Cloud Computing for dummies. Graphics. Netneutrality. Semantic Web.
Ten Laws to Design By « Web Design Marketing Podcast & Blog. As designers we have to be aware of the function of our work and design as much as we care about the aesthetics and visuals. There are a lot of terms for the design of how the site functions and works, from “usability design” to “user experience,” what remains constant is that if we want to become better designers we have to pair these two concepts together. Using clear and effective design laws as guides we can use proven formulas for better design. These laws both assist in the usability / experience of our design as well as the aesthetic values. Furthermore being able to refer and cite these laws when presenting or discussing design you can further establish yourself as a expert with justified reasons for your design choices. 1.
Hick’s Law Hick’s law states that with every additional choice the time it will take for one to make a selection increases. The classic case study for Hick’s law involves a grocery store which put out free jam tasting for customers. Read more about Hick’s Law. CSS-Tricks. WordPress Fat-Loss Diet to Speed Up & Ease Load. Last week we looked at some useful plugins to enhance and protect WordPress, following on with the WordPress topic let’s look at how you can tweak your WordPress install to increase the speed of your site and ease the load on your web servers. We’ll be putting the front end code on a strict diet, while trimming the fat from the database to produce a fast, lean website that doesn’t clog up your server’s resources. Despite its general awesomeness and wide adoption across the web as both a blogging platform and a trusty CMS, it’s no secret that WordPress is a greedy old memory hog.
This high memory usage soon becomes apparent when your blog receives a decent number of visitors and your blog goes missing due to your server throwing in the towel. Installing one of the many caching plugins fixes 90% of these server problems, while upgrading your server specs solves the rest. Caching solves 90% of those server problems. Instead, link up the pages directly in your theme file: Tutorialzine | Web Development Tutorials & Resources. UX Movement - User Interface & User Experience Design Ideas and Best Practices. 6 Ways To Subliminally Tell Users "Don't Come Back"
There are many practices that I can't believe are still on the internet. Here are a few ways to tell the user to never come back to your website. Resize The Main Browser Window If you want to make the user open a new window to view your website, fine. It's not the worst thing you could do, but it sucks. Even worse, however, is when the user's main browser is resized.
Require Login for Non-Unique Content Why do I need a username and password to see your content? Hide the Login Box / Page Link So you do have dynamic/unique content for me? Require Obscure Plugins There's no way I'm going to download "SugarSplitter" plugin to get into your website. Don't Resize / Optimize Images Ugh, there's nothing like a website that uses a WYSIWYG to allow its amateur editors to insert 2MB pictures and resize them down to 100 pixels. Use Unnecessary AJAX There's no reason to use AJAX in your navigation menu. TutorialShock. Tutorial Lounge [Learn Step by Step] iA » The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard. By Oliver Reichenstein Most websites are crammed with small text that’s a pain to read. Why? There is no reason for squeezing so much information onto the screen. It’s just a stupid collective mistake that dates back to a time when screens were really, really small.
Screen vs. magazine: 100% is NOT big; image by Wilson Miner. Don’t tell us to adjust the font size We don’t want to change our browser settings every time we visit a website! Don’t tell us busy pages look better Crowded websites don’t look good: they look nasty. Don’t tell us scrolling is bad Because then all websites are bad. Don’t tell us text is not important 95% of what is commonly referred to as web design is typography. Don’t tell us to get glasses Rather, stop licking your screen, lean back (!) Five Simple Rules 1. The font size you are reading right now is not big.
We don’t want to click bigger or smaller buttons and we don’t want to change our preferences. 2. Let your text breathe. Good Nielsen – bad Nielsen. 3. 4. 5. 25 HTML5 Features, Tips, and Techniques you Must Know. 50 Powerful Time-Savers For Web Designers - Smashing Magazine. Being a web designer is not easy. Not only do we need to have a good understanding about visual design, typography, information architecture, psychology and a plethora of other disciplines; in our work, we need to take care of so many details, so that our job becomes more and more time-consuming, requiring dozens of tools, attention span and an effective workflow for beautiful, timely and functional results.
And this is where small time-savers become handy. Be it a handy checklist, batch installer, dummy image generator or converter from Excel spreadsheet to HTML — all these things can save us a couple of minutes every day, making our work easier and more efficient. And this is why we keep collecting them for Smashing Magazine’s readers. Whether you like lists or not: this one will probably help you find those little nuggets out there that will help you avoid headaches and stress. Below we present useful time-savers for web designers. Time-Savers For Web Designers Link try ruby! How To Create a WordPress Theme: The Ultimate WordPress Theme Tutorial.
