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Two Online Web Design Tools To Make Life Easier

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By Bud Kraus
bud@joyofcode.com
Joy Of Code
Creator And Instructor

v5 i6
Originally Published: March 19, 2009

Believe it or not, I have run out of great online web design tools to share with my students and you, my Joy Gems Readers. It's hardly because I've used them all. It's because I've been working the web for a long time and I'm stuck in a rut using the same tools over and over again.

So I chatted with the Designers Talk group on LinkedIn, looking for new tools and some ideas to share with you.

My selection criteria was based on common sense. Was the tool usable and easy to learn? Was it something I would really use in making web sites?The answer was a resounding YES.

I looked at all of their favorite tools. These are the two that really stood out.

Browsershots

Ever want to quickly see what your page looks like in a variety of browsers?

Try Browsershot - it's awesome!! Submit your url to Browsershot, then sit back, relax, and wait a minute or two. Browsershot does the heavy lifting of assembling an image for each browser. Not only can you see how your page looks in all versions of Firefox, IE, and Safari, but even in browsers you've never heard of before (but other people may use).

This isn't just cool, it's very useful. So if you think your page looks good in all flavors of all browsers, give it the Browsershot test. Go ahead. Click on any browser's thumbnail to get a larger image of what your page looks like in a particular browser.

If you're using web design standards, sit back, relax, and enJoy an adult beverage as you applaud yourself for doing things the right way.

A word of caution. You still need to test your pages in live environments. Looking at screenshots is a good place to start to determine where design issues lay, but it's no substitute for looking at the page in an actual browser. A screenshot is hardly going to tell you if you've got any Javascript problems.

TinyUrl

This one is really not a design tool per se, but I just had to share this with you.

Have you ever had to work with an insanely long web address? I mean something ugly like

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?
eid=59349221173#/pages/Learn-How-To-Make
-Web-Sites-Online-With-One-On-One-Training-Joy-Of-Code/55843862662?ref=ts?

Of course you have!!

That is a link to my Joy Of Code Page on Facebook. It's so long that I can't even use it on Facebook to refer people to that page.

In comes TinyUrl to save the day.

Facebook can't use the url because of its length. But you can use TinyUrl to shrink that beast down to bite size like this

http://tinyurl.com/cgkal3

Isn't that much easier to deal with? Goodbye emails with unsightly urls!

While you are on my FB page, please become a Fan - especially if you've taken Joy Of Code. Oh yeah, I'm on LinkedIn too. Come and join my network.