Tweet-Parade (no.29 Jul 2011)

Yeah, it’s Saturday again .. and you all know what that means: A brand new Tweet-Parade! A Tweet-Parade is a 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.

Convert a Menu to a Dropdown for Small Screens - The Five Simple Steps website has a responsive design with a neat feature. When the browser window is narrow, the menu in the upper right converts from a regular row of links into a dropdown menu. When you’re on a small screen (iPhone shown here) and click the dropdown, you get an interface to select an option where each option ..

Unity in Web Design - Today we’re going to take a look at a design principle that plays a major role in the success of a web design: Unity. As with many designed elements in the world, unity can make or break a site’s design. A well “unified” site feels natural, organic, and seamless; Where an site lacking unity can feel disjointed, discontinuous, and discombobulated

HOW TO: Organize Web Development Projects Like a Pro - While web designers and developers are touted as being the tech-savvy and brilliantly creative types, they also have the unfortunate rap of being some of the most disorganized individuals on the planet. Luckily, most design shops come equipped with overly attentive, detail-oriented project managers.

Call to Action Buttons: A Survey of Best Practices - Call-to-Action buttons play a pivotal role in soliciting action from the user. To garner the requested action, buttons are placed on the website that allow the user to perform an action, such as buying something, or leading to another page for more information.

Responsive Containers - Media queries are clearly a huge step forward for responsive layouts. Letting you apply different CSS based on the width of the device or the viewport opens up all sorts of possibilities for adapting content to best fit a given space. Media queries work really well when you want to adjust the core layouts of the site, ..

Seven 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.

Learning To Use HTML5 Semantic Elements - HTML5 has several new layers, including a new set of semantic tags. While there is still some debate about whether or not we should be using and styling these tags I think at the very least we should start learning them.

7 Lovely Things About HTML5 Markup - HTML5 is quite a broad term, encompassing everything from the revised markup specification through to new API features such as audio, video, canvas and geolocation. In this article I’m going to focus on the markup language itself, and look at seven reasons why I love HTML5′s markup more than HTML4′s.

10 jQuery Developer Tips to Improve you - These are handy tips for any aspiring jQuery developer to improve their knowledge of JavaScript, be aware of the development tools available to them and hopefully become a better all round jQuery developer.

Animated Text and Icon Menu with jQuery - Today we want to show you how to create a slick menu with a nice animation feature on hover. The idea is to make some elements slide out, change and animate the background color of the item and then slide the elements back in with a different color.

Popular Mistakes in Universal Web Design - 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.

The New and Improved Way to Create Forms with HTML5 - After 12 long years, the core language of the world wide web (HTML or Hyper Text Markup Language) is finally undergoing a major revision with the release of HTML5. Although the much anticipated version is still in beta, with no official launch date having been announced; ..

XML Sitemap PHP script - Let’s first address the “why” of this script: in lots of cases, you’ll have static files, either they’re PDF’s, or static PHP or HTML files that create a site. This script assumes that all those files are in one directory. I know that’s a bit “lazy”, but if your site spans a lot of directories you probably should be using a CMS.

Don’t use IDs in CSS selectors? - Recently I came across the post by Matt Wilcox called CSS Lint is harmful, ranting about the useful free tool CSS Lint. The “Don’t use IDs in selectors” suggestion seems to have offended Matt the most, but I was surprised that many commenters also mentioned this as being a reason to avoid CSS Lint.

Responsive images right now - Responsive design is everywhere; everyone’s at it because, well, it’s a great idea. It isn’t without its problems, however… One of the more persistent issues is dealing with images. Resizing an image down to fit a smaller screen does work, but it’s a massive performance hit if your user is having to download a 1000px image to display on her 480px screen.

Responsive Web Design Techniques, Tools and Design Strategies - Back in January, we published an article on responsive design, “Responsive Web Design: What It Is and How to Use It.” Responsive design continues to get a lot of attention, but considering how different it is from the “traditional” way of designing websites, it can be a bit overwhelming for those designers who have yet to try it.

17 CSS/HTML Effects with Cross-Browsing Alternatives - Well, we surely have a lot of different ways to achieve similar effects and with CSS the hardest part is to make it look good in almost every browser. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time, if you get one good snippet that does what you want (and you understand what is happening) you don’t need to reinvent it every time you need a simple round corner, right?

Vertical Sliding Accordion with jQuery - Today we want to share a slick and flexible vertical jQuery accordion with you. The main idea is to expand the accordion slices on click and show some more information. The other slices will become less opaque and squeezed. When navigating to the next slice using one navigation arrows, a new slice will slide in from the top or the bottom.

40 useful APIs for web designers and developers - An application programming interface (API) is a set of rules and specifications that software programs can follow to communicate or ‘interface’ with each other. As developers are well aware, there are hundreds of APIs out there for doing almost anything you could imagine online. Some are better than others, and some are definitely more useful than others.

15 Important CSS Print Page Tricks - CSS Print Page Tricks comes as a great help to the environment at least if your sites deals with some educative stuff. Being an environment thinker, we should all try to conserve what we have. Students and even professionals likes to take printouts of important information, they find on websites.

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

Shading with CSS text-shadows - As a web designer, it felt great to use physical materials. And to be around John and Leonard, such careful stewards of their craft, was an education I could abstract; it’s easy to see opportunities for similar craftsmanship in the subtle and practical details of web typesetting.

The CEO of ME: 10 Personal Online Branding Tips - Admit it, when Facebook offered up vanity URL’s you stayed up past your bedtime to try and nab your name, or similar moniker you use around the Web. Likewise, gplus.to took off like gangbusters, before Google+ is/was even out of beta. And why? Because after being around the block a few times, we’ve all realized the power and potential ..

What Designers Need to Know About Typography - As a designer, you would always use type in your works. Hence, it is important for you to know the basics of typography. Typography is a central component of design and one of the primary ways of communication. This has been passed from generations and has undergone various improvements.

Blogging, Social Media, WordPress, Writing, etc.

37 The Best and Coolest Free WordPress Themes 2011 - Have a theme that suits your blog arguably tricky, a lot of options out there but not all qualified. Quality not only from the good looking side but also must be qualified in terms of code, navigation, and also easy to update and upgrade to match to your blog or website, personal or corporate.

10 jQuery Tumblr Plugins - 10 jQuery Tumblr Plugins – we have shared Facebook and Twitter plugins with you guys. Now, it’s time for you to check out this cool jQuery Tumblr plugins. Have fun!

Working With Code in WordPress Posts - Whether you’re a tech blogger, web developer, WordPress ninja or simply run your own personal blog, there are times when you’d like to share code samples in your posts, like CSS snippets, PHP scripts or HTML. There are numerous of ways of dealing with code in WordPress, and in today’s post, we’ll try to cover some of them ..

Reel ‘em In: Understanding Hooks From the Inside Out - The key to WordPress’ flexible foundation is in its use of hooks. Be it in themes, plugins, or the core, hooks allow unparalleled growth while ensuring compatibility with future versions of WordPress. As a result, understanding them should undoubtedly be a part of any developer’s repertoire.

20 of the Best Google+ Guides and Tutorials to Get Freelancers Up and Running - In my attempt to wrap my brain around Google+ and see how I could use it to reach my freelancing goals, I discovered a number of online guides and tutorials–all free. Here’s a rundown of some of the best ones I’ve found and why each might be useful to you:

6 Ways to Convert Social Media Traffic Into Leads - Are you getting traffic from social media? Want to convert some of that traffic into leads? This article will share six easy ways to turn lurkers into leads. A little background starts by evaluating your current lead generation process and whether it’s helping or hurting your efforts.

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.

25 Tremendous Tools To Enhance Your Google+ Experience - Google+ is getting lot of buzz these days and its not even one month before its launch – many users loves new social networking site offering from giant search engine company. There are already millions of people who have joined Google+ and enjoying its great features with their friends and family.

Search Engine Optimalization, Rankings, Analytics, etc.

When It’s Time to Revisit Your Keyword Research - The Internet is not a static thing. With billions of pages already published and more being created every day, there is more available content that could possibly be consumed in a lifetime (or even several lifetimes). User behavior changes over time as well; mobile search has exploded, social networking has forever altered the way ..

Factors that Could Be Affecting Your Page Load Time - Google has admitted that website speed is a contributing factor to how well a site ranks according to their search algorithm.  While page load time may be not as important as page relevance, it is still something that all site owners and web developers have to take into account when optimizing their website.

Categorizing Your Inbound Links - While it’s not fun or glamorous, it is important that site owners conduct a full link audit once a year. Depending on how long you have been engaging in link building, you might have thousands of links to sort through, but it has to be done. Digging through you link portfolio is important for several reasons.

Top SEO Professional Tip & Tricks - If you are a beginner to search engine optimization (SEO), there are a few basic items that you need to know. Of course, search engine optimization is not a simple task; every business online is optimizing its web pages and everyone wants to be on top of the Google list.

Tutorials

Create A Dead Simple Twitter Feed with jQuery - In this tutorial, we will be creating a jQuery script that retrieve twitter tweets from user account. It’s quick and easy, come with link, hash tag, alias parser as well as time posted (calculated relatively). Most importantly, everything has a class and will be flexible to style and match your design!

Optimise your website for Facebook - In this tutorial, we’re going to see how we can leverage the Facebook’s Open Graph to make our site more Facebook friendly. Doing this has many advantages but mainly it allows your external web page to be equivalent to a Facebook page. Therefore, when a user “Likes” your page, a connection is made between your page and the user.

Outstanding Text Effects Tutorials in Illustrator - Adobe Illustrator is a powerful tool that you can create fluffy, vague, sparkling, gelatinous, glossy, glittery, retro and revolutionary effects with. Creating a particular text effect in Illustrator is not that difficult now; thanks to the availability of huge number of tutorials that guide you through each step.

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

5 Steps for Taking on Something New - It’s a scenario most solo web professionals find themselves in now and then: You have the opportunity to work on a project that includes something you haven’t done before, and that something is pretty big. Maybe it’s editing video for the web, conducting user-testing, or creating a mobile web design.

Effective Freelance Business Planning Tips for Designers - Even a freelance business needs proper business planning in order for you to be successful. Freelancing is of great advantage to many for it provides flexibility for the workers. A freelancer can have control over how much he or she wants to earn and on what particular time of the day he or she wants to work.

Clients Don’t Quit Projects, They Quit Freelancers - There is an old adage in the business world that “employees don’t quit jobs, they quit managers.” The idea is rather basic and reminds us that it is most often the people and not the actual job that generates turnover. I think this philosophy holds true to running a freelance based business. But consider it this way: “clients don’t quit projects, they quit freelancers.”

What You Need to Know Before You Design - Before you sit down in front of Photoshop and design some brilliant piece of art work you need to know a few things about the project you are about to start. The planning phase of any design project is crucial to its success because any good design needs a purpose, it needs a goal.

How a Web Designer Can Lose Clients and Orders - Today, the world revolves backwards. I wanted to write a simple article comprising a few general tips for web designers about attaining more clients and orders. But that would have been a serious and dry piece of writing, nobody likes that, not even me. So to make it interesting I added a little twist.

How to Change Your Freelancing Perceptions and Prosper - People who are successful in freelancing will tell you that starting their own business was the best choice they ever made. Those who are thinking of going freelance, or are “happy” in a full-time job, tell a different story.

Lessons Learned: Productivity Tips For Running A Web Design Business - It didn’t work out as you expected, did it? The freelance life was supposed to give you more time with the family and free you from that incompetent boss. You even thought you might be better off financially.

How To Sell Your Designs Without The Sales Pitch - Let’s face it: sales make the world go round. But as a Web designer, you’re concerned more with fonts, color, hierarchy and images than with the sales process. Some believe that designs sell themselves; while this may be true for a few designers, it is certainly not the case for most.

Professional Practices They Don’t Teach You In Art School: Contracts – It’s Business! - Yes, everyone says GET IT IN WRITING! Still most people are afraid to ask a client for a contract. Don’t be ashamed of yourself for not doing it – most freelancers don’t. There are many reasons behind this problem.

The Anatomy of a Web Redesign Failure - All of the best practice documents in the world can’t prepare you for a thud that was supposed to be a splash when your big website redesign hits the market. Or should we say, misses the market. Designing a website is a difficult endeavor.

10 Simple Website Changes that Will Increase Your Freelance Sales - Is your website delivering new clients on a regular basis? Is your site’s sales funnel optimized? Have you been meaning to make changes to your site that improve your bottom line? Realistically, how effective is your freelance business website today?

Change on a Dime: Agile Design - What does it mean to have a good experience? Think of your favorite restaurant, the interior of your car, and the software on your phone; how do people craft these experiences? What details, planning, and design go into the process?

Interesting Facts and Myths About HTML5 - HTML5 is here to rule the world. Everyone is speaking about it and apprehending its usefulness. It is probably the most innovative technology at present day. But if analyzed, it will be found that, HTML5 is just the old wine in a new bottle.

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_