Throughout the years that Shape 5 has been creating templates for the Joomla CMS we have come across many sites that we've bookmarked and frequently reference for resources to build our templates with. We hope the following post will expand your current tool set of sites and boost the quality of the sites you output.
First off if you are a web designer and aren't using this or a similar utility you are wasting soo much time, download it immediately! It is a plugin for the Firefox browser and allows you to actually hover over any HTML element on your page and see what CSS and line of CSS is formatting it. It has many other functions and features that we plan to explain in an in depth tutorial to come in the near future. For now you can get some more information below:
Free Fonts:
As some of you have probably already noticed we get a lot of fonts for our Logo's etc in our templates from dafont.com. This site has a great collection of free fonts available for download. You can also type any text you desire into their "custom preview" box to actually see what your font looks like with your own text before downloading.
http://www.dafont.com
Free Stock Images:
One of the sites we have come back to time and time again is sxc.hu. This site provides a wide assortment of free stock images. You just need to be aware of the licensing when downloading and using these images. Some images require author notifications others just included the more relaxed standard restrictions so be sure to read carefully.
http://www.sxc.hu
Free Icons:
Maybe you've wondered where we get all the fancy icons sometimes used on our site or in our demos? Well the majority of the time we head on over to iconfinder.net. You can simply do a search for any type of icon "people, animals, images, etc". Just be sure to check the licensing when downloading and using these images, some icons are only for personal use and others are allowed in commercial applications.
Great Search Utility for icons:
http://www.iconfinder.net
Yet another icon search site:
http://www.iconseeker.com/
This site has continual updates and posts on icons:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/icons/
AJAX icon generator:
http://www.ajaxload.info/
http://www.preloaders.net/en/circular
A free famous and widely used icon set:
http://famfamfam.com/
AJAX script examples:
Need a new image slideshow or perhaps a new style of lightbox? Check out the following sites for some script examples.
Great site for some AJAX style examples:
http://www.ajaxdaddy.com/
65 awesome examples of Mootools plugins:
http://speckyboy.com/2008/12/15/best-ever-65-mootools-plugins-and-demos-is-it-better-than-jquery/
40+ more examples of Mootools plugins:
http://www.8bitmagazine.com/40-awesome-mootools-sripts/
