Have you ever been talking to a friend who is an aspiring graphic designer, and they asked you what your go-to graphic design tools are and which tools you could never live without?

Because I have.

And it happened to me this week.

One of my friends and I were chatting over a coffee when she asked me what tools she absolutely needs to start out as a graphic designer.

And that’s when it actually hit me that I love and use so many tools on a daily basis, that it’s hard to keep count.

So I went home that night and wrote up a list of graphic design tools that I really consider crucial, and the list was at around 25 tools.

7 Design Tools I Can’t Live Without

But I’ve compacted only my very favorites into this list of 7 tools that I’m going to share with you today that I simply can’t do without.

So without further ado, let’s jump right into them.

1. Affinity Designer

If you’re not a Creative Cloud user, then Affinity Designer could be the thing for you.

I used to be a die-hard Adobe user until I started getting incredibly bothered by just how sluggish Illustrator had become.

I remembered reading about Affinity products and decided to give them a go, and never turned back.

The design revolution.

“Affinity Designer has truly changed the world of graphic design. Five years of intensive refinement since launch have been dedicated to our unwavering vision of a powerful, super-smooth app that improves your workflow and allows your creativity to shine.”

Of course, there are lots of other great tools out there like Figma and Sketch, but after trying out Affinity Designer for a while, I was hooked.

And yes, there are things that still need some improving, like their color tools, but other than that, I can actually say that I’m obsessed.

2. Affinity Photo

Another tool that I simply can’t do without is Affinity Photo.

If you happen to manipulate a lot of photos, you might find that Affinity Photo is much stronger than Photoshop in some areas, and mainly in bitmap scaling.

Due to Lanczos 3 sampling, Affinity Photo’s bitmap scaling is incredibly better and more useful than Photoshop’s.

If you’ve ever gotten frustrated with the hours that you’ve lost just manually calculating the horizontal whitespace so that it’s proportionate to the vertical, you’re not alone.

Affinity Photo has solved many of the small annoyances we’ve all had to deal with Photoshop, so if you’re over Creative Cloud, it’s time to give Affinity products a go.

3. TinyPng

There’s nothing worse than slow loading times.

If a webpage doesn’t load in half a second, I’m gone.

And I’m not alone in this. 47 percent of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less. 40 percent of consumers will wait no more than three seconds for a web page to render before abandoning the site.

So, when I need to optimize my designs for the web, I need to use some sort of tool that is going to help me with that.

TinyPng has been my go-to tool for the longest time. It’s free and it works quickly and efficiently.

So if you to optimize some of your images and designs for web format, ues TinyPng!

Not to mention that their mascot is the cutest little panda I’ve ever seen.

4. Khroma

If you’re amazing at finding, matching, and combining colors, then you could probably skip over this tool.

But this is a tool that I definitely wouldn’t want to design without.

Khroma uses AI to learn which colors you like and creates limitless palettes for you to discover, search, and save.

The way it works is quite intricate.

Khroma’s search allows you to search and filter the generator by hue, tint, value, color, as well as hex and rgb values.

Give it a go and see how you like it!

5. Codekit

Like most of us, I didn’t invest in getting into compilers as soon as I should have.

I used all the apps, like Minify, to minify CSS and JavaScript, but then one day, I found Codekit.

And I never went back.

What I found amazing about Codekit is that while I’m coding, I can also change the settings because it is a GUI, and don’t have to think another coding language.

6. Fontstand

If you’re not using Creative Cloud, then you need somewhere new to get your fonts from.

Fontstand is a font discovery platform that allows you to test and use high-quality fonts on all platforms.

You can rent fonts by the month with a dedicated app for macOS and Windows or start the monthly subscription with the new iPadOS app.

So basically, if you find a font you like, you get a 1-hour free trial with it to see if it fits your vibe, and if it does, then you can choose to rent the font for a small fee.

I think it’s an amazing platform that’s definitely worth looking into!

7. BrowserStack

And finally, we come to our last “can’t-live-without” product which is BrowserStack.

No matter what it is you’re building, it needs to be tested.

If you could, it would be best to test on real devices. But in the case that you can’t afford it, or don’t want to spend your money on that, you’ll need a live testing solution.

You can use BrowserStack for that. With their product, you can give your users a seamless experience by testing on 2000+ real devices and browsers.

No need to compromise with emulators and simulators!

Final Thoughts

So that concludes my list of must-use tools for 2020.

Or at least, a part of that list.

Let me know in the comments which tools you started using this year that you think you’ll be using for the long-haul!

