4 Free Online Tools for Web Designers

There’s a trend in software towards expensive online subscriptions, but there are still a lot of great free services out there.

Every day, I relay on useful websites to get more work done. Here are 4 free online services that I use daily, whether I’m working with WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or something else.

Free Tool #1. Color Schemer Online

Website: Colorschemer.com/online.html

This is helpful for my design work. I can start with a single color and then find several matching color schemes based on that first choice.

This site is really easy to use:

1. Type in your starting color
2. Choose either RGB or HEX
3. You can choose to darken or lighten the color scheme

You can then use the generated color codes from the right side of the screen.

Free Tool #2. Font Awesome

Website: Fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/

Font Awesome allows you to use font icons instead of png images. They are really easy to use and also scale up and down far more effectively than traditional images.

1. Download the files
2. Decompress
3. Copy the /fonts/ and /css/ folders into your website
4. Load /css/font-awesome.min.css inside the head tag of your code

To render an icon use this HTML structure:

<i class="fa fa-icon-name"></i>

To display the check icon, use:

<i class="fa fa-check"></i>

The full list of icon classes is available at Fontawesome.io/icons/

Free Tool #3. Responsinator

Website: Responsinator.com

This is a really quick and easy way to test your responsive design work.

1. Type the URL of your site
2. Check the available screen sizes

Note: Responsinator is a useful tool, but isn’t a substitute for detailed testing in common browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer/Edge, Opera, Safari and Opera.

Free Tool #4. Jpeg Mini

Website: Jpegmini.com

This site make your jpg images lighter, but also allows them to keep the same quality.

1. Go to http://www.jpegmini.com/main/shrink_photo
2. Browse for your image
3. Wait until the process is finished
4. Download the compressed file