Tweet-Parade (no.45 Nov 2011)

It’s Saturday! .. Time for a brand new Tweet-Parade! A Tweet-Parade is a post filled with the best articles and tutorials of last week’s blogosphere. It’s all about webdesign, graphic design, SEO, tutorials, 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 Coding: CSS, HTML, Javascript, PhP, etc.

HTML5 Canvas Tutorial With Examples - The canvas concept was originally introduced by Apple to be used in Mac OS X WebKit to create dashboard widgets. Before the arrival of canvas, you could only use drawing APIs in a browser through plugins such as Adobe plugins ..

10 Great Websites To Learn PHP - Learning PHP have never been so easier, Here is a list of 10 of the greatest sites to learn php online.

How Do I Force the Browser to Use the Newest Version of my Stylesheet? - Sometimes it’s necessary to do a hard refresh to see the updates take effect. But it’s unlikely that average web users know what a hard refresh is, nor can you expect them to keep ..

CSS Transitions: A Simple Way To Delight Your Visitors - We all want our designs to be functional and usable. We want visitors to easily complete tasks and find what they want. We’d also like to delight them and make their experience enjoyable and memorable.

Wrapping Your Head Around HTML5 Canvas: Part 4 - today we’ll be diving into some of the more advanced 2D Canvas API features. To be a tad more specific I’m talking about beginning to use the animation. The animation features that we see coming out of Canvas have ..

Cross-Browser CSS Development Workflow - Most good developers by now accept the fact that pixel-perfect cross-browser CSS is not only unnecessary, but also totally impossible. Of course, when we speak of the challenge of “cross-browser” CSS, we’re really saying ..

Interactive Typography Effects with HTML5 - This tutorial outlines what is really just the tip of the iceberg that is interactive design. I will go over the development of dynamic, and generative banners to give your website that little extra wow!

What’s new in CSS3 Values and Units? - In CSS3 the values and units we can use in CSS properties are defined in the appropriately named CSS Values and Units specification, with the exception those relating to colour and images, and the pre-defined keywords specific to ..

CSS Box Shadow Property – The Basics and Fun Stuff - Box-shadow is a powerful property in modern browsers and we can make some really cool stuff with it. Let’s walk through basics of box-shadow property and then take it to the next level with ::before and ::after pseudo elements.

CSS3 Transforms: Adding 2D and 3D Effects To Web Pages - Transitions are a way to smooth css changes to an element so they’re more natural. However, they don’t define the changes themselves. Today I want to look at a set of more dynamic changes, namely transforms.

Tooltips, Courtesy of HTML5 Data Attributes - Tooltips are relatively simple to implement by just adding a bit of markup to your HTML and employing a bit of CSS. However, if you’ve never heard of HTML5 data attributes, you may want to check out this alternative (and much cleaner) approach.

 

Usability, User Experience, Responsive Webdesign, Mobile, etc.

Mobile web content adaptation techniques - This article will help you pick from amongst the many techniques for building a mobile website. It doesn’t describe how to do it, rather it instead tries to help you to pick the right approach. Before we begin it’s worth clarifying ..

An Extensive Guide To Web Form Usability - Contrary to what you may read, peppering your form with nice buttons, color and typography and plenty of jQuery plugins will not make it usable. Indeed, in doing so, you would be addressing (in an unstructured way) only ..

Responsible responsive images - Keep 2 golden rules in mind when it comes to choosing a responsive image technique for a particular project: 1. The small image should be default, 2. Don’t load images twice (don’t load the small images and the larger images).

Print Styles Forgotten by Responsive Web Developers - As web browsing technology continues to change at a rapid pace, budgets to update web sites for these changes often don’t match that same pace. Responsive web design has become the de facto answer to preemptively..

40 Fresh and Highly Useful Resources For Responsive Web Design - You are offered a totality of useful resources for web design that will be able to simplify your work, and to adapt your images for the following usage by means of other devices without destroying their structure.

 

Webdesign in Common, Web Typography, jQuery, Tools, etc.