Until next time,

Stay creative, folks!

You feel you have done everything right on your website. The copy looks compelling. The design looks magnificent. But still, visitors are not spending as much time on your website as much as you want them to. You have little to no clue about why it is happening and how to fix it. You try out a bunch of SEO tools, you undergo usability testing, but still, no significant improvements can be seen.

You feel tired and reluctant to try out more SEO tools and do more testing. You still have no clue why visitors are abandoning your well-designed information-rich website. You feel like talking to your visitors to understand what’s wrong, but how is that even possible? They certainly are in no mood to fill out a form on an exit popup or converse with your chatbot before leaving the website. The users that abandoned your website must have experienced issues you were not aware of.

Using a Real User Monitoring Tool

So, what’s next? With the attention span of people decreasing day by day, solving this problem for which you do not even know the root cause is imperative. Here’s how you can understand what’s going on. Try integrating your website with a real user monitoring tool.

Real user monitoring, an approach to web monitoring, is a type of performance monitoring that captures and analyzes every transaction of the user. It is a form of passive web monitoring because the monitoring services run in the background. There’s another type of web monitoring known as synthetic monitoring. In synthetic monitoring, the monitoring scripts are deployed via the browser to simulate paths that website users take.

Real user monitoring technology looks at how visitors interact with a website or an application. Real user monitoring tools enhance the front-end performance of your website by analyzing data to detect anomalies from real user sessions thereby increasing customer satisfaction. These tools can also send you alerts in real-time. Using these tools, you can get to know the exact underlying issues concerning your website. 

A real user monitoring tool like Sematext Experience is easy to use. It alerts you when user experience gets affected by website performance. You can inspect page-level specifics, track page loads, HTTP requests, UI interactions, resources, and more. Using such a tool, you can reduce performance-related issues by having 100% visibility into what areas are affecting UX.

How Real User Monitoring Improves SEO?

Real user monitoring lets you know the problematic areas on your website which could be affecting user performance. Here’s how such a tool can help in improving SEO.

Improving Page Loading Time

Google indicates that the loading time of web pages is a signal used by its algorithm to rank them. Google could be measuring the time taken to receive the first byte while calculating page speed. A poorly performing website degrades the user experience. Hence, such sites do not deserve to be promoted in search results.

Time-to-first-byte (TTFB) is the time taken by the browser to receive the first byte from a web server when a URL is requested. This metric includes the time taken to send a response, the processing time of the server, and the time taken by the first byte to reach your browser from the server. Here’s a graph of median TTFB vs ranking positions:

Source – https://moz.com/blog/how-website-speed-actually-impacts-search-ranking

Sematext Experience collects resource timing data for images, CSS, and JavaScript files. When someone visits your website, the browser begins downloading resources. These resources have a big impact on your website’s loading speed.

The resources are shown in the form of a waterfall ordered by the time they were discovered.

Resource Waterfall – Sematext Experience 

Load-time performance depends on various factors. If visitors experience slow page-loads or poor HTTP request performance, it is most likely caused by network latency, DNS servers, redirects, application performance, and other factors. A detailed timing breakdown on page loads and HTTP requests is displayed to understand which part(s) of the loading process is slow. 

Timing Breakdown – Sematext Performance

We can only optimize what we can measure. Once you have information on the resources which are slow-loading, you can start improving their load times. As SEO is impacted by loading time, here’s a list of tasks you can do to optimize your web pages for better SEO:

• Reduce the dimensions of images to fit the image containers on your web pages.
• Compress images to further reduce the space they occupy on your server.
• Stick to standard image formats (JPG, PNG, GIF).
• Use CSS sprites for images that you use frequently on your website like icons and buttons. A CSS sprite loads entirely in one go thereby reducing the number of HTTP requests. This technique helps in saving load time by not making users wait for multiple images to load.
• Reduce the size of your HTML, CSS, and Javascript files using a minification tool.
• Remove code comments, formatting, and unused code to reduce the size of the files.
• Reduce the number of redirects to avoid additional waiting time.
• Move scripts to the Footer to avoid render-blocking javascript code.
• Use browser caching so the browser doesn’t have to reload the entire page when a visitor comes back to your site. Browsers can cache images, stylesheets, Javascript files, and more. Learn how to leverage browser caching here.
• Improve the server response time by looking out for performance bottlenecks like slow database queries and routing. Try switching to a new hosting solution to further improve the server response time. The optimal response time is under 200 ms.
• Use a content distribution network (CDN) which essentially distributes the load of delivering content. It works as follows – copies of your website are stored at multiple data centers located geographically so that users have faster and reliable access to your website.

