Tweet-Parade (no.27 Jul 2011)

Sweet, sweet Saturday again .. and you know what that means: A brand new Tweet-Parade! A Tweet-Parade is a blog-post filled with the best articles of last week from the various blogs around the world. It’s all about webdesign, graphic design, typography, social media and more. A broad scale of topics, but never-the-less the underlying focus is on Design.

Also I see this as my personal bookmarks of great articles from the Community of the last period. The different articles and post are categorized by their main topics. The best way to keep track of these tweets is simply to follow me on Twitter.

Webdesign, CSS, HTML, jQuery, Usability, etc.

10 Principles Of Effective Web Designing - Web designing is not just creating a site with colorful images. You need to follow various rules and use tools for designing a website to attract target traffic. Using website design templates has simplified the process of web designing. It is important for a web designer to utilize these options for developing smartly designed sites.

Using the Black Box Model to Design Better Websites - Today we’re going to introduce you to a popular model used in marketing to understand consumer behavior. We’ll then discuss how you as a designer can use this model to structure your designs to encourage action from users.

How to Author a Super Accessible Website - Helen Keller, the deaf-blind and renowned American author and lecturer, who became world-famous for her passion towards preaching the importance of living a good life, conveyed an important message to the world through her life by overcoming the odds of sight and hearing deprivation.

10 super useful tools for JavaScript developers - In recent years, JavaScript has proven that it has to be taken seriously because it can really enhance the web, not only provide some cheap effects such as blinking text. In this article, I have compiled the 10 most amazing tools and script for all JavaScript developers.

Quoting and citing with <blockquote>, <q>, <cite>, and the cite attribute - Given HTML’s roots in the academic world, it should be no surprise that quoting is well-accommodated in the elements <blockquote> and <q>, with their optional cite attribute.

20 Cool CSS3 Navigation and Menu Tutorials - Navigation is menu is the most important element of websites. There are many way to create navigation and menu but in todays article we have featured some of useful and best CSS3 navigation and menu tutorials which surely help designer and developer to sharpen their skills.

50 Effective Landing Page Templates for your Products - A landing page is a single web page used that appears after clicking on an advertisement or an article at a certain site. It usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link.

8 Things Web Designers Forget When Launching A New Site - A collection of ten common mistakes which web designers regularly tend to forget when launching a brand new websites. This is a collection of common mistakes but also a great check list of tasks which need to be performed in order for website to be completed.

15 Fresh jQuery Menu Plugins and Tutorials - We haven’t actually taken a look at what new techniques and plugins are available for building menus with jQuery in quite a long time. For the most part, the plugins below are a great platform/canvas for you to build your navigation by offering fantastic customization options that ..

The three pillars of ecommerce design - However it doesn’t matter who you are, I always receive the same set of questions: what’s the best checkout experience, what should my content pages look like and how do I engage with customers better? Within this article I look at a number of best practice tips and advice for ecommerce merchants ..

Developing Streamlined and Efficient CSS Styles - CSS can be compared to the sculptor’s tool set when crafting a sculpture. We as web designers utilize all the assets CSS brings forth to create structured layouts for our websites. Over the years this design process has become more organized and fitted.

7 Email Marketing Tips - Now that you have a email list, what will you write? You want to promote your business, but you don’t want to put readers off and lose their subscriptions. You certainly do not want anyone to call your emails “spam.” You need to develop a content strategy that mixes valuable information with soft sell information ..

A Brief Overview of Responsive Design - The ever-changing landscape of the web and the technologies that access it demand for shifts in how we view websites. Most recently a trend called ‘Responsive Design’ has emerged, which allow for users viewing websites on mobile devices to access them in a user-friendly manner.

Make a Fluid Thumbnail Bar with jQuery - The idea of a fluid thumbnail bar is simple: Create a list of thumbnails within a space where the overflow can be flipped through page by page. Speaking of pages, make sure we’re on the same one by checking out the demo page.

Pseudo Spriting - You know about CSS Sprites right? They are fantastic to use when you know both the height and the width of they element you are applying them to, because then you can make a really tightly compact sprite image and use very exact coordinates to display exactly the bit you want to.