Web Typography 101 - The rise of web fonts has given way to a broader understanding — and respect — for typography, typefaces and the way text is displayed online. Typography is an essential part of visual design — and as any print publisher will tell you, the way that text ..

The Pure CSS3 Content Slider - A (not so scientific) experiment with CSS3 animations and transitions.

bxSlider – Features: Horizontal, vertical, and fade transitions – Display and move multiple slides at once (carousel) – Prev / next, pager, auto controls – Easing transitions – Random start and Tons of other options.

5 Tips For Improving Readability On Your Website - A more readable website means improved usability and an enjoyable reading experience. We all want that for our users, don’t we?

Case study in best practice: The whys, wheres and hows of going live - After 10 posts looking at every aspect of the web design process, we come to the moment of truth; making the site live. One of the hardest questions to answer in web design is “when is my site ready to go live?”

Common mistakes made by web designers - Although web designers continue to make significant strides toward developing websites that improve or enhance the user’s experience, there are a few persistent mistakes that can really take away from the overall impression of a site.

Type study: Sizing the legible letter - Sure, sizing text isn’t the most glamorous topic. What’s more, it can get downright contentious, with camps forming around their favorite units of measurement. The truth is, each approach has its own unique strengths and limitations.

How to Design a Tour Page: Examples and Best Practices - Tour pages are one of the most important components for websites advertising apps and/or services. The tour page is often where interested users will either make the firm decision to sign up or move on to something else.

Improve Website Usability Using jQuery, HTML5, And CSS3 – We’re going to take a look at HTML5, CSS3, and jQuery tutorials, techniques, and resources that can replace aspects of a website where the use of Flash was the dominant and most practical option.

 

 

Graphic Design, Brand Identity, Typography, Print Design, etc.

From Blogs To Billboards: 5 Ways To Use Your Logo - Creating your logo design is simply the first step towards branding your business but how many businesses are actually using their logo to full effect?  Sure, most will add it to their business stationery and maybe ..

10 Silly Mistakes Logo Designers make - When participating in projects, logo designers sometimes end up making small but noticeable design mistakes. Now, whether you blame this on looming deadlines or technical issues, truth is that these design mistakes can cost you a project.

10 tips for brilliant brochures - Make a good impression every time with David Foreman’s guide to producing better brochures

Tips And Tricks: Increase The Realism Of Your Vector Images In Adobe Illustrator - Creating realistic vector illustrations in Adobe Illustrator can be fun, but it can also give you a headache if you can tell something’s missing from an illustration but don’t know how to get it.

Logo Design: Five Key Elements for Reaching Your Target Audience - So why are logos so important? Well, think about it. As an individual, you want people to remember your face, right? Well, apply the same line of thinking to your business. Your business also needs ..

Howto: Effectively Use of Color Psychology in Logo Design - Initially, you need to ensure that the basic logo design is simple and the logo looks good in black and white. When you have got a cleanly designed logo you can start planning about the color scheme.

 

Blogging, Social Media, Writing, Content Strategy, etc.

Top Design Elements that Make Your Blog Look Amazing - WordPress or not, when you think you’re blog needs a face-lift, here are the design elements to look at and ways you can upgrade without an overhaul.

10 Things You Must Do Before A New Site Or Blog Launch - Launching a new website can be an intense experience. Preparing yourself for the launch and making sure you’ve got all your ducks in a row will ensure that your launch is successful.

5 Reasons Every Freelance (or Any) Business Should Have A Blog - blogging is a necessity for any business as a catalyst for continuous growth. In this post I will share some of the things I have learned and how these transferrable principles will work for others.

3 Things to Consider When Building Your Blog on a Separate Domain - I’ve noticed that very few blog posts talk about one of the first steps in developing a business blog—should it be on a separate domain or your current website?

10 Tips For Creating Killer Social Content - Content is currency these days. Follow these 10 strategies for creating blogs, websites, and videos that will grab attention in all the right ways.

