7 Incredibly Useful Tools for Evaluating a Web Design

An effective web design is one in which your users are able to find information quickly and in a logical fashion.

Do they visit the content you want them to visit? Are they looking in the right places of your web page? Are you able to keep your user’s attention, or do they just leave quickly?

It’s not just about the content either. If your design loads slowly - or if moving from one section to another takes a long time - it affects the user’s experience.

These things can be the make-or-break factors between a user clicking on a link to find more information, or the back button to find it elsewhere.

• ClickHeat is an open source visual tool for showing “hot” and “cold” zones of a web page. It allows you to see which spots users click on most, and which spots are being ignored.
• Crazy Egg offers a myriad of analytical tools to help you visualize what visitors are doing.
  
• YSlow for Firebug is a free tool for Mozilla Firefox that gives you information about your front-end design to see if it performs well. It gives you a letter grade (A through F) and outlines your web page’s trouble spots.
• clickdensity is a full suite of usability analysis tools that will help you assess your web page design.
• ClickTale offers a lot of user data pertaining to how visitors use your website.
• Clicky has is its real-time tracking and monitoring feature, called Sp.
• Google Analytics is One of the best free services that Google offers and probably the most well-known analytics tool. It’s incredibly easy to install and offers plenty of user and content data to help you learn more about your web pages’ performance.

Project Dogwaffle is a PC program for people who like to draw, sketch, animate and paint.

Project Dogwaffle is a paint program for the PC which also includes animation features. Started in 1997 as a project to work around shortcomings of the established 'big guns' tools used in the professional community, it is loaded with fast or realtime filters for color enhancing in digital photos and animations, special effects and many built-in natural media brushes.

Dogwaffle also has powerful user-defined custom and animated brushes, fractal particle brushes, full tablet support, layers, artist guides, powerful color gradients, great text tools, special FX for sky, snow, wet paint and even effects used commonly in 3D CG such as lens flares, as well as full Alpha support with direct painting on Alpha.

Perfect for the hobbyist on a tight budget who likes to explore colors and shapes, and equally useful for web artists, game content creators, cartoonists, designers as well as in digital photography and traditional animation, Project Dogwaffle almost lets you paint the natural way - but without the mess.

Adobe Video Workshop

You can use the Adobe Video Workshop to start learning about any application you’re interested in, whether you own it or not. The Video Workshop shares expertise from across Adobe and the Adobe community—you’ll learn tasks, tips, and tricks from leading designers, developers, and Adobe experts. There are introductory videos for new users, and more experienced users can find videos on new features and key techniques. Many videos show you how to use Adobe applications together.

When you start the Video Workshop, you choose exactly the products and topics you want to learn (see Figure 1). You can see details about each video to help focus your learning path. Each video covers a single subject and typically runs about 3 to 5 minutes. Many videos come with an illustrated tutorial and source files, so you can print out detailed steps and try the tasks on your own.

If you would like to use an Adobe video tutorial on your website, find out about Adobe's permissions program at: http://www.adobe.com/misc/agreement.html. Proper attribution of Adobe copyright and trademarks is necessary. You can find Adobe trademark guidelines for third parties at http://www.adobe.com/misc/agreement.html.

Image Inc.: Image Compositing Tool

Image Inc The purpose of this utility is to blend existing images in a very fast and easy way, using a layer mask for transparency. The process is simple ... load the base picture followed by a top layer image, then add a mask and the program automatically merges everything together. Ideal for anyone who doesn't want to use a major graphics application for this task.

• Photo Blending : One possible use for this application would be to mix parts of photographs together. For example, if you wanted to enhance the sky in one picture by fading-in the clouds from another, as shown below ...
• Texture Effects : Another handy feature is the ability to add distressed textures ...
• Edge & Frames : You can also use this program to quicky apply edge effects using various image masks. The background could be a plain colour or another image/texture ...
• 3D Texture Maps : The original purpose of this utility is to help 3D users build texture map variations without the need for more complex editing software. For example, you can use it to smoothly blend different skin textures for your Poser characters using gradient masks ...

A few gradient masks are provided within the program to get you started, but you cannot create any new masks directly. You can however import more images into the transparency layer. 20 sample grayscale *.jpg files are included, or you can create your own masks using any graphics program of your choice.

