http://smashinghub.com/50-best-responsive-web-design-toolbox.htm

We all know that smart-phones, Androids, iPhones and Tablets are gaining popularity like anything. Thanks to their popularity, responsive website designing is not only getting popular but also very important. Since websites are being accessed via mobiles on a larger scale, more and more web owners are turning towards responsive web designing. Web developers and designers who can design responsive websites are earning intensely. To support the entire process of responsive website designing and development, a lot of web design tools have been introduced. We should definitely thank those developers who are talented enough to design these tools and make things easier for other developers.

In this article, we have compiled 50 of the most useful responsive web design tools which can help developers in building a responsive design toolbox. This collection of responsive web design tools will help you a lot with your entrance in the field of responsive designing. The tools have been categorized for you to understand the tools and their functionality.

Grid & Frameworks

Let’s start with Grid & Framework tools.

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Columnal

Columnal is a great tool for making your grids flexible. So, when your grids are flexible your window will be resized with ease. This is a project of Pulp+Pixels having a pinch of cssgrid.net and code inspiration from 960.gs.

Skeleton

This tool is popular among designers and developers because it is simple and efficient to use. This tool basically prevails CSS framework so you will get a neat and easy documentation and the best part is, no Javascript here.

LessFramework 4

With LessFramework 4, responsive web development gets a lot easier. This is basically based on CSS media queries.

Semantic Grid System

This tool is basically meant to design grid layouts for responsive web sites. In order to give you the maximum proficiency, the Semantic Grid System uses pre-processed CSS extensions like LESS, SCSS or Stylus. Also, it gives developers an option to select widths and deal with pixels.

Golden Grid System

This is best for beginners and with Golden Grid System you can make your web pages look good with pixels from 240 to 2560.

320 and Up

This is again a beginner’s guide or a template for responsive website. It is basically a CSS media queries boilerplate and is quite different in comparison to other boilerplates.

Inuit.Css

The best part of Inuit.CSS is that it is very convenient for users. It is quite to the point but supports plugins for more help.

Gridless

This is a boilerplate which helps users in developing responsive websites with extraordinary typography. Gridless is great for newbies.

1140 CSS Grid

This grid system is designed by Melbourne designer Andy Taylor and the basic purpose of this tool is to make your design adaptable to various resolutions.

1KB CSS Grid

Tyler Tate takes the credit for this tool. With this you can set the number of columns.

Bootstrap

Bootstrap has a huge number of free UI elements, layouts, Javascript tools for users’ to download and they can be utilized in various responsive designing projects.

Fluid Grid Calculator

This is indeed a simple tool with a simple functionality. You can easily seize the CSS of your fluid grid website design.

Fluid Grids

This will help you in creating responsive layouts with 6-16 columns.

Flurid

This is a great tool and indeed a useful one. It is a cross-browser CSS grid framework with up to 16 columns.

Grid Set

This will help you in making grids of all kinds. Mark Boulton has introduced the beta version but it is a good one.

Gridpak

This is an online grid generator which helps user with the number of columns, padding, and gutter. Apart from this, user can also add custom breakpoints. The best part is that with Gridpak, you can download PNG grid templates.

SimpleGrid

As the name suggests, it is pretty simple and is developed by Michael Kuhn.

Susy

Sassy is another form of the Semantic Grid System.

Tiny Fluid Grid

This is an excellent web app which can accommodate you in determining the grid system of your website in an interactive way.

Variable Grid System

This is based on 960 grid system and allows user to design customized grids.

Sketch Sheets & Wireframes

Responsive Web Design SketchSheets

This tool makes mapping out and placements of the elements a lot easier.

Responsive Wireframes

Built with HTML and CSS, this tool will help you in visualizing your responsive website.

StyleTiles

It also helps you in analyzing how your website will look like.

JavaScript & JQuery Plugins

Adapt.js

This is a great alternative to CSS media queries. This is basically a small javascript library.

Isotope

This is a jQuery plugin useful for designing responsive websites. It helps in the rearrangement of elements on resizing.

Masonry

With this you can create adaptive responsive layouts. It also helps in rearrangement of the elements.

Respond.js

The main purpose of this script is to make your responsive website compatible for browsers like IE wo do not support CSS3 media queries.

TinyNav.js

This helps developers in creating small drop downs for long lists.

Wookmark JQuery Plugin

This is a great tool and functions to detect the size of the browser and fits the elements accordingly.

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About the author

Humaira Sajawal is a competent, dynamic and highly motivated creative writer. She loves to write on variety of subjects as writing is her passion! She is also a great fan of reading.

