Tweet-Parade (No.38 Sep 2011)

Hello Saturday! .. 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.

9 Essential Resources for User Interface Designers - Designing a great user interface can be a challenge, even for the most seasoned designer. Countless factors need to be taken into consideration and the difference between a good UI and a great one often boils down to paying close attention to the smallest details.

CSS3 Media Queries Tutorial: Part 1 - With the introduction of a whole new market of mobile devices and tablets, there has never been more of a need for your website content to display across a variety of platforms properly.

Do You Use These 7 Attribute Selectors In Your CSS? - CSS Selectors are an essential ingredient in developing websites. They’re the hooks our css has into our html. How may different css selector patterns do you regularly use?

jQuery Timelinr - This simple plugin helps you to give more life to the boring timelines. Supports horizontal and vertical layouts, and you can parameterize the majority of attributes: speed, transparency, etc..

30 Really Useful HTML5 Tutorials - Almost everybody is talking about latest enhancement in web industry. Yes, it’s HTML5 and CSS3. Really these languages expanded the possibilities of web design. There are lots of web designer s and developers who have started using HTML5 into their designs.

10+Example Captcha Plugin Using JQuery/PHP - CAPTCHA is designed to recognize the difference between a bot and human and sometimes even malicious software to provide the security to your system.

Exclusive preview of the hottest CSS specs [*] ~ providing an exclusive look behind the CSS Working Group and the lowdown on 13 exciting CSS3 specs being discussed right now. If you want to know the future of CSS, read on!

cssHooks – Expanding the Set of CSS Properties - In this article I will tell you about the jQuery.cssHooks object, which jQuery contains by default. The expansion of this object allows you to add new properties or values written in the . css () method, which are not natively supported by certain browsers.

How To Use CSS Combinators and Simple Pseudo Class Selectors - This week I want to continue and talk specifically about combinators before starting to cover pseudo class selectors. Combinators are ways to combine several different selectors into new and more specific selectors.

7 new techniques every web developer should know - Web developers always have to update their knowledges and learn new technologies if they want to stay tuned with today’s coding. Today, I’m going to show you 7 recent web development techniques that you ..

20 Helpful jQuery Accordion Menu Tutorials And Plugins - In a graphical user interface, an accordion is a vertically or horizontally stacked list of items. Each item can be “expanded” or “stretched” to reveal the content associated with that item. There can be zero or more items ..

Gold section and web design: how to use it and why - I’m talking about the gold section, that special number that, like an urban legend never contradicted, seems to be the holder of intrinsic and great abilities.

Responsive Image Gallery with Thumbnail Carousel [*] - Today we want to show you how to create a responsive image gallery with a thumbnail carousel using Elastislide. We’ll use the jQuery Touchwipe Plugin that will make it possible to navigate the images by “wiping” on the iPhone and iPad.

30+ Most Useful Web Development Frameworks - Web development framework is especially created to help you boost the performance and efficiency of your web applications, web services and website development task.

10 jQuery Plugins to Enhance your User Interfaces - Today, we’ll put some focus on some popular jQuery user interface plugins to help you enhance your current website to stay ahead of the crowd!

Building prototypes in HTML and CSS - If you’re building a prototype for the web, it makes sense to build it in its natural environment as it provides as real an experience as you can hope to achieve. Understanding how to build your designs can also give you a greater affinity ..

7 Essential Resources for Responsive Web Design - A large percentage of the world’s population owns a web-capable mobile device nowadays, with nearly 130 million people using iPhones alone.

Super Simple CSS3 Selection Declaration - If you’ve ever been on a website and thought to yourself ‘I wonder if you can change the background colour of a selected element ‘, well the answer is simple, yes you can! And boy is it easy…  with a simple CSS3 declaration.

Fresh Resources For Web Designers And Web Developers - I’ve stated that being up-to-date is essential no matter what you do for a living, so here are new resources for web designers and web developers, things that could help you on your projects.

Responsive Lightbox With jQuery UI - rlightbox is a lightbox plugin that is built on top of jQuery + jQuery UI and comes with some fresh features that doesn’t exist in its alternatives. It can display any type of content from images to videos (YouTube and Vimeo), Flash files and HTML.

The Best Way to Learn JavaScript - your blueprint, your roadmap, your plan of action for learning JavaScript! You don’t have to worry about finding the best resources, sorting out the bad ones, and figuring out what to learn next. It’s all here. Just follow it, step by step.

CSS3 Click Chart [*] - Click a heading to view details on that property. You can also view the raw CSS for this page. I will be updating this page regularly to eventually display all CSS3 properties.