50 Tips To Increase Traffic To Your Blog - But building a good level of traffic doesn’t have to be a pipe dream. With a lot of hard work, quality content, and marketing nous, you can produce a well-trafficked blog. 50 tips to get you on the right track.

3 Stages of Business Blog Success - If you are unable to attract traffic to your content, you can’t build a list.  If you can’t build a list, you can’t convert that list into sales. It’s called the ARC Method, and it’s powerful stuff. It’s particularly powerful when discussing business blog strategy.

What’s the Best Font For Your Blog? - Yes, a font communicates your brand to your readers and customers, but what’s the REAL goal? A font’s main purpose is to be read, and that’s it! People shouldn’t need to TRY to read your text, it should just happen.

 

WordPress

WordPress Internals: The Rewrite API - In today’s edition of WordPress Internals we are going to dig into the WordPress Rewrite API. Exploring its inner workings and mechanisms should allow us to understand WordPress better, why it does what it does and how it does it.

DIY WordPress Framework Part 2: Creating the Theme - The important thing to keep in mind throughout development is we want to keep this general enough that we can easily adopt it/build on it in future themes; I also made it a personal goal of mine to make this good enough ..

Top 4 Ecommerce Tools for WordPress – Make way for latest phase of WordPress’ evolution: ecommerce. If you’re selling products online, you need to take a serious look at WordPress as your platform for ecommerce. Today, ecommerce on WordPress is ready for prime time

10 Things To Do After Installing WordPress On Your Website - If you are new to WordPress and want to know the important things that should be done right after installing the self hosted WordPress package on your website, here is a checklist worth referring to

How To: Improve the Default WordPress Search Engine - I like the fact it keeps a log of searches on your site and the fact you can make it work with custom post-types is a big bonus. After trying a few searches on WPLift it seems to be a big improvement over the default search

Change style depending on User Browser in WordPress - In wordpress it is possible to change the body tag class to something depending on the browser the user is on. This is done by using a hook with a filter to add extra classes to the array for the body class.

Securing Your WordPress Website - Security has become a foremost concern on the Web in the past few years. Hackers have always been around, but with the increase in computer literacy and the ease of access to virtually any data, the problem has increased exponentially.

 

Search Engine Optimalization, Rankings, Analytics, etc.

6 Tips For Designing an SEO Friendly Website - It’s not enough these days to design a beautiful, functional website that addresses your clients needs. If you truly want your client to reap the benefits of having an online presence, then SEO is a necessity.

Best Options for Real Time Analytics - Real time analytics can prove to be invaluable when working with social media or viral campaigns that tend to send traffic quickly and in short bursts. In these situations you’ll need to be able to react quickly, and real-time website analytics ..

5 Key Signs You’re Doing SEO Wrong - While there is no set “right way” to run an SEO campaign, as each site will approach it differently based on their needs and goals, there is a wrong way to manage SEO. Are you guilty of one or more of these 5 things?

Simple way to spot landing pages and keywords to fix - here’s a very simple technique which will make the trouble-spots stand out. You can use this trick in loads of Google Analytics reports. It will work for keywords, for landing pages, for referring sites.

How to (Finally) Make Web Analytics Work for You - Have you ever wished you knew how to use that data so you could actually make changes to your website that gave you real and profitable results? Web analytics will only work for you when you learn how to use the ..

SEO Tricks from Patio11, aka Patrick McKenzie – [like this section] A good looking, well designed website will convey credibility and professionalism. Even if you’re just two guys coding at a Starbucks, you can look like a big, well-known brand. Invest in design.

20 Free Online Tools for Website Speed Testing - We all should be aware by now that Internet users are impatient when it comes to waiting for a web page to load. Thus, your website’s performance and ability to render speedily is critical to its usability and, ultimately, its success.

10 Point Website Optimization Checklist - The first step of any SEO campaign should focus on website optimization. This is the process of making your website as appealing as possible to both the search engines and your visitors.