15 Fresh and Brilliant jQuery Tutorials - Today we are going to introduce 15 useful and fresh jQuery Tutorials for web developers and designers. I hope you will enjoy this post and learn something new from this tutorials.

20 More Responsive Web Designs - Few weeks ago we have done an inspirational article about responsive web design that featured some of amazing responsiveweb design. In this roundup we have showcase 20 more responsive web design which uses CSS media queries to achive this and along with few tutorials that will help you to learn more about responsive web design.

Reasons Why White Spaces are Good in Web Designing - In the context of web designing, white space is referred to the space between different design elements. The area between text, paragraphs, images, links and footers etc. are referred as white space. White space is not necessarily “white” it is essentially a blank space.

Rolling Your Own Grid Layouts on the Fly Without a Framework - Do you hate CSS grid frameworks but love the rapid layout benefits that they provide? Do you struggle with the math and code necessary to create your own flexible multi-column layouts on the fly?

Designing Websites with SEO and Conversions in Mind - If you’re running an online business, you’re not alone. Millions of other online entrepreneurs are out there trying to earn livings. To stay ahead of the competition, you need to get educated about search engine optimization (SEO) and social media.

Designing Faster with a Baseline Grid - Hundreds — not to say thousands — of articles, tutorials, books and websites solely dedicated to grids and their application in (web)design have been published in the last few years. A simple search on Google with the terms “grid” and “webdesign” returns almost 5 million results.

Best web design resources of June 2011 - Here’s the round up of fresh web design resources for June 2011! we have icon sets, CSS3 tools, web typography, Chrome Extensions for Google Web Fonts and WordPress resources.

Thoughts On Developing A Responsive Design Workflow - Print design has the physical constraint of the canvas. The format is fixed. The situation is different on the web. We can’t know in advance exactly how someone will view our sites. We don’t have a fixed canvas. We need to create websites with the ability to adapt and respond.

Helpful Tips & Tools for Web Design Experiments - Today’s article encourages you to get into the habit of devoting time to little experiments. Testing ideas and solving problems in a low-pressure and possibly even fun environment can massively boost your education and lead to awesome innovation.

Create a 404 page with CSS3 animations - When I was asked to build a new 404 page for netmagazine.com, my first thought was to create a CSS animation of some sort. I wanted the design to blend seamlessly with the visual style already established for the site, so I started by designing a page with 404 set in Clarendon ..

Top 7 split testing blunders you must avoid – Split testing sucks! Let’s face it. Testing kind of sucks. For most people anyway. It’s hard to learn… takes a lot of time… and typically requires you to hire a split-testing service provider like me to get the job done right (unless you’re a testing-obsessed fanatic like I am and love doing it!).

The Visual Weight of Primary and Secondary Action Buttons - Many user interfaces have more than one button. But not all the buttons are of equal importance. Some are primary to the user’s task and some are secondary. To make this distinction clear, you have to use visual weight.

How to protect your site from hackers - Evidence is everywhere that the number of cybercriminals remains a serious issue, and internet ‘bad actors’ are making a substantial living from their illegal activities. While it’s true that many cyber criminals are focusing their efforts on individuals, ..

10 Best Free JavaScript Frameworks And Libraries You Should Know - Today I am focusing some most useful JavaScript Frameworks for Web developers and designers. JavaScript is a client-side scripting language, developed for creating attractive websites with its awesome features, ..

 

Graphic Design, Brand Identity, (Web) Typography, etc.

22 Ways to Create a Logo Design that Stands Out - Whether you’re a newbie designer or have been in the industry for years, there are several basic principles to keep in mind when designing a logo. After all, there are many elements that go into creating a great logo.

Photoshop Masking Tips - The work that I’ve been doing recently has required quite a bit (read: tons and tons) of masking in Photoshop. While working through the images and trying to improve efficiency along the way, I’ve picked up a few useful methods that I’d like to share because they’ve been helpful to me.

Font-weight in the age of web fonts - If you’ve seen me speak at a conference recently, or we’ve chatting about the web whilst sharing a pint, you might have noticed a pattern emerging whenever I talk about web fonts: as keen as I am to celebrate them as the coming of true typographic nirvana.

