The 30 Best Web Design Gallery Picks of 2012 We’re well past the half way point of 2012, and it’s been an absolutely amazing year for web design. CSS3 and HTML5 are at the height of their game, responsive design is the poster child of modern web practices and we’re beginning to wrap our minds around new concepts such as serving up retina quality images to high resolution devices. With all of this great stuff happening in the industry, the Design Shack Web Design Gallery is positively bursting with awesome new inspiration and I think it’s a great time to highlight the best sites that we’ve seen in 2012 so far. Read on to see our hand-picked selection of the thirty best sites submitted this year. Quarter Rest Studios A great site for a collaborative music design studio based in Brooklyn, New York. When was the last time? A intriguing site that aims to challenge you and ask questions. Riley Cran A simply superb portfolio site for a designer and illustrator in Vancouver, BC. Goosebumps Pickles Forside Made by Vadim Go Beyond Pixels CSS Piffle
55 Awesome Website Headers For Your Inspiration In the last years, the notion of “website header” chanced dramatically. If until a few years ago, the header was the place for a standard logo and a simple menu, now this can be a piece of art. Below you can see 55 superb examples of such headers. eco-environments.co.uk harmonyrepublic.com mikedascola.com ryanscherf.net octwelve.com bluehatonline.com ectomachine.com cosmicdiary.org inspiredology.com blackmoondev.com vunkyblog.net aussiebbqlegends.com yaronschoen.com foxtie.com vegasuncorked.com mospromstroy.com livingdesign.info le28thiers.fr alexandregomes.com.br hotelrottnest.com.au toasteddigital.com experiencialecom.com.br chedonline.com wpglamour.com adaptd.com dquinn.net simpleart.com.ua helmy-bern.cz inchoo.net hepppo.se belighted.com relogik.com visitphilly.com carlcartee.com gapmedics.co.uk lordlikely.com feedstitch.com foodtease.com culinaryculture.com showandtellsale.com lionite.com badhealth.nhs.uk racket.net.au undergrad.biola.edu viget.com versionsapp.com acko.net corvusart.com marchanddetrucs.com pienternet.be
Top 10 Free Responsive Image Galleries/Slideshows If your website relies heavily on images, then having an image gallery is a great way to showcase your content on your website. Having said that, this idea may also backfire if visitors are coming from a mobile or touch device. Mobile users deserve some love too, hence the purpose of today’s post. There are a variety of responsive image galleries, slideshows and sliders to better manage your photos, screenshots and other forms of images on your site. Some incorporate transition effects, fade-in, fade-out and other effects, as well as thumbnail views of the gallery for faster access, flexibility and ease-of-use to view your site in full all-out browser mode and palm-sized smartphone screens. To make it easier for you to find the right pick for your website’s needs, we have put together a showcase of the best 10 galleries, slideshows and sliders we know of. FlexSlider – [demo | download] Elastislide – [demo | download] Responsive Image Gallery – [demo | download] wmuSlider – [demo | download]
22 Essential Tools for Testing Your Website's Usability The Web Design Usability Series is supported by join.me, an easy way to instantly share your screen with anyone. join.me lets you collaborate on-the-fly, put your heads together super-fast and even just show off. A site's ease of use, or its usability, is an integral part of its success, especially with websites becoming more and more interactive, complex and packed with features. User-centered design is all about building websites that fulfill the goals and desires of its users, and at the heart of this concept is that a user must be able interact with your website effectively. Testing usability is an art and a science. In this post, we'll discuss six crucial factors that affect usability. We'll focus on practical usability testing, so the emphasis is on pragmatic and inexpensive strategies that most site owners can do. What other tools have you used to test website usability? 1. The first thing that must be done is determine what the core user tasks are. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
34 Free and Useful Mac Apps for Developers You know Apple has opened Mac application store a few months ago and you can buy many paid and download free Mac applications from the store.Unfortunately, it is really hard to check all the applications to find free ones but today we bring them together for developers which we think these Mac applications will make a developer’s life easier. I’m sure you know most of them and probably already using on your Mac but there may be a few worth checking it out.Here is the collection of free Mac applications especially for developers. LittleIpsum Latin text generator for OS X.Option to wrap generated text in HTML tags.Generates words, sentences or paragraphs Navicat for MySQL Lite Navicat for MySQL Lite is a powerful database administration and development tool for MySQL. MobDis Unretiner A tool for iOS developers to easily resize their @2x or -hd cocos2d images in seconds! NovaBench DTerm Clipboard History TextWrangler Synalyze It Synalyze It! JSTalk Editor DockIconChecker Lite EasyFind Simon Free Tilen Kod
