Tweet-Parade (no.31 Jul-Aug 2011)

It’s Saturday again, .. and you 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.

10 Most Creative jQuery Navigation Plugins - This is collection of most attractive jQuery plugins for navigation (menu). This is various plugins including context menus, floating, dropdown and other custom menus.

Becoming Responsibly Responsive - If there were a buzzword for web design in 2011 it would be ‘responsive.’ As Ethan Marcotte, the man who coined Responsive Web Design, said, a site should include “fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries to create device- and resolution-agnostic page layouts” in order to be responsive.

Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers) - Welcome to another edition of the iNoobs series – where we teach you how to become a web developer (and how to grow lots of body hair and shoot omega beams from your eyes – because ya’ll know that’s the only thing that can defeat Superman).

Borders on responsive images - This is a quick-tip type post, nothing major but a simple and effective tip for getting responsive borders on responsive images in your responsive designs. As we know all too well, we can’t specify borders as percentages.

Columnal: A responsive CSS grid system - The Columnal CSS grid system is a “remix” of a couple others with some custom code thrown in. The elastic grid system is borrowed from cssgrid.net, while some code inspiration (and the idea for subcolumns) are taken from 960.gs.

22 Useful jQuery Animation Tutorials - Web developer created some great animation jQuery tutorials and today we just want list some of the tutorials which really stand out from the tradition javascript effect tutorials. So in this collection we have compiled some useful jQuery animatin tutorials which improve your skill in jquery animation.

Five Low-Hanging UX Tips - People are always looking for ways to improve their websites or applications, and oftentimes we come up with very big and overly complicated ideas on how to do that. Here are some simple ways to greatly improve the user experience of an app.

10 Excellent Tools for Responsive Web Design - So, you’ve decided to venture into the creation of responsive web designs. Wonderful! With the browsing landscape diversifying into mobile devices, netbooks, desktops and so forth, responsive web designs allow web designers to provide different layouts for specific devices ..

30 Excellent CSS3 Tutorials - In this post we have collected some useful and fresh CSS3 tutorials for developers and designers. If you like these CSS3 tutorials you might also want to check out our previous posts below.

CSS3 Transitions Without Using :hover - Up to this point, the most common use for CSS3 Transitions has been in conjunction with the well-known CSS :hover pseudo-class. Here’s a typical transition that changes link color on mouseover using pure CSS

The future of CSS layouts - After years of promise, CSS3 has finally arrived in style (if you’ll pardon the pun). It’s added a whole new array of tools to our front-end toolbox, giving us rounded corners, gradients, opacity, transformations, transitions, animations and much more.

Trying to Navigate Website Navigation - Let’s start off with a simple task. Most web users can find the primary navigation on the image below, but take a few moments to see if you can find the secondary navigation. If you had a problem definitively identifying it, you aren’t alone. Even information architecture (IA) experts ..

HTML5 – To Be or Not To Be? - Non-web designers won’t be really aware of what HTML is and how does it work. As a common man, he must have heard the term off course but he won’t know the advantages and disadvantages and to be honest, he wouldn’t even care much as long as his browsers are functioning properly.

8 tips for small business homepage designs that actually work – I admit it. I love to argue. I love to debate. I love to pick apart someone’s reasoning point by point. And the truth is, I am extremely annoying. Partly because I’m really good at it. But I think mostly because I don’t know when to quit.

9 Useful Techniques for User-Friendly Tables - Tables are great for displaying information. But making them user-friendly is a challenge. One reason it’s challenging is because the table grid limits the amount of information you can display in a table cell. This means you have to figure out how to display the information the user needs without displaying too much of it.

The Neglected Necessities Of Design - Right now is an exciting time to be in the Web design community. Every month we seem to stumble on a new thought-provoking way to put our expanding tool set to use for our clients and the patrons of the Web. Many designers are chomping at the bit to litter their websites with new CSS, advanced HTML and ultra-engaging JavaScript.

Wireframing is About More than Just Visual Layout - In this article, I will be drawing on my own recent experience to consider the topic of wireframes. Most specifically, I will be considering how wireframes are about more than just establishing the visual layout for a website and should not be created entirely in a vacuum, but rather with thoughtful ..