Balance in Design - In a figurative sense, the concept of visual balance is similar to that of physical balance illustrated by a seesaw. Just as physical objects have weight, so do the elements of a layout. If the elements on either side of a layout are of equal weight, they balance one another.

Blogging, Social Media, WordPress, Writing, etc.

Daily Tip: Add a Honeypot to Contact Form 7 to Prevent Spam - If you’re a fan of the popular Contact Form 7 plugin but don’t like using ugly CAPTCHAs, you may want to consider adding the new Honeypot for Contact Form 7 plugin. It introduces an additional field in the form that, when filled out. will cause the form not to validate

15 Free Minimalist WordPress Themes Downloads - A website theme should serve the purpose for which it was created. This objective should not be allowed to slip our attention while making the selection for a website design or theme. There are countless WordPress themes vying for your attention.

7 Tips to Catapult Your Blog into Success - There was time when people talk about the quantity and the saying more the merrier sounded utterly rejoicing. However, the widespread internet, affinity with online market and availability of abundant valuable information has made super saturated the online blogging industry.

40 Free And Premium WP Themes Ideal For Portfolios - WordPress gives you the opportunity to create a portfolio easily with the help of a theme specially designed for this. By using a portfolio WordPress theme you can create and administrate a showcase of your work with little effort no matter what you do for a living.

Free WordPress Themes: 2011 Edition - It’s interesting to look back at our previous WordPress themes round-ups. It’s almost like looking at a visual timeline not only of WordPress’ advances in theme design, but of the rapid development in functionality of the CMS itself.

How to Display a WordPress Post only if it has a specific Custom Field - Recently one of our users asked us how to display WordPress posts only if a specific custom field was present. After replying back with the answer, we thought it would best if we share with everyone else, so the larger community can benefit from it as well.

The Ultimate WordPress Multi Site Network Management Guide - If you run more than one WordPress powered website, updating them all each time there is an update can be a pain. Not to mention the handful of plugins used on each website that need to be maintained!

Search Engine Optimalization, Rankings, Analytics, etc.

Get Ahead of GOOGLE – PageRank - Google analyzes unimaginable amounts of data from millions of websites and whittles it down to the ten most relevant results for your search. As you will soon see, only a few factors ultimately determine the order of search results. But the big G likes to have all sorts of data available so that it can return relevant ..

15 Tools for Checking Duplicate Content - Readers prefer original content so you must pay increased attention to the content your writers are writing before posting it to your website. Also, checking if your site’s content is being plagiarized or if your website is having too many pages with duplicate content are essential things ..

Tips For Designing an SEO Friendly Website - Search engine optimization (SEO) has emerged as a valuable online marketing tool for different businesses. It primarily aims to secure high page rank of a website in the SERPs (search engine result pages) of major search engines. The website may be created from scratch or with the help of web templates but it must comply with standards required for SEO.

How to Optimize an E-Commerce Site - An e-commerce site could have thousands upon thousands of pages of products. Just look at the online shopping giant Amazon; they probably have millions of product pages. E-commerce sites that only sell one kind of product (cameras, shoes, furniture, etc) might have fewer pages overall, but by no means is it a small amount.

4 Ways to Market Your Beautifully Designed Website or Blog - So you just spent countless hours designing and building the most visually attractive website in the history of the internet, Congratulations! …Now how are people going to find it? No matter how professionally developed your website is, there needs to be traffic for people to appreciate it.

The 10 most common website SEO mistakes - It happened again. I just conducted an SEO audit on a newly launched site. Three interconnected sites: an e-commerce site, the main brand site, and a WordPress blog. The web shop my client hired to build and design the sites promised that it had SEO expertise.

How To Get More SEO and AdWords Clients in 2011 - How do you get more clients? I went freelance just about a year ago (for the second time in my career), and though it’s been sometimes more exciting than I’d like, it’s been a great ride and pretty successful. I’m celebrating a year of independence today on Independence Day!

5 Tips to Make Proper Use of Your Google Analytics Reports - Google analytics is one of the best web analytics solutions that gives rich insights into your website traffic and suggests best ways for improving your marketing strategies, which is equivalent to what the enterprise-class web analytics can deliver to you.