Improving User Satisfaction

The more the users are satisfied with your website experience, the more likely they will spend a lot more time on your website which in turn will help in improving SEO as time spent on the website directly affects your search engine rankings. Naturally, we want the average time spent on your website to be as high as possible for Google to take note of the importance of your website. 

On the other hand, if users are dissatisfied with your website experience, they are more likely to abandon your website which eventually will lead to an increase in the bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who abandon your website after visiting a single page. A high bounce rate means that visitors don’t like what they see on your website. We want to have the bounce rate as low as possible to have better rankings.

You learned how time spent on the website and the bounce rate impacts the rankings for your website. A real user monitoring tool like Sematext gives a measure of user satisfaction. 

User Experience – Sematext Experience

The user satisfaction score is based on the Apdex industry standard. Page loads, on-page transactions, and ajax requests are separated into different user satisfaction scores as they have different performance characteristics.

Conclusion

As 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine and 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search (source), it is important to improve the SEO of your website for better rankings. The fact is that there could be issues concerning your website which you might not even be aware of. These issues could secretly be affecting the user experience thereby making visitors abandon your website. You need real user monitoring tools to know these issues to improve your website rankings. Do research regarding which real user monitoring tool is good for you – one that fits your use case. The important part is to monitor the end-user experience and be in control of how users interact with your website.

Each year, loads of development tools come out. It’s becoming harder and harder to decide what tools you actually need and which ones you can live without.

 Honestly, it’s probably a personal preference, but it really helps me decide what I need when I have a list of useful tools to look over.

 So here we go: the top 8 development tools you absolutely need in 2020.

1. IPstack

IPstack allows you to locate and identify website visitors with an IP address. This is extremely helpful for a lot of reasons, but simply knowing who is coming to your website is one of the most valuable tools anyone can ever ask for.

Built within this tool are 5 different modules that are definitely worth mentioning:

• Location module

This module gives you all the information for the visitor’s location. All the way down to the zip code. With this information, you can optimize your ad targeting based on geolocation.

• Currency Module

Using the information above, you’ll also get an accurate report on the primary currency being used in the visitor’s region.

• Time zone module

The time zone module instantly lets you know the local time of the visitor. No more guessing and counting in your head.

• Connection module

Gather valuable information about the ASN and the hostname of the ISP your website visitors are using.

• Security module

IPstack will also detect any proxies, crawlers, or tor users. Security is a big deal for many users, and Ipstack makes sure you feel comfortable at all times.

Ipstack is fast and trusted by literally the biggest names in tech. To top it all off, they partner with the largest ISPs around the world, so you can rest assured that the information you’re getting is 100% accurate.

2. VSCode

VSCode is an open-source code editor that makes editing code as easy as pie. The developers of this tool basically took everything that sucked about coding and reinvented it to be easier.

So for example, they use InteliSense, which provides smart completions based on variable types, function definitions, and imported modules.

Possibly the worst thing about coding is debugging. At the very least, it can be quite time-consuming. But not so much with VSCode. You will no longer have to print out a debugging statement. Now, you can simply identify the bug and fix it right from the editor. Attach this to your running apps and debug with breakpoints, call stacks, and an awesome interactive console.

VSCode has built-in Git commands, it’s completely customizable, and it’s completely free. Check it out.

3. Postman

Postman is a collaboration platform for API development, and it has a lot to offer. Essentially, it’s your all-in-one tool for creating APIs. Here’s a list of some of the features you’ll have access to:

• API client

Send REST, SOAP, and GraphQL requests super fast.

• Automated testing

Automate your manual testing process.

• App mock

Run simulated endpoints and predict potential behaviors of the app.

• Monitor

After all is said and done, keep an updated report of the performance of the app.

Of course, there are quite a few features that Postman offers. Overall, it’s definitely worth checking out and using. It will make your life so much easier, and the amount you end up paying compared to the value you get out of it is incredible.

4. Docker

Docker is a platform for building, testing, and deploying applications. As simple as that sounds, it has quite a bit to offer. When I say a lot, I really mean a ton. There is a wide variety of development tools ready to go at any time. 

Docker has been a developer favorite for a while now, and it’s only getting better. If I added absolutely everything you have to look forward to on the list, we’d be here for a while. My best advice is to go and check it out for yourself to see what you think.

5. Sublime Text

I think Sublime Text said it best when they described themselves as a sophisticated text editor for code, markups, and prose. Even if they didn’t use the Oxford comma in their original description. 

