In order to celebrate the 800,000 active users of the Google Maps API, Google has launched a showcase website for their product.

The website, named "More Than A Map", features the capabilities of the API and displays various demos to show its power.

It is possible to find demos of the standard maps to satellite views, usage of the "places", routing and more. The source of the demos is also a good way of finding out their usage.

Also, under the "Developer Stories" menu, selected real-world implementations of the API can be found for inspiration.

While working on responsive websites, we quickly want to see how the layout reacts to different screen sizes.

Viewport Resizer is a very useful bookmarklet for responsive-layout-testing with few clicks.

Once clicked, it shows a list of popular screen sizes and we can see the websites in those sizes by simply pressing them.

Its page allows us to create a customized bookmarklet that includes the sizes we want.

The orientations of various sizes are already set but there is also an option to manually change the orientation.

There is support for media queries and it is touch-friendly.

There are lots of internet companies/services that we use daily; Twitter, Facebook, GitHub, Skype, Dropbox and more.

In case you wonder "how they make money", a website exists to answer this specific question.

Although we probably know the monetization method behind each or most, the website is still fun to browse (and has a nice presentation).

The website currently lists ~50 companies and clicking any of them simply provides the information needed.

More than a year ago, a WRD post had shared "8 Free Placeholder Image Services For Instant Dummy Images".

Here is a new one: Cambelt, which is a full-featured service for placeholder images.

It works by using special URLs as the image source (like http://cambelt.co/468x60 will generate an image with the mentioned dimensions) and has support for custom text + images with custom colors.

The service is even possible to use custom fonts, font sizes and ask for a specific filetype (like http://cambelt.co/400x300/Custom+Text?font_size=12&format=jpg).

Also, besides the standard placeholder images, it can provide icons in any size as well.

There are various solutions exist for compressing and minimizing the size of images (like Smush.it, PNGGauntlet, punypng, Kraken.io and more).

Here is another good one: TinyPNG that only works with PNG files, shrinks them -nearly- without loss that an eye can see and by keeping the transparency.

It works by drag 'n' drop uploading the images to be minimized to the web interface and auto-generates the compressed ones.

Using TinyPNG, it is easily possible to get 50%+ smaller sized images as they are converted to 8-bit PNGs (rather than 24bit) by using smart techniques.

While creating/editing CSS files, viewing the output instantly saves much time.

CSSrefresh, a JavaScript file that auto-refreshes the web-page, was featured before at WRD.

SoFresh!, a bookmarklet, extends it a little further, works without inserting a JS file to our web pages and allows us to choose which CSS file to refresh.

In case you don't have such a live-updating development environment, you should definitely give this tool a try.

Google Web Fonts is a great directory of free-to-use and open source web fonts. Not only the fonts are free but they are also served from the Google's fast servers.

And, there are many items in that directory which may make finding the one you need hard.

Best Web Fonts is a web app which aims to simplify the process of finding the right Google Web Font.

It is a curated directory which you can instantly test the fonts and get the embed codes. All in the same page.

Also, there are various CSS effects provided which can be previewed with the font of your choice too (the CSS of the effects are available for use as well).

For JavaScript and CSS-based animations, easings (the speed of the animation progresses) have a huge role in making them realistic.

Easings.net is a very useful website for understanding and using such easing functions.

Each function is displayed with a line chart where hovering them automatically runs an animation with that curve.

And, we can see how each function can be used with CSS, SCSS and JavaScript (jQuery Easing plugin).

Also, to customize them, there is a custom link for the functions that gets us to another awesome easing-related website: Cubic-Bezier.com (was featured at 3 Tools For Easier CSS3 “Transition Timing Functions” Cubic-Bezier).

As a web designer/developer, I strongly believe in creating wireframes in the beginning of any web project rather than directly starting to work on the real output.

This not only helps understanding that you are on the right track with the customer but also usually pops out new questions regarding functionality which would normally be a problem if such questions had appeared after the project was built.

The Ideaboard is a non-virtual whiteboard that is not big in size so that we can carry it with ease (to meetings, parks, etc.) but also not that small so that we have enough space to work on.

And, there is a mini-version that requires less space and can fit into a laptop bag.

Besides the standard clean sheet, there are various templates offered:

• website design template pack – includes browser and 2 browsers side-by-side (both use 960px grid), a grid-only one and a monthly calendar
• blogger template pack – brainstorming sheet, to-do-list sheet, monthly and 2 months editorial calendars
• whiteboard deluxe template pack – monthly calendar, 960px grid, brainstorming + to-do-list sheets 

There are also transparent overlays other than these sheets which are handy for working/discussing on the details of the layouts in those sheets. They are simply overlayed to those sheets and anything can be written + drawn over them or erased.

How to join the giveaway?

A mini ideaboard with ready-to-use sheets + transparency overlays and another pack of bigger-sized templates + transparency overlays is being given away to WRD readers so that you can get a chance to use the product.

P.S. For the winners, US shipping is included and international shipping belongs to the winners.

Today, many websites are using web-fonts with @font-face for a more customized design. However, web-safe fonts usage is still so wide as many others prefer to make sure all fonts will be displayed cross-browser/device, not to use web-fonts services and/or minimize the total size of websites.

CSSFontStack is a simple, one-page website which lists all the web-safe fonts.

The website also allows us to copy the font-family CSS property for each font with a click.