Kick-Ass Squeeze – June 2009

Kick-Ass Websites

Satellite | International Web Development – One of our many great friends in the TWS community and superb Aussie developer Japh quit his day job and became a freelance developer. And this is the site he’s kick-starting his business with. Not too shabby I must say!

Fuel Your Writing – The Fuel Brand Network is pumping out sites like crazy! Last month they unveiled Fuel Your Code and now, another goody, is Fuel Your writing. Lost of great tips on writing!

Fuel Your Apps – The second of 3 great Fuel sites to come out. I found some great apps thanks to that site already!

Fuel Your Photography – Aaaaand here’s the third Fuel site to hit the net this month. Into photography or getting into in? There some great tips to get you going.

Texture Lovers – Max from Design Shard launched this gem of a site! Instead of having a bunch of textures bookmarked, I just have this one now. It’s all there and some great new ones I haven’t seen.

CGTuts – The Envato crew unveiled another great site this months for the CG people out there. Tutorials and articles on creating great 3D images to realistic faces, this site is another great TutsPlus hit!

Digging Into WordPress -”This blog is home for the upcoming book of the same name by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr. Books and blogs are the perfect compliment to each other when it comes to learning web technologies. This blog is great for finding copy and pasteable code, quick tips and quick searches.”

html5doctor -”This is a resource that caters to people who wish to find out more about implementing HTML 5.”

Kick-Ass Links

Check My Colours – “This beta tool is for checking foreground and background color combinations of all DOM elements and determining if they provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits. All the tests are based on the algorithms suggested by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).”

ColoRotate – “With ColoRotate, you can work with colors in 3D, in real time, and in a way that matches how our minds process color. [...] ColoRotate has an intuitive interface that eliminates the need to memorize or jot down color combinations or numbers. Indeed, you can traverse across an open three-dimensional color space and choose (or design) the color palette that fits your needs. In the process, you can uncover color relationships that give your designs an aesthetic balance that will please the most discriminating eye.”

Fontifier – “Fontifier lets you use your own handwriting for the text you write on your computer. It turns a scanned sample of your handwriting into a handwriting font that you can use in your word processor or graphics program, just like regular fonts such as Helvetica.”

Flipping Typical – “A way to explore the popular typefaces you have on your computer.”

The 1KB CSS Grid by Tyle Tate – “Other CSS frameworks try to do everything—grid system, style reset, basic typography, form styles. But complex systems are, well, complex. Looking for a simple, lightweight approach that doesn’t require a PhD? Meet The 1KB CSS Grid.”

CSS Text Wrapper – “The CSS Text Wrapper allows you to easily make HTML text wrap in shapes other than just a rectangle. You can make text wrap around curves, zig-zags, or whatever you want. All you have to do is draw the left and right edges below and then copy the generated code to your website.”

Kick-Ass Articles / Tutorials

How To Make Potential Customers Pick You Over ‘The Other Guys’ – “Consumers and business buyers alike are looking to get maximum value for their dollar. The burning question at the back of every buyer’s mind is: Why should I buy something from you instead of from your competition? It’s more important now than ever to differentiate your freelancing business from other freelancing businesses. Differentiating your business is the key to winning clients from competitors.”

What’s The Best Way To Handle Page Titles? – So what do you do? Did you get in on this great discussion over at CSS-Tricks?

Getting Started Writing WordPress Plugins – “I think WordPress plugins should be especially important to anyone running a web application that could benefit from direct integration into the WordPress platform. This could include a WordPress sidebar widget that pulls information from your website, a shortcode for quickly embedding your site content in WordPress posts, etc.”

How to Organize Graphic Design Files – “I think it is safe to say that every designer out there has a huge amount of files on their computer. It just comes with the territory. From stock files to client files, our computers are over run with files both big and small. Not having some sort of organized system in place can quickly lead to lost files, headaches, and even the occasional accidental delete. While every one has their own method of doing this, I wanted to share some of my thoughts and practices on organizing graphic design files.”