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10 Must-Have User Interface Design Tools

November 21st, 2017 No comments
GitHub User interface components for Prototype.js

Every designer wants to deliver high quality, valuable experiences for the users. but designing a good user interface is a very challenging task. To succeed, it is necessary to have many web user interface resources and building blocks. Many User Interface resources allow you as a web designer to access and create a good User Interface. In this article, you’ll find a list of User Interface Design tools which you can use.

LivePipe UI

LivePipe UI is a really nice toolkit that you can use to ease your work process. This is a suite of high-quality widgets and controls for web 2.0 applications built using the Prototype JavaScript Framework. Everything is well tested, highly extensible and fully documented.

iPhone Mockup

iPhone Mockup lets you create a user interface for an iPhone app in a very easy and interactive manner. This toolkit will make the process of designing mockups fun and creative. It’s very useful for UI designers or app designers.

DesignerVista

DesignerVista Mockup Tool User Interface Design Tools

DesignerVista is powerful, easy to use GUI mockup design tool to quickly design GUI Mockups for Desktop, Web and Mobile Applications. This toolkit comes with many great features such as Flowchart and UML Mockup, Look and Feels ( Sketch, Native, Office Ribbon and Custom Look and Feels ) and much more.

Gliffy

Gliffy _ Online Diagram and Flowchart Software

Here’s another useful toolkit. This one is called Gliffy and it is easy to use and requires no complicated software manuals. You can simply drag-and-drop shapes from an extensive library and point-and-click your way to format. With Gliffy you can work from any place and with anyone without worrying about software or browser compatibility.  With this toolkit, you will achieve consistent results with custom templates, logos and shape libraries which your entire team can create, edit and share. Gliffy integrates with Confluence, JIRA, and Google Drive so you can collaborate easily on your company’s chosen platform.

Wireframe Magnets

Wireframe Magnets (DIY Kit) user interface

In this link, you will find an extremely useful toolkit, called Wireframe MAgnets or DIY magnet template. This toolkit is based on the Konigi wireframe stencils and it includes 3 sheets of elements that will definitely be useful in whiteboard prototyping. All you have to do is simply download the toolkit, which is free, and print the PDFs onto magnet sheets. You can also laminate them but that is optional. The last step is cutting them out.

Patternry

Start Building Consistent Web Interfaces _ Patternry

By using Patternry, you’ll find an efficient way to build, manage and share living style guides and design systems. This is an awesome front-end resource that contains design patterns, HTML & CSS, wireframes, images, links, and more. Patternry makes it easy for your designers and developers to start sharing their work and build consistent Web apps faster. With it, you can build all sorts of things, starting from a simple style guide to a complete pattern library with all its design elements and code.

User Interface Design Framework

GUI Desgn Framework - Free Vector Icons, GUI elements for Web Designers

In this link, you will find an awesome app that helps you design faster and easier. This app was specially created for the wireframing process and it can be used to create better mockup deliverables with Illustrator and to easily customise the vectors GUI elements to your own needs. In this example, you will find 200 graphic styles for buttons, headers, and blocks, 260 vector icons for creating wireframes and web design and hundreds of vector elements for designing interfaces.

Fontawesome

Font Awesome, the iconic font and CSS toolkit

In this link, you will find a massive collection of scalable vector icons that you can easily customise using CSS. Font Awesome is a pictographic language of web-related actions that will come in really handy. This toolkit doesn’t even require JavaScript. Each graphic element is fully scalable which means it will look great at any size. The toolkit is also free to use in both personal and commercial projects. Download this toolkit as soon as possible and find out all the benefits of using it in your projects.

Mockingbird

Website wireframes_ Mockingbird

The Mockingbird is an online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application. Get your ideas out of your head and straight into your web project which is now easier to get done. With this toolkit you will be able to easily drag and drop UI elements to the page, to rearrange and resize them and much more. This feature lets you go from a simple idea to a mockup within minutes. Another cool feature will let you link multiple mockups together and preview them interactively. In this way, you will get a hint of the feel and flow of your app. There’s plenty of things you can do with this toolkit, all of which will help your creative process. You can share links to your clients and teammates and they can edit wireframes with you in real time.