In fact, just watching the demo on their main page shows you just how easy it is to fix and create text. Across the board, Sublime is getting great reviews for its ease of use, friendly interface, and for being the best text editor on the market. 

You may want to take the time to learn all of the specific commands for making the process even faster, as there are quite a few to memorize. But, all-in-all, you really won’t find a better product for editing text for code.

6. GitHub

Github has been a fan favorite for many years now. Some even consider it to be the best social coding and social sharing platform on the market.

The concept is simple: code together with your team to avoid confusion and delays. It sounds kind of messy, but I can assure you that it works pretty flawlessly. It really streamlines the process of bug fixing as well. Instead of making changes on a local device and then sending off the patches to be approved and implemented, you can simply (if approved by the lead developer) fix it on the spot.

7. Sifter

Sifter is definitely one of the best issue tracking software out there today. Possibly one of the best things about Sifter is how easy it is to learn and use. I would be very confident in suggesting this tool to even beginners.

Sifter brings all the issues it found to one platform. From there, the lead developer can label, attach files (screenshots, Docs, etc.), and assign them to qualified team members in basically minutes. On top of that, Sifter leaves a progression trail so that you can track exactly who did what.

Sifter also integrates really well with Slack, GitHub, and others to make sure that you have absolutely everything you need to make your app perfect.

8. Microsoft Visual Studio

Visual Studio by Microsoft is an IDE that is a great fit for anyone. It uses IntelliSense to autocomplete code and is notorious for the massive amount of languages it can support.

Visual Studio is jam-packed with all sorts of integration, plugins, and shortcuts to make your life easier. And that’s what we all really want, right?

Wrapping up

Now don’t get me wrong, there are thousands of development tools out there to get lost in. This is simply a list of the top 8 development tools you need in 2020. Or the top 8 that you should at least look into.

Regardless of your skill level, I think you’ll find something on this list that will help you out tremendously. Be sure to check out each link and take advantage of those free trials!

Are you testing over and over web tools and services to find the best ones? You can stop it as we’ve made the job for you and we are eager to present you probably the best web tools and services for 2017. You will find the most appreciated WordPress themes, a premium WordPress Signature Plugin, strong web development agencies that deliver on-time, website builders and many others. Check of all these below and keep in mind that many of them have free trials or even free forever plans.

1. Be Theme

Be Theme is the greatest WordPress theme, an all-in-one solution for any kind of project you are having in mind. It comes with more than 250 gorgeous pre-built websites covering the most popular fields like business, creative, blogs, shops, portfolios and others; with a 200+ shortcode generator that will help you customize; two page builders: Muffin Builder 3 and the Visual Composer (it costs $34 and it’s included for free in the theme’s price( which is the most professional and trusted builder with more than 500,000 powered websites and much more. Another 2 plugins are included for free (total worth of $37) and it will make your website look even better. The 2 of them are the Layer Slider and the Slider Revolution. Always keep in mind that this professional theme is super fast, simple to set up as it’s having the most intuitive installer, it’s SEO friendly and fully responsive. The cost of Be Theme is only $59 and it comes with lifetime updates, 6 months free support and for an additional $10,13 you will get an extra 6 months support. You should check their website, they have a great video that will present you Be Theme and after that, you can play on their demo, so see how cool is this theme.

2. ApproveMe

ApproveMe created an efficient eSignature tool that works perfectly for your WordPress site and it’s super simple to use.  Being a premium WordPress plugin means that you can use this in a lot of ways, with all of its available integrations. This plugin works with popular web apps like Easy Digital Downloads, Woo Commerce, Ninja Forms, Gravity Forms, Formidable, Contact Form 7, WP Forms, Dropbox and others.  And it’s not complicated — it will connect right out of the box so you can get started right away.  Some of the things you can do with this plugin: have your customers sign a contract before downloading a digital product or making a purchase, dynamically insert your client’s info, and even automate signing reminders.  That means no more chasing down clients for signatures, and when they do finally sign, it’s stored away.  Any document that runs through this plugin is 100% UETA/ESIGN compliant.  That means these contracts are valid, and will be held up by the court in case of any dispute.  Not only do you save time, you get peace of mind knowing that your business is safe.   The ApproveMe team got pricing right. Instead of a monthly cost like most other plugins, they offer two options: yearly and lifetime.  The yearly Professional Plan starts at $177/year.  It comes packed with features (way more than we could list here), and the security you need for your business.  Go check out their demo and see how quickly it can help your business.

