Everybody loves free web design tools, but there’s a lot of garbage out there so it becomes very helpful when someone recommends a tool to you. When a free web design tool is recommended you can be sure there is no spyware, viruses or any other garbage. Anyway, I grabbed a list of free tools that some of my fellow Xsitepro users are using….take your time and read through the list, there are some pretty awesome time saving tools that you can download right now for free.

I thought I’d post about a free piece of software that
I always use in conjunction with XSP and Photoshop.

It’s called ColorPic and it let’s you pick out any color
in a browser or on an application like Photoshop or XSP!
Once you pick out a color ColorPic gives all the info related
to it. Perfect for when you want a shade of color just slightly
lighter or darker then what you’re currently using.

Download it free and find out more at:
http://www.iconico.com/colorpic/

I’ve been using colorpic for a long time….it’s a great little application.

Someone
might wonder why they would need this little tool. If you do any
website design, it’s perfect for grabbing colors and duplicating that
color. For Xsitepro users, especially version 1 users it is
indispensable for setting up your google adsense ads. Xsitepro doesn’t
really have a very good system of picking custom colors so that you can
match the adsense backgrounds and boundary with your website background
color…..well, Colorpic to the rescue! All you have to do is use color
pic to sample the background of your webpage color and use the color
code in your Xsitepro adsense color values.

Here’s a couple of other applications that are free and helpful when working with xsite or your computer.

I use a free version of Screen Calipers
which comes in handy when trying to duplicate website designs or
determining what size table will fit into a blog column….actually
anytime you need to measure a distance on a website. The free version
is somewhat limited, but I’ve not run into a situation where I needed
to purchase it….very handy too.

One more is called simple search and replace
and you can use it to search a folder for just about anything. I use it
to search for my google adsense number when I export a site from
xsitepro to Dreamweaver and then replace that number with a php include
so that anyone can change one file and all the adsense numbers will be
change.

I do the same thing with clickbank id’s, use search and
replace to find all my clickbank id’s and then replace with a php
inlcude that will direct to a file that contains the clickbank id. This
way, I can make a site and sell it to anyone who doesn’t have xsitepro,
all they have to do is change 2 files, the google file and the
clickbank file which are pulled in with the php includes.

Ok…..what the heck….last one. I use an application to help me stay organized called Treepad.
It’s free also, and the free trial version has worked for me for at
least 4 years. You can drag urls, images or text into a file. You can
use it as a diary, phone book, address book, store important urls,
store downloads, store purchases….you name it and you’ll find this
little application will help keep you organized.

Anxious to see what you guys come up with!

Thanks Patrick and Scott for those excellent pointers. I’m going to go and check them all out right now.

Treepad
sounds right up my street. I use Evernote at the moment, which has a
free version, and that does a similar thing. Here’s the url:

http://www.evernote.com

PIXresizer – Free Image Resizer
PIXresizer is a photo resizing program to easily create web and e-mail friendly versions of your images with reduced file sizes,
http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm

Firefox Add-on
Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies,
https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/271

Firefox Add-on
Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage,
https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/539

Firefox Add-on,
Select text and it’s automatically copied to the clipboard. Like Linux or mIRC,
https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/383

Web Developer Toolbar
The be all end of of free tool is a FireFox addon called Web developer Toolbar.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

So many useful tools I cannot list them all.
Here are a few of my favorites.

  • - Error checker. Checks a pages code and tells you instantly if there
    is an error, what the error is, and where the error is. Code, scripts,
    CSS. All checked.
  • – Ruler and line guides. Check sizes AND alignment of objects.
  • – Outline. Adds an outline to all elements on a page so you can see EXACTLY how a site is built.
  • – Image options. On, off, and more. Get EVERY kind of info you can image on every image on a site.
  • – Security features as well.

