Okay, okay; this may be a thank you posting for the wonderful sponsors of our massive HTML5 competition, however, it’s important for me to note that I refused to accept sponsors of any product that I didn’t honestly feel was fantastic. What this means is that, as the editor of Nettuts+, I fully endorse each and every one of the following services and products, and, in fact, use many of them on a daily basis! That’s why I asked these companies to sponsor the competition!
1. TechSmith
TechSmith has been extremely generous to Envato in the last few years. Luckily, that has no effect on the fact that the products they provide — everything from Camtasia Studio to Jing Pro, are amazing.
Did you know that I personally use their products every single day? When you watch screencasts from Nettuts+, they were recorded with Camtasia Studio for Mac. When I send out quickie videos and images, I use Jing Pro to distribute them on Twitter. Not only that, but they’re constantly updating their products, and support both Windows and Mac.
“We’ve stayed on top of the screen capture and recording game since the launch of Snagit nearly 20-years-ago.”
2. Media Temple
In addition to being my personal web host of choice, Media Temple is hugely respected around the web as being one of the premier web hosts. Whether hosting jQuery, or Starbucks, or even Django’s site, MediaTemple can handle the load! They come highly recommended.
“Media Temple hosts websites. Big and Small. For years we’ve taken complex technology and simplified it for the everyday website owner. Our products are designed to be powerful, affordable and relevant. Please take a look around; perhaps (mt) is a good choice for your next project.”
3. FormStack
Do we recommend FormStack? Well consider this; the submission form to enter the HTML5 competition…was created with FormStack. Their service is incredibly simple to use.
“Formstack’s easy form builder gives businesses and organizations an easy way to build any type of online form, integrate it with their website and begin collecting data. ”
4. Wufoo
At Envato, we use Wufoo as well. If you haven’t heard Chris, from CSS-Tricks praise Wufoo enough, let us assure you that their service comes with the highest recommendation from Nettuts+. I even use them on my own personal sites!
“What is Wufoo? Wufoo strives to be the easiest way to collect information over the Internet. Our HTML form builder helps you create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code.
5. FusionCharts
FusionCharts has long been regarded as the premier solution for rendering animated graphs and charts for your business. Just browse through their various demos if you don’t believe me!
“FusionCharts v3 helps you create animated and interactive Flash charts for web and desktop applications. It livens up your applications by converting monotonous data into exciting visuals. “
6. Pagelime
We’ve published PageLime tutorials a couple of times on Nettuts+ recently. The huge advantage with their service is that zero coding is required on your part. This makes it significantly appealing to non-tech savvy folks. Most recently, they’ve launched a reseller program, as well as a new navigation manager.
“Pagelime is a brandable CMS that lets your clients manage their content. No installation, no coding to integrate, and no wasted time. Just add the cms-editable CSS class to any HTML element on your site and Pagelime does the rest.”
7. Campaign Monitor
There’s a reason why Facebook, Ebay, and Twitter utilize Campaign Monitor’s services: they’re the best! In fact, their email CSS guide has been proven to be a bible for me, when creating designs optimized for email. They even contributed a tutorial to Nettuts+ not too long ago on the state of CSS3 in email designs.
Send beautiful email campaigns, track the results, and manage your subscribers.”
8. Snippets
If you’ve watched my tutorials, you might have noticed a little scissors icon in my menu bar. That’s for Snippets. It’s an incredible code snippet management tool for Mac, that I use on a daily basis. Even better, it has support for Snipplr uploading — which Envato recently purchased!
“Snippets is a powerful application for Mac OS X that stores the most valuable pieces of code you can reuse in different projects many times.”
9. Querious
In need of a kick-ass MySQL database management app for Mac? I was, and Querious proved to be the best tool for the job. I use it often in my SQL-based video tutorials.
“Querious is a MySQL database management application written from the ground up for Mac OS X. Unlike mindless Mac OS X ports of applications originally made for Windows or Linux, Querious works the way you’d naturally expect it to as a Mac OS X app.”
10. Miva Merchant
Miva Merchant has been around for a long time, and is one of the top providers of e-commerce solutions on the web.
Miva Merchant is a leading supplier of e-commerce software and services to small and medium-sized businesses. We provide online merchants, developers, web designers and web hosts with the information and technology needed to be successful in today’s online selling environment.
11. Rockable Press
Envato’s publishing branch, Rockable Press, is in full force these days — especially with the release of our CEO’s newest book, “How to Build a Successful Blog Business,” which I’m currently reading through. To be objective…it’s fantastic.
“At Rockable Press, we produce simple, straight forward how-to guides and resources for web and creative professionals. We are a small web publishing outfit operated by Envato with authors based around the world. ”
12. jQuery Enlightenment
To this day, jQuery Enlightement holds the spot as my most recommended book on jQuery. Written by Cody Lindley, the book is succinct, and cuts out all of the fluff. As a result, you learn everything you need to know…as quickly as possible. Not only that, but he utilizes JSBin to provide clickable code examples for all of the demos. This has proven to be an extremely smart decision on his part, and you’ll surely see others adopting this same method in the future.
“jQuery Enlightenment was written to express, in short-order, the concepts essential to intermediate and advanced jQuery development. Its purpose is to instill in you, the reader, practices that jQuery developers take as common knowledge. Each chapter contains concepts essential to becoming a seasoned jQuery developer.”
13. WP Structure Theme
Chris Robinson is far and away one of the best authors on ThemeForest, and this theme is a perfect example of his talents.
“Months in development WP Structure is a highly flexible and heavily optioned premium theme, to be used for almost anything business, portfolio, blog, magazine & more!”