tripwire magazine

Readers at tripwire magazine daily submit links and short descriptions to highly relevant and worth investigating articles. Previously these links where added to the RSS feed directly but as the number of submissions is getting higher the feed is being flooded. I have decided to create regular round-ups to provide the user links submitted on tripwire magazine to subscribers and this way take some load off the feed.

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Creating Web Sites is not a simple task at all and the value of getting some help from useful online tools should not be underestimated. Creating web applications requires deep knowledge and experience with many different tools, techniques, standards etc. and it is hard for developers and designers to keep track.

The purpose of this article is to provide a one stop resource introducing Web Developers and Designer to the most important tools found online. The article provides a large collection if Extremely Useful Free Online Tools that for sure will make their work a bit easier. It is important as it will allow me to add it to the article making it even more complete. So far you will find color scheme inspiration, tools for working with icons, css, fonts, domains, even tools testing compliance with standards, testing load, browser support etc. Also you will find various code and Lorem Ipsum text generators etc.

What tools are you using to finish your work faster and with higher quality – please share your experience and favorites! If something important is missing I hope you will post it as a comment.

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Light paintings, also known as light drawing or light graffiti, is a photography technique in which exposures are usually made at night or in a darkened room. This momentary approach to art and expression uses the movement of light to create incredible images and is created on the streets, in nature, and in studios by artists whose creative impulses transcend traditional media. Light graffiti is sometimes produced as performance art, and sometimes just to capture it with photography and video, but either way it makes for some incredible viewing. Although light is considered to be rather a practical than an artistic tool, it has some properties which designers can effectively explore in their works.  In this post you will find a huge collection of very inspirational Light Paintings as images and videos and list of the most well known artists.

Caution! You may loose your sleep tonight because you can’t resist spending some hours trying to make your own amazing Light Paintings.

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Regardless of industry and product top quality usually comes at high prize. When it comes to Fonts the same fundamental rule applies. The prize of good Fonts usually reflects their quality and start at around $50 going up to thousands of dollars. This may not fit into the budget of most minor design jobs and fortunately there are free alternatives that really is worth investigating before purchasing fonts. This article will give you an overview of some high quality free fonts available for use in professional designs. Please take a minute to review licens terms before using any of the fonts as this may change. Also please leave a comment if you know an excellent free font.

Other relevant articles.

• 75+ Excellent Free Fonts For Professional Design
• 65+ Hand-picked Free Fonts for Serious Designs

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With Photoshop you can turn plain text into awesome typographic art. As usual with Photoshop it not easy to do it on your own but with the step by step tutorials you find in this article you’re half done. This article presents the best typographic art tutorials I have seen to date and I hope you will try some of them and learn from the cool techniques used. All tutorials included are high quality work and detailed in the right degree. You should not risk getting 30 minutes into a tutorial and then suddenly find yourself at a dead end.

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Everyone, or at least most adult men that really never “grew up completely” just loves gadgets. Gadgets are small technological items that in terms of design and function is believed to be way ahead of their time. Something we just need even though we may have good and working alternatives already. A true gadget that nearly anyone knows about and would like to have is the iPhone. iPhone pushes the traditional limits of usability and functionality and provides it all in an extremely simple and well designed mobile device. Besides that it is just cool to have an iPhone as it it will attract other peoples attention and interest. Another currently very hot gadget is the concept of netbooks. These are general purpose gadgets that hit very broad. Other gadgets a more aimed at specific niches. This article will provide a list of gadgets that could be particular interesting for developers.

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I think most people will agree that Wordpress is an obvious choice for blogging. When it comes to showcasing designers, photographers etc. work it turns out to be a superior publishing platform as well. Today a lot of creative professionals have realised this an use Wordpress as the engine for building an online reputation. The ease of use of Wordpress, the amount of themes and plugins available for that will support building a portfolio is amazing. This article provides a list of more than 25 excellent portfolio themes for Wordpress. Not all the themes for Wordpress is free but you can find great themes that wont cost anything. Still the premium themes sometimes comes with features that makes your live a bit easier. If you’re a professional designer or photographer etc. a theme with a cost of less than $100 may not scare you away. For that reason his article features premium themes as well.

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With icons, web designers and graphic artists have a good opportunity to showcase their skills, prove their experience and explore their creativity. A well created, good looking icon set is a great way for designers to showcase their work and it may be a way to build up some reputation in the online sommunity. Creating professional Icons and allowing people to download them for free is a certain way to attract attention and visitors on a design portfolio or blog. But how how should you get started with creating icons that rock and stand out from the endless masses? This article provides a large collection of tutorials for Photoshop and Illustrator that currently is the de facto standard tools for this purpose. The article also provides links to some very interesting and worth reading articles on icon design. Get started and please comment and drop a link to your own creations and favorite icon tuts and resources.

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A really great source of inspiration is CSS Gallery and Web site design Repository sites. Looking at the successful work others created is one of the best ways to get ideas and kick start the creative process. This article provides a large compilation of web sites that specialize in collecting great web designs and making them easy to browse. All web sites are presented with screenshots and I hope you will easily find the sites that matches your needs. Get started with your creative journey with 30+ CSS and Web Site Design Showcase Sites any Designer MUST Know.

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It’s getting more and more usual for designers to showcase their artwork online and the result is tons of portfolio websites competing for awareness. This means that you need to be special to stand out. Having access to collections of great web designs that really stand out may speed up your design process significantly and increase the chance that the result you end up with have new and unique features. The value of fresh inspiration should not be underestimated and in this article you will find more than you’ll need. Get started and be inspired to create a unique and attractive portfolio.

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