Implementing Google Authorship Markup On Your Website - A few weeks back Google announced they were supporting authorship markup—a way to connect authors with their content on the web. This isn’t really a how-to as Google provides pretty clear instructions on how to do it.

Tutorials

How to Create a Slideshow Plugin with jQuery – There are hundreds of slideshow plugins out there, from all time favorites like Lightbox to the most advanced like Galleria. You might think, why make another one?. Well, most of us are using plugins like these on our websites, so why not use our own?

Cool notification messages with CSS3 & Jquery - Nowadays, UX is a key factor when it comes about creating/designing a product or system. To keep users happy, developers struggle to create a good experience and a better interactivity. UX is a term used to describe the overall experience and satisfaction a user has when using a product or system.

Create a 3D Opera Logo - In this week’s tutorial I will show you how to create a 3D Opera logo. You will start with two simple circles and some basic effects. Next, using multiple fills and strokes along with Pathfinder options, opacity masks and some new effects you will create your own logo. The final result can easily be turned into a nice icon.

F*cking Brilliant, a great Read or just magnificent Tips!

Time Management for Creative Minds - If you’ve ever missed a deadline or had to pull a red-eyed all-nighter, you’ve probably wished there were more hours in a day. While you can’t pull a Superman and slow the Earth’s rotation, you can learn to use your time more effectively.

9 Tips for Emailing Important People - As web professionals, we spend a significant amount of time communicating through email. In many cases, getting a fast response to our emails can mean the difference between enjoying our job and stressing about deadlines.

10 ways to improve your programming skills - Learning new programming languages will expose you to new ways of thinking; especially if the new language uses a paradigm which you aren’t yet familiar with. Many of the ways of thinking that you will learn can be applied to languages that you already know ..

The Insidious Evils of ‘Like’ Culture - If you happen to be reading this article online, you’ll notice that right above it, there is a button labeled “like.” Please stop reading and click on “like” right now. Thank you. I feel much better. It’s good to be liked. There’s a growing cultural obsession with being blogged, digged, tweeted and liked.

Creating Meaningful Site Search by Challenging Assumptions – The role of search in your site can be a hot topic. Sometimes there is pressure to make it a giant bandage to cover poor navigational structure, and other times it’s included just because “every site needs search.”

The Medium Is The Message - Since the early days of communication, humanity has been captivated by the methods it uses to convey and preserve information. How we communicate with each other defines who we are and constitutes so much of what makes a culture and an individual unique.

A Modest Proposal - Proposals are difficult. They take too long. They’re usually an exercise in unrequited love. Is it any surprise creative professionals cringe when it’s time to put one together? Proposals are, however, often vital to being in business. Whether you’re running a solo shop or keeping a team of 25 busy, they lead directly to that next paycheck ..

The secret power of personality - The design of your site should communicate something of your organisations personality as well as make a connection with users. Knowing who you are and how you communicate is a vital for a successful site.

Responsive Design. I don’t think that word means what you think it means - ON 25 MAY 2010, when Ethan Marcotte coined the phrase “responsive web design,” he defined it as using fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries to deliver elegant visual experiences (e.g. layouts and type treatments) that accommodate the reality ..

Does Your Audience Care About Design? - You’re likely familiar with services like Readability and Instapaper that aim (in part) to make reading better by stripping away the boilerplate of a website and serving up the content in minimalist style.

The Art of Outsourcing – 4 Essential Steps You Must Know - One of the reasons people give up their online business is because they are overwhelmed by the nitty gritty of running their online business. These people tend to do every single thing such as market research, content creation, graphic design, web design, ..

On Tools and Clients - HTML5. CSS3. Responsive Web Design. Sass. Less. Javascript Frameworks. No one cares about this stuff. Let me back up, the people who pay me money to build their sites/apps don’t care about this stuff. Why would they?

The Fold Exists but Does it Matter? - The phrase “the fold” comes from broadsheet newspapers. It refers to the top half of the front page, the only piece of content visible without picking up the newspaper. Whatever content is on the fold helps determine the salability of the paper because it’s either interesting or it’s not.

 

I hope you have enjoyed these hand-picked great articles? Please let me know by sharing your opinion in the comments-section. Did we miss a great article, please let us know  .. To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @gonzodesign_