6 Ways to Improve Quality in Your Projects and Reduce Stress
“If you’re like me, each new web design project looks like a fresh adventure to spin your creative wheels on. There are new challenges and ideas that get the mind buzzing. Sadly, this momentary bliss falls apart as I start thinking about everything it’s going to take to finish the project. My mind stops buzzing and goes into shut down mode. All of a sudden, I don’t even want to look at the project anymore.”
How To Target Devices Using CSS Media Queries
“Media queries are a way to serve different css rules to different devices and device characteristics. They’re the final piece in allowing us to create designs that are truly responsive to our audience and how our visitors choose to view our sites.
The last few weeks we’ve been building up toward responsive layouts, first by creating flexible girds and then by adding flexible images and media inside those grids. Today we’ll add media queries to the mix.”
Common Issues and Workarounds for Web UNSAFE fonts
“It’s almost possible to feel the wave of euphoria rolling around the Internet that’s been generated by the arrival of Web fonts. Finally, website designers can unshackle themselves from the limited range of fonts that’s available once you aggregate down the common typefaces on Windows, Mac, Linux and so on.
I can’t be the only one who sighs in desperation each time the words font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Geneva, sans-serif; are keyed into a stylesheet.
When you read the marketing pages from suppliers of Web fonts and font delivery services, you get the impression that with just a couple of lines of code you can transform a site with no hassle; all the issues taken away from you. The reality is somewhat different: there are actually quite a few gotchas, some of which are easy to miss if you’re not testing thoroughly.”
Are You Ready For Google Swiffy?
“Google’s Swiffy can convert basic Flash applications to HTML5. Unlike similar projects before it, Swiffy appears to emulate the ActionScript Virtual Machine, which suggests that conversion of complex Flash apps to HTML and JavaScript is actually viable.
Recently, Twitter went a-fury with Google’s announcement of Swiffy, a tool to convert compiled Adobe Flash files, or SWFs, to HTML5 animations. If you keep a search open for HTML5 game-related material like I do, you might have been overloaded with mentions about Swiffy being a game changer in the war between HTML5 and Flash. Sensationalist terms like war aside, Swiffy is indeed an important creation.
But wait, you might say, didn’t Adobe release something just like this? Sure Adobe released a similar experiment, Wallaby, in March of this year, but it only supports the most basic Flash features. Swiffy has taken an important step further: emulating the ActionScript Virtual Machine.
Why is this important?”
How to Deal with Feature(Scope) Creep
“If any assumption is safe, it’s that six months after launching a website (or sooner?), its owners will have a list of things they want to change, from minor typos to entirely new functionality.
Is it possible to accept feature creep as a natural (or at least inevitable) process?
Many websites begin to fail when their goals change or their scope expands.
Feature creep sets in when a client asks for one tiny adjustment that takes only a minute and then never stops making requests.
Accepting feature creep as a natural process requires an ability to distinguish between a genuine need and a run-away imagination or ‘Wouldn’t it be great if'”…
Get Hundreds of Free, Open-Source Fonts!
Google Web Fonts gets an upgrade. Go check out their new offerings optimized for the web: [Go to Google Fonts]
Useful Ideas And Guidelines For Good Web Form Design
“The input form is an essential element of almost any website or application these days. Input is a core method of interaction, and in many cases it represents the hard conversion point between success and failure. With the amount time and effort we put into bringing users to our sign-up and contact forms, it’s surprising that we tend not to spend a proportional amount of time on the forms themselves.
A number of techniques and elements can be used in Web forms to turn them from abject failures into successful conversion points. In this article, we’ll present some interesting examples and useful guidelines for Web form design.” [Go to full article]
Top Challenging Client Habits Every Designer Needs to Handle
“Dealing with clients is a great challenge for everyone. Oftentimes, we encounter problems in working with our clients. These are actually not just habits of clients but are the realities of work. It now depends on how you deal with it. Here are some habits of clients that most designers experience:”
Do You Know The Real Design Trends For 2011?
“Everything inside the design world is permanently changing, evolving and adapting into new ways of expression and communication looking to satisfy the new consuming needs and set innovative exchanging channels. 2010 made a huge closure for the final year of the first XXI century decade, we witnessed the rising of tablets (iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tablet among others), the demise of Internet Explorer 6 and the absurd fanaticism towards Flash (though it’s losing a lot of fans), which is going to be slowly replaced by HTML5 (we’re not saying that Flash is dead, only that HTML5 will begin to cover many of its current uses).”