Update: We’ve created a second edition of this popular tutorial! It contains updated code samples, coverage of the latest theme development techniques, and more. Check it out at The ThemeShaper WordPress Theme Tutorial: 2nd Edition. In only 11 individual lessons this WordPress Theme Tutorial is going to show you how to build a powerful, up-to-date, WordPress Theme from scratch. As we go along I’ll explain what’s happening including (for better or worse) my thinking on certain techniques and why I’m choosing one path over another. Essentially, I’ll be teaching you everything you need to know about WordPress Theme development. Skip to the Table of Contents. Here’s the list of features your finished theme will be able to boast of: I think that’s kind of impressive—for any WordPress Theme.
At the end of this tutorial, with code in hand, you’ll be able to do almost anything you want. I’ve already used it to start another project of my own, The Shape Theme. Like this: Like Loading... Using CSS to Fix Anything: 20 Common Bugs and Fixes - Noupe Design Blog. Jun 15 2008 Without a doubt, a logical and structured layout is the best way to go. Not only because your layout varies between browsers, but also because CSS has a lot of ways to position every element you have. Today we wanted to share with you some quick tips on how to avoid easy pitfalls when creating your CSS layout. This is the first part in this series as there are SO MANY good tricks out there and if you see an easier or better methods, then post a comment below or email me. I will do my best to include it in our next post in this series.
You might be interested to check our other related post for some inspiration: IE Bug Fixes 1- Bug Fix: IE Double Margin Float Bug- It’s an Internet Explorer-exclusive bug wherein an element that is floated – and given a margin in the same direction as the float – ends up with twice the specified margin size.
To something like this: 2-Overcoming the Box Model Hack- If you want to specify a width to any div, do NOT specify padding or margins. <div><! How to Blog Design Style Guide | Blog design Blog for Blog Designers. How To Create WordPress Themes From Scratch Part 1 » Themetation. I’m going to show you how to create a wordpress theme from scratch in these 3 parts of tutorial series.
I will cover from Structuring, designing in Photoshop, slicing, coding into fully css based html, and finally wordpress implementation. Table Of Content Below is the index of the topics that we will go through: Structuring This is a very important part in designing a web layout. HeaderPosting areaSidebarSingle pageCommentFeedbackSearching fieldPage menuRSSArchives, Links and About Page Something we need to keep in mind. Display too many things in one single page.Use too many colors and font type. In this sample, I also try to make is as simple as possible because the purpose of this series of tutorial is to give an example on how to create a wordpress theme. Final Result Photoshop Step 1 Create a new document with 1024px X 768px as we are going to create a layout which suit for 1024px resolution. Step 2 Grab the rectangle tool and draw a header for it.
Step 3 I use Myriad Pro. Step 4 Step 5. 50 Useful Articles and Resources You May Have Missed - Noupe Design Blog. Jul 21 2010 When it comes to online tutorials and articles, you have to be very careful in choosing the right one from tens of thousands of articles you find as you are seeking help in the Web. So today we present nice articles and tutorials which are easy to understand and will surely add to your knowledge. Web Development The Principle of Contrast in Web DesignA web design is made of many different elements, each having varying levels of importance and some demanding prominence over others. Some elements share a relationship, while others are not related at all.
Personal Branding for Web Designers In this article, author will tell web designers that their self- branding strategies should be equally creative as their designs are. Redesign vs. The Current State of Web Design: Trends 2010In this article, we present some observations on the current state of Web design. Web Performant WordPressIn this article, author will share some tips about Web Performant WordPress CSS/Typography Tutorials. Mega Collection Of Cheatsheets for Designers And Developers. Cheatsheets and various quick reference guides are available for almost any type of software and language these days.
Unfortunately they’re not always easy to find when you actually need them. This is why I decided to take some time to gather up as many as possible and share them with you here! Hopefully this can be a timesaver for you, along with teaching you a new trick or two. The resources have been divided into various categories to make them easier to find. Below are more than 100 cheat sheets and reference cards for the following topics: CSS3 Cheat Sheet ↓ CSS2 Visual Cheat Sheet ↓ CSS Cheat Sheet (V2) ↓ Css Property Index ↓ BluePrint CSS ↓ HTML 5 Cheat Sheet ↓ HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet ↓ HTML5 Glossary ↓ HTML Character Entities Cheat Sheet ↓ Color Codes Matching Chart HTML (Convert CMYK, RGB Hex) ↓ Javascript JavaScript Cheat Sheet ↓ Javascript DOM ↓ JavaScript Reference Card ↓ jQuery 1.4 API Cheat Sheet ↓ jQuery selectors ↓ jQuery 1.3.2 ↓ jQuery 1.3 ↓ jQuery 1.2 ↓ Mootools 1.2 Cheat Sheet ↓ MySQL.
