If you haven’t heard, HTML5 is taking the web by storm! It is currently being enhanced by experts to provide us Web Designers & Developers with awesome new revolutionary web page features!
HTML5 Background Information
For those of you who are new to HTML5, here is some quick background information to get you up to speed.
- HTML5 is the new language for presenting content on the Internet (at the time of writing this article it is still in beta but soon to be released in 2012).
- HTML5 brings new features making it easy to incorporate video, audio, fonts, drag & drop, web graphics & animations into your web pages.
- HTML5 is backwards compatible to don’t worry about your old designs in HTML 4 or XHML1 they will work just the same!
- jQuery has started killing Flash, HTML5 will finish it off for sure.
HTML5 Online Tools & Resources
Not known to many web designers, there are some really good online tools & resources which web designers should definitely take advantage of to help create those new innovative designs and stay ahead of the field! We have collected 10 of the best Online HTML 5 Tools & Resources for Web Designers. Enjoy!
Online Sprite Box Tool
Compressing images is all the rage these days and putting all your images in a “sprite” will both increase the speed of your image transitions and loading times. This Online Sprite Box Tool can help you design your images into sprites using this awesome jQuery, CSS3 and HTML5 tool.
Online 3D Sketch Tool
This is no ordinary sketch tool, it uses the power of HTML Canvas to create 3D drawing. To rotate the canvas in 3D, you need to hold down SPACE and then DRAG horizontally with your cursor. You can also make the drawing vibrate and draw in dashed lines too. Pretty Cool.
Online Font Testing Tool
As a designer, choosing a decent font can be a tough process! Use this awesome font bookmark to instantly view any web page in a new font without changing any HTML or CSS! Harness the power of HTML5 and @font-face by dragging the font.ttf files into the top toolbar and they will appear in a list for quick view. There are hundreds of free websites just type in “Free Fonts” into Google.
Online Velocity Sketch Tool
Velocity sketch is a unique online HTML5 canvas drawing tool which you can create strange looking web like things. I did a quick one (in the screenshot) but I’m sure you web designers can be creative with such a tool and create something quite awesome.
Online Pattern Generator Tool
This online tool coule be pretty useful for web designers when it comes to creating page and header backgrounds or even heading backgrounds. I uses the power of HTML canvas to provide you with the pattern your looking for in seconds! It has heaps of options and is really easy to use! Great stuff.
Online XRay Tool
With Online XRay Tool can quickly view details of page elements on any webpage at the click of a button! Simply drag the bookmarklet on their website into your bookmarks, visit the webpage you want to analyse, click Xray bookmar then click any element on the page. It also can handle HTML5 elements such as canvas and provide you with the design information you need.
Online Automatoon (animation) Tool
Automatoon is pure HTML5. Since no Flash is used, your animations will play just fine on iPhones, iPads, Android devices, and all common web browsers. Awesome-atoon!
Online HTML5 Audio Maker Tool
I think with the introduction of the the audio tag in HTML5 we will start seeing more and more websites utilize the power of audio. This is an online audio maker tool which can help introduce you to the new audio features HTML5 has to offer. There is also a online HTML5 video maker tool which does a similar thing.
Online SVG to HTML5 Canvas Tool
Most vector art packages (Illustrator, Inkscape etc) can export as SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and with this tool you can convert your SVG file into it’s HTML5 canvas equivalent.
Chrome Ajax Animator Tool
A HTML5 powered web-based animation suite (that has evolved from it’s Flash IDE alternative). It is now a cross-platform/cross-format animation tool that works both online and offline! You’ll need to have Google Chrome installed, see a quick video tutorial to get you started. Great tool for HTML5 animation beginners.
