Market research for the expert web design Market researchagency by fact that the Web design industry is always in a state of flux as trends and technologies change for the better. We’ll have a look at some of the best web design tools, catering UI/UX, prototyping, and wireframing to the next level.
1. Adobe Dreamweaver CC
Adobe Dreamweaver’s latest 2021 release is capable to edit and upload files directly to FTP, SFTP, and WebDAV server. Users can develop responsive websites with JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and various other programming language support. You can design, code and publish websites and applications faster and easier. The software combine features of an advanced code editor and visual design interface with many different website designs, development, and management tools.
Design Specific Features:
- Multi-Monitor (Windows Only)
- Code completion, collapsing, themes, and introspection
- HiDPI (Windows Only)
- Syntax Highlighting and checking
- Quick CSS editing and in-context documentation
- Real-time browser preview
- Typekit marketplace
- JavaScript refactoring, ECMAScript 6 support, New CEF integration
- Japanese default font
- Git support
2. Photoshop
Photo editing, digital painting composition, graphic design, animation, and much more; Photoshop by Adobe is one solution to bring your big ideas to life. The software is now powered by Artificial Intelligence taking creative design to a whole new level.
Design-Specific Features:
- Stroke Smoothing
- Brushes from Kyle T. Webster
- Color and Luminance Range Masking
- Access to Lightroom Photos
- Curvature Pen Tool
- Custom Path Color and Width
- 360 Panorama Workflow
- Paint Symmetry
- Depth Map Import from High-Efficiency Image File (HEIF)
3. Wix
To create amazing websites, showcase your creative art, develop e-commerce stores or even promote your business services, Wix is the first pick by industry professionals. It’s one of the many leading cloud-based development platforms for creative designers to discover new skills and try out amazing things.
Visual content library and design suite let you choose from the many amazing custom features to make them exclusive to your website. Additional features like transparent videos, vector art, animation, and many others further bring creative style.
Design-Specific Features:
- Transparent Video, vector art, and animation
- Scroll effects with fade-in and parallax support
- Mobile Customization
- VideoBox for custom video editing
- Artistic, handmade illustrations
- VELO: an open development platform with quick visual front-end design
- IDE and DevOps code editor plus source control tools
- Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) for automated website designing based on Q&A.
- Great help features, including a searchable knowledge base
- Automatic website backups keep your work safe
4. InVision
InVision is currently one of the best design tools used by leading digital agencies and creative designers being a complete suite that lets you design, prototype, animate, and does a lot more.
Design-Specific Features:
- Vector drawing tool for super crisp, blazing-fast screen design
- Adaptive layout for responsive design in real-time
- Containers for alignment
- Percentage/measured geometry
- Real-Time Design Meetings and White-boarding
- Mobile device mirroring
- Prompt payback
- Built-in animation and motion graphics features for friction-free experience
- Project Management for Designers
- Create hotspots
- Architecture document management
5. FIGMA
An online UI design tool to help you create powerful UI components while inviting others to collaborate with the project in real-time. Prototyping and handoff are other lucrative features that make FIGMA a must-have design tool in the list.
Design-Specific Features:
- Advanced vector design/drawing pen tool
- Instant and amazing arc/geometry design feature
- OpenType is an advanced font feature
- Automatic layout and grid setup
- Plugins for stock imagery, colors, flow charts, diagrams, icons, and much more
- A URL parameter keeps the toolbar and footer hidden in embeds too
- Smart Animate to create Animated GIFs, detailed transitions, and animate objects
- Dynamic overlays
- Plugins for everything: Stock imagery, flow diagrams, color accessibility, charts, icons, and more.
- Interact with live prototypes in Notion or Dropbox
6. Sketch
From freelancers to the world comes another amazing design tool named Sketch. It’s actually a vector graphics editor developed exclusively for macOS however used for UI/UX design of websites and mobile applications.
Design-Specific Features:
- Vector editing tools
- Pixel-precision tools and settings
- Alphanumeric operators
- Native to macOS mirror UIs
- Retina and non-retina display support
- Sync with Cloud Libraries
- Turn pixels into code
- Feedback loops
- Two-factor authentication and SSO
- Plugins, Assistants, and integrations
7. Bootstrap Studio
Bootstrap Studio is a web design and development software to create highly responsive pages and components like header, footer, galleries, slideshows, and much more.
Design-Specific Features:
- Online library and linked components
- Smart drag and drop
- Custom web and app component creation
- Modern CSS, JavaScript, LESS & SASS support
- Single-click publishing
- Google web fonts
- Elevated Card Components.
Our discussion on the trendiest design tools continues as we explore the best ones used by creative web design Dubai agencies. Keep reading for more amazing tools and their unique features.
8. Weebly
Weebly takes web design efficiency to the next level being a powerful web builder and design tool. You can create, use and save templates for future projects which cuts down the design process time without compromising quality.
Design-Specific Features:
- Editable mobile website design themes and templates
- Website builder with templates
- Online photo gallery creation
- CSV File exporting
- Full HTML/CSS control
- Visual analytics
- Content repository
- Custom landing pages
- Online catalog
- Detailed website & traffic statistics.
- Integrated shopping cart & secure checkout.
