PingBrigade: Ping Any Hostname Online & Measure Response Time. Most of us are familiar with Google Analytics and how it helps us understand visits to our website. But if you are more interested in technical stuff like load times, JavaScript loading, file requests, performance scores, and more, then you should check out HTTP Archive. This tool lets you play around with different data that accurately describes how your website works. HTTP Archive provides insight into the Internet in a clean and actionable interface. This data includes fun stuff like bytes per page by content type, individual resource response size, most popular scripts, image formats, and much more. With this tool I quickly learned that Google Analytics is the most popular JavaScript snippet on the Internet.
I also learned that 47% of websites are still using Flash, and that Flash is still the slowest loading element on a website. HTTP Archive also provides a graph of your website’s performance, including response time, and top requests. Features: The Next Steps On The Road To Becoming A CSS Jedi Master. Last time I introduced you to the absolute beginner steps required to learning how to style websites with CSS. Today I’d like to continue to examine some basic points, take a look at how powerful FireBug is, show you how to do CSS rollover effects, and point you in the right direction for where to go next. The Box Model One of the key concepts behind CSS is the box model that surrounds every HTML element on the page.
Last time I introduced you to a fantastic utility called Firebug and the built-in Chrome equivalent. If you’ve got installed already and had a chance to play with it, you should have noticed that hovering over any element in HTML source view in the bottom left highlights a box around the element on the page view at the top. That highlight is the box model. One of the first mistakes any CSS learner will make is to confuse and use MARGIN and PADDING interchangeably. It’s also interesting to note that the border property takes up actual space and therefore affects positioning. 7-Step Process All Designers Should Follow To Complete Every Project. As a graphic designer, you know your job entails helping your client sell their service or product. Your ultimate goal is to help viewers understand a message and, in turn, reap benefits for your client. Developing a process to follow each time you take on a new project can help tremendously in achieving results you and your client are happy with.
Whether you’re a graphic designer, web designer, programmer or otherwise, having a system set up will help you get the work done faster in addition to keeping things organized and the designer/client relationship a positive one. Project Initiation One of the most important steps in the design process is accumulating the information you’ll need. The Brief: Although it may seem like more work than necessary, a design brief has a couple of key benefits, no matter how big or small the project seems to you: It ensures the client knows what he or she wants from the project It acts as your point of reference during the project Research Strategy Completion. 50 Truly Eye-Catching And Detailed Web Layout Tutorials. The History of Web Browsers [Infographic] Some infographics are better than others. I really like this one on the history or evolution of web broswers from TechKing. I was a big Netscape user back in the day and really disliked Microsoft’s strategy in bringing down a great browser.
Microsoft’s browser share has dropped dramatically due to Firefox and Chrome. Opera has always been in the mix but never really got the due it deserved. I am still troubled by the fact that people actually use Internet Explorer as both Firefox and Chrome are superior products. Take a look: (Click to enlarge) Ultimate HTML5 Cheatsheat by Tech King Tagged as: Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, Opera, Web browser.
Storyboarding: Pre-Writing Activity The more we podcast and have our students create video clips or other digital storytelling projects, the more we need to teach storyboarding as part of the process. Being able to pre-visualize how your story will unfold is becoming a vital skill to have for storytellers. Storyboards are defined as: Graphic organizers such as a series of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence, including website interactivity. In the book by Roger Essley “Visual Tools for Differentiating Reading & Writing Instruction: Strategies to Help Students Make Abstract Ideas Concrete and Accessible”, he says Storyboarding, or picture writing, is the origin of all written languages, used by ancient cultures before text evolved and as a natural bridge to text.
The Chinese language was built using pictographs. Pre-Writing is defined as Storyboarding Template Created in Word Individual Storyboarding in Journal. HTML and CSS Tutorials, References, and Articles. 5 Baby Steps To Learning CSS & Becoming A Kick-Ass CSS Sorcerer. This article is aimed at users who have very little experience with CSS yet, though hopefully there is something here for everyone. Before you start playing with CSS, you may want to download our fantastic free beginner guide to XHTML. (1) Grammar Like any language, CSS has a certain grammar to it, and it may seem a little “computer programmy” at first, but it’s really just a list of things. All CSS is written like this: As you may already know, CSS works by applying a style to a selected element in the webpage. For instance, to style how all your links are shown, you would use “a” as the selector.
The various properties and values you will learn with experience, but some are easy – things like COLOR, BORDER, FONT-SIZE, HEIGHT are all some possible properties, whose values might be red, 14pt, 150%, 1000px – it really is that easy. You can also use the same block of CSS to do more than one type of element at the same time with commas: (2) Class & ID selectors (3) Descendants.
Gridcalc: Create Website Grids & Widths For Your Web Layout. If you are just starting out designing your website, the first thing you should think about is the width of the website and the type of layout that can fit within it. Gridcalc is an app that lets you calculate different layouts or grid combinations that are possible for your desired width. To start, just enter the width that you think is best for your webpage, and then fill in the range of column and gutter width elements.
The tool will then provide all possible combination of elements for the widths you entered. In addition, you can preview the results to visualize how your website grid would look. Once you have decided on a layout, just click to download the CSS file with your selected configuration and load it to your website. This is a convenient tool for designers who like to play with different widths for blog themes.
Features: Check out Gridcalc @ www.problem.se/labs/gridcalc/?