Google has always tried to empower and encourage website designers and developers so that they can build engaging website that can add value to user experience. Over the years, Google has launched different tools and almost all of them are highly effective for building, improving and maintaining website. However, the most interesting thing about them is that they do not come at a price. You need to have a Google account and nothing else if you wish to try these website design and development tools. Here in this article, we have enlisted a list of some of the best Google products that may prove instrumental in designing and developing a website:

Webmaster Tools (google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en)
Of all the Google products, Google Webmaster Tools is the most versatile. It comes with loads of interesting features that can help you analyze website in myriads of ways. You can check whether or not your website has been attacked by virus or malware and you can also pinpoint spider crawl errors. It also offers HTML suggestions and some information on how to speed up the loading time of your website.

Google Chrome Developer Tools (blog.chromium.org/2009/06/developer-tools-for-google-chrome.html)
Testing and debugging your website in a web browser is the most convenient and easiest way of ensuring the stability and performance of a website. Being aware of this vital issue, Google Chrome has come up with an all new suite of effective tools that help you inspect different elements of your website meticulously before making it live. Some website developers even argue that this tool works even better than the popular Firebug.

Page Speed (code.google.com/speed/page-speed/)
As Google is passing more importance to loading time of a website, website owners are getting cagey about it since the ranking of a website is invariably associated with it. Page Speed is one such tool that lets you speed up your website by trimming redundant things as far as possible. You just need to install this amazing tool in your web browser and it will analyze your website automatically and then will show you the results.

Google Code Search (google.com/codesearch)
You are writing a mail function but it is not working somehow. Now, do not bang your head against the table rather do some searches in Google Code Search to find out what is wrong with your written codes. Google Code Search finds out results from different publicly available sample codes and it comes with an advance and intuitive search interface that will let you specify your search queries specifically.

Google Website Optimizer (google.com/websiteoptimizer/b/index.html)
Usability of website usually tops the list of concerns of most of the website designers and developers. Now if you are unable to make decide between two different designs, you can get some valuable feedbacks from the users by using Google Website Optimizer. With this powerful tool, you will be able to experiment with your website look and feel by launching A/B testing.

Browser Size (browsersize.googlelabs.com/)
You need to check out how your website gets loaded in different web browsers. Browser Size is one such powerful tool that will give you an excellent opportunity to explore how your website renders in different web browsers.

Google Analytics (google.com/analytics/)
This is an excellent and the most powerful tool of all Google products that will give you useful statistics about how your website is performing in terms of traffic. Various options are available to analyze traffic source of your website.

Since website design is an ever-evolving field, chances are that you might have missed out some common tips that would have otherwise proved extremely effective to ease up your workload. Though hundred of articles are there, featuring wide variety of website design tips, tricks etc, not all of them are of great quality and majority of them are the products of mindless repetition. Here in this article, we have tried to compile a list of some common website design tips that might help you to cruise through the initial stages of website design and development:

1. Before making your website live, you need to make sure that your website is running fine with or without WWW. You can always make 301 redirection to resolve this issue.
2. Reserve a subdomain for your website mobile version so that you would not have to face any uncompromising situation later.
3. Try not to use dashes in the domain names. However, if the preferred domain has always been registered, you are open to use hypen in the domain name.
4. Perfection is a happy blur in the design industry. Try to comprehend the simple fact that you cannot have a pixel perfect design. After all nobody is perfect in the mundane world.
5. Try to keep the required information in the sign up page of your website to a minimum since people will not care a fig to get registered if you badger their lives with so many questions.
6. Try to reduce size of the files as far as possible as file size has a direct impact on the page responsive time.
7. While designing mobile version of your website, you need to keep it as simple as possible. Do not use flash since iDevices do not offer any support for flash based sites.
8. Try to use CSS and place the codes in a separate CSS file. Do not use inline CSS since it will add to the complexity of your website.
9. Gather as much information about color combination as possible. Master the art of using colors and contrasts to give your website a brand new look.
10. Use only web safer colors as it will help you to make your website readable. Just having a good design is not enough; you need to ensure visibility of the texts at any cost.
11. Try to shun unwanted complexities while organizing the navigation structure of your website.

Smartphones are everywhere and their plummeting price is encouraging people to have this amazing device in their hands. The rise of the smartphone has a direct impact on the ever-evolving mobile website design and development industry as an increasing number of people are now accessing Internet through it and that means, if you do not lose this huge chunk of traffic, you need to have a prominent presence in this sector. However, ensuring an impressive presence in different mobile devices is not an easy task by any means. But there is no need to get worried about it since there are some cool tools that can ease your problems to a certain extent:

mobiReady (ready.mobi/launch.jsp?locale=en_EN)
Based on the industry’s best practices and standards, mobiReady tool is giving its users a unique opportunity to evaluate whether their websites can be viewed perfectly in different mobile browsers or not. You can check out the score of your website before launching the mobile version of your website.

iBBDemo2 (labs.blackbaud.com/NetCommunity/article?artid=662)
This tool is good at replicating iPad and iPhone web browsing experience. You can test your website against different web apps. It can come in handy if you have to prepare a presentation to demo iOS web apps even when you do not have Mac desktop.

Opera Mini Simulator (opera.com/mobile/demo/)
You can check out how your website is likely to appear in Opera Mini before making it live. It works similar to that of any other mobile devices and thereby giving you an excellent opportunity to modify the look and feel of your mobile website.

iPadPeek (ipadpeek.com/)
This is another excellent tool that will let you know how you website is going to perform on a mobile phone based on 30 standard mobile web development practices. If you website score less than 3, you need to make some major changes to make it more mobile friendly.

iPhoney (marketcircle.com/iphoney/)
The name of this tool is somewhat misleading since iPhoney has little to do with iPhone simulation rather it is an effective tool that is employed by website designers and developers for creating websites of 480 by 320 pixels. You can treat it like a canvas to have a clear understanding of the visual quality of your designs.

W3C mobileOK Checker (validator.w3.org/mobile/)
This is probably the best tool on web that can help you determine mobile-friendliness of your website. W3C mobileOK Checker performs different tests to ensure mobile-friendliness of a website.

Grid is mainly employed to keep the chaos at bay while designing and developing a website. By using grid, you can make a website look truly interesting, elegant and mind-blowing. Grid is basically a style in which a website is divided into different grids i.e. vertical and horizontal lines so that you can position different design elements efficiently and effortlessly. At the initial stage, grid was mainly employed in the print industry but now an increasing number of website designers are adopting this happening trend to maintain a certain standard in their website design projects.

Benefits of Using Grids
Integration of grid structure in a design can ensure a better look. As you will have less trouble placing content, images and other graphical elements in the design, you are less likely to goof up the thing and therefore a desirable outcome can be ensured. Moreover, users are less likely to face troubles while navigating your website.

Start From The Scratch
Grid system allows to prepare a plan after going through all its mathematical aspects. However, the entire thing is al about mathematical calculations, and therefore, you may find it boring at times. But if you can exercise a little bit of patience and effort, you can experience something significantly different at the end.

Here in this article, we have handpicked some of the best grid based website design layouts that you will definitely like to have a look before venturing in this territory:

Bisgrafic: This website comprises text and only text and the pure white background creates a unique contrast that is hard to overlook. Blocks of texts are positioned precisely and they give it an interesting and awe-inspiring appeal.

Studiomister: – This is another website that resembles Bisgrafic but the big difference is that here texts and images are juxtaposed. The alignment is impressive and a proper structure is maintained thoroughly throughout the entire website.

Superawesome: – Though it is also based on white background, you can hardly ignore the riot of colors that have been profusely used throughout the website. Quality of images are good and the pink border gives it girlish look and feel.

The grid system: – This website is the best example of how the grid should be utilized in our day-to-day life. Check out its utterly simplistic layout.