3. Xfive

Xfive is that web development company that you will get in love with. They are on the market since 2006, so they have 11 years experience in providing excellent results. These experts are friendly, transparent and they try to innovate every second. The range of services is large, offering everything you can think of: front-end to back-end development services, WordPress, eCommerce, Sketch and PSD to HTML and other useful things. The whole process is enjoyable, simple and straight forward. You start by getting in touch with them, discussing about your projects and after you approve their offer, you will have assigned an Engager, that will be your point of contact prior to the production of your project. Get in touch with Xfive.

4. IM Creator

IM Creator is a new, free and excellent website builder that is using a unique technology named Polydoms. Because of that, the websites you are creating look gorgeous and everything is super-simple. This professional tool can be used by graphic designers or by anybody else because it’s no need of any coding skills or previous experience. There were over 11 mil fully responsive and SEO friendly websites created with IM Creator. Start your new website right now.

5. wpDataTables

wpDataTables is recognized as the best-selling and most appreciated WordPress plugin that helps you easily work with charts, tables and data management. There is a one-time cost of $35 and there are over 11,000 companies using this tool with great success. Give it a try, it works perfectly with any WordPress theme and tables look amazing.

6. EverSign

EverSign is an electronic, easy to use and complete signature platform which provides services such as legal binding, taking a signature on NDA documents, storing digital information on a secure server and much more. It is packed with a lot of features that you should check on their website and they even have a forever free plan. If you need their premium plans, the first one starts from just $9.99/month. Make your free account right now.

7. LuckyOrange

LuckyOrange is an efficient web tool that will explain to you why 99% of your website visitors are going away from your website, without making a purchase. This great tool puts at your disposal a dashboard with lots of info, dynamic heat maps, form analytics and many other cool stuff that you should check on their website. Take it for a free ride. First monthly plan starts from only $10, it’s a budget that everybody can afford.

8. WebbyMonks

WebbyMonks is an exceptional web development agency focused on HTML and WordPress development with a track record of 1500+ successful projects. They also assist clients with data migration to WordPress from other CMS. There are 60+ experts working for them, and hence you would always be receiving your projects on time. Get a quote!

9. Jevelin WordPress Theme

Jevelin is a great multi-purpose WordPress theme that is coming with a library of pre-built demos. These demos can be installed in just a few clicks and it will show you exactly what can be done with Jevelin. This theme also comes prepared with the WooCommerce plugin that will help you have an online store in no time. Check the demo of Jevelin WordPress theme.

10. BugHerd

BugHerd is a super-simple and efficient to use bug tracking web tool. It can be used by designers and developers to make complex issue reports and feature requests with just a point and click.  The first premium plan starts from just $29/month and it can be used for an unlimited number of projects and guests with 10 GB file storage at your disposal. Try it!

11. FreelanceLogoDesign

With just $29 you can start a logo design contest at FreelanceLogoDesign and a bunch of freelance graphic designers will compete for your work. You will pay the full price of $99, only after you analyze their work and you decide to move forward. Get your logo design right now.

12. MeridianThemes– WordPress theme

At MeridianThemes you will find gorgeous WordPress themes that are super-simple to setup and customize and were built to be SEO friendly and fully responsive. All of their themes are fully compatible with the most popular WordPress plugins. Check their portfolio and select the theme you love more.

13. CSS Design House

CSS Design House is the right place to search for the best web design agencies available on the market. You can browse their showcase with awesome websites and after you like something really much, you can contact directly the web design agency and get a quote for your project.

14. actiTIME Employee Timesheet

actiTIME is the best timesheet software that is super simple to use, track your time spent on different work assignments at the desk or on the go. See where time has gone and increase your performance in the most efficient way. Keep in mind that is a complete solution, packed with anything you can think of, for time and project management. Try it for free right now.

15. H-Code – A most popular and high-quality WordPress theme

ThemeZaa created many brilliant themes, but the most appreciated one is H-Code – A multi-purpose WordPress theme suitable for any type of website. It’s a highly versatile theme that can fit any kind of project, for freelancers or any type of business. The cost is only $60 and it comes with 6 months free support, that is more than enough.

16. InvoiceBerry

Among the best invoicing platforms there is InvoiceBerry. It has a user-friendly interface and it’s super simple to use. InvoiceBerry is a complete solution, packed with many cool features that you should check on their website. It has a forever free plan and the first premium package starts from just $15/month. Make an account for the free version and upgrade it if necessary.

