Jeremy H., Author at The Site Slinger

7 Pro-Tips for Web Design

Here at The Site Slinger we live and breathe web development – we’ve been experts in turning design to code since 2009! All too often, website design files get submitted to us missing some of the fundamental components for effective and efficient web development. Whether you are a designer working on a website for a client, or a client who isn’t sure what they need to get from their designer, following these pro-tips will get your design ready to be turned into code.

Here at The Site Slinger we live and breathe web development – we’ve been experts in turning design to code since 2009!

All too often, website design files get submitted to us missing some of the fundamental components for effective and efficient web development.

Whether you are a designer working on a website for a client, or a client who isn’t sure what they need to get from their designer, following these pro-tips will get your design ready to be turned into code by our team at The Site Slinger.

7 Pro-Tips for Web Design

DO design in Photoshop, it is the best for web design (sorry, Illustrator, Fireworks and InDesign fans!)

DO design all of the pages you want to see as HTML or on a WordPress site — We match your designs exactly!

DO design all animation states, javascript validation, button states (click, hover, off), modals and anything else you can think of. If you don’t see it in the design, we can’t see it to code it!

DO label and organize your Photoshop design “PSD” files — 1 page per PSD, organized into labeled folders and layers.

DO say “I’m not sure, I will have to check” to a client if you are unsure on complex functionality or implementation — Its okay to say “I don’t know” – that’s why we are here!

DO talk with your developer and spec out your project before signing off on designs.

DO ask questions and get to know your friendly Austin, Texas web developer. We are always happy to answer questions about turning designs into code!

Have a question about one of these pro-tips or want to know more? Chat with a Site Slinger from 8am-6pm CST here on our website, or contact us.

*Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, used under the Creative Commons license.

10 Reasons NOT to code your own HTML

At The Site Slinger, we see LOTS of different kinds of web designs from our customers, and we hear lots of different reasons why they choose us to turn their designs into code. I wanted to share 10 of these reasons with you to show you the ways The Site Slinger helps you bring your designs to life, whether you are building a simple landing page, a complex web application, a WordPress theme, or even a great looking HTML email.

10 great reasons not to code your own HTML for your next project.

10. You can’t code.
Design to code services are for people just like you, no technical experience required. Don’t worry, developers don’t bite.

9. You are on a deadline (or multiple deadlines)
Rapidly approaching deadlines are not good for your stress level. If you don’t know how you will get the job done in time we have RUSH PSD to HTML options available.

8. You need jQuery or JavaScript animations
Most design to code services charge extra for JavaScript animations, we include it in the per page price.

7. Your client doesn’t want to pay for you to code by the hour
Using a design to code service for your website will be a fraction of what it would cost to code by the hour. We’ll even give you a PDF estimate to take to your client!

6. You don’t know any reliable web developers
Finding any good developer is hard, finding reliable outsourced development is even harder. You need someone you can count on who knows how to make you happy.

5. You have a LOT of pages to develop
If you build large, complex applications with extensive views, design to code services save you time so you aren’t wasting developer time coding HTML.

4. Your development team is backlogged
Your team is great, but they are busy building out your application. Don’t slow them down!

3. You are building a WordPress theme
WordPress sites are overtaking the web — everybody wants one and now you don’t have to be an expert to give it to them.

2. You build lots of web applications
We work with Bootstrap, 1140gridCSS, 960gs, Zurb and many other responsive web application frameworks. Get your prototype up in 5 days or less.

1. You are the smartest person on the planet and realize The Site Slinger should code your designs, not you.
We are happy to help!

Want to Learn More? See Examples!

25 Professional and Incredibly Powerful Photoshop Plugins

Freebies are awesome, and design blogs are full of them, but sometimes you need a professional tool to handle professional tasks. There are a wealth of extremely powerful and high quality Photoshop tools that can dramatically improve your workflow.

Freebies are awesome, and design blogs are full of them, but sometimes you need a professional tool to handle professional tasks. There are a wealth of extremely powerful and high quality photoshop tools that can dramatically improve your workflow and are worth every penny you have to spend to get them.

Today we’ll look at a number of the best tools available for making color adjustments, adjusting focus, enlarging images, transforming layers in 3D, reducing noise, creating textures, applying complex masks, and even taking that PSD into full-blown HTML.

