Photoshophappiness.com

http://www.bittbox.com/freebies/free-high-res-grungy-paper-textures/
I came across this site somewhat by accident and happy that I did.

There are lots of useful freebies on his site.

http://www.bittbox.com/freebies/

There are a number of tools I’ve used over the past several years that have really helped when designing for the web. These resources are good for the designer that has a good understanding of the technical aspects of web work. Although numbered here, there’s really no precedence.

1) Web Developer Extension for Firefox

http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/

From the author’s website: The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. It is designed for Firefox, Flock and Seamonkey, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

I love this extension. Truly a powerful array of tools for viewing/modifying/disabling various areas of web design components. Two of my favorite features are the ability enable/disable/edit CSS on the fly and the ability to outline and display information about specific page elements. A must have for the web designer and web developer.

2) kuler.adobe.com

http://kuler.adobe.com/
There’s this little company called Adobe. You might have heard of them (wink). They have great online color schem creator application. Although there are many more features than what I use it for, just the shear inspiration it generates from the user submitted themes to the way cool ways of choosing your colors.

3) W3C Shools Online

http://www.w3schools.com/
The ultimate web standards technology reference for (X)HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, ASP, etc.

4) maxdesign.au

http://css.maxdesign.com.au/
A great group of articles on web design and development. Dozens of helpful and insightful articles on Lists, Nested Lists, Floats and CSS Selectors.

5) Colorzilla

http://www.iosart.com/firefox/colorzilla/
A great little Firefox Plug-In that helps with color identification of various web site elements. A little clunky in its interface in that it’s not always noticeable that it’s toggled on, but once you get used to that you’ll find it a handy tool to have around.

6) CSS Zen Garden

The Beauty in CSS Design

http://www.csszengarden.com/
Hundreds of layout examples showcasing just how nicely you can separate content and styling. If for no other reason, it’s worth a visit on a regular basis for inspiration.

7) Komodo Edit

http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_ide/komodo_edit.mhtml

A free open source editor from ActiveState. If you are used to using Notepad or Word Pad for scripting, this is a very nice step up. It offers scripting support for many languages with auto-complete calltips. Customizable syntax coding and a syntax checking are a nice plus.

8) Lipsum.com

http://www.lipsum.com/

A simple web utility that generates dummy text for FPO text in layout. Generate anywhere from 1 word to, well… yeah, unlimited lines of Latin goodness.

9) JQuery & Mootools

http://jquery.com/
http://mootools.net/

Powerful modular libraries designed for Javascript developers that add tremendous flexibility and flair to one’s programming style. These two libraries are quite popular and have made a significant impact on DHTML over the past few years. A basic knowledge of Javascript is required to get started with these on an entry level but is well worth the time and effort.

10) Google Analytics

http://www.google.com/analytics/

It goes without saying that Google has the most powerful suite of tools on the web today. But a wonderful little gem is their Analytics tool. I’ve not had the chance to use it beyond basic tracking and visitor stats but it looks to have a nice integration to AdWords for ROI tracking. For the small website, it offers a wealth of information more with more detail than most would ever use.