What’s new for designers, March 2015

March 10, 2015

In this month’s edition of what’s new for designers and developers, we’ve included lots of new apps for design teams, domain resources, new design tools, JavaScript resources, productivity resources, new frameworks, new mobile apps, and much more. And as always, we’ve also included some awesome new free fonts!

Almost everything on the list this month is free, with a few high-value paid apps and tools also included. They’re sure to be useful to designers and developers, from beginners to experts. If we’ve missed something that you think should have been on the list, let us know in the comments. And if you know of a new app or resource that should be featured next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman to be considered!

2 Letter Domain Names

2 Letter Domain Names is a list of every 2-letter domain name available. Just hover over a domain to see which extensions are still available. If you’re looking for an easy-to-remember domain name, this is a good place to start.

Start.me

Start.me is a personalized start page that you can customize to include your bookmarks, notes, to-do’s, news, and more. It’s cloud-based, so you can access it anywhere.

Numbers.today

Numbers.today lets you track everything about your life and use that data to your advantage. Track your data, visualize it with graphs, and then find ways to improve and change your life.

Personable.io

Personable.io is a personalization service that lets you tailor recommendations to each of your end users based on their usage history and taste.

Agile Domain Search

Agile Domain Search is a powerful domain name search engine that actually looks good. Just enter a word and it will bring you back a whole list of possible domain names including that word.

WorkLife

WorkLife is a web and mobile app for running more productive meetings. It includes real-time note taking, automates setting and sharing agendas, and more. It’s free during the beta period.

Defringe

Defringe is a gallery of curated creative web content. It serves as a platform for innovative and creative ideas, and offers inspiring content.

Stampsy

Stampsy is a place to share, curate, and discover visual stories. You can create beautiful visual essays, mood boards, and more, and connect with others via collections.

Precursor

Precursor is a simple, no-nonsense prototyping app that lets you create interactive demos, linked wireframes, and more. It’s web-based and accessible on any device.

Booom

Booom is a Chrome extension that improves your Dribbble browsing experience. It adds key features like bigger images in HQ and the ability to add things to your bucket directly from the feed.

Flickity

Flickity is a touch-friendly, responsive gallery script. It’s easy to set up and use.

Chronus

Chronus is a Chrome extension that helps you track how much time you waste on sites like Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter during a given day. By seeing how much time you’re wasting, you almost automatically reduce your time spent. (Download link at the end of the article.)

Transformicons

Transformicons is a set of transforming, animated icons. There are menu icons, grid icons, add/remove icons, loaders, and more.

Tinychart

Tinychart is a simple web app that lets you create basic line or bar charts based on data you enter. Enter data manually in a table or copy and paste JSON code to quickly generate downloadable charts.

Cymbolism

Cymbolism is a color tool that lets you see what colors are associated with different common words. You can view words and their color associations (displayed as a chart showing the ratio of votes each color got), or vote on the colors you associate with particular words.

Astropad

Astropad lets you turn your iPad into a professional graphics tablet. It’s base, works over Wifi or USB, and supports most styluses.

Awesomplete

Awesomplete is a lightweight, simple autocomplete widget with no dependencies. It’s built with modern standards for modern browsers.

Colorable

Colorable offers this tool that lets you easily see the contrast difference in luminance and/or color between text and background.

Modulator

Modulator is a font generator that usees simple options and sliders to let you create a custom font that can then be downloaded. It’s simple to use, and offers a surprising amount of flexibility considering its straight-forward UI.

Polarr

Polarr is an online photo editor that offers tons of basic tools, filters, and more. Adjust color temp, tint, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, and more.

Specfox

Specfox makes it easy to create website specifications. You can upload screens, add notes, and generate PDS that you can share with your dev team.

Epic Favicon Generator

This Epic Favicon Generator makes it simple to create 20 favicon sizes, generating the code and images all at once.

File Comparison Tool

This File Comparison Tool makes it easy to compare files. Just copy and paste the two files you want to compare, and it highlights the difference, and even saves your comparison in a share-friendly version for up to six months.

1001 Free Downloads

1001 Free Downloads offers thousands of royalty-free graphics and fonts for both commercial and personal use. It’s updated daily.

PerfAudit

PerfAudit offers up performance audits of websites, including case studies about the performance issues of various sites. You can also submit your own website for audit.

Practice

Practice lets front-end devs practice their skills by getting creative inspiration or random suggestions. You can receive a random challenge, turn a Dribbble shot into code, or solve a random Github issue.

SkyBlue

SkyBlue is a CSS framework that offers a grid, typography, tables, forms, buttons, and icons.

Pingendo

Pingendo is a simple app for prototyping with Bootstrap. It’s available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Squall

Squall lets you write longer-form pieces for Twitter. The best part is that Squalls are images, so they actually display right in the Twitter stream!

NativeScript

NativeScript lets you use JavaScript to build truly native apps. You can build apps for iOS, Android, and Windows from a single code base.

Mericastock

Mericastock is a new patriotic stock photo service. Sign up and you can get the latest photos delivered right to your inbox.

Lumi

Lumi is a service that lets you create stamps, decals, and silkscreens in seconds.

Tiltology

Tiltology lets you create and explore interactive videos using your device’s gyroscope or touch.

Facebook is now offering Anonymous Login as an option for app developers. Let your users login to your service without actually sharing their personal information.

Springtime (free)

Springtime is a beautiful cursive script font. It includes over 160 hand-drawn characters and a wide range of ornaments.

Western Grit (free)

Western Grit is a distressed, hand made, western-style font.

Tresdias (free)

Tresdias is an outlined display font with a very modern feel.

Research (free)

Research is a free display typeface with abstract, geometric characters.

Mysore (free)

Mysore is a display font based on the visual art and tradition of the South Indian city of Mysore.

Nickainley (free)

Nickainley is a monoline script font with a mix of classic and vintage touches. It comes in uppercase and lowercase characters, along with numerals and punctuation.