• Compact, fast and easy to use
• Floating palettes with extra options
• 26 different Blend modes on top layer
• Opacity slider on the top layer
• Tiled mode on top layer
• Gradient presets on mask layer
• Rotate and Flip options on all layers
• Convert to Grayscale on all layers
• Invert colours on all layers
• Flatten and transfer to Base option
• Copy image to Clipboard
• Save merged image in *.bmp format
• Loading of additional graphics formats
• Zoom presets in main window

Download the zip file and uncompress all the files to a suitable folder on your hard drive. Then create a shortcut to the ImageInc.exe file and run it. To uninstall just delete the folder where you installed the program files to. Also delete the ImageInc.ini file that has been automatically created in your Windows folder (this is where your settings are stored). Finally, remove any shortcuts that you have created manually for the program.

Wigflip.com : Create Scrolling Text Signs

Signbot is a tool that allows users to create their own animated scrolling text LED sign. To use this tool, users enter in the text which will scroll across the page. Some typed characters will allow for picture text. For example, when the pipe is entered, it turns into a heart. Users then choose the width of the sign, either small, medium, or large.

Next they simply select “generate sign” and wait a second for the sign to be produced. Users can view their scrolling text in either Regular Mode, which allows for text of up to 100 characters to be created, or Live Journal Mode, which lets users know if their text is too big to be used as a LiveJournal userpic. Once scrolling text signs have been made, they can be used in MySpace pages, and as forum signatures, among other applications.

• roflbot : Make your own image macros without any graphics program.
• AutoMotivator :A motivational poster generator you can use for web posters or real poster prints.
• Signbot :Make your own animated LED sign.
• Easystreet :Make your own street sign picture.
• Make your own speech bubble! :Make a speech bubble in the style of diesel sweeties.
• Put speech bubbles on pictures! :Put some funny speech bubbles on your pictures.
• Screedbot :Make your own scrolling typewriter text.
• Make your own animated text icon :For use with LiveJournal, Xanga, MySpace, etc.
• Superstickies :Make your own stickynote.
• Cornershop: rounded corner graphics for web design :Any size, any color, instant creation of graphics for your rounded boxes.
• Tinytags :Make a little text tag graphic

SlickRSS: A Free RSS Icon Pack

What you have before you is a free set of beautiful RSS icons designed by the awesome folks at Creative Nerds, exclusively for you Six Revisions readers, released under Creative Commons (see below for the licensing details).

There are eight RSS icons in the pack, and it includes the Photoshop file (PSD) in case you’d like to tweak the design. he creative work featured here - entitled " SlickRSS " - is licensed under the Creative Commons license and can be used for personal and/or commercial purposes.

The Creative Commons license requires you to "attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor". Our attribution specification: you don’t need to attribute the work to us (though you’re more then welcome to, and we will definitely appreciate it).

The following file contains PNG files and a PSD file.

• slickrss.zip (ZIP file, 538KB)

Creative Nerds (creativenerds.co.uk) is an excellent online publication that discusses topics in design. Subscribe to the Creative Nerds RSS feed to get their newest posts in your feed reader. Follow them on Twitter.

IconPot: Cool Icon Collections

IconPot lists free and cool icon collection for web developers and designers. The icons are all on one page and sorted by type (social media icons, ecommerce icons etc). Unlike many similar icon websites, icons listed on this site are free to download both for personal and commercial use, with no required obligation to include backlinks/credit to the icon author.

Users can browse icon sets, view number of icons included in each package and check package specific restrictions (if any). When you find the icon package you want, simply click on the green “Download” button to get the icon set from the author’s website.

Features:

• List of nice icons free to download.
• All the listed icons can be used both freely for personal and commercial purposes.
• Browse icon sets by type, view number of icons in each set.
• Subscribe by RSS to get notified when new icons are added.

Free Online Watermark Tool with Text & Box Transparency

You have spent hours and a lot of effort to shoot some magnificent photos or work on some wonderful design. If you don’t want your masterpiece spread across the internet or get posted on somebody’s websites or blogs, one of the effective ways to protect your hard work is to add a custom watermark to your digital images. Adding in texts such as your name, URL, brand, etc in watermark form won’t cost you anything.

