15 Online HTML5 Tools for Web Designers

by Andy on October 10, 2012

Online HTML5 tools are quite useful for web designers who wants to forge ahead of the competition, and have more satisfied clients. It is of course important to follow developments and keep an eye on new tools that emerge.

HTML5 is the new version of the markup language HTML that has been used for presenting and structuring online contents since the early 90s. It is an internet core technology that was proposed originally by Opera Software. If you want to learn more of it’s background and history these HTML5 infographics can help you. HTML has been standing in the shadow of other frameworks like Flash and IE, but the word is, that this is going to change with the arrival of HTML5. As of today, HTML5 is still being developed, but believe me, it is here to stay.

HTML5 has opened a window of opportunities for web designers. Online web design tools based on HTML5 makes it easier to incorporate audio, video, drag and drop, fonts, animations and graphics into web pages. HTML5 also helps web designers build mobile friendly website themes to ensure excellent user-experience when surfing the Internet on mobile devices. However, since such tools are fairly new, some people may still be unaware of their true potentials. Also, some web designers still want to use Flash and other popular framework as their primary tool set.

Below, I have listed 10 useful online HTML5 tools. They can provide developers and web designers with manoeuvrability in making websites more convenient, productive and attractive.

Moqups – HTML5 App For Creating Wireframes

Moqups is a HTML5 web app for creating wireframes, mockups or UI concepts. You can go to their blog and read more about this highly popular project.

Fontdragr – Online Font Testing Tool

If you are a designer, you might find it difficult to choose a decent font. However, using this online font testing tool can make the process much easier. You can view any font you want in a webpage without changing its CSS or HTML code.

Liveweave – HTML5, CSS3 & JavaScript Playground

Liveweave is a new playground for developers and designers to test HTML, CSS and Javascript. Liveweave editor has built-in context-sensitive autocompletion for HTML4/HTML5 and CSS2/CSS3, that makes life a lot easier.

Adobe Edge Animate

Edge Animate will allow you to create animated and interactive web contents. It has an easy to use and intuitive interface, precise control, broad reach and more.

HTML KickStart

HTML KickStart is not really a tool, it is a set of HTML5, CSS, and jQuery building blocks for website development. It includes files, layouts, and elements that will give you a headstart and save you hours on your projects.

Stitches – An HTML5 Sprite Sheet Generator

Stitches is a really easy-to-use HTML5 sprite sheet generator. Simply drag and drop image files onto the app, click “Generate” and your sprite and stylesheet will be good to go. Currently compatible only with the latest version of Firefox and Chrome.

Create – Web Editing Interface

Create is a new web editing interface that uses a browser-based HTML5 environment for managing your content. It can be adapted for use with virtually any content management backend.

SpriteBox Online HTML5 Tool

These days, compressing images seems to be the rage. By placing your photos in a Sprite, you can increase the rate of your loading times as well as image transitions. Online Sprite Box Tool will aid in designing photos into sprites with the use of HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery.

Online Velocity Sketch Tool

This unique HTML 5 online canvas drawing tool can make creative, strange looking creations. Use this HTML5 tool to come up with something really awesome for your designs.

On/Off Flipswitch HTML5/CSS3 Generator

A beautifully designed and super-easy-to-use tool for generating your own HTML5/CSS3 “On and Off” flipswitches with optional animated transitions.

Online SVG to HTML5 Canvas Tool

Most vector art packages such as Inkscape and Illustrator can export SVG or Scalable Vector Graphics elements. This tool will allow you to convert SVG files into its HTML 5 canvas equivalent.

Online 3D Sketch Tool

This sketch tool uses the capability of HTML canvas in creating 3D drawing. The tool will allow you to draw with dashed lines and vibrate your drawing. You can also rotate the 3D canvas by dragging with the cursor horizontally while pressing down the Space Bar.

Online Pattern Generator Tool

This is an online tool that can be quite useful for creating header and page backgrounds. Designers can even use the tool to create heading backgrounds. The tool will allow you to try out any pattern you want in just a few seconds.

Online XRay Tool

Online XRay Tool allows designers to quickly view the details of various page elements that are present in any webpage with just a few clicks of the mouse. Just drag the website bookmarklet into your own book bookmarks, go to the webpage you like to analyze, click on the XRay bookmark and then click on any element of the page. The tool can take care of HTML5 elements like canvas and give you the design data you need.

Online HTML5 Audio Maker Tool

Among the best features of HTML5 is the introduction of the audio tag. This tool will help designers get familiar with the newest audio features being offered by HTML5. Even more interesting is the fact that designers can play, not just with audio, but also with video integration using this HTML5 online tool.

Group Discussion!

Please tell us what you think of these HTML5 tools by adding your comments below. And please, if you have considerable experience with an online HTML 5 tool not included in my list, let me know about it. You are also welcome to share this article to your friends and colleagues.

