14 Online Presentation Tools

Published February 16th, 2011 in Tools - 22 Comments

There may be times when you need to present ideas to clients or co-workers and could benefit from one of the many resources for creating online presentations. In this post we’ll introduce 14 different presentation tools to get the job done. Some are free to use while others will come with a cost.

Online Presentation Tools:

280 Slides

13 Options for Selling Digital Products on Your Website

Published December 8th, 2010 in Tools - 52 Comments

There is no shortage of options for managing an e-commerce website. There are all kinds of shopping carts and e-commerce content management systems that have a wide variety of strengths and weaknesses. Finding the right option for selling digital downloads, however, can prove to be a challenge.

There are a lot of factors to consider when selling digital files. You’ll need an effective setup for instant delivery. There are choices to be made between a flat pricing structure or per transaction fees. You can either host the files on your own or go with a provider that will host the files for you. You’ll also have to decide what features are important to you, such as being able to offer coupon codes and managing an affiliate program. If you’re selling a large number of products and/or large files it will only make your decision process more complicated and pricey.

We recently added functionality to Vandelay Premier for selling digital files (an alternative to purchasing a membership) and sorting through the different options took a considerable amount of time and effort. We thought it would be helpful to many designers and online business owners to share some of the information that we found. Ultimately, we decided on E-Junkie for a few reasons:

1. It allows us to host our own files on Amazon S3, which reduces the cost of storing the large files of our products.
2. Lots of features.
3. Ease of use. Adding products and inserting buttons into your site is very simple and quick.
4. Reputation.

It’s likely that your situation is much different from ours, so here we will present 13 different options for selling and delivering digital files, along with a brief description of each.

E-Junkie

E-Junkie can be used to sell digital products or tangible goods, but it provides a wide variety of features that make it very popular for selling digital products. E-Junkie will host your digital files (or you can host them yourself) and they’ll provide secure downloads for your customers while protecting your products. E-Junkie includes affiliate management, discount codes, autoresponders and more. Pricing is a flat monthly fee (no fees per transaction) based on the number of products you are selling and the amount of disk space needed, unless you are hosting the files yourself. Place “buy now” or “add to cart” buttons anywhere on your site to start selling with E-Junkie.

10 Extremely Useful Time Management Tools

Published September 22nd, 2010 in Business, Tools - 47 Comments

Web designers, especially freelancers, face the challenge of effectively managing their time while juggling a lot of different responsibilities. There are a number of online apps and tools that can help you to take control and make the most of your time. In this post we’ll look at 10 that may be able to help you. This includes calendars, to-do lists, time tracking, and project management tools. If you have a favorite please feel free to share in the comments.

1. Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk is a free to-do list manager. You can add tasks that you need to get done, prioritize them, and check them off when they are done. Remember the Milk apps are available for the iPhone and for Android.

45 Amazing and Free Photoshop Actions

Published May 11th, 2010 in Tools - 44 Comments

Photoshop actions allow designers and photographers to automate common sequences for increased efficiency. There are countless actions available that can be downloaded for free, and in this post we’ll feature 45 of them. Some of these are individual actions and others are sets that include multiple actions.

Photoshop Action 15

30 of the Best Websites for Online Photo Editing

Published April 12th, 2010 in Tools - 33 Comments

Designers and photographers have a number of options when it comes to photo editing. Of course, Photoshop is the most popular software, but there are a number of websites that allow you to edit photos online. Depending on your needs, the full version of Photoshop may not be necessary. In this post we’ll look at 31 options for editing photos online.

Leading Options for Free Online Photo Editing:

Picnik
With Picnik you can grab photos from your Flickr, Photobucket or Facebook account easily. Picnik includes advanced controls and effects in addition to basic options like cropping and re-sizing. A premium version is also available with more features for a little over $2 per month.

15 Resources for Easily Creating Web Forms

Published January 18th, 2010 in Tools - 48 Comments

Almost every website needs some type of form, whether it be a contact/feedback form, a registration form, a survey, or an order form. Despite the fact that forms are a necessity for just about every project, designers and developers can often be frustrated by the process of creating them, especially more advanced forms.

There are a number of resources available that have been created to make it easier for designers, developers, and website owners to quickly and easily create attractive, usable forms without the need to code. In this post we’ll look at some of the best options available.

The resources featured in this post include some free options and a number of paid options. Most of the paid options include a lot of features, and in many cases the ability to integrate your forms with PayPal or other payment gateways.

Resources for Creating Forms:

FormSpring

With FormSpring you can create standard contact forms, set up surveys, accept donations, manage event registrations and more. The form builder will allow you to easily create forms without the need for coding, and FormSpring helps you to manage the data that is collected through the forms (store in a database, export to Excel, or use the API). You can even use a payment integration feature. A free plan is available that allows 3 forms with 10 fields and 50 saved entries per month, and paid plans range from $14 – $159 per month.

35 Useful Scripts for Tooltips

Published December 2nd, 2009 in Tools - 43 Comments

Tooltips provide opportunities to give website visitors additional information without creating added clutter on the page. There are plenty of tooltip scripts available that can be used in your own work. In this post we’ll feature 35 options.

Prototip 2
Allows you to easily create both simple and complex tooltips using the Prototype javascript framework.

25 Scripts for Dropdown Navigation Menus

Published March 31st, 2009 in Tools - 61 Comments

Navigation menus are important to any website. Well designed navigation can improve the look and appearance of a site as well as the usability. For larger sites with a lot of content or pages, drop down menus are popular because the can make it easier to move through the site with less clicks. In this post we’ll feature 25 scripts for drop down menus that you can use on your own site.

jQuery Multi Level CSS Menu #1

71 Gradient Resources for Web Design

Published June 16th, 2008 in Tools - 56 Comments

For web designers and graphic designers, gradients provide almost unlimited options for creating the perfect look. This list is a collection of excellent tutorials and resources for effectively using gradients. Some of the tutorials and resources are specific to Photoshop and Illustrator, and others are general. Regardless of whether you use gradients every day or if you’ve never used a gradient, there should be something here for you.

Display Your Feed on a Static HTML Page Using FeedBurner’s BuzzBoost

Published May 18th, 2008 in Tools - 45 Comments

Almost every blogger now is using FeedBurner to publish their feed. The most obvious benefits of using FeedBurner are the statistics and the subscriber count, but there are plenty of other free options that you can use or customize to enhance your blog. One of these options is called BuzzBoost, and essentially it republishes your feed as HTML so that it can be used anywhere.