Rules For Designing Web Designing - There are quite a few guides outlining principles for web design. Many of them have plenty of useful information, but I found that about all of these guides are filled with utilitarian web principles and offer little to nothing on aesthetic principles.

HTML 5 Canvas Deep Dive [*] - Canvas is a 2D drawing API recently added to HTML and supported by most browsers (even Internet Explorer 9 beta). Canvas allows you to draw anything you want directly in the webbrowser without the use of plugins like Flash or Java. With a deceptively simple API, Canvas has the ability to revolutionize how we build web applications for all devices, not just desktops.

CSS3 Image Styles [*] - When applying CSS3 inset box-shadow or border-radius directly to the image element, the browser doesn’t render the CSS style perfectly. However, if the image is applied as background-image, you can add any style to it and have it rendered properly. 

CSS Buttons With Icons But No Images - As a web developer I don’t really get on with images and if I can avoid using them I will, so when I saw this trick about displaying icons in a button without using any images I wanted to explorer what other icons you can use just by using CSS.

8 Tools and Scripts for Responsive Web Design [*] - Along the way, I discovered some interesting techniques, useful resources, and handy tools to help with the task. So in this article, some of those tools and scripts I came across that make developing a responsive website a whole lot easier.

Create An Animated Bar Graph With HTML, CSS And jQuery - How can we as Web designers get in on all of this hot graph action? There are actually quite a few ways to display graphs on the Web. We could simply create an image and nail it to a Web page.

20 Awesome jQuery UI Resources - jQuery UI has opened many paths for us and you can get many of UI resources free of cost. We are showcasing some of the best jQuery resources that will be highly useful to you.

 

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

Kerning.js - CSS, meet kerning. Kerning, meet CSS. Kern, style, transform, and scale your web type with real CSS rules, automatically. Print designers have had it easy for way too long. This is 2011; the web has been around for over a decade, yet web designers don’t get full control over their typography?

Focus on Typography: Space [*] - There are a number of ways to add breathing space to your type. White space or negative space helps to focus attention on the words, while line spacing and letter spacing can help to make your text more readable.

45 Amazing and Free Photoshop Actions - Photoshop actions allow designers and photographers to automate common sequences for increased efficiency. There are countless actions available that can be downloaded for free, and in this post we’ll feature 45 of them

Can Your Logo Hit It Right For You Always? Importance of a Logo for Your Business - A finely designed logo speaks for you and conveys the right message you wanted to transmit to your customers. It gives a solid identity to your brand and stays in the minds of the ..

How to Create Credible Infographics - Infographics have become an increasingly popular inclusion in the blog posts of many respected experts within the online promotional content industry in recent years. These great tools allow knowledgeable individuals to share their views ..

Design Process for a Great Logo Design - Top graphic designers create their logo by following a design process. That is their secret in being successful in this industry. It is not merely a combination of lines and colors. It takes one’s talent and intelligence in order to make the logo effective and appropriate.

10 Tips for Designing Better Infographics - Infographics have been around for ages but in recent years they’ve really come into the spotlight as an almost irresistible way to communicate complex scenarios and information.

11 jQuery Plugins That Can Enhance Your Typography - There is an array of wonderful jQuery typography plugins that give web designers greater control over their sites’ web typography. At the hands of a capable designer, you can leverage the power of jQuery in web pages to reach a high level of typographic elegance and sophistication.

3 Trends That Will Define The Future Of Infographics - Now that everyone loves them, early adopters and forward thinkers want to know what is next for the infographic. Is this just the beginning of a visual revolution, or have they already jumped the shark?

10 Things Small Businesses Need to Consider When Branding - Brand management is a process that helps your business produce long-lasting connections with your customers. Your brand is an establishment of how you would like people to feel about your business.

 

Blogging, Social Media, WordPress, Writing, etc.

Theme.fm Weekly Roundup #4 - Ending this second week of September we’ve collected some of this week’s happenings in our weekly roundup. A little over two weeks ago we the folks over at bbPress brought us one step closer to the release of version 2.0.

Optimizing WordPress Permalinks with htaccess - how to use htaccess to optimize WordPress permalinks. I’ll go through some htaccess techniques and explain how they can improve your WordPress-powered site.

5 Essential WordPress Plugins For Comments - One of the best things about using the self-hosted version of the WordPress platform (i.e. not WordPress.com) is the plugins. Sure you get great functionality with the base system, but you can enhance it using plugins, and the comment system

Create WordPress Shortcode To View PDFs - In the article I will explain how you can make you WordPress have a shortcode for PDFs to display using Google Docs. Google Docs is a free application from Google which makes it easy to view, edit and share documents through your Google account.

How to Secure WordPress Part 1 - WordPress is easily one of the most popular web applications in use, and that makes it quite a target for malicious hackers using PHP injections, SQL injections, Cross-Site Scripting and many others to compromise blogs that are not secure.

How to Secure WordPress Part 2 – The Plugins - But once you have the files hardened against different threats, it is time to start looking at some of the different plug-ins available that can help you further protect and secure your WordPress site.

Categories, tags, links oh my! How-to avoid duplicate content on your WordPress site - Organizing your WordPress site in the right way will help you to avoid duplicate content penalties in the search engines, plus keep your readers interested and keep coming back for more.

3 Ways To Convert Visitors To Subscribers And Reduce Your Blog’s Bounce Rate - A lot of blogs (especially early on) will have a high “bounce rate”, or many of their visitors will click somewhere else after they have visited the blog.

5 Reasons for Freelancers to Use LinkedIn - Many of the freelancers I know stay active on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +, but they ignore one of the most powerful professional networks out there: LinkedIn.

Optimize Your Blog Posts for Better SEO Results - Business blogs are a useful tool for numerous reasons. They allow you to educate and inform your target audience, build up your reputation as an industry expert, provide valuable internal linking for your site and much more.

A Detailed Guide To Write An SEO Optimized Blog Post in WordPress - If the content is the King, we can say SEO is the Queen. 1WD has already brought you a lot of articles on SEO to help you optimize your blog and make it search engine friendly so you can increase your traffic and your sales.

Theme Code Matters, Too - When you’re crafting themes, are you checking the quality of your theme code? The design is important, yes, but so is the code. Within the past year, the WordPress theme review team has been hard at work encouraging best coding practices ..

How to Fix WordPress FeedBurner Feeds Not Updating - We published a post 8 hours ago, and our feed was still not updated. After some tinkering around and research, we managed to find several potential solutions. In this article, we will show you how to fix WordPress FeedBurner feeds not updating.

5 Ways to Optimize Your Facebook Page - There are several lesser-realized features on and around your Facebook page that can be optimized to best reflect your brand. Let’s break down your page visually into 5 major parts to understand best how to optimize your Facebook page:

Six Solid Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress [*] - If you think you know what WordPress is, and what is it used for, I still believe you need to give this article a read to get to know what WordPress is really capable of.

WordPress Essentials: Interacting With The WordPress Database - Because this functionality is built into WordPress, there is no need to open a separate database connection (in which case, you would be duplicating code), and there is no need to perform hacks such as modifying a result set after it has been queried.

10 Free Responsive WordPress Themes [*] - Responsive design has been buzzing on the internet since Ethan Marcotte’s post on A List Apart last May. It takes into account the fact that there is a growing number of devices that people are using to interact with the web.

Around the WordPress Community this Week - Seems like only yesterday did our WordPress Weekly Roundup air, yet a whole week has rushed by delivering lots of interesting content and ideas revolving around WordPress and its communities.

A Roundup of Valuable Facebook Tools - Not long ago we had a post featuring some valuable Twitter tools, and we received requests to do the same kind of post for Facebook. In the interest of giving our readers what they want, and the community content that is useful, this post was born

Using Shortcodes to Speed Up Posting with Popular Services - Today, we’re going to look at how to use shortcodes in conjunction with a variety of popular services – including sites like YouTube and Flickr by first recapping how to create a shortcode, and then how to..

WordPress Backup to Dropbox - Welcome to WordPress Backup to Dropbox! A plugin for WordPress that automatically creates a backup your blog and uploads it to Dropbox.

 

Search Engine Optimalization, Rankings, Analytics, etc.

8 Revolutionary Ways That Are Much Better Than SEO For Any Blog/Website - People have always used SEO, short for Search engine optimization to bring in a lot of traffic to their websites. Being high in search engine rankings for prime keywords was one thing that brought in thousands of visitors to your website regularly.

SEO Guide to Creating Viral Linkbait and Infographics - Linkbait is viral content with the specific aim to attract links from the “linkerati” – this is a term coined to describe people on the web who might be able to give links. Links drive their own traffic, but they’re also a critical component to search engine ranking algorithms.

Everything you need to know about rel=”author” - In this article, I am going to give you everything you need to know about the tag including what it is, why it is important and the possible future scenarios in which this tag will be used to enhance your personal “brand” (meaning you) know matter where you write.