The morning news: – It has a bit of everything. Try to analyze how the designer has used the grid structure without making it look too obvious.

Blogging is the most happening thing in the virtual world. It is thriving and bustling with the presence of different bloggers from different countries and thereby making the world feel truly enlarged. Now despite having passion for blogging, you may find it really hard to manage and promote your blog simultaneously. But these things can easily be done by using a desktop blogger editor. It will help you to invest more time and effort on publishing interesting blogs rather than on other trivial issues. Here in this article, we have summed up some of the best desktop blogger editors so that you can spend more time on other fruitful activities:

RocketPost: – It is a great tool and it is powerful enough to make your blogging career a smooth journey. It is packed with easy to use interface and its features are dame easy to get the hang on them. It is one of those few desktop blogging editors that are tailored for serious bloggers. WYSIWYG editing, full blog import, full local editing etc are some of its unique features that one cannot overlook so easily.

Blogo: – This is another powerful and feature rich weblog editor that is known for the ease of use and speed. The most interesting thing about Blogo is that it automatically updates your twitter account whenever you post an article on your blog and thus saving your time and effort. Publishing slideshows, videos, images etc are almost a treat with this weblog editor and its intuitive interface is easy enough to be managed by newbies.

Bleezer: – It is an exciting freeware blogging client application that is compatible with almost all major blogging services. Spell check, creation of custom markup etc are some of the interesting features of this desktop blogger editor.

Post2Blog: – At the very onset it looks like a variant of Windows Live Writer but spend a few moments with it and you will come to know that Post2Blog is a different ball of wax altogether. It comes equipped with tons of fascinating features, rich WYSIWYG editor and with a Microsoft Word extension. Built-in live spell checker is there to make your writing task a smooth job. You are at your liberty to add or not to add tags in the posts and the photos of the author will go live in each post automatically.

BlogJet: – This is mainly a weblog client for windows user and it enables you to update your blog without opening your browser. It is one of those few Windows blog editors that are specifically designed and developed for those who are a bit concerned about the editing and maintenance of their blog.

Zoundry Raven: – It works just like a word processor and it enables users to edit blog on different platforms. Adding links, photos, tags etc are quite easy and browsing your previous posts are quite easy with this desktop blogger editor.

WBEditor: – Working with this desktop blogging editor is a complete fun and it is easy to use. Some of its unique features are converting HTML to XHTML, thumbnail creation, track back ping etc.

Zeroing in on a particular CMS is intriguing task since each CMS comes with its own share of weaknesses and strengths and unless you have fair level of authority in it, you are bound to bark up the wrong tree. Though there are hundred of articles highlighting the weaknesses and strengths of different CMS, they would not serve any useful purpose since most of them are filled with outdated information. So, if you do not want to get confused, just check out whether or not your chosen CMS offer these features, which are described below:

Ease of Use: – This is the first and foremost feature that your chosen CMS should have. The main purpose of using a CMS is to make working as simple as possible and that means if you are struggling with its basic features, you should leave as it is and choose another one. Make sure that you can perform some basic tasks with the selected CMS without taking external assistance before coming to a conclusion.

Ease of Editing: – CMS editor makes it extremely easy for a novice user to make chances in a document. If you manage to get the hang of the common features of a CMS editor, you will definitely have a say in the appearance of a page. Make sure that the selected CMS have enough provisions to make changes in document the way you like.

Simple Back End: If you want to make certain changes in the back end of a CMS without having profound experience in this domain, you need to sort out a CMS that does not come with clutter and confusing back end structure. If you are running a rather small website with some minimal features, you can avoid unwanted confusion and troubles by opting for a basic CMS. However, if you wish to have some additional functionality, you should bank on a CMS that allows a certain level of access to new users so that they do not goof up the entire thing.

Check Its Features: Selecting a CMS based on its features is a daunting task since you would not be able to pinpoint their problems unless you are using it. Try to compare the features of one CMS against another and try to visit some forums for gathering some valuable information about them before making a decision in haste. First, make a list of features that you would like to have in a CMS and then start your quest for the perfect CMS for your website design and development project.