Dojo

Dojo Toolkit User Interface Design Tools

The Dojo Toolkit is a cross-browser 2D vector graphics API which will make things easier for you and your project. The toolkit enables the development of rich graphics web applications on both desktop and mobile devices. You won’t have to deal with the browsers’ native graphics technologies anymore. The toolkit is also very well documented. In this link, you will find documentation and examples for every part of it. You even have step-by-step guides and highly detailed tutorials that focus on using Dojo to develop web apps. All in all, this toolkit would look wonderful in your resource library. It will save you time and it provides everything you need to build a web app. This toolkit brings utilities, UI components and more into one place!

The post 10 Must-Have User Interface Design Tools first appeared on WebDesignDev.

The post 10 Must-Have User Interface Design Tools appeared first on WebDesignDev.


10 Must-Have User Interface Design Tools was first posted on November 21, 2017 at 9:40 am.
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Categories: Others, Programming Tags:

10 Must-Have User Interface Design Tools

November 21st, 2017 No comments
GitHub User interface components for Prototype.js

Every designer wants to deliver high quality, valuable experiences for the users. but designing a good user interface is a very challenging task. To succeed, it is necessary to have many web user interface resources and building blocks. Many User Interface resources allow you as a web designer to access and create a good User Interface. In this article, you’ll find a list of User Interface Design tools which you can use.

LivePipe UI

LivePipe UI is a really nice toolkit that you can use to ease your work process. This is a suite of high-quality widgets and controls for web 2.0 applications built using the Prototype JavaScript Framework. Everything is well tested, highly extensible and fully documented.

iPhone Mockup

iPhone Mockup lets you create a user interface for an iPhone app in a very easy and interactive manner. This toolkit will make the process of designing mockups fun and creative. It’s very useful for UI designers or app designers.

DesignerVista

DesignerVista Mockup Tool User Interface Design Tools

DesignerVista is powerful, easy to use GUI mockup design tool to quickly design GUI Mockups for Desktop, Web and Mobile Applications. This toolkit comes with many great features such as Flowchart and UML Mockup, Look and Feels ( Sketch, Native, Office Ribbon and Custom Look and Feels ) and much more.

Gliffy

Gliffy _ Online Diagram and Flowchart Software

Here’s another useful toolkit. This one is called Gliffy and it is easy to use and requires no complicated software manuals. You can simply drag-and-drop shapes from an extensive library and point-and-click your way to format. With Gliffy you can work from any place and with anyone without worrying about software or browser compatibility.  With this toolkit, you will achieve consistent results with custom templates, logos and shape libraries which your entire team can create, edit and share. Gliffy integrates with Confluence, JIRA, and Google Drive so you can collaborate easily on your company’s chosen platform.

Wireframe Magnets

Wireframe Magnets (DIY Kit) user interface

In this link, you will find an extremely useful toolkit, called Wireframe MAgnets or DIY magnet template. This toolkit is based on the Konigi wireframe stencils and it includes 3 sheets of elements that will definitely be useful in whiteboard prototyping. All you have to do is simply download the toolkit, which is free, and print the PDFs onto magnet sheets. You can also laminate them but that is optional. The last step is cutting them out.

Patternry

Start Building Consistent Web Interfaces _ Patternry

By using Patternry, you’ll find an efficient way to build, manage and share living style guides and design systems. This is an awesome front-end resource that contains design patterns, HTML & CSS, wireframes, images, links, and more. Patternry makes it easy for your designers and developers to start sharing their work and build consistent Web apps faster. With it, you can build all sorts of things, starting from a simple style guide to a complete pattern library with all its design elements and code.

User Interface Design Framework

GUI Desgn Framework - Free Vector Icons, GUI elements for Web Designers

In this link, you will find an awesome app that helps you design faster and easier. This app was specially created for the wireframing process and it can be used to create better mockup deliverables with Illustrator and to easily customise the vectors GUI elements to your own needs. In this example, you will find 200 graphic styles for buttons, headers, and blocks, 260 vector icons for creating wireframes and web design and hundreds of vector elements for designing interfaces.