How to Turn jQuery Accordion into CSS3 Accordion

http://css.dzone.com/articles/how-turn-jquery-accordion-css3

Have you ever used ordinary accordion plugins in your projects? I would believe so! Most of them use javascript to work (or jQuery). Usually we use such plugins (accordions) to build a promo with images, a little photo gallery, or in case we have to build an advertisement with a list of product features. We did some research and came to the conclusion that sometimes we don’t need to use any script in order to build accordions. We can just use the power of CSS3. We can handle the OnClick event and use custom animation.

download sources

I prepared three versions with accordions. For the first demonstration we use jQuery to build an accordion. I selected liteAccordion jQuery plugin (http://nicolahibbert.com/demo/liteAccordion/) as an accordion plugin for out test purposes. See how it works:

Live Demo

That’s all, our own CSS3-based accordion is complete! You can check it in action:

CSS3 accordion demo

But that’s not all for today, as a bonus, I prepared a third demo for you with an animated accordion.

animated accordion demo

In order to do it I recommend disable onclick behavior, and apply new animation:

Conclusion

Now that is all for today. We have just created three different demos: the first one with jQuery, the second and the third – with pure CSS3. I hope that you like it. Good luck!

10 Best jQuery Google Maps Plugins

구글지도 플러그인

http://designreflect.com/10-best-jquery-google-maps-plugins/

Most of the users on the internet use Google Maps whenever they need to find a location of a certain place. Google Maps is easy to use so it is widely used among internet users. These days it is common to see Google Maps embedded into the websites. People embed Maps to their websites so that their visitors can easily find their location to contact them.

Some premium WordPress theme developers have also started providing the options to embed Google maps by default into their themes. You might have already seen maps embedded into other websites and might be wondering how to embed these maps into your website as well. It seems a complex task at first but using these jQuery plugins you can easily accomplish this task yourself. All these plugins have proper documentation to help you out.

If you want to embed Google maps to your website, here are 10 Best jQuery Google Maps Plugins for you.

gMap – Google Maps Plugin for jQuery

More About gMap – Google Maps Plugin for jQuery

bMap – jQuery Google Maps Plugin

More About bMap – jQuery Google Maps Plugin

jQuery GPS

More About jQuery GPS

Google Maps the jQuery Plugin Way

More About Google Maps the jQuery Plugin Way

jQuery UI Map

More About jQuery UI Map

Google Maps jQuery Plugin

More About Google Maps jQuery Plugin

Googlemaps

More About Googlemaps

Mapbox – Zoomable jQuery Map Plugin

More About Mapbox

gMap3 – jQuery Plugin for Google Maps

More About gMap3

goMap

More About goMap

10 Responsive jQuery Slider Plugins

슬라이드 플러그인

http://designreflect.com/responsive-jquery-slider-plugins/

Sliders are common on blogs for a long time. But now sliders can be seen on any type of website. With the trend of responsive web design, you also need to make slider of your website or blog responsive so that it also adapts itself according to the resolution of the screen.

Its not that much difficult to make a website responsive but its always better to make use of scripts written by other developers to save your time. To help you out with responsive sliders, I have hand picked 10 best responsive jQuery slider plugins available on internet.

10 Responsive jQuery Slider Plugins

Flexslider

Flexslider is the most widely used and fully responsive jQuery slider. Flexslider is easy to use and is supported in all major browsers.

Flexslider

WOW Slider

WOW Slider is a responsive jQuery image slider with stunning visual effects and tons of professionally made templates.

WOW Slider

ResponsiveSlides.js – Responsive jQuery Slider

ResponsiveSlides.js is a tiny jQuery plugin that creates a responsive slider using list items inside <ul>. It works with wide range of browsers including all IE versions from IE6 and up.

ResponsiveSlides.js

wmuSlider – A jQuery responsive slider

wmuSlider

CSS3 Slideshow with Parallax Effect

CSS3 Slideshow with Parallax Effect

Blueberry

Blueberry is an experimental opensource jQuery image slider plugin which has been written specifically to work with fluid/responsive web layouts.

Blueberry

Camera Slideshow

Camera Slideshow

Elastic Image Slideshow

Elastic image slideshow is a simple elastic slideshow with a thumbnail preview. The slideshow will adjust automatically to its surrounding container and you can navigate through the slides by using the thumbnail previewer or the autoplay slideshow option.

Elastic Image Slideshow

Fullscreen Slit Slider

Fullscreen Slit Slider

UnoSlider

UnoSlider is an advanced image and content slider which is built with responsive design and mobile devices in mind.

UnoSlider

6 jQuery Plugins for Book Like Page Flip Effect

책 같은 페이지 전환효과 플러그인

http://designreflect.com/jquery-plugins-for-book-like-page-flip-effect/

jQuery when combined with modern web technologies can do wonders. It can be used to achieve most of the realistic effects. At most of the times, web developers develop the effects that are inspired by the real world examples. One of such effects is book like page flip effect. Page flip is very much popular among web developers.

Book like page flip effect can make your web layout look like a book with turning pages like real books. You don’t need to dive into the jQuery to write your own code to achieve this effect. You can choose from any of the following jQuery plugins to add a book like page flip effect on your web layout.