17. MinterApp

MinterApp is a cool and efficient time tracking web tool that can be used from anywhere and can be easily integrated with MailChimp, PayPal, BaseCamp or Trello. It can also be used a Chrome extension and it can do lots of things. The premium plan starts from just $9.95/month and you can register for a free trial, to see exactly how it works, without any cost.

18. SalesMate

SalesMate is an excellent CRM software that is used by the sales team to increase numbers and get everything in order. It can fit any kind of team and company, as it’s highly versatile and the cost is just $15/month or $12/month if you pay for the whole year. They have a 30-days free trial that you should try.

What I recommend is to test for free these web tools and to buy directly the ones that you are comfortable with. This way you will see exactly how these tools are helping and which are the results. Share your opinions here and with your friends.

Our time is limited and we can’t just search the Internet forever for the best tools available out there. That’s why we’ve selected exactly 15 tools and services that do the trick for any business or freelancer. All of them have great features, they’re really easy to use and their prices are really affordable. If you do some research, you will see that all of them have really strong, professional teams behind them that know how to create awesome results and value for you. Enjoy!

1. Browserling.com

Browserling is something you should know about. It really does the trick. It’s an online cross-browser tester with tons of awesome features that let anyone create a more standards-compliant, responsive and bug-free version of their site. Pretty much everyone on this list uses Browserling to make sure their products work in all the browsers.

Let’s get into features straight away. First you can choose from hundreds of browsers and they load in 5 seconds. Next, you can capture screenshots of browsers. Then you can annotate screenshots with Bug Hunter and pinpoint bugs. Need to do local testing on local web server? SSH tunnels have your back. Do you often need to access the same browser? They’ve bookmarklets that let you bookmark your favorite browsers and then access them with a single click on the bookmark. Do you often need to do URL decoding, HTML decoding, JS beautification, or XML to JSON converting? They’ve created amazing web developer tools that have 50+ tools like this (available absolutely for free). As they say – no ads, no garbage, no nonsense – just tools. Press button, get result.

Browserling is trusted by over 15,000 users and huge corporations, such as Blekko/IBM and even the government and NHS, UK’s National Health Service.

The best part of Browserling is that it just works in your browser and you always get access the latest versions of browsers, because they install them as soon as they get released. They have Windows and Android as current operating systems, but iOS, Mac OSX and Linux are coming soon. Go try them out! They’ve a free version available and it’s totally awesome! (PS. And they’ve an amazing webcomic.)

2. Luckyorange.com

Lucky Orange is definitely “lucky”, as it provides you with the best tools and features to turn more visitors into customers on your website! It is a great analytics platform that offers a lot of helpful users’ stats that can make you improve the performance of your website.

For example, they provide you with beautiful heat maps that sum-up all of your visitors’ actions in one clear picture, showing you how people read and interact with your site, by watching their clicks, movement or how far they scroll. You can segment heat map data by location, browser, dates, mobile users, and more. Next, you have a great realtime dashboard, where you can see exactly the people browsing your site at the moment, having the possibility to watch everything they did, talking to them and even co-browsing, to help them with their problems. Finally, another great tool is the polling system, which is fully customizable, can have multiple questions, redirect to URLs, and can be triggered at just the right moment, to give you instant customer feedback. For more, go and have a look yourself!

3. Invoicely.com

If you have a work or business that involves sending a lot of invoices to clients, such as being a web designer or freelancer, then Invoicely is here to help you get your finances out of the way, saying “good bye” to the time-wasting paper invoices. It is a free, online solution, that helps you track all your invoices from a single dashboard.

It gives you the chance to create amazing and professional invoices, in any language or currency, in just a few seconds. Then, you can easily send unlimited invoices to your clients, at any account level. If you have multiple businesses with different teams involved, you can still manage them, as Invoicely lets you set up as many businesses as you like. You can add admin and staff members as your business grows and easily set permissions for them. Moreover, with Invoicely you get generated reports, monthly and yearly statements and customizable summaries on your earnings and expenses, invoices, estimates and bills, all to keep your finances in one place. Go check them out for many other great options!

4. Invoiceocean.com

Do you have multiple business and you want to manage them from the same account? Haven’t you tried InvoiceOcean yet? Then you should try it right now. This app allows you to switch between your businesses really easy with only a few clicks with the option of getting separate reports. Also, you can divide your company in multiple departments. If you want to you can receive different document numbering, reporting and different users for each department, all of this to make your work easier and to help your business prosper. You should as well know that you can access your business information from you smartphone because the InvoiceOcean mobile app is ready to use. You can now add photographed receipts as expenses straight from your mobile device.