Fontawesome

Font Awesome, the iconic font and CSS toolkit

In this link, you will find a massive collection of scalable vector icons that you can easily customise using CSS. Font Awesome is a pictographic language of web-related actions that will come in really handy. This toolkit doesn’t even require JavaScript. Each graphic element is fully scalable which means it will look great at any size. The toolkit is also free to use in both personal and commercial projects. Download this toolkit as soon as possible and find out all the benefits of using it in your projects.

Mockingbird

Website wireframes_ Mockingbird

The Mockingbird is an online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application. Get your ideas out of your head and straight into your web project which is now easier to get done. With this toolkit you will be able to easily drag and drop UI elements to the page, to rearrange and resize them and much more. This feature lets you go from a simple idea to a mockup within minutes. Another cool feature will let you link multiple mockups together and preview them interactively. In this way, you will get a hint of the feel and flow of your app. There’s plenty of things you can do with this toolkit, all of which will help your creative process. You can share links to your clients and teammates and they can edit wireframes with you in real time.

Dojo

Dojo Toolkit User Interface Design Tools

The Dojo Toolkit is a cross-browser 2D vector graphics API which will make things easier for you and your project. The toolkit enables the development of rich graphics web applications on both desktop and mobile devices. You won’t have to deal with the browsers’ native graphics technologies anymore. The toolkit is also very well documented. In this link, you will find documentation and examples for every part of it. You even have step-by-step guides and highly detailed tutorials that focus on using Dojo to develop web apps. All in all, this toolkit would look wonderful in your resource library. It will save you time and it provides everything you need to build a web app. This toolkit brings utilities, UI components and more into one place!

The post 10 Must-Have User Interface Design Tools appeared first on Web Design Dev.

Categories: Others, Programming Tags:

10 Must-Have User Interface Design Tools

November 21st, 2017 No comments
GitHub User interface components for Prototype.js

Every designer wants to deliver high quality, valuable experiences for the users. but designing a good user interface is a very challenging task. To succeed, it is necessary to have many web user interface resources and building blocks. Many User Interface resources allow you as a web designer to access and create a good User Interface. In this article, you’ll find a list of User Interface Design tools which you can use.

LivePipe UI

LivePipe UI is a really nice toolkit that you can use to ease your work process. This is a suite of high-quality widgets and controls for web 2.0 applications built using the Prototype JavaScript Framework. Everything is well tested, highly extensible and fully documented.

iPhone Mockup

iPhone Mockup lets you create a user interface for an iPhone app in a very easy and interactive manner. This toolkit will make the process of designing mockups fun and creative. It’s very useful for UI designers or app designers.

DesignerVista

DesignerVista Mockup Tool User Interface Design Tools

DesignerVista is powerful, easy to use GUI mockup design tool to quickly design GUI Mockups for Desktop, Web and Mobile Applications. This toolkit comes with many great features such as Flowchart and UML Mockup, Look and Feels ( Sketch, Native, Office Ribbon and Custom Look and Feels ) and much more.

Gliffy

Gliffy _ Online Diagram and Flowchart Software

Here’s another useful toolkit. This one is called Gliffy and it is easy to use and requires no complicated software manuals. You can simply drag-and-drop shapes from an extensive library and point-and-click your way to format. With Gliffy you can work from any place and with anyone without worrying about software or browser compatibility. With this toolkit, you will achieve consistent results with custom templates, logos and shape libraries which your entire team can create, edit and share. Gliffy integrates with Confluence, JIRA, and Google Drive so you can collaborate easily on your company’s chosen platform.

Wireframe Magnets

Wireframe Magnets (DIY Kit) user interface

In this link, you will find an extremely useful toolkit, called Wireframe MAgnets or DIY magnet template. This toolkit is based on the Konigi wireframe stencils and it includes 3 sheets of elements that will definitely be useful in whiteboard prototyping. All you have to do is simply download the toolkit, which is free, and print the PDFs onto magnet sheets. You can also laminate them but that is optional. The last step is cutting them out.

Patternry

Start Building Consistent Web Interfaces _ Patternry

By using Patternry, you’ll find an efficient way to build, manage and share living style guides and design systems. This is an awesome front-end resource that contains design patterns, HTML & CSS, wireframes, images, links, and more. Patternry makes it easy for your designers and developers to start sharing their work and build consistent Web apps faster. With it, you can build all sorts of things, starting from a simple style guide to a complete pattern library with all its design elements and code.