Link Building Year Two: Now What? - The first part of an SEO campaign involves research and on site optimization. Phase two is link building, which is an ongoing campaign to increase a company’s brand and website in the search engines by building trust.

5 Free SEO Tools You Need To Discover - Automated power in your hand.

99 Ways to Build Links by Giving Stuff Away (and Improve Your Brand Too) - 99 actionable ways to gain links by giving stuff away. By the end you’ll have a ton of link building ideas, some of which I hope will be new to you. This is a springboard for new ideas ..

What You Need to Know Before You Start Your SEO Campaign - The main point of this post is to improve the general understanding of first time SEO’s. Far too many webmasters jump into Link Building and Keyword Research without realising that all of their work will probably be in vain.

The 21 Greatest SEO Myths of the Modern World - They say that ignorance is bliss and knowledge is power but somewhere between these clichés there’s a spot reserved for individuals who possess a little too much knowledge to be blissful but still only enough knowledge to be dangerous.

7 Simple Actions To Reduce Your Blog’s Bounce Rate - Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors

Thoughts On How Social Networks Impact Search Results - Social shares can be seen in a similar way to a link. If you consider a link as a vote then a Like or a Tweet or a +1 is also a vote. And just like links, different social shares can be given different values.

Social Bookmarking Strategy Tips - A recent study found that the social bookmarking site StumbleUpon accounts for 50% of all traffic derived from social media , surpassing even Facebook as the leading source of traffic.

An SEO Checklist for New Sites – Whiteboard Friday [*] - Over 160,000 new top-level domains were registered yesterday. 160,000! This huge volume of new sites being birthed wasn’t unique to yesterday; this happens every day

SEO for Non-dicks - I fully acknowledge the value of, and need for, actual SEO; I just think that in many cases, the tactics employed under that title would better be described as Search Engine Manipulation or even Abuse.

 

Tutorials

Create a Responsive Web Design Template – The web is buzzing with responsive web designs right now. To have a single site that will change its styling accordingly to fit to the device it’s being viewed on. In this tutorial, a simple web template that is responsive .

Create A Google Static Maps Plugin - In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a plugin that uses Google’s Static Maps API to display a map. We’ll also look at the differences between enclosed and non-enclosed shortcodes.

30 CSS Menu Tutorials to Build Attractive Menus - Navigation is an extremely important part of your website.  Your visitors need to be able to browse through your website easily and find what they’re looking for without getting lost or wasting too much time.

Resources for Useful CSS3 Tutorials - Every developer knows the importance of learning CSS as well as using it effectively. CSS3 is such a large expansion of the existing coding language, that I’ve compiled a list of the most useful tutorials that a developer would need to use the language successfully.

How To Create Your Own URL Shortener - However, social media sites — primarily Twitter — have made URL shorteners almost a necessity, and some users have developed quite a bit of “social capital” in the form of links built and shared using a particular service.

Fresh Portion of CSS3Tutorials from 2011 - There can never be too much of CSS3 goodies! Due to the flexibility of CSS3 and its absolutely unbeaten effectiveness, this technology continues to conquer new spheres of web development.

Create a Hip Magazine Cover in Adobe InDesign - In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Adobe InDesign to setup a print-ready document and use a couple valuable techniques for placing text to create your own stylish and hip magazine cover layout.

 

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

10 Tips to Invoice Your Freelance Clients Professionally - Let’s face it, while receiving money can be very addictive, invoicing is a total nightmare for freelancers, especially designers with artistic talent. However, the truth side about the freelance business is you ..

16 Ways to Promote your Website - Many people spend their time maintaining their websites these days. Some even consider this as their primary source of income. There are so many websites which deals with various topics.

Winning Combinations: Putting Data and Design Together – Helping people find meaning in large, complex datasets is becoming an increasingly important consideration in UX design. While the need may be clear, the steps of transforming unprocessed data into effective visualizations are not always so apparent.

5 ways to protect your work online - Photographs are constantly ripped off, articles plagiarized, and even code is often stolen. Despite those risks, there is something to be said for having an instant audience online.

Client Follow Up Tips for Freelancers - Freelancers are always looking for new ways to attract clients and to land new projects. There are any number of ways to find new work, but the ideal situation involves not dedicating a lot of time or money in the search for projects.

Emotion in design - Our creations need to be more human, says Aarron Walter, lead user experience designer at MailChimp. He argues that the task of designing a pleasurable experience is made easier when we create a distinct personality for our interface.

