A Beginner's Guide on How to Become a Better Graphic Designer. As a beginner who wants to become a better graphic designer or web designer we all start learning on our own by reading tutorials around the web. We search things that we like to learn, such as a button effect tutorial, typography, web layouts, illustration, and a lot more. Along the way we end up hopeless, thinking that we can’t be as good as already established designers and then just stop there. Have you been there? I’ve been at that point. Striving for success without hard work is like looking for fruit in places that you didn’t plant seeds! Be Curious of the things that you cannot do So you were probably searching the web and came across a great and well-designed website and you were like, “oh, wow!
How did they do these buttons, the shadow effect and 3D effect? I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.- Pablo Picasso Quick Challenge First, I’ll assume that you know the basics of Photoshop. Sounds hard, right? Browser extensions: Now Experiment! A Web Designer’s SEO Checklist (Including Portable Formats) As you might have noticed from our previous articles; there are many factors which need to be influenced to optimize a website for search engines. After a while you might not see the woods for the trees. To help you bring some order to this chaos, we’ve compiled an SEO checklist.
To make your task even easier, we’ve created a number of versions of this checklist, including an HTML version, Markdown, PDF and Evernote. Download them all from the Tuts+ GitHub account. This checklist has been divided into three parts: site-wide SEO, on-page SEO and off-site SEO. Site-wide SEO Site-wide SEO techniques can influence the entire website. Accessibility Page access: If a search engine can’t reach a page, it’s impossible to have it indexed. URL Structure www or non-www: Choose one and make sure the internal and inbound links use the same format. Sitemaps HTML sitemap: a HTML sitemap is not only useful for visitors, but also for search engines. On-page SEO Keyword Content Images Display in SERPs Local Search. Web Design Workshop #31: Namanyay Goel. Web Design Workshop is our regular community project where we ask readers to submit their work for your friendly, constructive criticism.
It's the perfect way to learn, offer opinions and have your own work critiqued! This week, a personal portfolio.. Rules of Engagement Play nice! We deliberately select work which will benefit from advice and pointers. If you can't be constructive in your comments, don't. Other than that, offer any advice you can give. The Design Redesigned my website for 2013, thought my previous one was getting old and boring.
Looking for constructive criticism on your own work? 8 Fresh Free Fonts. Fonts are definitely a very important part of every design, and this is why here at WDL we like to gather free fonts so our readers keep their library as updated as possible. Having several different options to count on is really important to keep your projects fresh. So check out today’s selection and download your favorite ones. Zerb Hapna Mono Speakeasy Lovelo Zwodrei Hammer Polaris About the Author Henry Jones is a web developer, designer, and entrepreneur with over 14 years of experience. Related Posts 933 shares 10 Best New Free Fonts We’ve been on the prowl for some new free fonts to share with you.
Read More 1138 shares 9 Free & Useful Fonts for your Designs Whether it’s PSD’s or icons, we love finding high quality free files and sharing them with our readers. Build a Responsive, Single Page Portfolio with Sass and Compass – New on Premium. There's a lot that goes into creating a web site these days. We're now building websites using HTML5, CSS preprocessors, APIs, custom typography and more. Our design challenges include responsive architecture, resolution independence and multi-device interaction support. In this article, we'll build a single page portfolio that covers aspects of all these techniques.
Let's take a look first at what we will be creating: This is a customizable, responsive, single-page website that incorporates modern web development techniques including: Responsive designHTML5 markupCSS using SASS and the Compass preprocessorTypography using Google's web fonts servicejQuery fetching data from Dribbble's APICross-browser, responsive, horizontal-scrolling carousel supporting touch interaction (without using javascript)Icon font using the free iconmoon.io font-generator First we'll start by creating our project's root folder and default index.html file. Let's get some basic HTML up and running. Perfect! MySql to MySqli OO and prepared statements. Hi all, here is one little helping tutorial on transitioning to mysqli. And well if u must transition than why not try OO way... Connecting : this is the thing u put in your connection.php file and include it in your scripts //declare vars $db_server = "some"; $db_username = "blah"; $db_password = "blah1231"; $db_database = "your_db_name"; //OO MySqli connection $mysqli = new mysqli($db_server, $db_username, $db_password, $db_database);//instantiate a connection to a object. if ($mysqli->connect_error) { die('Connect Error (' . mysqli_connect_errno() . ') ' . mysqli_connect_error()); }else{ if($mysqli->select_db($db_database)){ //this is example of regular query OO way $mysqli->query("SET NAMES utf8"); } Prepared statements: Select for multiple rows: $sql="SELECT id, name, date FROM login_tabledb"; //classic SQL nothing new $stmt = $mysqli->prepare($sql); //preparing the statement. the statement is checked is it is valid but its not yet executed.