User Interface Design Framework

GUI Desgn Framework - Free Vector Icons, GUI elements for Web Designers

In this link, you will find an awesome app that helps you design faster and easier. This app was specially created for the wireframing process and it can be used to create better mockup deliverables with Illustrator and to easily customise the vectors GUI elements to your own needs. In this example, you will find 200 graphic styles for buttons, headers, and blocks, 260 vector icons for creating wireframes and web design and hundreds of vector elements for designing interfaces.

Fontawesome

Font Awesome, the iconic font and CSS toolkit

In this link, you will find a massive collection of scalable vector icons that you can easily customise using CSS. Font Awesome is a pictographic language of web-related actions that will come in really handy. This toolkit doesn’t even require JavaScript. Each graphic element is fully scalable which means it will look great at any size. The toolkit is also free to use in both personal and commercial projects. Download this toolkit as soon as possible and find out all the benefits of using it in your projects.

Mockingbird

Website wireframes_ Mockingbird

The Mockingbird is an online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application. Get your ideas out of your head and straight into your web project which is now easier to get done. With this toolkit you will be able to easily drag and drop UI elements to the page, to rearrange and resize them and much more. This feature lets you go from a simple idea to a mockup within minutes. Another cool feature will let you link multiple mockups together and preview them interactively. In this way, you will get a hint of the feel and flow of your app. There’s plenty of things you can do with this toolkit, all of which will help your creative process. You can share links to your clients and teammates and they can edit wireframes with you in real time.

Dojo

Dojo Toolkit User Interface Design Tools

The Dojo Toolkit is a cross-browser 2D vector graphics API which will make things easier for you and your project. The toolkit enables the development of rich graphics web applications on both desktop and mobile devices. You won’t have to deal with the browsers’ native graphics technologies anymore. The toolkit is also very well documented. In this link, you will find documentation and examples for every part of it. You even have step-by-step guides and highly detailed tutorials that focus on using Dojo to develop web apps. All in all, this toolkit would look wonderful in your resource library. It will save you time and it provides everything you need to build a web app. This toolkit brings utilities, UI components and more into one place!

The post 10 Must-Have User Interface Design Tools appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.

Categories: Others, Programming Tags:

The Existential Terror of Battle Royale

November 5th, 2017 No comments
pubg-steam-stats-nov-2017

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post, I guess in general, but also a blog post about video games. Video games are probably the single thing most attributable to my career as a programmer, and everything else I’ve done professionally after that. I still feel video games are one of the best ways to learn and teach programming, if properly scoped, and furthermore I take many cues from video games in building software.

I would characterize my state of mind for the last six to eight months as … poor. Not only because of current events in the United States, though the neverending barrage of bad news weighs heavily on me, and I continue to be profoundly disturbed by the erosion of core values that I thought most of us stood for as Americans. Didn’t we used to look out for each other, care about each other, and fight to protect those that can’t protect themselves?

In times like these, I sometimes turn to video games for escapist entertainment. One game in particular caught my attention because of its meteoric rise in player count over the last year.

That game is Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds. I was increasingly curious why it was so popular, and kept getting more popular every month. Calling it a mere phenomenon seems like underselling it; something truly unprecedented is happening here. I finally broke down and bought a copy for $30 in September.

After a few hours in, I had major flashbacks to the first time I played Counter-Strike in 1998. I realized that we are witnessing the birth of an entirely new genre of game: the Battle Royale. I absolutely believe that huge numbers of people will still be playing some form of this game 20 years from now, too.

steam-top-games-by-player-count-nov-2017

I’ve seen the Japanese movie, and it’s true that there were a few Battle Royale games before PUBG, but this is clearly the defining moment and game for the genre, the one that sets a precedent for everyone else to follow.

It’s hard to explain why Battlegrounds is so compelling, but let’s start with the loneliness.

