Filed under: Design

CD Art Display is a great little utility that puts the album art for the music you're listening to right on your desktop. It works with numerous players (iTunes, Foobar2000, Winamp, Helium, Windows Media Player, and more), and it shows you the album art for whatever track is currently playing with a beautiful skin. The art has to be in the album's folder, but if you don't already have it, CD Art Display can help you find it (it has a feature for automatically downloading covers).

Since it already interfaces with your player, CD Art Display also lets you switch to the next or previous track, pause/play, change the volume, and even rate the song and find and display its lyrics (right in the program, not in a pop-up browser window). It's pretty neat stuff!

CD Art Display isn't new; the last stable version (2.0.1) was released on September 8, 2009. The program is certainly not dead, though; CD Art Display 3.0 Beta was last updated on July 12, so it seems like development is definitely ongoing.

There are currently over 200 skins in the official gallery, so picking nine was tricky. However, I used the program's built-in browser to go through lots and lots of skins, installing and testing, until I found nine skins that I really liked. You can check them out after the jump!

Have you ever wanted to compare how fast one site loads against another one? Instead of futzing around with multiple browser windows or a stopwatch, just head over to Which Loads Faster, and load the URLs into the split window interface. When you hit the GO button, it will load both sites in side-by-side frames, then make a judgment.

Keep in mind, there are a lot of variables at play, and you'll want to run the same test multiple times to get a better idea of what the average load speed is. Also, it's not clear whether the site automatically clears your cache, so you're going to want to do it manually between tests.

Of course, since each test will likely be different, it can help you create smart-ass screenshots like the header image on this post. Hey, we're just havin' fun here, right Lifehacker?

Let me start this off with a disclaimer: If you feel any sort of aversion towards hipsters, you should probably move on; I don't think you can enjoy Forrst. However, if Tumblr feels like a second home, and you spend your days endlessly gazing at ffffound and sharing snarky comments over at the Shirt.woot forums, you are probably going to love Forrst.

The site has a simple, clear-cut mandate: it's "a place for designers and developers to share inspiring code, screenshots, and links with their peers." That is very much to the point; it almost sounds boring.

Forrst is currently in closed beta, but I was curious enough to ask for an invite. To see how the site goes about accomplishing its mission, continue reading after the fold.

Type Folly is a tour de force, showing how far JavaScript and CSS have come. When I first openend the page I got a canvas with all sorts of text, which looks like an image. But then I clicked it, and discovered I can drag stuff around.

Then I noticed the tool panes on the sides; they look like Photoshop tool panes, but are implemented in JavaScript and are fully functional. There are layers, and type properties, and containers sizes and whatnot.

You play around with the canvas just like you would with Adobe Illustrator (including font effects, etc). But the shocker comes at the end, when you get a fully valid CSS3 + HTML code which is the exact canvas you created. It's all done with JavaScript, CSS and HTML.

I'm pretty sure the fonts come from Google, which is a case in point for me. But even if they use some paid service, the point here is the tool itself, which you really have to play with to understand.

xoki's about page says: "I am a webpage that displays a blank empty screen, freeing you from the information avalanche. Take a moment to relax. Pick your favorite colors and dream away". While the original text is missing some of the punctuation, this is one About text I'm inclined to agree with.

It's just a blank page. There's no music. There's nothing. It's awash in one shade of color. Move your mouse, and get a color picker (which is what you see above).

The color picker doesn't actually pick one color; it lets you assemble a "playlist" of colors, which you can pick out of several categories: Random, Custom, Basic, Soft and Popular.

Just click-click-click to add colors to your playlist, and then hit Play. The colors will start gently shifting from one to the next, and a moment later the interface will disappear and you will be left with a soothing, silently shifting background. You can also set your playlist to repeat.

The only feature it's missing is an ability to set how long each color stays on the screen before shifting to the next. You can click a color multiple times to make it stay longer, but I wish I could make the whole thing a bit slower.

