80+ Free and Useful Web Design Resources and Tools

Over the years I have accumulated a healthy list of websites that I abuse on a daily basis. From analysis tools, to image search engines, inspiration websites and more. Below is a breakdown of my well organised list of resources (in no particular order).

Inspiration Resources

Pattern Tap
Designspiration
Patternry
MephoBox
Selected Webdesign
Colour Lovers

Site Optimisation Tools and Resources

W3C Unicorn Validation Service (RSS, CSS and X/HTML)
W3C X/HTML Validation Service
W3C CSS Validation Service
Robots.txt Validation Service
Web Page Analyzer
Pingdom Tools
http://site-perf.com/

Free Stock Photography Resources

Not all of these are great, but it's nice to have a varied selection:

Veezzle - A free stock photo search engine.
http://free-images-etc.rb-d.com/
Free Range Stock
Free Digitial Photos
PhotoGen
StockVault
MorgueFile
Stock.xchng
Photos8
FlickR Creative Commons
Every Stock Photo

Design and Development Tools and Resources

Wordmark It - Test a piece of text in all your computers font, simultaneously.
Frame Box - A simple wireframe tool.
Adobe's Browser Labs
Font Stack Tester
Support Details - A great tool for finding out your clients computer specifications.
Resize my Browser
Minify Javascript
RegExr - A very handy tool to help you write Regular Expressions.
Launch List - A checklist tool for launching websites.

SEO Tools and Resources

Bing Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools
XML Sitemap Generator
PopURI - A tool for checking your Google page rank, Alexa rank and more.
Google Keyword Tool
What page of Google am I on?
Yahoo! Site Explorer - Track inbound links and more.
Backlink Watch - Another useful backlink checking service.
Keyword Questions - What are people really searching for?
WooRank Website Analysis Tool
BuiltWith Website Analysis Tool

Free International Proxies

These are great for simulating the user experience as if from another country. These often come and go making it quite difficult to maintain a steady list of up to date proxies.

iBypass (French Proxy)
German Proxy
American Proxy

Free Photoshop Brushes

Brush King
Brusheezy

Free Font Tools and Resources

Wordmark It - Test a piece of text in all your computers font, simultaneously.
Font Squirrel
DaFont
What Font is - An awesome font recognition service that can name a font from an image.
Identifont - An amazingly accurate service for recognising fonts based on your description of them.
FontFuse - A cool font pairing site.

Free Icon Search Engines and Resources

Again, as with the stock photo collection, not all of these are great but it's nice to have a good selection.

Iconfinder
DryIcons
IconsPedia
Find Icons
iconlet
Very Icon
Icon Scan
Free Icons Web
Icons SEARCH
Icon Seeker
Icon Archive

Graphic Resources

365 PSD
Design Kindle
Premium Pixels

Websites I Visit Daily

The Next Web
Mashable
Smashing Magazine
Web Design Ledger
Search Engine Land
SEOMoz
MightyDeals - The GroupOn for web professionals.

Other Webmaster Tools and Resources

Google Analytics - Obviously...
Notable App - A website feedback and annotation service, great for compiling inspiration.
ASCII Table
URL Encoded Characters Table
Special Characters in HTML Table
The Dynamic Drive Favourite Icon Generator
CopyPasteCharacter - A quick and easy solution to writing special characters.
Name Checklist - Find out if your brand name is available as a domain, on twitter and more.
DomainR - A tool for finding available short URLs.
The Noun Project - A selection of simple pictures that describe pretty much anything and everything your interface requires.

Do you have resources that I have not mentioned here? If so, please feel free to share them.

Posted: 6/2/2011
Categories: Resources / Tools

A fantastic list Tom. =)

I'll definitely be referring to this in the future. ^_^

I had a quick look on my computer to see if there are any resources/tools I have come across before, that I could add.

Here are the ones I found:
(whether they'll be useful to anyone, I don't know)

http://designora.com - Design related tutorials, icons, graphics, fonts, brushes etc.

http://www.searchfreefonts.com/ - Another free font resource.

http://websitegrader.com - Tests various aspects of your website.

http://www.csstypeset.com/ - For those like me that may need a little hep with CSS. Choose what you want your text to look like (font, size, spacing, colour etc.) and the site will generate the CSS for you.

— Julianne Britton, 8th February 2011 at 13:14