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30+ High Performing HTML5 Templates for Web Design

SmartStart – Responsive HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

This is a professional theme with a clean and simple attitude. It is designed for portfolio or business websites. SmartStart has been crafted with the latest CSS3 and HTML5 techniques. It will easily adjust to any browsing device, including mobile phones and tablets, because of its responsive feature. You can also get this template in the WordPress version.

Perspective – Responsive HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

Perspective is a template that is ideal for all kinds of business websites. It is packed with plenty of HTML shortcodes and jQuery plugins like accordion, sliders and tabs. The design is responsive, and it can be edited easily.

Agora HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

This is a nice HTML5 template that is ideal for showcasing fashion, studios and creative. It can be customized easily with 13 pages and powerful full screen gallery that can showcase big sized works on the homepage directly. The customization process can be enhanced by the Serif and Sans Serif styles that are included with the template. In addition, the themes is mobile friendly.

VividPhoto HTML5 and CSS3 Template (free) – MORE INFO

VividPhoto is a stunning photography HTML5 and CSS3 template that is designed to showcase a portfolio of images.

Vega HTML5 Responsive Template – MÒRE INFO

Vega is a HTML5 template that is dynamic, stylish and creative. It is easy to customize and user friendly. Vega is a great way of showcasing your media.

Popular – Responsive HTML5 Theme – MORE INFO

This template was designed with HTML5 and CSS3, and has a corporate and agency appearance. It’s fully responsive feature is created with Bootstrap.

Royale’ Creative HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

This is a creative template that can enhance your video or photography showcase. The complete page template set will provide the possibility to showcase your work and brand in a professional and refined manner.

Minimalism HTML5 and CSS3 Template (free) – MORE INFO

Minimalism is an HTML5 and CSS3 template that is minimal and beautiful in its simplicity. Combines multiple-column groupings and newspaper style column.

Harmony – Multipurpose HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

Harmony is packed with easy to use and built in features that will make user experience an exciting, pleasant and intuitive one. The package includes 4 Home page sliders , 16 color schemes, a working contact form with validation and more. IT is not responsive though.

Chromatron HTML5 Admin Backend – MORE INFO

This is a professional and simple HTML5 template that can be used for both desktop and mobile devices. Chromatron has a lot of features and build in jQuery. There are 4 default colors available, each packed with popular and basic user interface widgets.

Folder (free) – MORE INFO

Folder is a free HTML5 portfolio theme with responsive design.

Neutron – HTML5 Templat – MORE INFO

This HTML5 template is modern and clean. It is great for any portfolio or business website. It has jQuery features available and 12 page templates.

Retro – HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

This is a modern and clean template that is best suited for business or portfolio websites. Easy and fast to set up, Retro also has a WordPress version.

NeoArts (free) – MORE INFO

NeoArts is a modern and elegant web template designed for Design/Studio websites. All-in-One page with an animated theme.

Qreator – Corporate HTML5 template – MORE INFO

Almost anything can be changed in this template. You can make your own creative design and set up color for all site elements using CSS. It includes 5 preset Home page layouts, Google webfont directory support (320+ Fonts) and more.

Limitless – Multipurpose HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

Limitless HTML5 template is packed full of user friendly features and plenty of PSD and HTML files. Limitless was designed with SEO in mind.

Responsive Brownie (Free) Html5 Template – MORE INFO

An awesome free, responsive HTML5 template aimed at businesses and portfolios.

Simplex – Responsive HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

Clean, responsive and simple would be the perfect words to describe Simplex HTML5 template. Simplex has been designed with mobile devices in consideration and is well suited for studios and digital agencies. The template will adjust its size automatically on different devices, ensuring a nice experience for every visitor.

Projection – Responsive HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

This template is entirely responsive and designed with an elegant and minimal look. The package includes CSS3 and HTML5 codes.

Manifest – Premium HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

Manifest is a HTML5 template that is very flexible and clean. It has a minimalist and modern design that is ideal for galleries, creative blogs, portfolios and other types of websites. The package includes 6 predefined skins to customize your website easily.

Muro (free) HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

Muro is a brilliantly designed web template that comes with 3 different skins, 7 page layouts as well as jQuery functionality.

Energetic – Responsive HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

This is a professional and clean template that is ideal for portfolio, business and hosting websites. It has a responsive design that was created with HTML5 and CSS3, making it compatible with all kinds of devices including iPhone, iPad and Androids.

White Noise – HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

This template is easy to customize and full of features. Show off your work with this easy-to-customize and fully featured Site Template.

Basix – Premium HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

This theme is easy to customize and use. Basix is a minimal HTML 5 template that is full of features like unlimited colors, jQuery, 960 grid system and working contact form. The portfolio section is filtered using Isotope. In addition, this theme is also well documented, with a lot of shortcodes and features for creating your own pages.

Moderna Responsive HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

A clean and responsive HTML5 template. Moderna is ideal for both creative personal portfolio and professional business websites. The theme has two skins, which are stretched and boxed. The boxed version has 15 patterns so that you can have unlimited options in managing and organizing your contents.

LEFT HTML5 Theme (free) – MORE INFO

LEFT web template is designed in HTML5 and offers more than 6 page layouts with a unique skin system.

Weiss – Responsive HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

If you are looking for a responsive and clean theme that is suitable for a wide variety of uses, Weiss HTML5 template would be a great choice.

Canopus – Responsive HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

This is a responsive HTML5 template that is ideal for business and portfolio websites. It was created using the best web design practices such as Microformats. Canopus is ideal for iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices.

Oreva Business HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

Oreva is very minimal and clean HTML5 business template that can be used for all kinds of personal and business websites. The template has 2 color variations that can fulfill all the requirements of modern web development.

Impromptu – Responsive HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

Classy and responsive, Impromptu HTML5 template is perfect for portfolio blog or business websites.

Magazine HTML5 Responsive Template – MORE INFO

This minimalist and clean HTML5 template was created for WordPress. It is ideal for blogs, magazine, personal and news websites.

Responsy – Responsive HTML5 Portfolio – MORE INFO

This responsive HTML5 template is most suited for creative agency and portfolio websites. The solid responsive layout is flexible and can scale down from 1170 pixels to 320 pixels.

Mustach – Responsive Html5 Theme – MORE INFO

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Simple yet packed with a lot of options, Mustach can be used for personal portfolio and small business sites. The template comes with a clean and neat code, making it easy to understand when making variations in the template.

URI는 그것이 텍스트의 한 페이지나, 비디오 또는 사운드 클립이든, 정지 화상이든 동영상이든, 또는 프로그램이든 상관없이, 이러한 콘텐츠 들 중 어느 하나를 인식하기 위한 수단이다. 가장 보편적인 형태의 URI가 바로, 웹페이지 주소 즉, URL인데, 이는 URI의 특별한 형태이자 부분집합이라 할 수 있다. URI는 대체로 다음과 같이 설명할 수 있다.

    자원에 접근하기 위해 사용되는 절차
    어떤 자원을 가지고 있는 특정한 컴퓨터
    컴퓨터 상의 특정 자원의 이름 (파일 이름)

예를 들어 아래의 URI는 웹프로토콜 애플리케이션인 HTTP를 사용하여 액세스될 수 있는 파일을 인식하며, 그 파일은 유일한 인터넷 주소로 사상될 수 있는 www.w3.org라는 이름을 가진 컴퓨터에 존재한다.

    http://www.w3.org/Icons/WWW/w3c_main.gif

컴퓨터의 디렉토리 구조에서, 그 파일은 "/Icons/WWW/w3c_main.gif"에 위치해 있다. FTP 주소와 전자우편 주소들을 인식하는 문자열들도 역시 URI이다 (그리고 HTTP 주소처럼, 이것들도 URL이라고 불리는 URI의 부분집합이다). URI의 또다른 종류 중 하나는 URN이다. URN은 "제도적인 영속성"을 갖는 URI의 한 형태로서, 그것의 정확한 위치는 때로 변할 수 있지만, 일부 에이전시가 그것을 찾을 수 있다는 것을 의미한다. 

The What, Why and How of Data URIs in Web Design

http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/htmlcss-tutorials/the-what-why-and-how-of-data-uris-in-web-design/

Principles for Successful Button Design

http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/design-theory/principles-for-successful-button-design/

http://dribbble.com/ormeski/tags/button

1. Matching Brand

It’s important that your buttons match their contextual style. This could mean fitting in with a color palette, graphical style or taking a lead from some form of brand guidelines or logo. Perhaps there are some prominent shapes, textures or design styles that you can pick up on. Maybe a logo has a circular aspect to it and you could pick up on this in your buttons or other potential calls to action.

If an interface predominately uses flat color then perhaps big shiny Apple-like buttons aren’t the way to go. If you can, take the opportunity to experiment with extending the brand through to the interface by using appropriate shapes, effects, coloring or other forms of embellishment.

2. Matching Contextual Style

Following on from above, stop for a moment before opening the ‘UI Elements PSD’. It’s easy to reach for grads, shadows, bevels etc. but take a moment to think whether it’s the right choice not just to match a brand but also the interface in which the buttons sit and whether they need to feel overly ‘buttony’.

Buttons may need to feel particularly button-like within an app and on mobile, for example, but with websites maybe there’s room to do something a little different with your buttons or calls to action.

