Elbowruminations Graphic Design Trends, Tips and Reviews

You don’t need to be a Graphic or Web Designer to appreciate this list of mostly free tools you can use to transfer files, tracks stats, and interact online. Check out this list and add what’s missing.

Mozy

I personally cannot recommend this online back-up service to more people. Mozy is an easy to install program that syncs your computer or multiple computers to a remote server. With unlimited data transfer for $4.95/mo. and the unlimited peace of mind that comes with knowing all your artwork is safe from disaster is a deal you can’t refuse. And if you do refuse this deal, they have a FREE 2GB storage account as well. How can you refuse free?

Dropbox and Dropio

Both Dropbox and Dropio offer you the ability to share files with other people and users. Dropbox gives you the ability to sync files between multiple computers. I use the free 2GB account on a regular basis as I’m typically working between various work stations around the office. Both are easy to use and offer a great way to get your print ready files to the printer.

Firefox/ColorZilla/Measureit

I’m almost positive that you’ve heard of these extensions for Firefox. Measureit gives you the ability to size up any on-screen object that needs to outfitted with a specific graphic element. Just drag the ruler and take your dimensions to Photoshop. Colorzilla is another useful tool that picks a color off a website for you. Great for matching specific shades.

OpenX

Similar to Google Ad Planner, OpenX is built by a well supported community of open source developers who have created an awesome ad sever for the web environment. Host affiliate ads or paid ads on your site with full control over how often an advertisement displays and to whom it displays. OpenX has been configured to serve ads for our advertising purposes and it comes highly recommended.

Woopra and Click Density

In addition to the mainstay of Analytic world, that being Google Analytics, there are a variety of up and comers that offer stats and behavioral tracking for your websites. Woopra is a free option which offers WordPress implementation through a plug-in. Click Density is another that shows heat map overlays for your sites in an effort to help you discover what content you have is hot and which is not.

Hootsuite

If keeping in touch with tweeps is a priority, check out HootSuite. It’s a Twitter management application that gives you the flexibility to tweet to multiple accounts at once or at a time. You can also track the actions of your followers and create nice looking charts and graphs to put up on your filing cabinet.

TinyChat

Have you been looking for an easy way to video conference or chat with colleagues and clients in a private online environment? Well you’re reading the right post. TinyChat supplies the world with free, disposable online chatrooms. When used carefully, this can be a great tool for video conferencing with a number of people at once. Be forewarned however, that the public chat rooms are unsupervised and can contain some strange and perhaps disturbing behavior.

ProofHQ

Go green, save paper and impress your clients with this online proofing platform. ProofHQ can provide the tools you need to collaborate, revise and approve print proofs or online mock-ups. It’s full of a wide array of functionality that will make you wonder why you didn’t use this service sooner.

What the Font/Font Burner

Met your match with a font that will not be identified? Try uploading it to What the Font. It will detect its distinct characteristics and render a verdict. If this does not provide the desired result you can also post your mystery font to the forum where a number of font enthusiasts will solve the case before you can say “Arial Rounded MT Bold.” Another useful font site is FontBurner which is a service that embeds non web-friendly fonts for easy inclusion on your website.

Icon Finder

If you are on the hunt for an icon, start your search at IconFinder.com. Recently outfitted with a shiny new robot mascot, this site will locate the icon of your dreams in seconds.

Please feel free to make additions to this list in the comments!

In 1991, the very first web browser was released. Named ‘Nexus’, it had very basic capabilities, and could not display much more than the most simple stylesheet.

Thankfully, technology has evolved a long way and there are now many options depending on your surfing preferences. Browsers are now able to display everything from a spreadsheet to a feature-length movie. While evolution brings choice, this is not necessarily a good thing. Now, we are faced with the problem of choosing and recommending a browser which is intuitive for both developers and users. Firefox or Internet Explorer? Chrome or Safari? Opera or Netscape? Flock? Camino? Sea Monkey? It certainly is a difficult choice. However, this article should help you to weigh out the Pros and Cons of each browser.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome was released by Google in December 2008, with promises that it would load websites significantly faster, and only one tab would crash, not the entire window.

One largely significant downfall to the browser, however, is the fact that it has no built in RSS reader. If you are rely a lot on your RSS for daily information, be warned that Chrome may not be for you. For example, when reading an RSS feed, the user is presented with many lines of text in a single block, with no spaces, which makes for a rather unpleasant reading experience.

Security is obviously paramount to any developer. Chrome regularly downloads blacklists of malicious websites, to protect the user from viruses and malware.

The user interface is very plain and simple, and there is currently no possibility to expand Chrome with plugins.
In conclusion, Google Chrome should be recommended to users of a website, but I would not recommend it for use by developers.

Development Tools: 2/10
Security: 6/10
Speed: 8/10
Reliability: 7/10
Interface: 5/10

This means that Google Chrome has scored 28/50, but how will it fare against Firefox and Internet Explorer?

Firefox

Firefox is a development-focused browser which was created by Mozilla. The browser is open source, which means users and developers had a say in how it was made. The best thing about Firefox is that it has many development tools built in, such as an expanded page source viewer, a javascript debugging tool and a real-time DOM inspector/editor. However, if the standard tools do not quench your development thirst, then Firefox has literally hundreds of “add-ons” which can be installed to your requirement.

The security for Firefox is standard for most browsers, but again, there are many plugins which can be downloaded to enhance the security of the browser. Firefox is well laid out, but the top quarter of the screen is dominated with toolbars and such, but these can easily be removed.
All in all, Firefox is a useful tool for the developer, and comes with some great stuff as standard.

Development Tools: 8/10
Security: 5/10
Speed: 6/10
Reliability: 7/10
Interface: 6/10

This means that Firefox has scored 32/50. How will Internet Explorer fare against this score?

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer is the default browser packaged with Microsoft Operating System. It is certainly not renowned for its development tools, and offers only a ‘developer toolbar’ download. The developer toolbar includes the tools which Firefox has generically. Many security vulnerabilities have been associated with Internet Explorer. The main way that hackers exploit the browser is through the ActiveX controls that it routinely uses. All a hacker has to do is write a malicious ActiveX control and then they can access all of your files.

Internet Explorer also includes a tool called the ‘Favorites Center’, which is a glorified version of the favorites toolbar.
The browser is typically very slow to load, and with security vulnerabilities, it’s not the ideal developers browser.

Development Tools: 6/10
Security: 3/10
Speed: 5/10
Reliability: 7/10
Interface: 7/10

Internet Explorer has scored 28/50, meaning that Firefox is most likely the best browser to use as a web developer or a graphic designer.

We’ve talked about Firefox tools before on Elbowruminations but if you are looking for more, check out this post by Speckyboy.

If you’re looking for an easy way to make sure your page looks good across all browsers or platforms, check out Browsershots.

And finally, for an exhaustive list of browsers and their history, wikipedia is the place to go.