Category: Brainpicks

Smush it - A Smart Image Optimizer

Mastering graphic optimization may takes time. Thanks to Stoyan Stefanov and Nicole Sullivan who has designed a web tool called: Smush it.

Smushit.com is an image optimizer for non-lossy image format to be squeezed until the last bytes out of your images - without changing their look or visual quality. There will be a report page that shows how many bytes (in minimum) you can save.

The features that are included in Smush it comes in:

* Multiple upload for number of pictures directly from your browser.
* Additional options for image URLs.
* SMUSH.IT 0.5 is a Firefox Extension - available to optimize the images found on any web page.
* Optimized images are downloadable as a single zip.

This tool will save your time when you are dealing with web graphics most of the time

Typechart: Browse Web Type, Grab CSS

Typechart is a web tool to preview and compare web typography while retrieving the CSS.
This is how to use this tool:

1. Browse typographic styles; In quick look up, there is Style ID for each Typeface, which allows you to annotate prototypes and retrieve the css while coding.
2. Download CSS; When you click the “Get CSS” button, there is a sliding tray that displays the CSS.
3. Compare Typeface previews in two different OS; Windows view for (ClearType) rendering, and Mac view for Apple font rendering.

A tool that will save your time whenever you need to have quick overview on several web typos. Keep this Typechart inside your bookmark lists and have a try if you like

ShadowBox - a Smart Media Viewer

ShadowBox is a JavaScript media viewer application that supports all of the web’s most popular media publishing formats including images, QuickTime, Windows Media Player, Flash, Flash video, HTML, and even external web pages. In fact, you can customize the skin of Shadow Box with CSS.

Why ShadowBox?

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Constructr Open Source CMS

Constructr CMS is a new Content management System with a couple of modern Features: Clean URLs, Caching, NestedSets Page Tree, multilangual Backend,… just try - it is and will forever be freely available.

The list of the main features of Constructr looks like:

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Scroll Multiple Videos with jQuery.Scrollable.js

site>> http://www.flowplayer.org/tools/scrollable.html
tutorial demo>> http://www.flowplayer.org/tutorials/scrollable-view.html

Tero Piirainen has created a handy Flowplayer tool that scrolls playlist of several videos using jQuery. The tool is pretty light, which is wrapped in 3.9 Kb javascript file. The features are:

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3 Sets of Free Designious Icons

DesigniousTimes.com have compiled their best icon freebies which are consist of 3 amazing icon sets. All of them are available to download in EPS 8 format inside .zip file.

Best use of these icons are in your website navigation menus, or software projects. Some icons are designed for any business or office related designs, such as: charts, calculator, currency, etc. You’ll see the third icon set is designed in Blue color scheme. There are 30 of them to download for free
Grab these Designious Icons if you find them useful for you!

Simple Realtime Survey

site>> http://dojotoolkit.org/demos/realtime-survey-demo
demo>> http://turtle.dojotoolkit.org/~dante/surveyDemo/survey.html

Simple Realtime Survey is one of Dojo Javascript toolkit to build a simple unobtrusive form. Dojo Toolkit is known as an open source Javascript that delivers on the promise of Web 2.0 terms like Comet and Ajax by helping you create rich and interactive web apps. No wonder if, Simple Realtime Survey is developed as dynamic survey form with powerful charting (Chart2D). This charting system is backed by cometd and dojox.

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jQuery.ComboBox dropdown list

website >> http://jquery.sanchezsalvador.com/jquery/page/jquerycombobox.aspx
demo >> http://jquery.sanchezsalvador.com/samples/example.htm

jquery.ComboBox was created by a an application developer, Ahura Mazda due to the fact that the standard Select element cannot be styled, or it is limited to what can be styled for some internet browsers, for instance: IE 6.
Even at the moment the jquery.ComboBox behaves as a dropdown list and not a full combobox since it does not currently accept text input, this technique would still allow you to set up a structure of controls.

Some supporting features:

* easy to set up
* control over style of combobox using CSS (background opacity, background color, fonts choices, borders, drop-down button image etc. )
* supports keyboard navigation
* cross-browser support (best viewed in firefox)
* different style of animation for drop-down (fade or slide animation FX)
* original Select html control is still available for access and control and reflects the user’s selection
* works the same with forms and server-side form processing, retaining the original control’s ID and updated values

The latest developed version is jQuery.ComboBox 0.1.2.7. and it is available in .zip file to see offline demo with different styles. Should be interesting to have a try!

Copy & Paste Character from Web

Sometimes you need to draw characters when you write email, create a blog post, or even designing. While time is also moving on, it may be took time searching them down into your system. Hold still, because there is a web tool to help you solve this problem.

CopyPasteCharacter.com provides you list of symbol, number, and special type characters that works easy. You just need to click a character to copy it. Hold down «alt» to copy several characters.

CopyPasteCharacter.com is developed by Konst & Teknik and Martin Ström. We think this web tool is a great helper, so have a moment to save it to your favorite boomark list!