Color and Exposure

Exposure 3

“Over 500 analog techniques and organic looks are back like cross processing, Polaroid and vintage Daguerreotype. There is careful research under the hood, but the controls are simple so you can focus on the creative choices. The result is a photo that looks like it was made by a human, not a computer.”

Price: $249.00

PhotoTune 3

“Great color, it’s not as hard as you think. If you can compare images side-by-side and pick the best one, then you can easily color correct and enhance your images with PhotoTune 3. Additionally, PhotoTune 3 improves the color and sharpness of your image without the need to know how to use levels or curves in Photoshop.”

Price: $159.95

Kubota Artistic Tools Viva La Vintage

“Add some new fun to your images with these Kubota Actions inspired by vintage looks your clients will love! These classic effects are wildly popular around the industry and in high demand from photographers and their clients. ”

Price: $109.00

Topaz Adjust

“Quickly and easily make your photos stunning by using Topaz Adjust’s creative exposure, powerful detail enhancement, and unique color manipulation tools.”

Price: $49.99

Focus Enhancement

Bokeh 2

“Bokeh 2 provides a wide range of creative focus effects and accurate lens simulation in a simple interface. Photographers use Bokeh to draw attention to their subject by manipulating focus, vignette, and depth of field. Bokeh gives you the visual language of specialized lenses without the expense or hassle. Just drop a focus region over your subject and choose a preset or easily craft your own look.”

Price: $199.99

FocalBlade

“FocalBlade effectively sharpens photos for display and print, reduces noise and produces great looking blur, soft focus and special effects. FocalBlade is ideal for sharpening and enhancing all kinds of photo, e.g. snapshots, landscapes photos, portraits as well as high-ISO shots, because it effectively sharpens and reduces noise at the same time.”

Price: $69.95

DOF Pro

“Naturally occurring depth of field has extremely complex optical characteristics. It cannot be simply simulated through the use of a standard blur filter. Lens size, subject distance, aperture shape, lens curvature, film grain, spherical aberration, chromatic aberration, lens asymmetry, transparency, light refraction, motion blur and much more must be taken into account in order to achieve an accurate and convincing depth of field effect. DOF PRO carefully takes into consideration all of these aspects in order to produce the highest quality depth of field output possible.”

Price: $99.99

Enlargement

Blow Up 2

“Blow Up 2 is a Photoshop plug-in that produces enlargements dramatically sharper than any other software, especially Photoshop! Blow Up uses an innovative algorithm that temporarily converts pixels to a vector representation which results in perfectly smooth, crisp edges. Simulated texture and film grain keep photos looking natural even in extreme enlargements. Blow Up can even clean up JPEG compression artifacts when a client insists on using a low quality source image from the Web.”

Price: $249.00

Perfect Resize

“Perfect Resize (formerly known as Genuine Fractals) is the industry standard for enlarging and resizing images. It is renowned across the photographic and printing industries for its ability to increase image size without the loss of sharpness or detail that you might normally expect. The patented, fractal-based interpolation algorithms work like nothing else and the results speak for themselves.”

Price: $199.95

3D Transformations

3D Invigorator

“3D Invigorator for Adobe Photoshop allows you to easily create complex 3D objects, logos and text. Import a vector object or create a simple object inside the Photoshop plugin. Add lighting to make the object look more real. Then drag-and-drop 3D materials to make the object look transparent, reflective, or just plain cool. This 3D Photoshop plugin opens up a new world of creating 3D objects and text.”

Price: $199.00

AV Bros. Page Curl Pro

AV Bros. Page Curl Pro 2.2 is an extremely powerful and high quality Photoshop plugin, which will definitely boost your productivity and creativity. This Photoshop filter lets you not only bend the image, using two types of bending (curling and folding), but also texturize it (using the bump maps), orient it in 3D space (including the perspective distortions) and obtain total control over the process of lighting the image (including the option of dropping inner shadows). All this is possible thanks to the all new and unrivalled engine of this plug-in.

Price: $49.95

3DECovers

“Create dazzling ecovers that virtually jump from the screen into the prospect’s lap…giving them a level of ultra-realism and incredible detail they can almost touch with their fingers. There’s no huge learning curve, no monster manual to memorize, and no long list of prerequisite software. All you need is Adobe Photoshop–that’s it!”