Interface Design is Copywriting - The first is that words mean everything in the interface. Every single word you choose is important, from the call-to-action button to the headline to the words in an error message.

10 Rules For Writing A Compelling ‘About Me’ Page [*] - Writing the perfect pitch and crafting a compelling bio is difficult. That’s why whole industries exist to enable us to tell our stories better. Copywriters, creative directors and brand strategists like me wouldn’t exist if it was easy to articulate the essence of what we do ..

Determine a Good Designer and Client Match - Great design requires great designer /client collaboration. If you are a graphic designer, then you know all too well that one of the hard, yet fascinating, things about design is that it requires so many kinds of knowledge and thought—from conceptual to technical.

What Things Should Be Included In Your Graphic Design Resume? - Getting a job mostly depends on your resume for that is the first thing you have to appeal the board so they could call you for an interview. This proves that you need to mention every bit of your ability in your resume and that too in its own category with its unique style.

9 Free Productivity Tools for Web Professionals - As a web designer or web developer, focusing on your core work responsibility — producing websites — is tough enough of a job. So, I want to share with you a list of free tools to help you in various aspects of your work ..

Introduction to Defensive Web Design - There are several types of design and every web designer decides for himself which approach he takes, but today we take a look at a particular one of them, called Defensive web design.

How Metrics Can Make You A Better Designer - Metrics can be a touchy subject in design. When I say things like, “Designers should embrace A/B testing” or “Metrics can improve design,” I often hear concerns. Metrics can vastly improve design and make you an even better designer.

You Can’t Buy Word of Mouth - Good marketing may get people in the door the first time, but it’s good product development that gets them in the door the second time and the third time. People pay little attention to commercials now and are weary of the new guy who’s selling something.

Prototyping in code [*] - First off, let’s get something out of the way. Prototyping in code is something of a misnomer within the context of what we’re about to discuss. Code sounds scary, it’s something programmers do.

Editing tips for designers - “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

How to Deal: A Freelancer’s Guide to Coming to Terms with a Gig Gone Bad - When I began freelancing, I was open to anything. I would take just about any job, at just about any pay. I’m still like that, sometimes, although my standards have grown.

Unitasking - Emails get answered while to-do lists are created while graphics are exported while sites get updated. Notifications pop-up, and I suppress them. I am master of my desktop environment, and it’s wearing me out.

Streamlining the Handoff [*] - As a front-end developer, nothing stops productivity in its tracks faster than opening up a complex design document. There is too much to take in and there may not be enough time to figure the file out.

The Rules [*] - Weak designers believe they are artists. They eschew rules, believing them to be unnecessary constraints that serve only to stifle their visual “genius.” Such perspectives are overwhelmingly endemic amongst amateurs. Their thinking is analogous to musicians ..

The Lean Startup Methodology - The Lean Startup provides a scientific approach to creating and managing startups and get a desired product to customers’ hands faster. The Lean Startup method teaches you how to drive a startup and grow a business with maximum acceleration. It is a principled approach to new product development.

The X-factorisation of the Web [*] - There was a time—not so long ago—when passionate individuals would blog about their work for no other reason than to share their discoveries. The more prolific of these individuals built up an online reputation and became seen as experts.

10 Ways to Be a More Productive Web Developer - We could all be more productive. There are many things we can do — some big, some small — that will enhance the way we work and improve the outcomes of our activities.

7 Tips for Boosting Your Productivity as an Entrepreneur [*] - Time is usually the subject brought up most regularly when work is discussed. The discussions usually start off on the note of how they would want to add extra hours to a day due to having too little time or how time flies when they have so much work to do…

Is There Room for Negative Space in Web Design? - The user needs a little bit of room to breathe, your design needs a little bit of room to breathe and we all know the importance of negative space in design – you don’t want your site to feel cluttered, cramped and disorganized.

How to promote yourself as a freelance web designer - There can be no doubt, starting your own blog is one of the absolute, without a doubt, best ways of promoting yourself online. It will bring you lovely traffic, encourage interaction from your readers, and help show ..

Common mistakes designers make with clients – Part 2: Allowing a discount - I can already here the collective outcry: “What!? No discounts?” But I’m here to tell you that offering a discount to your clients is one of the most common and most deadly mistakes you can make.

Long-Term Considerations for Freelance Designers - Freelancing can provide designers in a wide variety of situations with a way to earn a living, and in some cases the experience that is gained becomes just as valuable as the income. However, freelancing for the long-term presents some unique challenges that should be considered from the start.

 

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_