IT. Finding Inspiration. As a designer, I think we all have experienced the hard time of finding new ideas and inspirations. That's why I've chosen to talk about this topic in my presentation at the FOWD conference. In this post, I want to do a recap of my slides – Finding Inspiration From Your Environment. Read on to find out how my work habits and environment influence my design. Working at Home = Killing Your Creativity My work habits and environment have a big influence on my work. So, I'm going to talk about my work environment first.
Being a freelancer, I get the freedom to work anywhere I want as long as there is internet connection. My Office = Starbucks To keep my creative juices flowing, I like to take my laptop and work out of my home or office. You may wonder: isn't that annoying when people bump into you? I like to see fresh people and things around me, so I don't go to the same location all the time. Book Stores The other place I like to go to is book stores such as Chapters or Indigo. Shopping Mall. Faster Page Loads – Bundle Your CSS and Javascript. Have you ever watched your status bar while you wait for a page to load and wondered why several files seem to be downloaded before you see anything at all on your screen? Eventually the page content displays, and then the images are slotted in. The files that keep you waiting are generally the CSS and Javascript files linked to from the “head” section of the HTML document. Because these files determine how the page will be displayed, rendering is delayed until they are completely downloaded.
HTTP Overhead For each of these files, an HTTP request is sent to the server, and then the browser awaits a response before requesting the next file. Example Case As a demonstration, I’ve created an empty HTML document which loads 5 stylesheets. A total load time of 2.24 seconds. Lets see what happens if we request the same stylesheets from lighttpd, a lighter weight web server which is not being weighed down by PHP. Static Content Bundling 560ms! CSS3 Generator. ColorTheory_Screen_White.jpg (JPEG Image, 1224x792 pixels) Designers Toolbox: Graphic Design Tools : Lorem Ipsum Text Generator : Create An Online Portfolio.
35 Stunning Hi-Res “Public Domain” Astronomy Images | BittBox. If our freebies have benefited you personally or have helped you earn a profit please consider donating via paypal. Donate Now In the wake of Shepard Fairey’s debacle with the AP over the rights to the image he used as reference/inspiration for his wildy popular Obama poster, I wanted to share a list of Public Domain Licensed images, in this case, astronomy. Fairey’s situation should hit home with all pixel junkies out there and remind us that we have to pay close attention to the licenses associated with the images we use in our design work.
I’ve compiled a list of beautiful, inspiring astronomy images that all have a Public Domain License. Astronomy intrigues me. I’m a regular APOD surfer. Earth Full resolution: 3,000 × 3,075 pixels Full resolution: 2,048 × 2,048 pixels Full resolution: 3,000 × 3,002 pixels Full resolution: 1,696 × 2,074 pixels Full resolution: 2,458 × 2,458 pixels Full resolution: 2,400 × 2,400 pixels Full resolution: 3,097 × 3,000 pixels The Moon Mars Mars’ moon Phobos Saturn. ThriftDeluxe - DIY For the Hip. Tutorial - Controlling The Real World With Computers. 1001 Free Fonts - Download Free Fonts - Free Windows and Mac Fonts.
GotAPI.com :: documentation search engine. Popular RFC Title Index 1. Industrial design courses ? designboom. Projectseven.com - Dreamweaver Menus, Widgets, Extensions and CSS Templates. Digital Photography Tutorials. Learn how to take and edit digital photographs using visual tutorials that emphasize concept over procedure, independent of specific digital camera or lens. This is a complete listing of all tutorials on this site; click the drop-down links in the top menu to see particular topics.
Photography is going through an exciting transition period as many film photographers are beginning to explore the new capabilities of digital cameras. While the fundamentals have remained similar, other aspects are markedly different. This is a great time to get involved with digital photography. These tutorials are rarely influenced by changes in image editing software and camera equipment — due to their unique concept-based approach. View in other languages: Português Русский Deutsch Français Italiano. World History : HyperHistory. Fwis • Readymech Series 002. Gorgeous. The Internet Theatre Bookshop - Plays & Musicals & Play Scripts. SP*C**L D*F*CTS. Those Dark Hiding Places: The Invisible Web Revealed.
Dayofbirth.co.uk. Test your web design in different browsers - Browsershots. Nice and Free CSS Templates. HTML Playground, html, css reference by example. Recipes for: C (Page 150) - Complete Recipes. CSS Cheat Sheet.