Price: $97.00

Noise Reduction

Noiseware

“Noiseware is a high-performance noise suppression software tool designed to decrease or eliminate noise from digital photo or scanned images. Unlike most image processing software techniques that utilize simple methods (such as median filters) to treat digital noise in images, Noiseware features a sophisticated yet fast noise filtering algorithm. Using the adaptive noise profile capability and sharpening function, Noiseware greatly reduces the visible noise while keeping the details in the images. ”

Price: $49.95

Neat Image

“Neat Image is an image filter to reduce noise and grain in photographic images produced by digital cameras and scanners. Neat Image is indispensable in low-light (indoors, night, no-flash, astro) and high-speed (sport, action, children) photography.”

Price: $79.90

Texture Creation

Texture Anarchy

“Texture Anarchy is a set of Adobe Photoshop filters for creating textures and borders. With these three Photoshop texture filters, you can create a variety of seamless, infinite textures that range from realistic and organic to design-appropriate. Plain old math is used to generate, extend, and output an image.”

Price: $129

Machine Wash Deluxe

“Finally you can create professional quality image texture, aging and weathering effects with our Machine Wash Image Filters! This closely guarded secret of the design industry can now be yours!”

Price: $99.00

Filter Forge

“Filter Forge is a high-end Photoshop plugin that lets novice and expert users create a wide variety of realistic and abstract textures and effects. It’s a must-have for any digital artist – 3D modeller, photographer, web designer and scrapbooker alike.”

Price: $166.00

Kubota Texture Tools Industrial Pak

“You’ve never seen anything like the 50 textures you’ll find in our new ‘Industrial’ pak. Far from subtle, these striking looks give you the ability to add an element of techno-industrial style that will make your images snap! Edgy looks from textures like ‘Cobalt’, ‘Fingernails’ and ‘Lead’ bring a sharp, eye-catching look while ‘Radon’, ‘Polonium’ and ‘Zinc’ will give you that final touch, grunge-look that seniors are begging for in their portrait shoots.”

Price: $149.00

Masking

Mask Pro

“For removing unwanted backgrounds, Mask Pro is the Photoshop plugin recommended by Advanced Photoshop magazine. Mask Pro allows you to cut out a subject from the background by assigning keep and drop colors and simply painting away the background. Mask Pro makes it easy to create masks, selections and clipping paths on difficult subjects like hair, glass and fog all in real-time.”

Price: $159.95

Fluid Mask 3

“Take masking to the next level with Fluid Mask 3. The professional choice for quality masking, Fluid Mask 3 is industry recognised for excellence. Quick to pick up and intuitive to use – gets professional results fast.”

Price: $149.00

EZ Mask

“EZ Mask is an easy to use interactive image masking tool capable of extracting almost any object in an image–even if you are dealing with fine hair detail, smoke, or reflections. This extraction process creates what is known as a mask–essentially a black and white cutout. White mask areas are extracted, black areas not, and gray areas in between represent a level of transparency. Once a mask is extracted, the foreground object can be seamlessly composed onto a new background in Adobe Photoshop as well as apply filter and image corrections only within the area defined by the mask.” Also check out Power Mask from the same developer.

Price: $150.00

Web Design

SiteGrinder

“If you know Photoshop then you already know enough to start creating web pages for yourself and your clients. With SiteGrinder there is no longer a requirement to slice up your web design and send it off to a developer to convert your design from Photoshop to HTML / XHTML and CSS. SiteGrinder does all of that tedious work for you. Your Photoshop web design is output just the way you envisioned it – resulting in a full functioning website.”

Price: $397.00

Divine

“Divine suggests easy steps to convert Photoshop to WordPress theme that any of you can carry out. Yes, that’s right – you need no special extended knowledge about HTML, no special skills in coding, basics are completely enough to convert PSD to WordPress. You’ll find all necessary information about converting Photoshop to WordPress at our site. ”

Price: Free (Still in beta, Windows only)

Miscellaneous

DiskFonts

Browse and install uninstalled fonts right from Photoshop.

Price: $29

ColoRotate

“Fully Mac and Windows compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS4 or newer. The ColoRotate 3D color editor plugin for Adobe Photoshop CS4 is intended to give you another way to edit colors — intuitively and effectively. The magic of ColoRotate is that your colors are displayed and edited in three dimensions, the same way your brain naturally understands colors. ”

Price: $9

What Are Your Favorite Plugins?

