Design your way

Have you been putting off tackling a website project because you don’t have all the needed tools or lack access to a key resource?

There’s no sense in putting the project off any longer.

Since there’s something here for everyone, whether it’s a prototyping tool, photos or fonts, a responsive chart and table maker, or something else that will make you design efforts a little easier, you should find it here.

It’s not always easy to keep up with the latest and greatest web design tools and resources. We’ve complied this list of favorites to help you out; and whether you’re a beginner, or an expert at web design and/or development, doesn’t really matter.

You’re sure to find something that’s both useful and a pleasure to work with.

Proto.io

A low-fidelity prototype is typically shared with others to get feedback on the direction the design work is taking. A high-fidelity prototype on the other hand, typically takes on the exact look and feel of the real thing. In either case, building a prototype should be a quick and easy process.

Proto.io satisfies all your prototyping needs. You don’t need any previous prototyping experience, nor do you need to have any knowledge of coding or design skills, to use this tool.

Proto.io has three basic components: 1) the Dashboard assists you with your collaboration and version control tasks, 2) the Editor, which performs most of the heavy lifting as you build your prototype, and 3) a Player, that enables you to share the results of your efforts and conduct testing.

The newest version, Proto.io 6, is even easier and more intuitive to use than the previous versions. Like the earlier versions, it gives you the ability to preview your prototypes on your web browser, or on a device using the free Proto.io app for iOS and Android.

SITE123

Once your prototyping efforts are completed, and all the stakeholders are happy with what they’ve seen, you still must build the website, which is where SITE123 enters the picture.

This modern website builder comes with a WYSIWYG editor. When you make a change, it appears on the screen immediately. This feature makes website building oh so easy and intuitive.

Since SITE123’s selection of responsive designs are arranged in thematic categories, you won’t have to waste time searching for a theme that’s a best fit for your current project; and, once you’ve started, it’s simply a matter of using the dashboard to arrange and customize the design modules you’ve selected to work with.

You should find the built-in app market to be a great help in building a website that will stand out from the crowd. This feature allows you to integrate useful external apps into your websites.

Xfive

If you would feel better having an outside agency do your website development work, there’s no better place to go than Xfive. Xfive has worked with thousands of clients during the 10+ years they’ve been in business.

Send them your design files (Sketch, Adobe XD, Ai, Figma or other), and they’ll perform the conversion to HTML, and do so quickly. And if you want something more complicated coded in modern JS Frameworks they can do it for you as well. Xfive also builds apps in Ruby on Rails.

You won’t see or hear it, but when the Xfive team delivers quality code to you, they celebrate with high fives all around. Xfive is Australian based, with offices in Europe and the USA.

Webflow

Webflow enables you build anything from an ultra-high-fidelity prototype to a production-ready website, without hand-writing a line of code. And since you can design and develop at the same time with Webflow, there’s no need to repeat your work, once on desktop, and again in code.

With Webflow, you can start designing with real content and real code, from day one – a truly innovative approach to website building.

wpDataTables

As much as you may love data management, it can be a real burden at times. wpDataTables takes that burden off your shoulders. It performs all the tasks necessary to embed clean, crisp, interactive tables and charts into your websites.

Given the complexity of the tasks required of it, you may be surprised to discover there’s zero learning process involved. The latest version of wpDataTables is incredibly intuitive to use.

Pro

Pro is an industry-first “app” for building highly-customized sites on WordPress. In addition to its header, footer, and content builder, Pro offers an impressive collection of premium tools, including a combination of Themeco-developed and 3^rd party plugins.

Apex, a newly-launched feature, enables you to tie into a community of creative professionals

Ultra

Ultra provides the ideal solution for a startup in need of a website. Ultra is a web-building tool with a twist. Instead of customizing layouts, designers work with customizable pre-made row designs. Designers can therefore follow a modular approach to website building, an approach that is both speedy and efficient.

If you’ve been accustomed to building pages one element at a time, you’ll quickly fall in love with Ultra’s innovative approach.

Pressmate

Once you have a website up and running, it’s nice to be able to rely on a support service that will keep it that way. Pressmate is a WordPress support services that works with small businesses and agencies to provide them with automated and offsite cloud backups, WordPress core, theme, and plugin updates, security solutions, and more.

Pressmate offers a free site analysis before signing up for their services. Pressmate offers 4 different plans.

WhatFontIs

Have you ever come across a “must-have” font, but you don’t know its name? WhatFontis can help you; either by analyzing a sample and producing an exact match or several close matches, or with assistance from a forum that always appears delighted to help.

Manual searching for an elusive font can take up a ton of time. WhatFontis is fast, accurate, and best of all, free!

FFonts

Another approach to finding a “must-have” font is to search through several thousand different font styles, which of course can be like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. FFonts takes care of that problem. Ffonts features an outstanding collection of several thousand free fonts.

The good news is, they are arranged in more than 30 different categories, which should save you a ton of time. This is a nice resource to have at your fingertips.

SnapPages

SnapPages 3.0’s drag and drop website builder, together with its selection of beautifully designed sections and templates, make building a website a snap. The page templates are 100% responsive, and your website will be fully hosted in the cloud, where you can access it at any time, from anywhere.

Blogger? SnapPages 3.0 is a blogger’s dream platform.

Aurora

Aurora is a Mac compatible HDR photo editor (a PC-version release is imminent however). This is an excellent tool to have if you want to jazz up photographs to give them a truly professional look, or incorporate subtle or dramatic special effects.

Aurora comes with plenty of resets to make work easier for the beginner, or more efficient for the more experienced user.

Stockfresh

Stockfresh is an up-and-coming stock photo agency, that has nevertheless managed to put together a library of several million photos and vectors, which they are able to offer at competitive process. Looking to the future, Stockfresh expects to have a much wider selection of design goodies in store, which could make it a resource well worth adding to your tool kit.

BBT Drag and Drop Email Builder

Thanks to Big Bang Themes, Email template designers haven’t been forgotten. The BBT Drag and Drop Email Builder’s modular approach makes it easy to create a customized email template in a very short time. You can export HTML code compatible with any Email sending service.

More than 9500 clients can attest to the quality and performance of this useful tool.

Goodie

Goodie has launched hundreds of websites for businesses like yours. With Goodie’s service, you work directly with a web developer, and your website will be coded quickly for a fixed price you will receive in advance.

This is the best possible match for small projects like single-page websites, simple WordPress sites, or as set of e-mail templates. Submit your project details right now for a fixed price offer. You’ll be glad you did.

Conclusion

We must admit that this is a nice selection of tools and resources, and a comprehensive one at that. You should be able to build almost any prototype, website, or app from among these offerings. We hope you’ve found one or two items that will prove useful, and make your web design or development work easier and more enjoyable.

The post Start working with the best tools and resources for designers in 2017 appeared first on Design your way.