What’s new for designers, February 2012

The February edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, frameworks, jQuery plugins, WordPress tools, and some really great new fonts.

Many of the resources below are free and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there.

As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments.

And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration.

Dolody

Dolody is a new weekly online magazine for the design community. They cover design, coding, graphics, and WordPress, with commentary from some leading designers, quick tutorials, interviews, and more.

Zip.js

Zip.js is a JavaScript library for zipping and unzipping files. It’s a great addition to an online file management system or site where users need to upload content.

WP Remote

WP Remote lets you manage and maintain all of your WordPress sites from a single dashboard. You can update your core, plugins, and themes, track site status, and have daily backups run and stored to Amazon S3.

Bear CSS

Bear CSS is an online app to help you build a stylesheet based on your HTML markup. Just upload your HTML file and Bear CSS will generate a CSS template based on it.

Zoey

Zoey is a framework for developing mobile apps. It includes a range of UI elements and is lightweight and customizable.

Arctext.js

Arctext.js makes it easy to create curved lettering with CSS3 and JavaScript. It calculates the right rotation for each letter to distribute it across the arc of a given radius.

SlabText

SlabText is a script that lets you create a big, bold, responsive headline for your web designs. It splits headlines into rows before resizing each row to fill the available horizontal space, and even lets you specify preset word combinations.

HTML KickStart

HTML KickStart is a set of HTML5, CSS, and jQuery building blocks for rapid website development. It includes files, layouts, and elements that will give you a headstart and save you hours on your projects.

Fokiz

Fokiz is a content management system designed for ease of use by designers, developers, and users. It has a minimal learning curve, with a simple templating system and easy-to-develop module system for expanding functionality.

GuideGuide

GuideGuide is a Photoshop plugin for creating grid-based designs with pixel-accurate columns, rows, midpoints, and baselines, all of which can be created with the click of a button. Frequently used guide sets can be saved for repeated use, saving you even more time.

deCSS3

deCSS3 is a free bookmarklet for testing the graceful degradation of your designs so you can see exactly what they’ll look like on older browsers that don’t have CSS3 support. It currently supports Chrome and Safari.

Bootstrap Generator

Bootstrap Generator makes it easy to get started with your Twitter Bootstrap project the way you want. Just alter the options to suit your needs and it will generate your compiled Bootstrap CSS file.

Gridpak

Gridpak is a responsive grid generator that creates PNG, CSS, LESS, JavaScript, and SCSS files to your specifications. Just enter the number of columns, the padding for each, and the gutter width.

Create

Create is a new web editing interface that uses a browser-based HTML5 environment for managing your content. It can be adapted for use with virtually any content management backend.

Dabblet

Dabblet is a CSS and HTML sandbox that lets you test out your code and preview it instantly. You can save files anonymously or create an account for more options. You also have a variety of views available, including a results-only view for previewing your entire design.

Impress.js

Impress.js is a presentation tool that uses CSS3 transforms and transitions to create more interesting slideshows. It’s currently supported in Chrome and Safari, and will be supported in Firefox 10.

EaselJS

EaselJS is a JavaScript library for working with HTML5 Canvas. It provides a retained graphics mode, including a full, hierarchical display list, helper classes, and a core interaction model.

Notification Control

Notification Control is a one-stop source for resetting your email notifications for popular web services, including Forrst, Facebook, Twitter, Path, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Tumblr, and more. Just visit the page, and click the links to go directly where you need to to adjust your email notifications for each site.

IconBox 2.5

IconBox is “like iPhoto for your icons”, and lets you organize and customize your icons. It also includes tools and an “Icon of the Day” that features a new icon from a different artist each day.

The Shock Free Bundle 2

WordPress Theme Shock is now offering the Shock Free Bundle 2, a collection of 99 PSD themes, all for free. Each comes with home and internal pages, in a wide variety of styles. The free version includes a personal license, but a commercial license is available for purchase.

youRhere

youRhere is a jQuery plugin that gives your users a chance to mark their article-reading progress just by clicking. It’s an incredibly useful plugin for sites that post long-form content, and uses the HTML5 local storage API.

Eenox Designer

Eenox Designer is a tool that lets you create dynamic and interactive touch-optimized websites for computers, smartphones, and tablets, using HTML5. It lets you design and animate without coding, and then lets you download your design to host on your own servers. There’s a free plan with limited functionality, while paid plans start at $99 for 2 months.

Reverie

Reverie is an HTML5 responsive WordPress framework based on Zurb’s Foundation. It uses media query to adjust for all kinds of devices, is optimized for iPhone and iPad, and is hNews microformat ready.

SyntaxHighlight.in

SyntaxHighlight.in is an online tool that displays formatted source code. It doesn’t use dynamic styling (so there’s no flash of unstyled content), is only about 6kb (JS and CSS), and code can be opened in a popup for easy printing.

Enlight

Enlight is an open source e-commerce framework created by Shopware. It’s based on both the Zend and Symphony 2 frameworks, but focuses on creating rich internet applications and individual e-commerce applications. It’s highly adaptable, uses a simple plugin system, and is specifically adapted to e-commerce.

Bemio (Name your price)

Bemio is an ultra-bold sans serif typeface that bridges the gap between old fashioned signage and modern forms. It includes more than 1000 glyphs and full language support.

Hagin (free)

Hagin is a new serif typeface with strong geometric forms and old school style. It’s perfect for a variety of graphic design, including web, print, motion graphics, and more.

Veles (free)

Veles is a handwritten-style Cyrillic and basic Latin Ukrainian style font that comes in regular and bold weights.

Meander (free)

Meander is an experimental script font with a freestyle winding and intertwining style. It was created by doodling with felt pens, and is best used at larger sizes.

Wonder Brush ($29.95)

Wonder Brush is an incredibly versatile script typeface that’s perfect for display use. It was inspired in part by a 1969 typeface called Poppl Stretto, but fused with ideas found in interwar designs.

Made for Japan ($20)

Made for Japan is a glyph typeface that was created to raise money for relief efforts after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. All proceeds from the sale of this typeface are delivered directly to organizations in Japan.

Anodyne ($19)

Anodyne is a weathered all-caps font with hand-printed texture. Layering regular and shadow versions offers a variety of unique shadow options.

Memoir ($59)

Memoir is a very romantic script font, inspired by handwritten letters, journals, and documents dating to the 18th century. It’s designed to allow letters to connect fluidly, as if they were actually written.

Eterea ($134)

Eterea is an antique-style font that comes in 12 weights and styles. It includes italics, small caps, swash caps, handtooled caps, ornamented caps, and calligraphic caps.

Uniwerek ($46)

Uniwerek is a hand drawn font reminiscent of university sportswear. It includes six fonts, including stencil and light versions.

Know of a new app or resource that should have been included but wasn’t? Let us know in the comments!

Cameron Chapman

Cameron Chapman is a freelance writer and designer from New England. You can visit her site or follow her on Twitter.