3. Ensure Buttons Have Enough Contrast

With so many interface designs being inspired by Apple OS styling, particularly in a lot of the UI Element PSD’s out there, buttons can get a little lost amongst other elements being used in the UI, diluting their potentially important power. Try using color, size, whitespace or typography to ensure your buttons have the visual weight they need to stand out from the rest of the interface.

4. Consider Rounded or Shapely Buttons

Following on from the above, if there are lots of other rounded corner UI elements in your design, consider using circular  ended buttons or perhaps some other change in shape. This could give you an extra bit of contrast that ensures your important calls to action have the prominence they may need.

5. De-emphasise Secondary UI Elements

If you’re striving for an OS inspired style or you’re working with a predesigned elements PSD then it’s likely your UI elements will predominantly be rounded corner rectangular in shape. Consider reducing the level of embellishment on elements that can afford to feel less ‘buttony’.

For example, bespoke select menus, segmented controls, custom menu triggers might all be the same rounder corner shapes but using less shadow, border, bevel, gradient or other effects can help to reduce their richness and in turn promote button styles.

6. Color Match Strokes/Borders

Most buttons we see out there have some form of border or stroke on them. Loosely speaking, if your button is darker than the background on which it sits use a dark stroke of the general button color. If the reverse is true then go for a stroke that’s a darker shade of the background color. If you stick with the former and use it on a darker background I find it can make the button edges a little ‘dirty’. Using the latter can also help make your button really pop. I consider this to be a general design principle when dealing with strokes/borders in web design.

7. Be Careful With Blurred Shadows

Over the years I’ve always sworn by my ‘Shadow Law’. The ‘Shadow Law’ states that drop shadows work best when an element is lighter than its background. If an element is darker than its background then drop shadows should be used very subtly. Similar to color matching strokes and borders, I very much consider this to be a general design principle that applies to all UI elements.

8. Subtle Iconography Can Give Affordances

As well as being another small detail that can further differentiate your buttons from similar UI elements, the use of simple iconic elements such as arrows can give some sense of action and a small affordance as to what happens when a user clicks.

For example, an arrow pointing right after the text on a button maybe gives the user some sense of moving on or leaving the page. An arrow pointing down might suggest that some content will be progressively disclosed below, or perhaps some kind of menu will open.

9. Consider Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Styles

If you’re designing an interface where there are consistently lots of actions and functionality on display it may be important to establish some visual language with your buttons by establishing primary, secondary, tertiary and potentially more styles.

Consider reserving the strongest and boldest color for your primary buttons and using progressively less strength or saturation as you reduce importance. As well as color and shade, consider reducing size, whitespace, text size and level of embellishment to further reduce the visual weight of buttons that aren’t primary.

10. Always Make Feedback States

This is a no brainer really, but is often something considered toward the end of the design process. Always work through the core states required for your buttons to ensure they provide the user with sufficient feedback in their context. Users will likely have a mental model of how a button works in the real world as they use it through its various states. Some simple CSS tweaks with shadows, border and gradients and the like can give the user some simple feedback and a touch of eye candy!

Conclusion

As designers you’ll all have your own process you go through. I’ll bet a lot of the time that can involve moving your head back from the screen, tilting it slightly, squinting and saying ‘Yeah that’s about right!’. That’s part of the fun of designing of course and talented designers tend to get it right doing just that, but I think it’s always good to run a bit of internal commentary, interrogating and reasoning over the design decisions you’re making.

There’s no harm in re-using or leaning on pre-designed styles and UI elements, they can obviously save a lot of time. It may even be the case that someone has pixel-perfectly crafted exactly what you were looking for and is offering it for free. However, I don’t think there’s any harm in having a deeper understanding of the design process and craft behind what you’re creating and informing your design decisions going forward.

20 Examples of Minimal Style Navigation Menus in Web Design

Minimalism is the art of exposing the essence of something, eliminating non essential forms, features and concepts. In web design, minimalism is really appreciated, especially when it comes to menus and navigation. It is always inspiring to see how some designers apply the well known “less is more” concept to websites menus, and this is what we will show here today, minimal navigation menus. Enjoy.

Colorkite

Cristian Ordonez

Kirschner Brasil

Stuntbox

Derwent & Tamar Chambers

Copy Boy

Crafting Type

formrausch.com

FoundryCo

Envy Labs

south & eleven

Paid to Exist

mangrove

Aa.

Chad Miller

New Babylon

Fear the Grizzly

BVD

oak

Identity Print

About the Author

Gisele Muller is someone that recently discovered a new career online. A person that really likes technology, design, photography and creativity. An eternal geek wannabe, tech fan and a communication lover! Current location: San Bruno, CA – USA. Twitter: @gismullr