If you don’t have this, you should!
===========

JING
http://www.jingproject.com/

Dude, seriously, screen caps and video capture with free file hosting AND super easy to use.
TechSmith has top notch products, and this is the top notchiest of them all.
Just a little glowing orb on top of your screen and you can catch it all.

Great for sending quick video instructions to clients, or taking screen shots for you blog etc.
==========

Not a day goes by where I don’t use both of those tools for personal and professional uses.

You read my mind Patrick.

I was (and still will) write a longer and more detailed blog post writing about the various Free tools I use.


_________________
Knowledge is not information, it is transformation. ~ Osho ~
Creative Compulsions | Winnipeg Web Design
Shop XSitePro | Creative XSitePro Templates

I have to admit It took forever for me to switch over to Firefox :oops: , but
it’s when I discovered FF’s addon Web Developer that I was completely sold!

Another free application I’ve been using for as long as I can remember is
WordWeb. It’s a comprehensive one-click English thesaurus and dictionary
for Windows. It can be used to look up words from almost any program,
showing definitions, synonyms and related words. It includes pronunciations
and usage examples, and has helpful spelling and sounds-like links.

I love Wordweb and you will too. You can grab your free copy at:
http://wordweb.info/

Thank you everyone for sharing! And keep sharing your ideas.

Cheers!

Patrick

_________________
* We Make The Sales. You Get Paid! –> Golf Affiliate Program

* Product Reviews = How Super Affiliates Are Raking in the BIG Bucks!

This is a great thread, keep those links coming.

Firefox add on,

Seoquake
is a Mozilla Firefox extension aimed primarily at helping web masters
who deal with search engine optimization and internet promotion of web
sites. Seoquake allows to obtain and investigate many important SEO
parameters of the internet…
https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/3036

Here’s another fantastic Free tool for all you
web designers. It helps you to co-ordinate a complementary
color mix for you site. left panel, right panel, main panel, links etc etc

It’s great to use with the colorpic tool, and being as it’s so
easy now to alter colors with XSP2 it’s just a breeze to play
around with colors!

Just enter the color code eg #ffffff into the box and click on submit hex.
Or you can use the RGB box. Choose the colors you are happy with!

(make sure you just enter ffffff and not #ffffff ie leave the # off as it’s
already in place)

http://www.defencemechanism.com/color/

Here is a very good free tool. It is a powerful word replacement
program designed to help writers, copywriters, article marketers, and
‘private label rights’ content users.

I use it almost every day with PLR.

http://www.wordflood.com/Free.html

Thanks for all the good information.

Color Pic is great. I been using it for some time now. A great free onscreen ruler for measurements is JR Screen Ruler. http://www.spadixbd.com/freetools/jruler.htm

If you use your PC’s screencapture button you’ll want to
check out FireShot. It’s a Firefox addon and it rocks.

It’s free and simple to use.

Check it out at:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5648

Keep the great suggestions coming!

This one deserves a mention…

Newly available free tool for creating stellar website headers. (Thanks to Paul!)

http://www.xheader.com/

Cheers!

First off, great idea here!! Love the pixresizer and the wordweb.
Pixresizer going to help me alot, especially putting up blogs and
resizing the header from the main site to fix the blog.

Here are a few more FF add ons…

Session
manager, if you are like me and have MANY tabs opened.. you know, out
of sight out of mind, this helps bc it will restore your previous
session in case of crash. They also have morning cup of coffee which
can save group of tabs by days but the new version doesnt show the icon
for this. I also use tabsaver as well.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2324

Colorful tabs, adds colors to your tabs. Wife liked this more than I did, lol

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1368

Search
Status – Like this b/c it highlights no follow links and also will show
other various forms of data from links, whois, archive, robots..

http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/

Y
SLOW another must have. YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why
they’re slow based on the rules for high performance web sites. YSlow
is a Firefox add-on integrated with the popular Firebug web development
tool.

http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

Recommended by the 30 Day Challenge folks. I haven’t tried it yet but it looks good:
http://www.socialmarker.com/

OK…man, you guys/gals have come up with some really good stuff.