SEO Friendly: – This is another vital thing that you should not overlook at any cost. Make sure that the chosen CMS can create Keyword based URLs, can set separate page title, customize meta tags in each posts, add no follow attributes and other common SEO features.

The use of transparency in the sphere of website design is not anything new given the fact that website designers are always striving hard to experiment with the look and feel of the website to make the final product look different as far as possible. Though transparency can make a website look unique and amazing, if you fail to employ it correctly, things can take a serious turn. Even experienced website designers take extra precautions while designing a website based on transparency. Here in this article, we are going to showcase some of the websites that are interlaced with transparency:

4mula Design: – Here in this website, the designer has focused fully on transparency and the use of bright colors has heightened the impacts precisely. Though content is used, the focus is solely on the style. Navigation is not easy and novice users might have to face some troubles. Other than this, it looks good and promising.

Christine Galvin: – This website looks stunningly beautiful because of the extreme level of simplicity. Navigation is quite easy and the first timers are not likely to face any trouble while browsing this website. It has a bit of everything in it. Designer has done a commendable job by fusing two opposing polarities beauty and brains successfully.

Design Attik: – This website is a brilliant example of how a single page website should look like. About Me, contact us and rest of the important sections are placed prominently at the fore and the impact is truly amazing. Though the transparency level is not high, it creates a unique effect that you can hardly overlook.

Lift UX: – This website focuses mainly on the use of dark colors. The use of dark and light color creates a unique level of contrast that will definitely seize the attention of the readers. Message of the website is quite clear and it has almost everything that a website should need to grab the attention of the readers.

Evodence: – This website employs a cleaver variation of light and dark colors and the outcome is enriching and truly unique. However, reading the text is a tough nut to crack.

Google Chrome is the fastest growing web browser that comes with a growing number of extensions that can make working on it a breeze. Chrome is fast, user-friendly and as obvious it is a Google product and that means you will  experience something unique while browsing in it. Google Chrome, though beneficial for all users, is particularly useful for the budding website designers and developers who want to learn some interesting stuffs about website design and development while browsing. Here we have enlisted some of the best Google Chrome extensions that can prove extremely useful if you are on the learning curve:

StayFocusd
This is particularly useful for those who are attacked by sudden bout of distraction while learning something serious. As virtual world is crammed with such distractions, you need to be a little cautious while browsing websites and here this particular Chrome extension can give you fresh lease of life. StayFocusd restricts the amount of time that you spend on web and even more you can use it easily locking some websites for specific blocks of time.

Awesome Screenshot
Are you tired of pressing the Print Screen button for capturing the best image while browsing a website? This Chrome extension can give some relief as it comes with a wide range of screen grabbing options that includes selected area capturing, whole-page screen capture and more.

Web Developer
This particular Chrome extension comes with a vast suite of tools and functions for analyzing a website closely and minutely. You can inspect HTML elements, alt tags of images, see the CSS styles, enable or disable images and more. In short, you can get all that you want to examine a website closely.

Apture Highlights
If you have an inquisitive set of mind, you would much in the habit of googling things if you got struck somewhere in the middle. Apture Highlights, which happens to be an indigenous Chrome extension is going to allow the users to get instant access to Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, Google and other websites. Interestingly enough, you would not require leaving the page. Dictionary definitions are also available while making search.

DayHiker
This is basically a straight forward calendar app for Chrome that is integrated with Google Calendar. If you happen to be a student, chances are that you are finding it hard to juggle between sports, academics and part time social activities. DayHiker will help you to keep a track on different actives.

Window Resizer
If you need to have a quick look of how your website appears in different screen size, you should not give this Chrome extension – Window Resizer a miss. You can check your website in different browsers and screen resolutions before making your website live over the Internet.