Five Lessons from a Year of Tablet UX Research - The iPad was first launched in April 2010. One month later my organization, AnswerLab, conducted its first UX research on the new device. We sought to understand what kinds of content consumers expect across mobile platforms, how it should differ on the mobile phone from the touchscreen tablet ..

 

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

The good and evil of infographics - There has been an explosion of interest in infographics. Lowly excel-charts have been overshadowed by the unexpected visualizations being circulated lately. Though information design has a rich history, magazines like GOOD, Wired, and Popular Science have helped to repopularize data visualization ..

A method to produce the perfect book - The perfect book. This is how designer-genius Jan Tschichold described this system. Not the ok book, nor the pretty good book, but the perfect book. This method existed long before the computer, the printing press and even a defined measuring unit.

Web Fonts: Custom Fonts Using @font-face - Web based platform are increasing in popularity day by day and a huge portion of ‘netizens’ completely depend on internet for their various needs. No wonder then that most of that companies are going online and one of the most important requirements of such sites are the way ..

The Web Designer’s Guide to Font Replacement Methods - Fed-up with Arial? Tired of Times New Roman? Font-replacement methods have improved dramatically over the past 2 years, but it can be often hard to sort out the different methods if you’re not constantly reading about it. This article will discuss various font replacement techniques that are out there right now.

11 Mistakes Customers Make When Getting a Logo - In this article we’re going to cover the common mistakes companies and small business owners make when having their logo design and brand identity created. These mistakes range from what you would think are obvious to some things you may have not thought about.

Boost your personal brand - Here’s a secret: promoting yourself is a team effort. The biggest mistake you can make when  planning to market, brand and sell both yourself and your services is thinking it’s actually about you. Really, it’s all about them: family and friends, colleagues, clients, employers and peers.

 

Blogging, Social Media, WordPress, Writing, etc.

How A Content Distribution Network Can Increase Your Site’s Performance - When you hear the phrase “Content Distribution Network” it may sound to you like the propaganda spreading operations of a 1984 style government. In reality, a Content Distribution Network is really just a system of computers containing copies of the same data at different locations.

10+ Facebook Tips You Should Check - When checking your Facebook account on daily basis is a ritual for you, you can’t miss on the General and important Facebook tricks that will make your life (Facebook life) much easier and comfortable.

10 Code Snippets WP Theme Developers Should Have on Speed Dial – One of the ways we endeavor to improve productivity when building WordPress templates is to have snippets of code available to us very quickly, through the use of tab-triggered shortcuts.

Using Custom Post Types to Create a Killer Portfolio - Quite possibly the best addition to WordPress 3.0 was that of Custom Post Types. This took WordPress from being a CMS that can manage posts and pages to being able to manage anything the user can think of rather easily.

18 Tips to Enhance Your WordPress Blog Traffic - As soon as you start the new blog the first thought that penetrates your mind is “How to increase traffic”? The first thing to consider is that you’ll definitely have to put some effort into involving some target audience.

17 Tips to Get More Exposure for Your Blog Posts - The most significant challenge that bloggers face is attracting visitors. For new bloggers nothing can be more frustrating than trying to figure out how to get people to see the content that you’ve spent time preparing.

Natively Detecting iPhone Users in WordPress - With the rapid growth of smart phone users, it has become increasingly important in web development to ensure visitors who access your website through handheld devices are catered to appropriately. There are a number of ways in which these visitors can be targeted, and in this tutorial we will explore creating a function to natively detect iPhone users in WP.

Images, Image Sizes and Post Thumbnails in WordPress - A recent exploit revealed that many of the WordPress theme designers and developers, including companies like WooThemes and ThemeShift are using third-party tools like TimThumb to manage their thumbnails, preview and featured images in their themes.

 

Search Engine Optimalization, Rankings, Analytics, etc.

7 Tips To Help Your Website Load Faster - There are several things to look at when your website has bad latency.  Slow loading pages can be frustrating for viewers and can be loss of business for you.  There are several things that cause latency issues on websites. This article will review examples from popular websites and examine the tools they use to help ensure that a website loads quickly and efficiently for viewers.

What do people type in the address bar? - Earlier this year, I added a feature to URL Fixer that collects anonymous usage stats from users who opt in in order to help improve the ways that URL Fixer corrects typos; the collected data includes domains that are typed in the URL bar as well as the locale (language/country) of the user who typed them.