Update: Delete: Nice share mang. FounderTips: Blog Focused on Online Income for Web Designers and Web Developers. As a freelance web designer or web developer you have probably already realized these two things: You have to take care of your own financial future, because as a freelancer, you don’t have any guarantees.Annoying things always happen when you least expect them: cars break, clients disappear, you get sick, etc. This means that you have to put in extra effort to make yourself as financially secure as possible. However, you can only take a certain number of clients at any given time, assuming you don’t want to lose your sanity.
What else can you do to make your life easier? There are two different types of income: Active income This is income you earn when you trade your time for money. Biggest pro: It’s the most straightforward way to earn money because you are directly trading your time and skills for money. Biggest con: You only get paid when you work, therefore if your only income is active income, and for some reason you have to stop working, you’re in a tough situation. Passive income. Principles for Successful Button Design. There are a thousand ways to design and create buttons today and you only need to spend a small amount of time looking through work on dribbble to get a sense of them. A great deal of these examples are exactly the same, but occasionally there are the odd few that feel like they've had a little more care and attention in their making. Republished Tutorial Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site.
This tutorial was first published in February of 2012. Taking advantage of wonderful new CSS3 properties we can create some amazingly elegant and stylish buttons styles without so much as the whiff of an image and have perfectly adequate fall back styles for older browsers. You may like to create your buttons straight in CSS, or you may like to head for your layout tool of choice, but it's important to think carefully about how your button design lives in context. 1. It's important that your buttons match their contextual style. 2. 3. Help Your Site Grow by Properly Managing Links. Link building is probably the most time-consuming task of an SEO. Nevertheless it’s perhaps one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. Today we take a look at the various techniques that can be used to create and manage inbound links. Note: I’m aware that link building isn’t exactly related to web design.
But because we want to create a complete SEO Session, we have no choice but to include it. Let's Back up a Little In the very first article of this Session - An Introduction to SEO - we learned how search engines work. One of the factors that search engines use in their algorithm are links. It’s important to know that not all links have the same effect. That’s why link building is an important part of search engine optimization. Things to Consider When Building Links Of course there are a few things you should keep in mind when you’re building links.
Domain Diversity Page Context On a related note; site context also plays a role in the valuation of links. External vs. Take Control and Save Time When Designing for Clients. At FHOKE we’ve managed hundreds of projects in many ways. With our team's industry experience, running, or working within studios, we’ve seen it all; ways that have worked and others that have failed. Over the years we’ve refined our process and found a great staged approach that works well for all our clients. It saves us time and puts more control in the designers' hands. The key is to always maintain a great relationship with the client, leaving them feeling satisfied at the end of a project but saving you the heartache, pain and tears that running a project can bring. So if you're struggling to deal with clients and losing the passion to design because of this then why not give our approach a go? Brief and Spec The Work Embrace a Clients Vision & Stop Feature Creeps It might appear obvious, but all too often we hear of freelancers and even agencies jumping into a project without thinking of all scenarios first.
Creating an Effective Design Brief Stop Feeling Snubbed Wireframing Design. Weekend Presentation: Tim Brown On Universal Typography. Making the Most of Photoshop Layers. The way web designers are using Photoshop is changing; pixel perfect comps are less relevant than they were a year or two ago. However, Photoshop is still an invaluable design tool and using its features properly is as important as ever. The following tips will help you master working with layers.
A Quick Word About Best Practices Layers are a classic culprit where project disorganization is concerned. By handing over a PSD to a colleague, you have to assume they can understand and work with what you've given them. This means having well managed layers, color coding, proper labelling, grouping, efficient and non-destructive techniques, tidying up and so on.
These aspects are all very important, but we're not going to dwell on them here. Duplicate Layer Within Another PSD Document Dragging and dropping is most commonly relied on for this, but there's a cleaner and more reliable way. For example, I've created a document containing a layer with a logo. That's it! Thumbnail Size Conclusion. Stir up Your Own Delicious Sass Mixins. Sass is designed to help write CSS faster; mixins are of the features that make it possible. Several heavyweight libraries exist with complex formulas for every situation, but today I’m going to show how to stir up your own mixins that complement existing workflows. Thumbnail: hand mix egg on PhotoDune. Note: The completed document files can be downloaded ahead of time to view what we’ll be creating, and get an idea of what raw Sass files look like. I've been using Sass in my front-end development for more than a year, and mixins were the feature I latched onto right away.