Here are 6 Page Flip jQuery Plugins for book like effect.

Turn.js

turn.js makes your content look like a real book or magazine using all the advantages of HTML5. The plugin works on most of the devices including Android, iPad, iPod and iPhone.

Turn.js

Booklet

Booklet is a jQuery powered plugin for a flipbook style layout. The plugin provides many options to customize it as per your needs. You can change the speed, starting page, shadows, reading direction and more.

The plugin has the option to turn pages using keyboard’s previous-next buttons or manually. Keyboard navigation makes it really easy to use this plugin.

Booklet

BookBlock

BookBlock is a jQuery plugin that is used to create book like layout with a page-flip navigation. The plugin can be used to flip any type of content like text or images.

BookBlock

jFlip

jFlip plugin builds an image gallery made as a book. You can flip the book pages to view the next or previous image clicking or dragging the animated corners shown when hovering on the gallery area.

jFlip

Notebook Page Flip

Notebook Page Flip is a customized version of the Booklet jQuery plugin. This plugin shows latest blog posts in a book style layout with a page flip navigation.

Notebook Page Flip

imBookFlip

The imBookFlip plugin can load a book in an iframe or directly on the page. The book’s pages can be set to turn when manually clicked only, begin auto flip as soon as the page loads or begin auto flip when first page (front cover is clicked).

imBookFlip

Is Safari on iOS 6 caching $.ajax results?

$.ajaxPrefilter(function (options, originalOptions, jqXHR) {
    // you can use originalOptions.type || options.type to restrict specific type of requests
    options.data = jQuery.param($.extend(originalOptions.data||{}, { 
      timeStamp: new Date().getTime()
    }));
});

iOS6 Safari orientation change bug?

Safari Overflow Hidden Problem

There may be times when you need to hide the overflow (scrollbars) being visible on a page. You can specify to have all scrollbars hidden or the x and y scroll bars separately. When trying to hide the overflow of a project I was working on I realized that the ‘overflow:hidden’ was not working on the Safari browser. This was very frustrating because it worked on all other browsers except Safari. Well, there is a very simple solution to solve this problem… All you have to do is set that element to have a relative position. For instance, if you were to specify for the body to hide the horizontal scrollbars you would want to have the following css in your stylesheet:

 
body {
	position:relative;
	overflow-x:hidden;
}

iOS 6 Beta 1: HTML5 new APIs, Remote Debugging and native apps integration

Public new features for Safari on iOS 6

File uploads

Finally! We can now select an image from the Photo Library or opening the Camera from a web form. The question is about HTML Media Capture being implemented or not (see later for the answer).

Web Audio API

With the Web Audio API we can enhance HTML5 games and multimedia apps with mixing, filtering and processing operations through JavaScript.

CSS Filters

CSS 3 Filters a set of image operations (filters) that we can apply using CSS functions, such as grayscale, blur, drop-shadow, brightness and other effects. These functions will be applied before the content is rendered on screen. We can use multiple filters using spaces (similar to transforms).

Smart App Banners

It’s a way to connect websites to native applications. When you browse a web that has a related native application, Safari can show a banner inviting the user to install or open the native app. The website can also send parameters to the native app. It’s not clear how this is going to be implemented. My guess is through meta tags. The same behavior is available on Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8.

Full Screen support on landscape

When you orient your device in landscape mode you can then move to a full-screen mode, including hiding the status bar and the Safari toolbar at the bottom. Transparent buttons are replacing the toolbar. A similar behavior is available on Nokia Browser for Symbian.  It’s not clear at this point if we can use the FullScreen API to request the feature (see later for the answer)

Remote Web Inspector

This is a big feature. Announced as a very small feature in the new APIs for developers. In the keynote there was no other information. As you may know, I’ve developed iWebInspector for iOS 5 because of the lack (or the hiding) of a web inspector tool for debugging web apps. It’s not public if this new Remote Web Inspector through LAN (like BlackBerry Remote Web Inspector) or through USB (like Google Chrome for Android)… the answer, later in this post.

Crossfade CSS Function

This feature was published in the keynote with “font-face: 3px” but I’ve seen it. It’s an image function that will create a crossfade between two images (Spec draft), for example:

Will it work with transitions?

Other announced features and questions

iCloud Tabs

You can synchronize your tabs between all your devices, including Macs, iPhones and iPads. So the same URL will be distributed through all devices. Be careful on your mobile web architecture!

Offline Reading List

when the user adds a page to the reading list it will be also downloaded and precache. Is there any API to know if our page is being executed from the cache?

Maps

Google Maps native app was replaced by a new Maps app (directly from Apple). The question is, is this app still capturing http://maps.google.com URLs? (I hope not) and how to open the native app or driving instructions from a web.

Twitter and Facebook

Both social networks are not integrated in the operating system. It will be good if at some point web apps can also use these credentials.

Questions from the past

WebGL? IndexedDB? getUserMedia (camera access)? Nitro engine on Web Views?