 

Tutorials

25 Cool Adobe Illustrator Icon Design Tutorials - Most of us recall the logo first, when ever we talk about any Brand. The first thing that a company should go for soon after finalizing a name should be a Logo. A Logo serves as identity of your brand both online and offline, thus you should come up with the unique and unparalleled Icon design ..

Creating new HTML CSS website layout #4 (Gray theme) - After long delay (3 weeks I was on vacation in another country – hope that you missed us), I decided to make new nice article – this will new nice template (in gray colors) for our readers.

30+ Tutorials That Will Teach You Illustrator - There were a number of posts here at Arbenting that were really popular among the community that our traffic tells us are sorely missed. So I’m going to work overtime this first month to get those posts back up so that those searching for them will have their resources ..

Use Paper.js to create HTML5 interactive vector animations - Paper.js is an open source vector graphics JavaScript framework built on top of HTML5 canvas and developed by the incredible Jürg Lehni and Jonathan Puckey. Dr Woohoo, Claus Wahlers and Rasmus Blaesbjerg from HAUS create an example that explores Paper.js

 

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

How Images Improve—or Destroy—Conversion Rates - I’ll level with you. When you use images on your site, two things can happen: Images can either help you achieve your business goals, or hurt. Seems simple enough… …But until you learn the subtle nuances of how images affect people, ..

Types of Clients and Dealing with Them – Tips for Web Designers - There are many kinds of clients which graphic and web designers have to deal with. Some are nosy, some think they are very smart, some just don’t understand a thing, the list goes on.

Keep People On Your Site With A Strong Information Scent - A few weeks ago while listening to the CopyBlogger podcast I was reminded of information scent (it came up in passing about 12 minutes in). It’s a subject that doesn’t always get covered in design circles.

The design axiom/why css will never catch up with design - With time comes experience, and with experience comes a sense of caution. You slowly lose that gullible edge and you learn to see hypes and promises from a different perspective. And sometimes you hit an obvious truth that has been laying there all along.

Guidelines for Small Project Pricing - Over the past few years, I’ve had the pleasure of working on a lot of small gigs as a result of my plugin, Supersized, and our company, One Mighty Roar. I currently average about 3-4 small projects a week, most of them with new clients.

Steering Clear of the Bad Clients - The main purpose of designing a web and developing a blog is to build a community and to bind it with sharing information. This is achieved through sharing the tips and suggestions to make it easy for fellow web designers and bloggers too.

Utilizing The Power Of Recycling In Web Design - Truth be told, I am a philistine. When people talk about recycling, I don’t think of saving the planet. In my earlier post, “Lessons Learned: Productivity Tips For Running A Web Design Business,” I wrote about how we can reuse and recycle what we do in the Web industry to save time and money.

Type study: Is anyone paying attention? - I don’t have a formal design education, but I’ve found common sense and psychology go a long way when designing for readers on the web (or anywhere else). In my eight years of publication design I’ve learned that the basics of editorial structure come down to pretending your reader ..

Visual Design is not a thing - Recently, in our industry, I’ve noticed a disturbing increase of the term ‘Visual Design’. It’s often used to describe a job title, or a step in a UX design process; ‘we’ve done the strategy, the product definition, the prototyping… now, let’s make it pretty with some visual design.

From Noob To A Good Web Designer – A Step By Step Guide - So you want to become a web developer, right? After seeing all those cool web sites, you’re thinking that you want to do that too. Maybe you’re also thinking on quitting your day job, buying a macbook and a pair of glasses and going to the nearest Starbucks and start ..

Why is it Important to Set Your Specialty in Freelance Business - Without any doubt designing is a vast field. There is a lot of scope to learn in designing and because of the ongoing developments in the designing field; the horizons of designing are broadening. If you are a freelance designer, you need to have a good knowledge of everything associated with designing.

20 Unique ways freelancers can use business cards to find new design clients - Business cards are important for designers to have. They sum up what services/products you offer and how somebody can contact you on a small piece of paper. However, most designers don’t take advantage of their usefulness.

The Best Strategy For Big Innovation: Knowing Your Limits - It may not be a silver bullet, but design thinking can yield results if companies manage their expectations and commit themselves to implementing good ideas. Before we announce the death of Design Thinking, we ought to at least agree on what it meant — or rather, what it means, since, although maligned, ..

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_