I saw an instant reduction in the time I spent writing stylesheets, no matter how large or small the project. Mixins are one of the most powerful Sass features. Put another way, mixins are code generators. Step 1: Verify Ruby on Your Local Machine These first two steps require us to open the Terminal app (Command Prompt in Windows) to verify the Ruby language, and to install the Sass gem. Step 2: Install the Sass Gem. Designing for Performance. Designers have a tremendous impact on site performance based on how they design for the web, before a single line of code is written. This article will cover how performance can be designed and what it takes to make it happen. Speed is a fundamental part of user experience on the web. Web performance has been proven to have a direct impact on how people use a site and if they are willing to use it again.
With the rise of mobile web usage, it is more important than ever to focus on performance. Yet performance is often ignored by most designers. This happens for many reasons, but it often boils down to the fact that designers consider load times someone else's job. Designing Performance is About Mindset There are plenty of articles that cover how to make a website faster and they almost always provide tips like minifying your CSS and optimizing your images. The more essential step is less tangible - it requires a shift in thinking. Aiming for Simple and Efficient The Flat Design Aesthetic.
2012 was a Great Year for WordPress Development, How Will it Fare this Year? 2012 is long gone. The past month was slightly busy owing to happenings here at 1stWebDesigner (stay tuned, we got a lot coming your way!) , and as February begins, I have decided to take a look at how 2012 was, as well as what 2013 has in store for WordPress! Now, before I actually start ranting about how good or bad 2013 is going to be, let us spend some time taking a look at 2012. 2012: The Year That Was… All in all, 2012 proved to be a wonderful year for WordPress users and enthusiasts all over the world. The year saw two major releases of WordPress — Green (version 3.4) and Elvin (version 3.5).
However, it was not simply the version number that saw an upgrade. Yet, not all innovations were well received by the community. Still need more? Now, coming to WordPress themes and plugins. Just like any other year, 2012 also saw many new free and premium themes as well as plugins of which Twenty Twelve is a shining example! Thus, all said and done, 2012 was a terrific year for WordPress. 7 Fresh and Useful jQuery Plugins. It seems that jQuery plugins are constantly being released, and it’s no surprise considering its popularity. The only problem is being able to sort through them all to find the good ones.
That’s why we’re always on the look out for new jQuery stuff to share with our readers. So for this post, we’ve gathered 7 plugins that will help you some fresh jQuery functionality to your projects. jQuery File Upload File Upload widget with multiple file selection, drag&drop support, progress bars and preview images for jQuery. jQuery Validation Engine jQuery validation engine is a Javascript plugin aimed at the validation of form fields in the browser (IE 6-8, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera 10). Validations range from email, phone, and URL, to more complex calls such as ajax processing or custom javascript functions. Wookmark jQuery A jQuery plugin to create a dynamic, multi-column layout. jQuery URL Parser kerning.js Take control of your web typography. Baseline jQuery Tags Input About the Author 920 shares.
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Inspiring Wireframe Sketches. Easy form validation class. Javascript Animation Tutorial: Animated Sidebar. 21 Examples of Dark Colors in Web Design. This One Advice is All it Takes to Become a Successful Freelancer. Working With WebINK: Pro-Quality Fonts for the Web. Learning Web Design: How to Get Started and Not Give Up. Tips for Designing in the Browser. Creative Techniques for Single-Page Websites.
21 Fresh Examples of Responsive Web Design. 16 Inspiring Examples of Interactive Maps in Web Design. 1WD Foundation: In Order To Speed Up, You Need To Slow Down. Spam bot defence. JS Snippet: Checkboxes. Dark Footers in Web Design. Logos: Inspiring Examples and Related Books. 9 Fresh Free Fonts. Jumpstart Your WordPress Career - Your Essential WordPress Toolkit [Video] 21 Fresh Examples of Websites Using HTML5. Create image with text on the fly with PHP. The time has come for action.
PHP MySQL Multiple Choice Quiz Part 7. 15+ Free Patterns for your Designs. Web Design Workshop #29: Corpora WordPress Theme. Notepad plus plus customization. Creating an App Walkthrough in After Effects. Theme Trust Hiring Support Staff | News. Give Your Website an iOS Home Screen Icon. Ajax: Record Window Dimensions. New from DealPixel: Massive Vector Bundle with 4400 Vectors | News. Work Environment - 3 Step Action Plan Improvement. Best of Tuts+ in December 2012.
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