- Fine-grained tax control
- E-commerce management
9. Webflow
Webflow is yet another powerful web design and development suite that let users build powerful and interactive websites, on a full display canvas without any coding restrictions
Design-Specific Features:
- Build and add CSS grids and filters respectively for the best visual experience
- Clean, reliable, robust, and exportable code
- Page transitions
- Scroll-based behavior
- Editable and reusable symbols
- 3D animation and motion graphics support
- HTML/CSS carousels and sliders
- Broken grid layouts
- Floating menus
- Google Analytics integration, in-app domain purchasing option directly from Google Domains
- Real-time integration with MailChimp, Zapier, and Google Optimise
- Brutalism; open space for designers to do what they want
- Maximalism in designing is visually enticing, emotionally evocative, and truly unforgettable
10. Weje
A multi-use versatile online whiteboard that assists in conceptualizing and delivering design projects and eases efforts’ sync between collaborators. Weje is a canvas that one can use to create prototypes and keep all project-related information, such as time-tracking tables or Kanbans, in a single shareable workspace.
Design-Specific features:
- Free endless online canvas
- Very clear configuration from the UI/UX perspective
- A user may either upload pictures, icons, and photos, or copy links to these from the Web and paste them onto the online board
- Supports all common file types, including PDF, PNG, JPEG, and others
- Scattered design pieces can be organized into cards and regrouped at any moment
- A painting tool – to quickly make edits
- Named cursors and commenting option – to track changes
11. AXURE RP
A cloud-based, on-site, and complete wire-framing plus prototyping solution is known best for product designing and UX; Axure RP is among the best, breakthrough, and highly advanced designing tools ever.
Design-Specific Features:
- Create Interactive Prototypes, Wireframes, and Diagrams
- Annotate Prototypes and Diagrams
- Organize Notes for Different Audiences
- Dynamic Content
- Conditional Flow
- Match Functions
- Adaptive Views
- Password-Protected Projects
- Publish To Axure Share
- View Prototypes and Diagrams from Mobile Devices
- Easy Team Collaboration
- Team Projects
- Check-In/Check-Out System
12. Balsamiq
Perhaps Balsamiq is the only designing tool dedicated specifically to wire-framing for real-time user testing, quick designs and even sharing mock-ups.
Design-Specific Features:
- Click-Through Prototypes
- Export to PNG or PDF
- Low-Fi Sketch Wireframes
- Quick Add for Speed
- UI Components & Icons
- Works Offline
- Sketch-Style Controls
13. Lucidchart
It’s a complete visual workspace that packs data visualization, diagram/drawing visualization, and collaboration for even better design aesthetics and taking the industry a level up by every means.
Design-Specific Features:
- Fully spontaneous user interface
- Enterprise-grade security and admin controls
- Third-party integration with Google Apps, Confluence, JIRA, Office 365
- Publish to PDF, JPG, PNG
- Supports Visio import and export
- Wire-framing/iOS mock-ups
- UML (Unified Modelling Language)
- Mind maps and Organisational charts (organogram)
- Best to design floor plans and concept maps
- Venn diagrams and database design
- Graphical Workflow Editor
- Import database, tables, and schemas for ERDs
- Expand your canvas
14. UXPin
Interactive prototyping, documentation, and building an entire design system are now made easy with UXPin which isn’t just any conventional designing tool. Many new features have been introduced to the exclusive design suite while various others are soon to come which will further expand possibilities with user experience.
Key Design Features:
- Manage your UX process Code Components
- Conditional Interactions, Variables, Expressions
- Translate UI Patterns into ready-to-use CSS code
- Code components and HTML import features (to be introduced soon)
- UXPin mirror (a new feature that lets you test design for mobile screens in real-time)
- Automatic style guide
- Sketch import and design system portal
- Pre-installed component libraries to choose from iOS, Material Design, Bootstrap and User Flows
- Heatmaps
- Animate between states using micro-interactions or hover effects
- Built-in contrast checker and color blindness simulator
15. MoqUps
MoqUps is a visual collaboration tool and app that lets you create and share wireframes, whiteboards, diagrams, prototypes and mock-ups in real-time.
Key Design Features:
- Concept diagrams & decision trees
- Flowcharts with user interactions & for software workflows
- Mind maps & Sitemaps
- Use-case diagrams
- ready-to-use Stencils
- Work in the Cloud and integrate with Slack, Google Drive, and Dropbox
- Precision adjustments with grids, rulers, custom-guides, snap-to-grid, and quick-alignment tools
- Gantt Chart
- Business Model Canvas
- Customer Journey Map
- SWOT Analysis
- Release Roadmap
- User Persona
- Eisenhower Matrix
- Empathy Map
- User Story Mapping
- Kanban Board
- Cause and Effect Diagram
- Affinity Diagram
16. Pixelmator
A graphic editing tool specifically developed for macOS to feature paint, retouch and rebuff, navigation, color correction, and layer-based image editing features. Pixelmator is the next-gen designing solution used by agencies and professional designers.
Key Design Features:
- Core Image & Automator technology
- Based on ImageMagick
- 40+ built-in tools to select, crop, paint, retouch, type, measure, and navigate the design
- Built-in integration and support for applications like Photos and Aperture
- macOS ColorSync support
- Mac OS X Lion support
- Compatible with macOS Catalina
- Multi-channel curves and wheel-based color balance
- Machine learning algorithm trained on 20 million photos
- Arrange tool makes layers into position as you move them around
- dual texture brushes
- Sidecar and Apple Pencil support
- runs natively on Macs powered by the Apple M1 chip
This covers up the first version of the two-part series. There’s more to come ahead as we’ll highlight a few more top web design software used by professional designers and agencies. Stay tuned.
Also Read: 10 Principles Of A Great Web Design!