5. Sketch to HTML by Xfive.co

Do you love designing in Sketch, but don’t have time for conversion to HTML or just don’t know how to do it? Sketch to HTML by Xfive will bring your designs to life. All you have to do is press the “Get started” button and let them worry about the rest. Their motto is “Dream, Move, Hope, Do” and that’s because with their help you can achieve your goals and create the best project possible.

6. uKit.com

Though uKit has been launched a year ago, it has already forced its way to the top.  It received much attention from review services and was highly rated by http://mmthomasblog.com/. The main highlights of the system are a simple drag-and-drop editor and a wide choice of themed widgets, which makes it really simple to put together a professional website in minutes by simply manipulating the elements like in LEGO. With over 240 professional-looking themes, a mobile responsive version, and included web hosting, uKit is definitely a good choice to put your business on the Web.

7. Mobirise.com

With the immense spread of advanced online technologies, which have already become a significant part of our everyday life, creating a website that will attract the attention of your target audience and keep them interested in your business is vital. By using this website builder, you will be able to create a site that will be accessible on any mobile device, which is crucial for those users, who have got used to browsing through the web on the go.
Apart from the convenient web design options, Mobirise team has made it possible to host the newly created website on any platform of your choice with regard to your business or personal needs. What’s more, there are no hidden charges involved when it comes to using this website builder. The tool is free for all users, with no exceptions.

8. Dealfuel.com

DealFuel is pretty popular, thanks to its amazing web designer deals that it offers, from WordPress themes, webpage tools, online tutorials and eBooks, to templates, SEO tutorials and graphic tools, such as icons, badges, mockups, Photoshop actions and more. It has a special “Freebies” section, where you can get some great deals (worth hundreds of dollars) for free! So if you are looking to save a good deal of money and quality time, head straight out there.

9. Photowoa.com

These awesome guys from PhotoWhoa provide you with curated products to improve your photography. From some great tutorials from Lindsay Adler, ebooks from Michael Zelbel, guides from Ana Brandt – you have it all here (Difficult to believe?)You can find something for every photographer, from glamour and weddings to portraits, or even food photography, all of them at discount prices! In addition , you can manage to get your hands on some photography gear, such as flashes, wireless triggers, camera straps and camera filters at unbelievable prices.

10. Cyberchimps.com

Get 100% responsive and SEO-optimised WordPress themes; that can help you grow your website, making it more beautiful and professional looking. CyberChimps provides you wide range of themes, covering various niches, such as restaurants, blogs, travel companies and more. You can join CyberChimps Club, that gives you access to all their 40 WordPress Themes and Plugins – and all new releases too!

11. Onlinelogodesign.us

To own an inspired logo is the first step to business success and also an important part in brand and social marketing. OnlineLogoDesign offers a team of hand-picked designers at different prices (from $99 to $299) to create yours. Just by looking at their portfolio, which contains over 20 000 examples, you can be sure by their excellence. Go have a glance!

12. Freelogodesign.me

A free logo might seem a dream request, but you can actually get one at FreeLogoDesign. After you send them a request, they will send you an icon three days later, at most. They give away five icons daily and have tons of fresh designers eager to make an incredible logo, to pass an exam to get a job. With such a great offer, why on Earth wouldn’t you give it a try?

13. Colorlib.com

Pinbin” is a clean, minimalistic, beautiful and responsive theme inspired by Pinterest. It is ideal for graphic and web designers, photographers and many other creatively related activities. It is a portfolio theme, making it the perfect choice for any artist who is looking to create his or her own site with their work. If you are one of those creative people don’t waste any more time and download it!

14. MotoCMS.com

Launching a website from scratch in just a few minutes seems to be quite a complicated task, unless… you use MotoCMS. This website builder offers a selection of tools, which make the process much simpler even for inexperienced users.
An intuitive WYSIWYG editor comes with step-by-step guidelines, following which you will cope with the task in no time. A user -friendly interface and a collection of high quality templates help create websites, which are both functional and professionally looking. Versatility of web design features, in its turn, contributes to the efficacy of the process and helps improve the search engine ranking of the website.

15. Typeform.com

Typeform represents the next-generation of online forms. You can build surveys, quizzes, 360 degree feedback forms, and simple apps. For devs, Typeform has an API so you can integrate its beautiful interface into your next project. You can start using Typeform for free, and upgrade to utilize more advanced features. Take it for a spin today. No sign-up required.