There are a few plugins from the list above that I simply love using. For example, Machine Wash is unrivaled for creating awesome grunge effects; I’ve never used anything else that even comes close. Also, Page Curl is a great tool that I used daily back when I in print design and constantly creating product mockups.

Leave a comment below and let us know what your favorite Photoshop plugins are and why you can’t live without them!

The Easiest way to order PSD to HTML, from The Site Slinger

The Site Slinger turns designs into code, and sets itself apart from other PSD to HTML companies with its quality, reliability, & speed. We are the only company to offer easy online ordering and a fully transparent development process.

We’ve implemented a new online ordering system!

Check out this walk-through and see how easy and fast it is to get your project from design to code with PSD to HTML from The Site Slinger.

LOG IN/REGISTER

Enter your email address and password, or select CREATE ACCOUNT at the top to register as a new customer.

UPLOAD PROJECT FILES

We make it a breeze! In the SUBMIT A NEW ORDER section upload your PSD file(s) via drag-and-drop, or click ‘Pick File’ to browse and select your file. We’ll see the files right away, and you can always add more later.

ENTER PROJECT INFO

While your file is uploading, let us know your Project Name, and select your Project Type & Project Deadline from the drop down options. Tell us a little bit about your project, or ask any questions you might have – we’ll see your order immediately and are ready to help.

VIEW ORDERS

To view an existing order, select YOUR ORDERS from the left menu. Your current orders, and completed orders, will be listed. Select the VIEW PROJECT button to see an order’s details. A consolidated list of your order history makes for easy reference – each and every time.

REVIEW ORDER DETAILS

We want you to feel happy, not sad, during development so we built a fully transparent ordering process. In the project details screen you can view the Project Status, Project Price, Confirmed Delivery date and even view an Invoice in the left sidebar. You can also leave your comments about the project and check for our replies. You will receive an email notification whenever we comment or have an update for you. That’s how we keep you updated at each step in the development process!

REVIEW/ADD ORDER FILES

On the ORDER FILES tab within the same screen you can review the file(s) you’ve already uploaded, and add more files, if you need to. As always, we’ll promptly review your order & files, and ensure everything’s in place for a quote. That’s just the first step in getting the project turned around as quickly as possible – we make sure all PSD to HTML projects are completed in 7 business days or less.

OTHER FEATURES

Click the BACK TO YOUR ACCOUNT button in the upper right to go back to the main account page. From here, you can also Edit Your Profile, or get your Referral Program details. Spread the word about The Site Slinger and receive a credit on future orders!

What we do.

PSD to HTML

Built for designers and headquartered in Austin, Texas, The Site Slinger makes building custom websites easy. Send us your PSD files and we return HTML code in 7 business days or less. Take our HTML and use it to create custom websites, WordPress themes, web apps, enterprise software or whatever else you can think of. This is the fastest way to get building for all your web projects.

PSD to WordPress

Our PSD to WordPress product is the best starting point for custom WordPress development. We hand code your PSD files into static HTML views and then compile them into a basic WordPress theme for custom development. We deliver the WordPress theme files and SQL file for your developer to customize.

If your project requires additional development and your team is without a developer we can recommend great developers.

We want to give web design and development teams an upper hand with easy PSD to HTML and WordPress. Our easy online ordering, personal 24/7 service, and expert developers take the pain out of outsourced development.

Test us out! Submit a design for a free quote today and we’ll be happy to give you a $100 discount off your first order. If you have any questions, just let us know!

Design Rules for PSD to HTML

Want to make your development team love you? Learn how to design your PSD (Photoshop design files) into clearly labeled, appropriately layered files for PSD to HTML!

If you’re coding PSD to HTML/CSS, you know that there’s often a disconnect between the person creating the designs and the development team coding them. With well organized and labeled files you can avoid many of the worst web development pitfalls.

By following these simple steps you can hand your PSD designs off to a good PSD to HTML team and they will come in back pixel-perfect, just like you imagined. This makes PSD to HTML easy for both you and the development team.

Some basic rules to follow:

1. One PSD file per page template or folders for each page in a single PSD file. What is a PSD?

2. Label all folders with the section of content on the page they refer to (Top navigation, Content, Footer, etc) Example

3. Separate folders for “on” and “off” states. Make sure to separate your on/off states into different folders so the development team can easily identify the different states in the design.