Anybody ever use HTTrack Website Copier?

Before
you start thinking this is illegal, remember just about anything you
put online is accessible to anybody….I don’t like it anymore than the
other guy, but and that’s a big but, it depends on how you use this
material.

Bottom line, if you download someone else’s stuff and
use it on your website or sell it then you are a thief…plain and
simple, your a thief just like any other parasite.

However, as a webmaster HTTrack can do many things for you.

First let me tell you what it does. Basically it downloads the entire website to your desktop, complete with folders files ect.

This is from their website:

Quote:
It
allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a
local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML,
images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack
arranges the original site’s relative link-structure. Simply open a
page of the “mirrored” website in your browser, and you can browse the
site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can
also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted
downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help
system.

There are a number of ways you can use this tool.
For instance if you are working with a person who has a website up and
there has been an argument between the domain owner and the webmaster,
and the domain owner hired you to redo his site….You can download
almost everything on the server.

I almost hesitate sharing this
tool because I know there will be some that will use it in an
unscrupulous way. Please don’t think you can download someones site and
steal their content, images and site structure…..that would make you
a real jerk!

Once I had a client that was a doctor and they
wanted to put 100’s of pdf’s directly on their site that came from
another doctor. The other doctor gave their permission and I was able
to use HTTrack to grab the needed files.

Basically, I use the
tool to grab a website and plug it into dreamweaver and study how the
site was put together. I’ve learned a lot of tricks and I’ve been able
to duplicate affects that I would have never figured out on my own.
So….in essence for me, it is a great learning and teaching tool.

You
can configure the program to only download certain sections of a
website. I would highly recommend only downloading what you need.
Remember if you snag someone’s site that is huge, you’ll be taking
bandwidth from them.

The tool has been around for a while, many
people use it. Just remember to use it wisely and if you think you are
going to use anything you download….please, please get permission
first.

To get your free copy of HTTrack….just go to http://www.httrack.com

For
some of you guys who are new to building websites, it’s a great way to
learn html. You’ll be able to learn certain effects and transfer those
effects to your Xsitepro websites. When you see a site with something
really cool and it doesn’t show up on “view source code”, you can give
httrack a try. By the way, this tool isn’t foolproof and will not grab
everything, but you will get more than is available with “view source
code”…..plus you can see how a site is structured.

Most will
pass this by, but perfection involves understanding. Even though you
use Xsitepro, at some point you need to start learning html…unless
you are building only one site in your lifetime.

I’m constantly
amazed at the number of people who bitch and complain the xsitepro
won’t do this or that…when in the long run, some basic understanding
of html and css would prove invaluable in the development of your sites.

Oh well….I better stop before I say something that gets me in trouble :)

Best Wishes to All!


scottparat, you didn´t pöst the links so here they are,
http://www.httrack.com/

And the FF add on,
https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/1616

scottparat wrote:
Quote:
And the FF add on,
https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/1616

How can I see this in English?

Scott

Remove nl

I cannot believe I did not list my #1 pluggin for Firefox

FireFTP – Built in FTP program, that is super easy and does everything you need an FTP program to use.
fireftp.mozdev.org/

Glad to see this thread is helping XSP users discover some kewl new free tools to help with web design.

I’ve been using the FTP addon program for Firefox for some time now and love it.
It’s simple to use and you can beat free when it comes to cost. Well most of the time. :D

An interesting Firefox addon that I enjoy is Foxmarks. With Foxmarks I can go anywhere in
the world, get on a computer, and still have all my bookmarks! It’s smart stuff.

Check it out here: http://www.foxmarks.com/

Keep them ideas coming!

PForbes


_________________
* We Make The Sales. You Get Paid! –> Golf Affiliate Program

* Product Reviews = How Super Affiliates Are Raking in the BIG Bucks!

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