Diigo Web Highlighter and Bookmark
With this amazing Chrome extension, you will be able to tag, highlight and bookmark web pages easily and effortlessly. Moreover, if you wish, you can leave some sticky notes in it.

Coding is one such area of specialization where even big daddies commit silly mistakes and it is the website that gets punishment for that. Careless coding not only makes a website unresponsive at times, but it can also make a website virtually invisible in the online industry. Therefore, if you are running a website, you need to check and recheck all the codes to increase the visibility of your website and to make it more search engine friendly. Here we are going to share some common HTML and CSS coding errors that can have detrimental effects on your website’s overall online presence even:

Capitalization of Tags
Though it has little do with the validity of the HTML coding, this is definitely a bad practices (at least an eyesore) as it gives rise to unwarranted confusions. Try to write everything in lower case. It makes the codes look nice.

Wrong Closing and Nesting of Tags
For the beginners, this thing is quite a common. But this is not so less common in experts. If you forget to close some tags, the entire HTML structure would go haywire and this can have serious impacts on the usability and accessibility of your website.You need to give serious attention to it if you are into a website design project.

Incorrect DOCTYPE!
Mention the DOCTYPE specifically to let the browser know what type of HTML you are using in the website. This can help the browser to display your website properly. Do not let the browser guess about your HTML code, be straight and mentioned DOCTYPE in clear English.

No Special Character Please
Try to minimize the usage of special characters as some search engines cannot read them properly and therefore, there will be greater chance of being overlooked by them.

Inline CSS
Do not overboard your HTML file by featuring all the CSS codes in it. Create a separate CSS file and then fetch all the commands in the HTML document.

Do Not Use Automated Coding Software
Say no to Automated Coding Software. They may seem good at first but sooner or later you will be able to realize that they are making your website a complete garbage by dumping unwanted elements in the HTML file. Moreover, you might find it overwhelmingly difficult to make changes in it.

Do not Mingle Single Quotes and Quotes
Try to stick to either single quote or double quote, but you should not use both of them as you will eventually mix them up badly and cause great damage to the health of your website.

A messy CSS is the last thing on earth that a website designer or developer would like to encounter. Numerous changes, sloppy coding etc may be the reasons behind this website design disaster. But what will happen if you have to deal with a clumsy CSS file whose code is as good as Hebrew. You will launch a tirade against it, wade through the jungle of incomprehensible codes and eventually come to the conclusion that you are unable to make it work. Since there is no shortcut route to having a clean, super-manageable CSS, you need work honestly and sincerely. Here we are going to share some CSS practices that can prove immensely effective to keep the codes under control:

Keep a Template Library
You can save a good amount of time by selecting a structure and then stripping out everything that is not generic and then save the file as CSS template that can be used later. Mobile, print, blog layout, two-column layout etc are some of the unique variations into which a CSS template can be saved. You can try Coda (an OSX editor) for performing this task. It is meaningless to rewrite the same code over and over again when the methodologies and the conventions are basically the same.

Make It Look Organized
You should not use id’s and classes in the CSS file haphazardly since it will lead to confusion. Try to feature generic items at the first of the CSS document and then you can use the rest of the other elements. Try to create a structure that is easy to understand and that does not conflict with logic.

Date, Sign and Title
This can come in handy when a developer has to make some changes in the CSS file but he/she has no idea where to start it after all. Try to add your name so that people can contact you if they have any problem with the file. You can leave the modification date and sign for the same purpose as well.

Use Hyphens
CSS with underscore elements are likely create serious problems with old browsers as most of them do not offer any support for them. To reduce the chances of falling prey to browser compatibility issue, you should make it a habit to use Hyphen as opposed to underscore.

Do Not Repeat
Try to reuse the existing attributes whenever possible rather than creating new styles over and over again. It will only increase complexities. Try to group same elements if possible.

Lightweight Style Sheets
You can trim down the size of the CSS file as it will help your website to load faster. A short style sheet means, you will not have to waste your time and effort while maintaining and updating your website.