4. Provide a text file or .pdf that clearly outlines all functionality for the individual pages (this includes things like animations, slide transitions, etc.)

5. Be sure to design all animation states, javascript validation, button states (click, hover, off), modals and anything else you can think of. If you don’t see it in the design, we can’t see it to code it!

PSD to HTML Example

This is an example of a PSD single page with well organized folders for the content of the page. The organization of this is is clear and easy to follow.There are subfolders for each portion, clearly labeled.

Within the folder structure each page has its own subfolders that are all appropriately named. The elements for each group are within the subfolder and vector images are imported to the file when necessary (logos or other images). Make sure to show different on / off states. Rather than show multiple flat files for each state, they should be organized and named within the PSD in a way that the development team can understand.

Below is a good example of how files should be organized when you hand them off to your development team. You will see that there is 1 PSD per page with all of the necessary states for web development included in each PSD file.

Photoshop (PSD) File Structure

If you hand us well organize and labeled PSD files, our team will code the HTML/CSS and hand you back pixel perfect, markup!

Final Markup (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)

If you have questions about the process we would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Web Design and Development with Mobile SEO in Mind

We’ve broken down the key features of responsive web design and discussed the benefits that make it the go-to choice of web designers today. But how do search engines feel about all of this?

SEO is at the forefront of every web publisher’s mind.

So whether you’re an internet business pining for maximum clicks, or a new blogger luring readers to your corner of the web, it’s a topic that deserves priority consideration when deciding how you’ll approach ‘going mobile.’

Let’s look briefly at the top search engines. These are Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and Ask.com (source). These four are far more popular than other search engines out there so it makes sense to focus your SEO efforts on these major players as they’ll be driving most of your indirect traffic.

The search engines primarily use a three-pronged approach comprised of: a web crawler to follow links and ping millions of sites efficiently; an indexer that, well, indexes their findings in a database; and a query processor to interpret your search terms and provide the best matches from the database.

Beyond traditional mobile web development.

While the SEO world still focuses its efforts on desktop design, the world of mobile design and development has boomed – inevitable considering our smartphone-driven lives. Traditional web development often calls for duplication of web content for desktop and mobile sites. This dual-mode presence calls for time-consuming URL redirects, separation of content, and splitting site traffic, which isn’t good for user experience or that all-important mobile SEO.

Again, we find ourselves landing on responsive web design as the solution (SEO mobile web development is the key!). Keeping your site and content singular is inherent in this web development technique – no URL redirects, no multiple web crawls needed from the search engines, no split traffic hurting your rankings. All this is possible just by choosing a better web design strategy!

There are numerous ways to make your site responsive, including using a responsive framework like Twitter Bootstrap or coding a responsive page template with @mediaqueries. Learn more about responsive design.

For an expanded look at mobile SEO and mobile design/development, reference: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/11/seo-for-the-mobile-web/

*Photo courtesy of Fotopedia, used under Creative Commons License.

HTML5: The Language of the New Web

No longer a novelty, HTML5 has already changed the way web developers code and the way users interact with websites. Contributing to the decline of Flash, HTML5 is an undeniable force utilized by countless modern websites.

The New Standard.

HTML5 is setting the bar for the ever changing web landscape. In addition to being integral to the single-site, multi-device experience, HTML5 serves as a standard for video, Flash-like interactivity, and is even creeping into the ad space. With HTML working hand in hand with CSS3 and JavaScript, HTML5 brings us to the next level of web development.

HTML5 is paving the path of the future for the Web:

It will be the go-to language for cross-platform development. According to Web Developer Juice, “Almost every platform – mobile or web – is now making the shift to HTML5 (this includes Blackberry OS, Palm WebOS, and Windows 8).” And Strategy Analytics predicted that HTML5 phones are a hyper-growth market, and global sales will increase 365% by 2016, from 2011. Developing for the desktop now includes developing for mobile. Which means faster and more cost-effective reach.

Ads will continue to shift from Flash. Apple adamantly denounced Flash, so, unsurprisingly, their iOS devices lack compatibility with those traditional Flash ads you otherwise see blinking at you across the web. With so much of mobile web traffic coming from iPhone and iPad users, advertisers can’t ignore that fact. Even on desktops, HTML5 aims for faster loading and better integration. Google Mobile Ads now offers a feature to easily convert Flash ads to HTML5 in Adwords and offers HTML5 banners. Pointroll goes as far as calling HTML5 “the future ‘Secret Sauce’ in online advertising.” HTML5 proves, once again, it is the solution for more effective and efficient reach.

It’s a robust and clean coding standard aimed at streamlining coding, publishing and browsing. HTML5 has been designed to do away with the need for add-on browser plugins. Many features are intended to improve site discovery and overall SEO, translating into more traffic. HTML5 includes the use of Canvas, which provides the potential for more graphic interactivity and an alternative to loading images the ‘old’ way – even on the fly! With better support for feedback forms, drag-and-drop tools, chat, and other popular interactive elements HTML5 aims to make developing and using the new Web much easier.
You can reference a useful infographic about HTML5 features and the benefits for future web development here.

To make the most of the new Web, the HTML5 experts at The Site Slinger code with the future in mind, utilizing the latest tools to provide robust user experiences, beautiful and clean websites. We’re happy to turn your vision into a pixel-perfect site via our best-in-the-world PSD to HTML coding, so contact us or submit your design and let’s get it done!

*Image courtesy of W3C, used under Creative Commons licensing.

30 Brand New PixelsDaily PSD & CSS Design Freebies

Loads of new freebies and open source codes are placed online every day. Web & mobile designers can learn a lot by studying newer interface trends and design layouts.

featured-pixelsdaily-screenshot-image-freebies

Loads of new freebies and open source codes are placed online every day. Web & mobile designers can learn a lot by studying newer interface trends and design layouts. PixelsDaily is one such website which publishes freebies and premium content. This is an excellent resource for designers who want to dig a bit deeper into constructing usable layouts for the web.

In this roundup I have put together 30 of the latest freebies from PixelsDaily. You will find both PSDs and HTML/CSS codes mixed in with each other. Some freebies actually offer both graphics and the code together! But no matter what items you’re looking for, this showcase is bound to have something cool.

Google Maps Markers (PSD)

These varied Google Map Makers are a fantastic set of resources to have in your design collection. They represent different things — a restaurant, telephone, gas, airport, rail station, and mechanic. It’s simple to implement these into an embedded Google Map!

photoshop freebie psd download googlemaps

Custom Slideshow (PSD + CSS)

This custom slideshow is provided both as a PSD, or fully coded in CSS and HTML. It’s wrapped up in a delightfully simple design, with subtle shadows, borders, and textures. It’s simple to make a few tweaks to add your own images, captions, and information. Enjoy!

freebie jquery slideshow html css webdesign download

Info Widget (PSD)

This is a tidy little information widget for a blog post, containing the title, author information, comments, and likes. Presented as a well organised PSD file to integrate into your own designs!

Sticky Note Paper (PSD)

A “Sticky Notepaper” — a piece of paper with lined paper, a download button, and some sticky tape that wraps it all together! Really simple, but a useful starting point for your own note-style interface.

sticky notepad paper designs psd freebie

Windows 8 Metro Buttons (CSS)

A selection of Metro style, Windows 8 buttons and icons. All coded using HTML and CSS, so they’re incredibly easy to drop into your own design, customise colours, and so on. Add a little simplistic metro style to your next interface!

Notification Centre UI (PSD + CSS)

A versatile PSD of a notification style interface. It includes a drop-down list of recent notifications/messages, a login/connect window, and pop-out messages with more information as well. Packed with potential functionality for your next app, and we’ve also added a fully coded CSS/HTML version. Enjoy!

notification center user interface webdesign psd freebie

Timer Interface (PSD)

A stylish countdown/stopwatch/timer interface, with play/stop/restart buttons, countdown digits, the current time, and some simple OS X chrome.

stopwatch timer psd freebie ui interface

Yellow Subscribe Box (PSD)

A stylish subscription box, giving your readers the information they need to subscribe to your site. It contains two options — one for an email newsletter subscription, and another for RSS. The base colour is yellow, but it’s easy to tweak to fit in with your own design.

Spotify Mini Player (PSD)

A stylish mini-player interface for Spotify. It contains a track listing, simple play/volume controls, and a full-screen graphic. The perfect way to get started with a media player, whether for Spotify, or any other third party service!

green user interface mini music player freebie

Confirmation Dialog (PSD)

A beautiful confirmation dialog box with a subtle set of gradients and textures, a header, close button, two different button styles, and some explanatory text. A really gorgeous interface on which to build upon!

Newsletter Signup Form (PSD)

A detailed newsletter sign-up form PSD, including a description of the mailing list, fields for name and email address, an anti-spam message, and a prominent “Join” button. Enjoy!

Metro Twitter Feed

Microsoft have been doing a wonderful job with their simplistic “Metro” style, and today we’re presenting a lovely Metro-style twitter feed. Containing various states for different tweets, links, and timing. A really wonderful little widget!

windows metro twitter ui interface design

Pro Admin Interface (PSD + CSS)

There’s something about this one that we really love! It’s the top part of a simple administration interface design, with various navigation options / notifications, and a content box. As well as providing you with the original PSD, we’ve also gone to the trouble of coding it all up in CSS and HTML for you. Enjoy!

freebie html css admin toolbar ui layout template

Blur Login Form (PSD)

Login forms can be tricky. They need to be simple, convey the basic information, and exude a little style. This one presses all the right buttons, with some beautiful interface styling and typography. Enjoy!

PixelsDaily iPhone App Interface (PSD + CSS)

We thought it’d be fun to create a funky app interface for PixelsDaily, then give it away free for you to use! Provided both as a fully coded HTML/CSS version, and a PSD. It has some uniquely created iOS interface elements, an author area, and a set of resource thumbnails.

custom iphone ios ui interface design freebie download

Trendy Nav Bar

A stylish navigation bar, provided as a PSD. It comes in four different colours, and might just be the perfect addition to the top of your next web design project!

trendy navigation bar interface psd freebie

Settings Panel (PSD + CSS)

We’re really pleased with this one. It’s a settings panel with brushed metal interface elements / toggle switches. Not only is this provided in the usual PSD format, but we’ve gone ahead and coded it up as a fully functional HTML/CSS version for you!

freebie download psd website ui interface html

Tiny Note (PSD)

Just a quick note about this one. It’s a note. A beautiful, pixel-perfect note. On a subtle background, it’s a paper “stack” with close/minimize icons, a link to read more, and some lovely typography. Hope you find it useful!

tiny note freebie psd download pixelsdaily

vCard Minisite (PSD + CSS)

This is a beautiful minisite vCard in PSD format. It contains elements for your social media profiles, an avatar, a small bio, and a “folded corner” for someone to download a copy of your vCard. If you want to put up a vCard website, this is the perfect way to do so! We have also included a fully coded CSS and HTML version, complete with an animated corner roll-over. Enjoy!

vcard freebie website ui layout download css html psd

Design Agency Layout (PSD)

A fully-loaded PSD file, this graphic contains a sleek and professional layout for a design agency or portfolio. It has plenty of room for your logo, navigation, an introductory text area / video, and a set of different “services” that you might offer. It’s really simple to customise for your own needs!

freebie download psd pixels website agency layout

PHP Metro Generator Webapp (CSS/PHP)

Something a little different today, this is a PHP application that helps you generate unique metro-style interfaces with ease. Just drop it onto your server and experiment away! You’ll need to upload this to a web server to run the script and see how it works.

metro user interface layout webapp php testing

Stylish Ribbon (PSD)

Four(4) colourful ribbons with a 3D look and feel, stiched outer pattern, and a top shadow to create the effect of the ribbon dropping over its’ container. Have fun integrating it into your own design!

psd freebie download pixelsdaily website

Credit Card Form (PSD + CSS)

This is an incredibly handy credit card information form, containing fields for your card number, type, expiry date, and CVV number. It’s simple enough to incorporate into any design, and is provided both as a PSD and fully coded as a CSS/HTML design. Enjoy!

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Various Alert Boxes (PSD + CSS)

Three different alert box styles are included in this PSD — A green “success” alert, a yellow “alert” … alert, and a red “error” alert! We’ve also built one of these into CSS and HTML for you, just to save you a little time!

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Delicious Notepad & Ribbon (PSD)

A simple notepad freebie with a classic striped/leather look-and-feel, and a red ribbon flourish of detail. Provided as a well-organized PSD file for you to incorporate into your own designs!

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Notepad Interface (PSD)

We’ve created a pixel-perfect notepad interface, straight out of a cutting-edge Mac app! A wonderful basis on which to build your own application interface.

Animated Buttons (CSS)

This one is just beautiful. Two examples of a gorgeous animated button — both have subtle animations in the background, and plenty of excitement when you hover over them! The “Favorite” icon takes on the form of a beating heart, with the the download flying out, then back again. You’ll have to download the freebie to see them for yourself – don’t just take our word for it!

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Ripped Tasks List (PSD)

A “ripped” skeumorphic to-do list with a paper effect, check-boxes for completed tasks, delete icons, and a button to add a new task. Take it, build upon it, and enjoy! Provided as a simple layered PSD file.

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Clock iOS App Icon (PSD)

A delightful wrist watch/clock icon, designed for an iOS app. It is provided in a range of different sizes suitable for each different iOS device, and we’d love for you to use the end result however you’d like!

Paper Stack (PSD)

A beautiful paper stack, complete with a quotation, avatar, stylish pin, and a subtle textured background. It’s a delightful piece of interface design work, and we hope you enjoy it!

Conclusion

Many of these elements are great for building complex layouts and applications. Mobile designers will especially enjoy some of the aesthetic pieces such as buttons and notepads. But in my opinion this set of freebies offers a powerful start to the new year. Be sure and keep updated for new releases over the course of 2013.

So what IS responsive web design, anyway?

With the world going mobile there’s no way around it: your site has to adapt to any and every device that’s out there. Think about it… How many devices have you used today? I can count checking my email on three already!

Don’t get lost in buzzwords, understand why/how responsive web design works.

In the past, the solution to differing device screens was to build an alternate version of your site, or even multiple apps optimized for the various mobile OS’s. However, these options often prove to be too costly in development and cumbersome to perform maintenance and updates. So what is today’s solution? Responsive web design!

Well, you ask… what IS responsive design? It’s one of those buzz words being thrown around a lot right now.

Responsive design allows for a single site to be designed and developed, yet performs effectively and beautifully across devices of varying screen sizes and orientations.

There are a few key features that allow this to work:

A flexible framework for content – the ‘grid’

The foundation of the responsive design, the grid provides easy content management across varying screen sizes through the repositioning of content areas or boxes.

Check out some great info on how to use the grid in design and download some basic templates here.

Responsive web design — Content moves based on screen size, but should still relay the same message in an aesthetically pleasing way. (Image courtesy of DezignMatterz)

Adaptable visual content

From images to backgrounds and graphical motifs, a solidly designed responsive site must be able to communicate your vision consistently, regardless of device and screen size. These elements of the page must be able to move around and make sense from a user perspective and still effectively tell the user what you’re saying/selling.

Check out some great examples of sites that do this here.

The ability to respond to devices

Generally done via ‘media queries,’ a responsive site must determine the best display configuration and adapt in an instant to changes in screen orientation and size. This should be done in such a way that the user doesn’t notice the site changing.

Check out some great examples of this here.

The Site Slinger understands the need to develop websites in a cost-effective, multi-platform manner. We love coding PSD to responsive design! You shouldn’t spend all of your resources managing updates or site variations across a seemingly infinite sea of different mobile devices. That’s why we build effective, high-value, responsive sites, giving you the ability to deliver content consistently and reliably to all visitors, whether they’re on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone.

If you’d like to discuss the options for translating your web design into a fully responsive site, please contact us, or submit a quote. We’re happy to turn your vision into a pixel-perfect site via our best-in-the-world PSD to HTML coding.

*For further reference on responsive elements see, “Understanding the Elements of Responsive Web Design”

The Site Slinger Makes Design to Code Easy.

The Site Slinger makes design to code easy. Headquartered in Austin, our quality, reliability, and speed makes us different than other PSD to HTML companies. We are the only company to offer easy online ordering and a fully transparent development process.

The Easiest Way to Order PSD to HTML

We’ve just recreated The Site Slinger from the ground up focused on offering you the easiest PSD to HTML option, and we want to know what you think! Create an account, upload designs and we will get you a quote in 24 hours or less. Our easy to use online ordering system makes it simple to check the status of your current projects, submit new projects, see order history, and connect with the developers.

We love to code and we know how bad outsourced development can be. Try us for your next PSD to HTML project and get $100 off your first order. Please reach out if you have questions or comments, we would love to hear your feedback!