Although you can play in squads (and I recommend it), the purest original form of the game is 100 players, last man standing. You begin with nothing but the clothes on your back, in a cargo aircraft, flying over an unknown island in a random trajectory.

battlegrounds-cargo-plane

It’s up to you to decide when to drop, and where to land on this huge island, full of incredibly detailed cities, buildings and houses – but strangely devoid of all life.

playerunknown-battleground-drop

What happened to everyone? Where did they go? The sense of apocalypse is overwhelming. It’s you versus the world, but where did the rest of the world go? You’ll wander this vast deserted island, scavenging for weapons and armor in near complete silence. You’ll hear nothing but the wind blowing and the occasional buzzing of flies. But then, suddenly the jarring pak-pak-pak of gunfire off in the distance, reminding you that other people are here. And they aren’t your friends.

battle-royale-vista

the dread of never knowing when another of the 100 players on this enormous island is going to suddenly appear around a corner or over a hill is intense. You’ll find yourself wearing headphones, cranking the volume, constantly on edge listening for the implied threat of footfalls. Wait, did I hear someone just now, or was that me? You clench, and wait. I’ve had so many visceral panic moments playing this game, to the point that I had to stop playing just to calm down.

pubg-combat

PUBG is, in its way, the scariest zombie movie I’ve ever seen, though it lacks a single zombie. It dispenses with the pretense of a story, so you can realize much sooner that the zombies, as terrible as they may be, are nowhere as dangerous to you as your fellow man.

Meanwile, that huge cargo airplane still roars overhead every so often, impassive, indifferent, occasionally dropping supply crates with high powered items to fight over. Airstrikes randomly target areas circled in red on the map, masking footfalls, and forcing movement while raining arbitrary death and terror.

pubg-map

Although the island is huge and you can land anywhere, after a few minutes a random circle is overlaid on the map, and a slowly moving wall of deadly energy starts closing in on that circle. Stay outside that circle at your peril; if you find yourself far on the opposite side of the map from a circle, you better start hunting for a vehicle or boat (they’re present, but rare) quickly. These terrordome areas are always shrinking, always impending, in an ever narrowing cone, forcing the remaining survivors closer and closer together. The circles get tighter and deadlier and quicker as the game progresses, ratcheting up the tension and conflict.

Eventually the circle becomes so small that it’s impossible for the handful of remaining survivors to avoid contact, and one person, one out of the hundred that originally dropped out of the cargo plane, emerges as the winner. I’ve never won solo, but I have won squad, and even finishing first out of 25 squads is an unreal, euphoric experience. The odds are so incredibly against you from the outset, plus you quickly discover that 85% of the game is straight up chance: someone happens to roll up behind you, a sniper gets the drop on you, or you get caught in the open with few options. Wrong place, wrong time, game over. Sucks to be you.

pubg-vehicle-shooting

You definitely learn to be careful, but there’s only so careful you can be. Death comes quickly, without warning, and often at random. What else can you expect from a game mode where there are 100 players but only 1 eventual winner?

There haven’t been many Battle Royale games, so this game mode is a relatively new phenomenon. If you’d like to give it a try for free, I highly recommend Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode which is 100% free, a near-clone of PUBG, and quite good in its own right. They added their Battle Royale mode well after the fact; the core single player “save the world” gameplay of building stuff and fighting zombie hordes is quite fun too, though a bit shallow. It also has what is, in my opinion, some of the most outstanding visual style I’ve ever seen in a game – a cool, hyperbolic cartoon mix of Chuck Jones, Sam & Max, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. It’s also delightfully diverse in its character models.

fortnite-battle-royale

(The only things you’ll give up over PUBG are the realistic art style, vehicles, and going prone. But the superb structure building system in Fortnite almost makes up for that. If nothing else it is a demonstration of how incredibly compelling the Battle Royale game mode is, because that part of the game is wildly successful in a a way that the core game, uh, wasn’t. Also it’s free!)

I didn’t intend for this to happen, but to me, the Battle Royale game mode perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the current moment, and matches my current state of mind to a disturbing degree. It’s an absolutely terrifying experience of every human for themselves, winner takes all, with impossible odds. There are moments it can be thrilling, even inspiring, but mostly it’s brutal and unforgiving. To succeed you need to be exceedingly cautious, highly skilled, and just plain lucky. Roll the dice again, but know that everyone will run towards the sound of gunfire in hopes of picking off survivors and looting their corpses. Including you.

Battle Royale is not the game mode we wanted, it’s not the game mode we needed, it’s the game mode we all deserve. And the best part is, when we’re done playing, we can turn it off.

Categories: Others, Programming Tags: