50 Free UI and Web Design Wireframing Kits, Resources and Source Files

I strongly believe the most important phase of a software project is in the Design phase. Unfortunately, not everyone shares my point of view, and many opt to skip this phase (or cut it short) because they see it as an unnecessary time and money wasting expense. I think their belief is that they’d rather deliver something to the customer/client – full of bugs and all – then taking longer to deliver. I just don’t see it that way.

I think of the design phase like an architect designs a building. You design and plan it out ahead of time BEFORE you hire the crew and start digging and hammering away. It’s going to be a lot cheaper to erase a few lines on paper then to have to scrap 2 months of work because the solution wasn’t thought out well enough.

In any case, perhaps a good middle ground is to find ways to help expedite the design phase. Here’s an article from my much beloved Smashing Magazine, that covers 50 Free UI and Web Design wireframing tools and standalone applications, as well as resources that you’ll need to build your own wireframe: wireframing kits, browser windows, form elements, grids, Mac OS X elements, mobile elements, which you’ll use in any typical graphics editor such as Photoshop or Illustrator.

Great stuff. Check it out, and if a you’re web developer new to Smashing Magazine, I highly recommend keeping that site on your radar. Always great stuff.