 

Tutorials

Fun with CSS3 Transitions – Create Super Cool Text Effect using CSS3 and Lettering.js - So, in this post we will see how to achieve that effect with a little help of lettering.js and css3 transition property.

Display Feedburner Subscribers - Feedburner allows website owners to submit their RSS feeds to keep track of the statistics of the feed. It will track how many subscribers you have and how they are using your feed. You can see what posts and being read and which ones people ..

Animated Buttons with CSS3 - We’ll go through every example and see how the HTML structure looks and what the styles for the normal, the hover and the active states are (will only work in browsers that support CSS3 properties).

Design a beautiful CSS3 search form - You’ve already seen before how to create a cool CSS3 search box and now you’ll see how can you create the above CSS3 search form with 3D look using CSS3 box-shadow.

12 Amazing CSS3 Tutorials to Try - Getting to learn the basics of css can help you move forward onto a higher level of css which is css3. In css3 you do a lot more with your css for example buttons, icons, image slider, and more. In this post you will find 12 Amazing CSS3 Tutorials to Try

Create a CSS3 Image Gallery with a 3D Lightbox Animation - I’ve started playing around with a few cool techniques and exploring how to make the content accessible in less capable browsers while giving the best possible experiences to the ones that support the latest advancements in CSS.

23 Must-Read Tutorials for Advanced HTML5/CSS3 Coders - Below I have included 23 examples of what I would deem “advanced” web design. These are mostly focusing on CSS3 effects and constructing webpages with HTML5 elements (and some light jQuery in a few)

jQuery Animation in Navigation Menu - JQuery-powered menus are very reliable, simple and spectacular. Now if you are interested in improving your jQuery skills than you should check out navigation menu jQuery animation tutorials

Freelance, Business and Workflow Related Stuff

Social Trust Factor: 10 Tips to Establish Credibility - When building an online persona and brand usually we start with the most basic aspects including over arching brand, logo, colors, core messages etc. All of these are foundational to success

10 quick tips for first time freelancers - Beginning your freelance career can be a scary time in your life, no matter how excited you are at taking the plunge. Luckily, this article will outline 10 quick tips for first time freelancers, so you’ll be able to put a lot of your nervousness to rest.

17 things I wish I’d known when starting my first business - I now own a few businesses of my own. But I made lots of mistakes getting started, mistakes I could’ve avoided if I’d known a few things. Here are seventeen mistakes that you should avoid ..

The #1 Thing That Successful Freelancers Always Do - If you want to be a successful freelancer, then there is one thing that you need to get down pat. Let me share a personal story that illustrates my point. “That’s What I’m Looking For…”

Facts About Marketing for Freelance Designers - In this post we’ll take a look at some facts about marketing for freelance designers. If you’re considering moving into freelancing hopefully this information will help in your preparation. If you’re already freelancing and looking ..

How to Write a Proposal for a Guaranteed Design Job - Well, if you think being a graphic designer only needs creativity to succeed, you are wrong. There is still more to that and that includes making a well-written design proposal for the clients. How to effectively make a proposal ..

How Freelancers Can Compete with Bigger Fishes in the Market - If you really want to be a successful designer, you have to let go of these typical myths that you have surrounded yourself with, you can definitely attract big clients, all you need to do is do the right things at the right time.

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.

 

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

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design - Visions give people a direction and inspire people to act, and a group of inspired people is the most powerful force in the world. If you’re a young person setting off to realize a vision, or an old person setting off to fund one, ..

The Ten Commandments of an Awesome Lead-Generating Website - Your leads are only as good as the website that produces them. Fortunately, designing a landing page that’s built for leads doesn’t have to be overwhelming or time-consuming. By looking at examples ..

Getting feedback is crucial - Criticism is key to improving your craft and keeping clients happy and invested. The key is knowing when to get opinions, how to ask for them and what to do with them.

Why Blending Usability & SEO Really Matters - Though there is improvement, traditionally the term, “usability and SEO” represent two distinct countries, each with their own culture and belief systems.

 

 

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 me @gonzodesign