Search Google for "stock photography" and you will get an endless list of results. There's no shortage of sites trying to make money off the work of stock photographers, and apparently no shortage to drab sites and blogs who seek out the stockiest images, despite the fact that it all looks like the same clip-art that was used in 1996. Finding truly good images usually requires a lengthy search through the annals of Flickr, DeviantArt, and other sites not actually meant to provide stock photos. Stocky aims to bridge the gap between quality content and traditional stock photography -- but right now it's only a project on Kickstarter.

The idea behind Stocky seems to be that all creative media can be exchanged freely and collaboratively in an open, engaging environment. Photography isn't alone in this; if the project ever comes to fruition, Stocky would also incorporate video, vectors, Photoshop brushes, audio samples, design templates, fonts, and just about anything else that an artist or designer could create and hope to share. So, if you're an avid user of the Share and Share Alike type of IP licensing, then you might be interested in a new service like this.

The project was posted to Kickstarter about a week ago, but has yet to receive any notable pledges. It's currently sitting at under $100 USD, which is quite a distance from the $5000 goal. The deadline for pledges is July 28, and no funding will go to the project if the goal isn't met by then -- so if you're interested, pledge!

WhatTheFont is pretty much the established player in the font identification market. The service's claim to fame is its ability to figure out what font is used in a particular image (or try to, at least).

A new contender, called IdentifyFonts (original naming there!), recently came into this same space. Since they are so similar, I felt a head-to-head comparison would be the obvious thing to do.

First of all, I must admit that I tested both services with a challenging image. It's white text on reddish background, and the typeface is a thin sans-serif. So, neither of the services had an easy task, but one definitely came out on top. To see which service took the round, keep on reading after the fold.

It's no GIMP, but free utility FotoSketcher has a few neat tricks up its sleeve and it's very easy to use.

You won't find any subtle red eye adjustments here. In fact, there's not even a way to select a portion of an image. These are brute force, full-image effect filters. Simply select an effect, set some parameters, choose a frame, and apply. That's it. There's undo functionality (thankfully), but there isn't a preview option. It's pretty much as bare bones as it can get.

Of course, it's nothing you can't do with GIMP or Photoshop, but you might not want to fire up a heavyweight image editor for a simple one-off manipulation.

Results vary greatly depending upon the image that you select. Matching the effect to the content of the image is a matter of personal taste, of course. You can do some very nice things with it, though; the gallery on the website shows some of its power.

Some of the other things I like about FotoSketcher are that it's fast, free, and portable. (They have a version that is just a single EXE, with no installer.) All in all, it's a neat little toy.

Sculptris is, without question, the coolest thing I have seen all day. What was supposed to be a short spin became an hour of prodding and playing around with every tool of this incredible creation.

In simple terms, it's sculpting software. It's free, and it's accessible. I once downloaded Blender and spent an hour trying to figure it out to no avail. With Sculptris, I got it, started playing around, and in less than an hour I created the rudimentary pig-man that you see in the image. And I have no previous experience with any sort of 3D graphics (except for a bit of SketchUp).

Yes, the ears are on purpose -- it's a tribute to Sebastian's furry friends.

Many developers know that technically, you can create CSS-only buttons with rounded corners and nice gradients. Since it's often such a hassle, though, they may not bother with it. Button Maker is a tool that takes all of the hassle out of creating buttons for the Web.

Button Maker lets you play with three sliders and some color pickers, and you end up with comprehensive CSS for your button.

While this tool lets you create the buttons, it cannot solve the biggest problem with CSS-only buttons which is that they don't work on all browsers. I tested the site using Firefox and Chrome and it displayed just fine. Safari worked too, but it lost the gradient on the button (the same thing happened with Firefox 3.0 as well). Internet Explorer choked completely, showing the button as a simple link and lacking even a background color.

I think they should put a visible alert for this kind of behavior or change the CSS so that it degrades more gracefully. Still, if you have the will and energy to fix your buttons for IE, this tool can provide you with a nice starting point.

Clip art can be useful for more than just boring presentations; if it's high quality and in a vector format, it can be used as a basis for other projects, such as T-shirts, stickers, gig posters, etc.

OpenClipArt Library is a large site that features thousands of bitmap and vector clip art images. As can be expected, the content is quite often crappy. I'm sorry, I'm not going to sugarcoat it; if you're looking for a nice image, you may have to spend some time sifting through a lot of pretty awful stuff.

Still, it is free, and some of the content is vector-based. You can browse by artist, which might help filter the amount of bad clip art you have to endure before you find something you like.

Search could be improved, too. It may just be a matter of policing tag usage; try searching for cat to see what I mean. Perhaps 10% of the results are actually images of cats; the rest is composed of pretty random stuff (green checked border?).

Criticism aside, this is a valuable initiative. The domain name is good, and I hope that, over time, search will get better and more high-quality content will be added. If you have any free clip art of your own, do consider adding it to this massive collection.

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CSS Grid Builder is a neat tool for Web designers (from ZURB, the company behind Notable). So what's a CSS grid?

CSS Grids are often used by Web designers to control page layout and position elements in a somewhat sensible fashion. Grid Builder lets you specify what sort of grid you would like to have and spits out just the CSS you need.

The top section of the window has a simple form to fill out that designates how many columns you want, what their width should be, what the gutter width is, and the expected total screen width. There's also a "Presets" list box with just one preset available; I don't really get the point of having just one, but okay.

As you set parameters, you can watch as a mock-up to the right of the form automatically updates to reflect your selections. Error checking is rudimentary at best; you can easily have your layout overflow the window, but I guess this is to be expected with such a simple tool.

While there is a button captioned "Get the Code!," all it does is scroll down the page to the section entitled "CSS Code." There, you can see the code for your layout with some really nice syntax highlighting. The CSS actually updates live, as you fill out the form, so there is no need to click the button.

All in all, it's quite a neat tool for developers and especially for those who are just starting out with CSS grids.

I love freehand painting. While I have absolutely no talent, I love the freedom of working with paint or even crayons. It just feels nice, even if the result is nothing to write home about (in my case, at least).

If you're looking to replicate the same experience on a computer, there's always Corel Painter. But on the off chance that you don't have hundreds of dollars to spend just to doodle, MyPaint gives you a nice chunk of functionality for the even nicer price of... free.

The program comes with many brushes that are divided into several categories. The brushes seem to work quite well at default settings. In case you want to tweak something, though, hitting Ctrl+B shows the Brush Settings dialog, which has a mind-boggling array of parameters that you can change for the brush you've selected.

The interface is multi-windowed but is not as horrible as GIMP's (sorry, GIMP lovers). The color picker is quite advanced and features color-matching harmonies (which I completely failed to use in my creation shown above).

Right-clicking the canvas rotates between the last five colors selected, which is a very handy feature. The program also features a ton of single-stroke hotkeys for changing brush sizes, saving favorite brushes, and more. MyPaint even supports layers, and it is available for both Windows and Linux.

Bottom line: This is not a toy. Whether you are serious about painting software or just starting out MyPaint is a great option.

Dreamweaver fans ought to be pretty happy about this one: Adobe released an extension pack on Tuesday that brings extensive HTML5 and CSS3 functionality to Dreamweaver CS5. The pack is available as a free download from Adobe Labs, and installs with zero hassle since it just uses the CS5 Extension Manager.

Adobe warns up front that this is just meant to provide initial support for the new standards, but it really is pretty extensive for what's described as somewhat of a stopgap. The pack also includes some improvements for WebKit rendering when dealing with Live or Design Views. Overall, it's not too shabby.

Now, I know I may knock on Adobe every now and again when things like Flash come up, but when it comes to getting the job done it's usually a Creative Suite app that I turn to in the end. Lately, Dreamweaver's been getting written off more and more due to its lack of HTML5 and CSS3 -- I know I stopped using it. Hopefully, this extension pack can start giving the old warhorse some of its mojo back.