Having the right tools and services at your disposal will make the trick for you. These 15 tools are among the best solutions available and were tested by many companies and freelancers. Try them on your own !

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm6CuEBTHqM]

Choose from 139 Animation Effects for your Adobe Muse website. No Coding Skills Required.

Website animations are becoming more and more popular on the web today. Animations can make your website stand out and give it more life. Two of the more popular website animation libraries are Animate.css and Magic.css. Animate.css is well known within the web design community and many web designers and developers use it within their website. Magic.css, although not as popular as Animate.css, has many great animations that you can add to your website. With these libraries you can have elements rotate, fade in, fade out, flip, bounce, shake, pulse, vanish in, vanish out, bounce in, etc. You can visit the above libraries to see all of the animations.

This gave me the idea to create a widget for Adobe Muse that combined both of these libraries and allowed users to add these animations to their Adobe Muse website. I called the widget “The Animator Widget,” a name I thought was fitting for what it does :). In total there are 139 web animations that you can add to any element on your Adobe Muse website. All you have to do is add the widget, assign the widget to the element, and you immediately have animation on your website. This makes web designing in Adobe Muse a lot of fun. You can have the animation start on load, on start, on hover, on click, or on scroll. This allows you to completely customize how you would like your users to experience the animation.

The Animator Widget Cover Art

Features Include:

• Choose from 139 different animations
• Set the duration of the animation
• Add a delay to the animation before it starts
• Set how many times you would like the animation to repeat
• Infinitely loop the animation
• Add to any element on your Adobe Muse website
• Lightweight for your website

Trigger Animations:

• On Load
• On Start
• On Hover
• On Click
• On Scroll

It is no wonder this widget has been one of the most popular in the Muse For You Shop. Web designers and developers love engaging their audience with animations. You can choose from 139 animations and completely customize how elements animate within your Adobe Muse website. Watch the video tutorial above to see the widget in action and how it works. To access the widget visit http://museforyoushop.com.

Recently a Senior Web UI Engineer by the name of Ashley Nolan published a wonderful blog post detailing the results of a survey he conferred with various web developers. The results were meant to measure which tools, languages, libraries, and dev resources are currently the most popular among coders in 2015.

Some results feel more than obvious while others are rather surprising. Here’s a rundown of the data charts for each question on the survey. If you want to read more details please visit Nolan’s original blog post.

Preprocessors

Modern CSS preprocessors save a lot of time on more than just one or two tasks. Interestingly we all can expect either Sass or LESS to make it onto this list. But the results show a few other interesting points as well.

Post-Processing

The next question wasn’t geared towards the popularity of tools, but rather the number of developers who were familiar with the idea of post-processing. The most popular choices are Post CSS and Rework CSS, both of which were the limiting options in this survey.

Task Runners

These tools follow automation to the max. You can write scripts or apply pre-built scripts to a wide variety of files to achieve results like minification, merging, and simplification of redundant elements.

JS Frameworks

The fourth question deals with JavaScript frameworks, and more specifically developer’s current knowledge base of dev frameworks. I’m not surprised to see jQuery so high up on the list. I am a little surprised to see Ember.js is “heard of”, but very rarely used.

JS Frameworks(Most Used)

Similar question but more about usage. This graph depicts the most popular JavaScript libraries & frameworks that frontend developers use on the vast majority of their projects. Yet again jQuery leads the way, but Angular is a close second which I’m very happy about.

JS Module Bundlers

It seems very few devs have even heard of these bundlers, let along use them in their workflow.

A bundler is meant to save time by combining all modules together into a single file. This can also work with something like ES6 or variants of JavaScript like CoffeeScript.

Interestingly enough, frontend developers on average do not use module bundlers at all in their workflow. I’m curious to see if this trend might change over the next 5-10 years.

JS Testing

Another less-popular chore among frontend developers is testing. This can be accomplished through a variety of frameworks that work on page dynamics/DOM elements, as well as asynchronous results like Ajax requests. Again it seems very few developers have latched onto custom testing but maybe this will catch as the years pass by.

Misc Frontend Tools

Lastly we come to a general question about miscellaneous tools for developers. This isn’t just about usage, but also considers if developers have even heard of these tools. The results are quick interesting and overall I find this quiz to paint a magnificent picture of the microcosm of frontend development.

I’d again like to thank Ashley Nolan for granting permission for us to republish his findings here on Web Design Ledger. I’ve only glossed over many of these topics presenting the raw results of Ashley’s survey. But if you’re interested to read more please check out his wonderful post covering many facets of the surveying process itself.