It’s free and even if it can’t stop others from copying or using your images, at least the source of the images is prominently displayed and acknowledged. You can do this by using the Watermark Tool, a free web application that helps you to add a custom watermark to your digital images.
Watermark Tool is a free web based service. To add in watermark texts, just go to Watermark Tool, upload your file and add in the texts that you want to trademark your photos. This application features some basic text editing tools for you to customize the text size, font type, text color, text transparency, box colour, text position and other attributes.

Once you have finalized the watermark, just click on to the “Generate” button and your new watermarked image will be produced. You can thence download this new watermarked image. Watermark Tool is a pretty straightforward tool for those who want to add in watermark to their photos. The downside of this tool is you can only add watermark once at a time.

Yo can visit Watermark Tool Here

Reflection.js uses unobtrusive javascript to add reflections to images on your webpages.

Reflection.js allows you to add reflections to images on your webpages. It uses unobtrusive javascript to keep your code clean. It works in all the major browsers - Internet Explorer 5.5+, Mozilla Firefox 1.5+, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera 9+. On older browsers, it'll degrade and your visitors won't notice a thing. Best of all, it's under 5KB.

Reflection.js works well with logos, icons and dynamic image content such as forum avatars. Reflection.js comes into it's own with forum avatars; you can apply a reflection effect to every avatar on your forum or blog without any additional server work. Try it out with your own images using the reflect-o-matic

Features

• Fun and easy to implement! Just add class="reflect" to your images
• Automatically blends into background colours or images
• It's easy to vary the reflection height and opacity
• Can respond to user actions through Javascript
• Degrades in older browsers; they won't notice a thing!
• It's smaller in size than most images; under 5KB!

Download the latest version, Reflection.js v2.0.

Please see the readme.html file inside this download for instructions on how to use reflection.js. You only need to upload reflection.js. Or just get the javascript.

Many of these implementations include an older versions of reflection.js in their download. You may wish to use the latest version of reflection.js from this webpage instead.

• Blog / Blogger: For hosted Blogger.com blogs.
• Blog / Lifetype: Reflection Plugin
• Blog / Typo: Plugin for Typo, Ruby on Rails blog engine
• Blog / Wordpress: WP Wet Floor
• CMS / Typo3: Reflection effect for the Typo3 CMS
• CMS / TextPattern: The wetfloor plugin for the TextPattern CMS
• Forum / Invision Board: Avatar Reflection Mod
• Forum / phpBB: phpBB Modification (or use the instructions here)
• Forum / SMF: Add Reflection.js to your Simple Machines forum avatars or via BBCode
• Forum / vBulletin: Avatar/Image Reflection Effect
• Gallery / ZenPhoto: Simple+ Theme incorporates Reflection.js
• Images / Lightbox: Modification of Lightbox 2.0.2 with Reflection.js

Logopond : Choose ideas for your logo

Most of you have already heard about LogoPond. For those of you who don’t, LogoPond is a website for identity inspiration. Logo designers can post their work and get feedback from the readers.

If you haven’t visited LogoPond, you should, and you should bookmark it and subscribe to their feed. This goes for potential clients too, so that you can understand why your logo designer doesn’t want a 3d rotating rainbow in your logo.

The better a logo greater the probability that your clients will remember you and get back to you. For that: designers have to be creative and have to work their ass out in designing beautiful, unique logos. And the results they come out with their hard work are stunning and spectacular.

Logopond allows its users to upload, rate and comment on logos all neatly tugged into an easy to navigate site. This site helps you out not only with shaping how your logos turn out, but also what else could you improvise upon to give you that cutting edge.

The rating system is based on the layout of a reviews site. You can rate logos on the page they appear on, and you can also leave comments for each of them. Browsing through the logos could be done according to tag, color and date.

Logopond is a great alternative to those large logo books that occupy half of your room. It’s also a valuable resource for obtaining community critiques and ratings. You won’t believe but at present there are around 1000 logos uploaded and as the community grows logopond could be a great resource for community designers.

You can visit Logopond Here