5 Frightening Facts from Forrester and the Good News for Digital Marketers Popular Today in Business: All Popular Articles Yesterday Forrester Research released its latest report on digital marketing after taking a survey from consumers in both North America and Europe. The North American survey polled 58,068 US and 5,635 Canadian online adults in Q2 2012, while the European poll took place in Q3 2012, polling 20,778 Europeans from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The report leaves advertising and social media marketing practitioners on both sides of the Atlantic high and dry. Consumers trust self-selected content more than push communications Conclusions: The good news for digital marketers is that self-selected digital pull content rules the roost with up to 70% of consumers affirming that they trust brand recommendations from friends and a median 46% saying they trust online consumer reports and reviews. Related Resources from B2C» Free Webcast: Blogging in the Age of Modern Marketers The Takeaway:
Complete Beginner's Guide to Design Research It actually begins the moment we learn about a project, whether we acknowledge it or not. We ask questions. We take notes. We learn everything we can about our client and their audience—and that’s before we even begin! Let’s explore the (purported) method to this (seeming) madness, known as design research. Design research is an integral part of the oft–misunderstood user–centered design process. Design research, as described in this article, assumes the reader follows a user–centered design process. Back to topWhat is design research? Design research describes any number of investigative techniques used to add context and insight to the design process. Design Research techniques can be incorporated before, during, or after the design solution is established. The diagram below provides an overview of user–centered design techniques, highlighting research activities in red. A constellation of design techniques. Young, Indi. 2008. Purpose Analysis Malleability Testing protocol Lab research Ethnio
20 Tips for eCommerce Web Design and Usability It might have happened to everybody: you find in the search engine a link to the product you need, click it and close the page in a few seconds. Simply because the site web design puts you off. Or vice versa: you come to the beautifully designed site, but understand nothing of how to navigate through it. Andy Booth, English designer and developer, has been working in ecommerce for many years and has gathered 20 ecommerce usability tips, which will come handy for everybody who wants to create online store or improve it. 1. Almost any product may come in different sizes, colors, etc. 2. Amazon.com: under the main page is the dominating search bar. 3. The next advice on our usability tips list. 4. 20 Tips for eCommerce Web Design and Usability Probably, there is no such ecommerce expert, who has not highlighted the importance of item images. 5. Generally, there are two distinct types of shopping cart implementation. 6. 7. 8. 9. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
User Research Customer Journey Maps – A ‘Quick And Dirty’ Technique To Create Them A Customer Journey Map (CJM) is a very helpful tool that represents the whole interaction with a product or service in a transparent manner. It clearly points out the strengths and weaknesses of each stage of the interaction – particularly those that affect the user experience. In addition to this, Customer Journey Maps also show the possibilities for improvement. However, creating a Customer Journey Map is a very resource-consuming process. In this article the author introduces to you the approach they took for one of their clients. Customer Journey Maps – A ‘Quick And Dirty’ Technique To Create Them How Pocket Built a Research Lab for Mobile App Testing in Just a Few Hours You’re ready to run a user study for your product. How Pocket Built a Research Lab for Mobile App Testing in Just a Few Hours Download the Collective Action Toolkit by frog- Design Thinking in Simple Language Collective Action Toolkit Sketchnote Army
5 Web Design Colours that Encourage Visitors to Click that Subscribe Button People are still debating whether content is king or not. If you ask me, I totally agree with it and my opinion is based on my own experience. Regardless, whether or not content is king, there is something that is just as important! What is it, you ask? It is a book’s cover that counts too… I know, I know, everyone likes to say don’t judge a book by its cover, but how else are you planning to grab someone’s attention other than with a fancy cover? Obviously, once you have someone’s attention, you can leave the rest to content. To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them. You Make a First Impression Only Once Image By Frédéric Bisson There is always a one particular step you would like your website’s visitors to take. Whatever that call-to-action button is, always remember that whether people will click on it or not depends on how you make them feel while they are on your website. 1. Image By Roxanne Ready I Bet You Did Not Know
Mobile Site Design in Adobe Muse | Muse-Themes.com Everyone is talking about responsive design, however there’s certainly still a number of sites that use separate mobile versions to improve the browsing experience for those users. Here’s a great link from the Google analytics blog comparing the benefits of responsive vs. mobile sites. An understanding of this helps to make sense of the following post: How does a separate mobile site work? When a visitor lands on the desktop version of your site, a small piece of code (often using Javascript, PHP, etc.) detects the visitor’s device or browser size and redirects them to another location. For the purpose of this demonstration, I’ll be using a redirect to a different location (essentially a separate website). Step 1 - Setup your Mobile friendly website in Muse I’ve never come across a mobile site designed completely in Adobe Muse, so I took that as a challenge. Make your thumbnails tiny like the site above! Example: