The May edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, jQuery plugins and JavaScript resources, educational resources, wireframing kits, image tools, Photoshop extensions, web development tools, coding resources, and some really great new fonts.

Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there.

As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments. And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration.

LayoutIt!

LayoutIt! simplifies building your front-end code with Bootstrap, complete with a drag-and-drop interface. You get high-quality HTML5 code starting from any of their basic templates.

 

Flat UI Colors

Building a flat UI? Flat UI Colors is a tiny app that makes it easy to grab the colors from Flat UI for your project.

 

Hood.ie

Hood.ie is a platform for quickly building web apps. It’s for frontend-only web apps, and uses an open-source library that’s as simple as jQuery.

 

Little Nimbus

Little Nimbus offers robust web hosting plans starting at just $.99/month. They offer instant activation, CPanel and PHP, and 99.95% uptime. Plus, there’s a 7-day money-back guarantee.

 

Resemble.js

Resemble.js is an HTML5 canvas and JavaScript app that analyzes and compares images. Just drag and drop images into the app and it will highlight their diferences.

 

MixItUp

MixItUp is a CSS3 and jQuery filtering and sorting plugin. It uses jQuery to show, hid, or re-position your elements, and CSS3 for smooth animated transitions. It’s free for person and commercial use.

 

Web Colour Data

Web Colour Data makes it simple to pull color data from any URL, complete with charts showing the prevalence of each color used.

 

Userium

Userium is an interactive usability checklist that includes categories for user experience, the site’s homepage, accessibility, navigation, links, search, and more.

 

WireKit

WireKit is a set of Photoshop shape layers for wireframing iPhone apps that comes in two unique styles, each of which has over 60 common UI elements.

 

Creative Market Photoshop Extension

The Creative Market Photoshop Extension makes it possible to browse, search, and buy Creative Market assets right from inside Photoshop.

 

The Productivity Manifesto

The Productivity Manifesto is a free ebook filled with tips for becoming way more productive. Just sign up for the free newsletter for a link to download the PDF.

 

Froont

Froont is a visual responsive design app with a drag and drop interface. It runs in your browser and even lets you share fully functional HTML and CSS with your developer instead of static images.

 

Billy Madipsum

Billy Madipsum is a lorem ipsum generator that generates random Billy Madison quotes rather than the standard Latin. All you have to do is choose the number of words or characters and click “Call the zoo!”

 

Nanoc

Nanoc is a static site builder that works for building everything from a small personal site to a large corporate site. It even works for blogs.

 

Ruhoh

Ruhoh is a static blogging platform built on a number of existing technologies. It uses Markdown for writing, Mustache for templating, Git for file management, and more. It’s open source and can be hosted or self-hosted.

 

TowTruck

TowTruck, from Mozilla Labs, makes it easy to collaborate on your website in real-time. It’s implemented in JavaScript, and works with existing web pages.

 

Perspective Mockups

Perspective Mockups is a set of Photoshop actions for creating more interesting mockups for presenting your ideas. The results are, apparently, crisp and unique.

 

Scope

Scope is an easy way to create a web-based version of any email to share with others. It’s free and can be used with any webmail.

 

Packery

Packery is a bin-packing layout library that can be used for a variety of layout types, including masonry-style layouts as well as more meticulous layouts (and even ridiculous ones).

 

Wired 1.0

Wired 1.0 is a wireframe kit for Sketch that also comes in .png and .eps for use with other programs.

 

Designer School

Designer School is a regularly-updated online course that teaches more than just the basics of web development. You can join the mailing list for updates, or just check the website.

 

Slid.es

Slid.es is free online presentation creator that makes it easy to share your work. There are some premium paid features, too, including private decks, offline presentations, and more.

 

Shame.css

Shame.css is a special stylesheet reserved just for your CSS hacks, quick fixes, and questionable code, so you can keep it out of your main codebase and hopefully isolate and fix it easier.

 

Gallery

Gallery is a pure CSS image gallery that doesn’t use a single script. It even offers autoplay and comes in prefixed and unprefixed build versions.

 

Magnific Popup

Magnific Popup is a free responsive jQuery lightbox that focuses on performance and user experience. It’s light and includes retina display support.

 

Ghost

Ghost is a free, open source, simple blogging platform. It puts the focus squarely on publishing and your content.

 

LivIcons

LivIcons is an animated icon pack that includes both animated and static images. It uses brand new animation methods, and of course they’re scalable and customizable.

 

Cylburn (name your price)

Cylburn, from Lost Type Co-Op, is a semi-connected script font based structurally on Roundhand, but with a pointed brush and restrained tension.

 

Fairview (name your price)

Fairview is a condensed sans serif that comes complete with small cap alternates. It was inspired by 20th century industrial typography.

 

Style Script ($69)

Style Script is an upright script type family with a variety of looks ranging from casual to formal. It includes over 1275 glyphs, with eight weights and styles.

 

Trend Hand Made ($19)

Trend Hand Made is a layered font with a basis in sans and slab fonts. It comes in over twenty weights and styles, for a huge variety of design possibilities.

 

Benito ($20)

Benito is a proportional, geometric woodtype-style font family in six styles with italics.

 

Tomahawk (free)

Tomahawk is a free display typeface that’s free for personal use. It includes standard Latin characters, as well as a selection of Norwegian characters.

 

Valkyrie (free)

Valkyrie is a free type family designed for fashion brands and designers. It’s a set of serif fonts with geometric elements in a modern style.

 

Red Dawn (free)

Red Dawn is a free typeface based on camping and trailblazing marks. It’s an all caps display font, with a very bold look.

 

Agilis (free)

Agilis is a stylized serif typeface that includes 394 glyphs, ligatures, and automatic arrows.

 

Idealist Sans (free)

Idealist Sans is a free type family that includes regular and light weights. It was designed by Elena Kowalski.

 

Know of a new app or resource that should have been included but wasn’t? Let us know in the comments.

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Last week, Adobe announced that there will be no further development of their Fireworks application. Security updates will be provided and bug fixes may arrive, but for all intents and purposes Fireworks CS6 is a dead man walking. The petitions for clemency have already begun, but it seems likely that at some point Adobe’s CEO will give the order to flick the switch and like a paper rocket on a rainy fourth of July, Fireworks will be no more.

Whilst many in the web design community bemoan Adobe’s lack of foresight, there are others — myself included — that don’t quite understand the fuss. It’s just a piece of software, and a niche one at that, so what’s the big deal?

It seems for a great number of designers, Fireworks is the only tool they’re prepared to work with.

Here’s a confession: I’ve installed Fireworks on my machine twice; once to try it out, around 8 years ago; and once to research this article. Both times it lasted less than a day before being uninstalled.

I’ve heard the arguments in favor of Fireworks before. We regularly have articles submitted to WebdesignerDepot that extoll the use of Fireworks over any other application. I’ve been told that any designer who doesn’t use Fireworks is stuck in the past, too lazy to learn something new. The problem is, that none of these arguments have ever seemed to ring true:

I’m lead to believe that Fireworks exports sliced HTML better than Photoshop. The problem is, that the last time I allowed an application to code HTML for me it laid out the page in tables — and yes, that was standard at the time. We simply don’t slice images any longer; responsive design, flat design, the mobile web, SEO; everything considered good practice by contemporary web designers is hampered by image slicing.

Fireworks exports CSS, but then so does Illustrator, and so do a number of other tools. I’ve never seen one that could write CSS as succinctly as I can, especially when SASS or LESS are taken into account.

The main use, and main argument of flag waving Fireworks supporters is that Fireworks is superb for rapid prototyping web page mockups. That may have been the case a few years ago, but how does one approach prototyping responsive design in Fireworks? Fireworks creates pictures of static websites, which makes it about as useful for mockups as…well…Photoshop. Admittedly, not all designers are fans of designing in the browser. But even for those who can’t code, products like Typecast are far more advanced than Fireworks.

The current assumption is that Adobe will plunder Fireworks’ features and attempt to crowbar them into Photoshop and Illustrator. However I find that unlikely; both Photoshop and Illustrator are distinctly different tools. It’s unlikely that Adobe would compromise the premium raster and vector programs on the market in an attempt to win over former Fireworks devotees. It’s more likely that Adobe sees the future of web mockups in the Edge line of tools. Animate and Reflow are available now in beta, and show a great deal of promise.

It’s also important to recognise that Adobe are not comparing current versions of tools. Their development team has sat down and compared what they can do with Fireworks over the next decade, compared with what they can do with the likes of Reflow, and came to the conclusion that Fireworks will, sooner or later, be deadwood.

One thing that is interesting is that Adobe haven’t also pruned Flash from their line up. The Flash platform still has its uses; AIR applications, mobile apps and gaming are all well suited, but they’re better served by Flash Builder, it’s difficult to see why Flash Professional dodged the bullet. Why would Adobe kill off an application that is at best loved and at worst ignored; whilst saving an application almost universally abhored?

The show of support for Fireworks from the community has reaffirmed our belief that Adobe should continue to deliver dedicated tools for web designers — what follows Fireworks CS6 will be an revolutionary leap, designed from the ground up with the needs of the modern web designer front and center. — Adobe’s Web Platform and Authoring Team

For the time being Fireworks CS6 remains part of the Creative Cloud subscription. However, with its now inevitable decline, it’s hard to see Fireworks as a realistic option for web design. Many will seek an alternative, and Adobe will be hoping that their new products will inspire the same loyalty that Fireworks users are now showing.

 

Has anyone not using Fireworks missed out? Is Fireworks still relevant for web design? Will you miss it? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, Fireworks image via Shutterstock.

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