Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Top Five Web Design Tools

Just like in most other professions, a web designer’s set of tools is what brings a concept into fruition. There are many applications available to our disposal, but there are some that just stand out from the crowd. The tools in this article are what’s regarded as the most popular tools used for web design.

1. PHOTOSHOP















Adobe Photoshop is a very popular commercial graphics editor available for the Mac and Windows operating system. Created for professional photographers and designers, it is the ideal application for manipulating images and creating web graphics. Photoshop has all the necessary tools and options you need such as: Filters – which automatically adds effects to your image or a selected section of your image, extensibility and automation with BrushesActions and Scripting, and workflow enhancement features like Layer Comps and the Revert option.

2. DREAMWEAVER
















Adobe Dreamweaver is a commercial application for web development that’s available for the Mac and Windows operating systems. Its featured-packed suite of tools and options include: syntax highlighting and very smart Code Hinting, a built-in FTP client, project management and workflow options that make team work effortless, and Live View – which shows you a preview of your source code. Dreamweaver tightly integrates with other popular Adobe products such as Photoshop, allowing you to share Smart Objects for quick and easy updating and editing of graphics components. 

3. ADOBE FLASH
















Adobe Flash is the best software to use for web site animation. It has gained a lot of popularity and there seems to be a huge demand for Flash web sites. The reason Flash is so popular is because you can do fantastic animations while still keeping the file size low and so that sites can load fast. If you are interested in developing web animations Flash is without a doubt the best. There is also a huge online community of Flash developers so if you have questions or need resources like articles, tutorials, sound loops, flash files - it is all readily available on the Internet.

4. FIREWORKS















Adobe Fireworks is a commercial raster and vector graphics editor hybrid from Adobe that’s available for the Mac and Windows operating systems. Designed specifically for web designers (unlike Photoshop), Fireworks brings you a plethora of tools and options that make full web layout prototyping a breeze.

Among its notable features are: "slices" for slicing and dicing a design mockup into HTML/CSS for rapidly creating prototypes (though you should avoid using auto-generated source code for the end-build), the ability to package an entire site design as a PDF with clickable components for interactive and impressive site prototypes, and optimization tools for making your web graphics as lightweight as possible.

4. SWISH FLASH




Advanced Flash Creation Tool For The Graphic Artist Or Web Professional
Creates Stunning Flash Animations and Websites with Ease
Includes over 350 Preset Multimedia Effects
Includes over 180 Ready-to-use Components and Vector Shapes
Import Images, Graphics, Sound and Video from all popular formats
Export Presentations to Flash, Video, EXE, GIF Animation or Image Sequence
Powerful Scripting Language for Advanced Users
Tools to Control Motion, Draw Shapes, Edit Text, and more
NEW! Project templates - Instant Results Using the Wizard Panel
NEW! Drawing Tools - Shape Operations, Knife Tool, Component Tool
NEW! Improved Motion Path - Editable Bezier Curves, Convert a Shape to Path.

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