How To Create Better One Page Websites
“One-page websites are hot and popular no doubt about that. But they aren’t for everyone or every business. It’s easy to want one because they’re popular; and if done correctly, yours could be a hit. But make sure you’re project qualifies first.
A good candidate for a one-page website is not super-heavy on content. You only have one page to get your point across, and there are only so many animations and tricks you can throw in before they get stale.
Plus, most one-page websites are unconventional in their layout. Trying to fit a lot of content onto one page without looking cluttered is pretty tough.
Potential uses vary, but some of the most popular candidates for one-page websites are personal portfolios and websites for businesses that sell only a few products or services.
If you qualify, make sure your website hits the mark. There are always certain things you have to follow through on when making any website, but the points below are especially critical to single-page websites.”
CSS Menus for Responsive Web Design
“Responsive design and layout are the hot topics of today in the Web Design industry. More and more emerging ideas and methods are being developed every day. Sometimes all of this can seem like information overload.
In this article Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks does a great job focusing on one very important aspect of responsive design – what in the world do I do with my menus?”
10 Important UI Design Considerations for Web Apps
“When I finished building my first web app (CompVersions, which allows you to collect feedback from clients), I was surprised at the number of user interface decisions and considerations I hadn’t accounted for at the beginning of my journey. I’d like to share some of those things with you.
Many of these design considerations might seem superficially obvious, but once you’re going through the design and development process, it’s easy to forget about them because they’re like condiments you hardly notice them when they’re there, but if they’re missing, your food just doesn’t taste right.
Blank State
The blank state is how your app will look and function when the user hasn’t entered any data yet (except perhaps their email address after signing up for an account). This is the first interaction and scenario that your user will encounter with your app and it can make or break their first experience and impression.”
Are You Making These Mistakes In Your Web Designs?
“With today’s snazzy and competitive Web 2.0 and social media world, universal design is many times forgotten. It’s bewildering as to why since there are many social, technical, financial, and legal reasons which support universal design practices. Let’s discuss some of the more prevalent issues in websites today, and how they relate to the main universal design principles.
The Principles
First, let’s review the seven universal design principles including some web-related examples. Keep in mind that these principles are applied, of course, to many industries outside of computer and web, such as civil engineering (buildings, walkways), entertainment (movie theaters, theme parks), and transportation (buses, trains).” [Go to full article]
Create An HTML/CSS Mobile Web App Using Sencha Touch
“The world of mobile app development is quickly becoming a crowded and complicated space, especially for those outside of the development niche. Which development platform should I use? Do I go native or Web-based? Which devices should I plan for? Can I build my mobile website by hand or should I use a pre-built package? The questions are endless.
As a designer, my job is to help my clients answer these questions. I try to stay in the category of knowing enough to be dangerous, and I keep tabs on the latest mobile development trends, one being the growing popularity of mobile Web apps.”
7 Guidelines For Designing High-Performance Mobile User Experiences
“A positive first impression is essential to relationships. People look for trust and integrity, and they expect subsequent encounters to reflect and reinforce their first impression. The same principles apply to brands and their products. Design plays an important role in building lasting relationships with end users and, thus, in supporting the brand’s promise.
Users expect mobile services to be relevant and user-friendly and to perform well. The limitations of the medium, however, impose significant challenges to designing products that meet all of those expectations. While often underestimated, performance is a crucial contributor to a trustworthy mobile user experience. Therefore, it should be considered a key driver in the design process.
In this article, we’ll discuss performance in relation to design and present seven guidelines that can help shape design decisions related to performance while accounting for the needs of end users and businesses. These guidelines are based on the experiences of our teams in designing native mobile apps for a broad product portfolio and on multiple mobile platforms.”
Create a Settings Page For Your WordPress Theme
“Creating your own theme for WordPress is a great way to give your blog or other WordPress powered web site an original touch. But even the nicest looking theme is not that nice if you have to get under the hood and edit the theme’s HTML or PHP code whenever it’s time change some aspects of it. Especially, when it’s not you but a paying customer using your theme. Luckily, creating a settings page for your theme in WordPress is not very hard, and after reading this tutorial, you will be able to create one in no time!”
Learning To Use The :before And :after Pseudo-Elements In CSS
“If you’ve been keeping tabs on various Web design blogs, you’ve probably noticed that the :before and :after pseudo-elements have been getting quite a bit of attention in the front-end development scene and for good reason. In particular, the experiments of one blogger namely, London-based developer Nicolas Gallagher have given pseudo-elements quite a bit of exposure of late.
To complement this exposure (and take advantage of a growing trend), I’ve put together what I hope is a fairly comprehensive run-down of pseudo-elements. This article is aimed primarily at those of you who have seen some of the cool things done with pseudo-elements but want to know what this CSS technique is all about before trying it yourself.
Although the CSS specification contains other pseudo-elements, I’ll focus on :before and :after. So, for brevity, I’ll say ‘pseudo-elements’ to refer generally to these particular two.”
Google SEO Basics for Beginners
“As many of us web developers already know, Google is rated by many as the number one search engine in the world. We personally know that our websites get about 90% of their search engine traffic direct from Google searches.
Getting indexed by Google can be a pain, but getting highly placed rankings for specific keywords seems to be the nut that not many web developers without SEO (search engine optimization) experience or seo training can crack.
Today we’re going to give you an informative primer on the basics of search engine optimization techniques many of which we use everyday to optimize our websites and stay ahead of our competitors.”
[Go to full article]