Imagine a warm forest where you can share things, comment, add favorites and much more. But, what kinds of things would I share? And who would I share them with? Bears and deers?
Forrst is a fantastic place for developers and designers only where you can share snapshots, links, and code snippets with colleagues or friends. Also, you will be able to ask questions publicly and receive answers from your counterparts, or perhaps from a Forrst Ranger.
The concept is pretty similar to Dribbble but you are able to share more than snaps, which gives you a brand new social experience in the web technologies environment.
We’ll take a quick peek at what Forrst has to offer.
Overview
Forrst is totally free, but is invite-only. To apply for an invite, you will have to fill in a pretty simple form with your first name, last name, email, a link from something you have made as developer or designer, and Twitter username.
In addition to applying invites, you can also be invited by current Forrst members. They can earn invites by being active and giving valuable feedback and collaboration to other users in the site.
Forrst
The interface is pretty well designed, with attractive wooden navigation and nice scroll system within the posts. In general terms the app is very simple with great features to keep members hooked on posting and reading stuff.
Please don’t apply for a Forrst invite unless you are a developer or designer. The main idea is to keep the community clean of non-related web technologies content.
Usage
Once you have received your Forrst invite you will start the wonderful journey through this amazing virtual forest. You will be able to upload snapshots from your latest projects, submit handy code snippets to share with colleagues, post questions, and add links from articles and news events. Also, you will receive feedback from members, and will have a fancy “Like” button to show some love to the amazing content posted by others.
Forrst
Forrst provides us with a list of people you can add or follow, filtered by developers, designers and rangers. This feature allows you to follow their daily activity, as well as see their Twitter accounts and websites.
But wait! Who are these Rangers? Rangers, according to Forrst, are members who are excellent at tracking down quality content within a given tag, including Kyle Bragger who is the Forrst creator, and the great Chris Coyier, among others.
Forrst
Submitting content in Forrst is a simple task. Even submitting code snippets is pretty simple. You just need to copy the code from your favorite text editor, and paste it in the application. The only rule is that you must tag the post with the proper language code. For example, if you paste a PHP snippet, then you must tag the post with “php”. Add snaps, links and questions using the same method, but no special tagging is necessary in these cases.
Forrst
Final Thoughts
Forrst is an awesome web application. Its usability and attractive interface make it a great place for web designers or developers to share things. It’s such a good concept for the web technologies community that I’m pretty sure you guys will enjoy it as much as I do.
The only weak point I have found in Forrst is a lack of social media integration, such as Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, then we could be able to find more colleagues and interesting features within this nice application.
Overall, I think that the greatest thing about Forrst is that it keeps the site completely focused on web topics. This makes Forrst a well-balanced application for designers and developers, with nice social features.
Invites
Invites are coming soon and will be announced via Twitter when they’re available so be sure you’re following @webappstorm. Thanks!