Tweet-Parade (no.50 Dec 2011)

It’s weekend! .. 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.

CSS3 Border-Image Explained - One of the more powerful new CSS3 properties, border-image is also one of the best supported, with the exception of (all together now) IE9. It is, unfortunately, also one of the most obtuse and difficult to ..

An Introduction To Object Oriented CSS (OOCSS) - In this post, I’ll deal with this often overlooked area by introducing you to the concept of object oriented CSS and how it can help improve both the performance and maintainability of your Web ..

“Mobile first” CSS and getting Sass to help with legacy IE - Taking a “mobile first” approach to web development poses some challenges if you need to provide a “desktop” experience for legacy versions of IE. Using a CSS pre-processor like Sass ..

Four Simple and Fun CSS Button Hover Effects for Beginners - Today we’re going to take a step back from advanced discussions about CSS preprocessors and return to some good old basics. We’ll work up four super simple CSS buttons, each ..

Why HTML5 makes justifying native applications more difficult - I have recently become very bullish on Web applications, and I now highly recommend that you consider them over desktop applications in all but a very few sets of circumstances.

Create progressively enhanced 3D CSS rollovers - Here we’ll take a look at using CSS, 3D CSS transformations, transitions and CSS animations to create some great rollover styles without telling people that they need to have certain browser.

Six CSS Layout Features To Look Forward To - There are six layout proposals that are relevant to us, all of which I described in the talk. Here is a little more about these proposals and how they will help you in developing websites in the future.

CSS3 Patterns, Explained - But how many really understand how these patterns are created? The biggest benefit of CSS-generated backgrounds is that they can be modified directly within the style sheet. This benefit is void if we are just copying and pasting CSS code we don’t understand.

 

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

Better Usability Through Consistent Design - Using a consistent design throughout your website or blog adds to the usability of the site. It also adds accessibility and search engine optimization features. A site designed with the user in mind improves the overall ..

ResponsiveSlides.js – (Responsive slideshow plugin that weights just ~1kb) ResponsiveSlides.js is a tiny jQuery plugin that creates a responsive slideshow using images inside a single container. It work with wide range of browsers including all IE versions from IE6 and up.

The Mobile Case for Progressive Enhancement - There’s a mentality that in order to do create functional experiences in the browser, especially for mobile, you need to use some hardcore JS framework, rewrite the scrolling logic, add a bunch of interstitial animations ..

jQuery Plugins for Responsive Web Design - Today this trend will be presented by the awesome jQuery plugins for responsive design. We’ve tried to put together various types of plugins that will help you to properly display your content on mobile devices, and by content we mean ..

A prototype is worth a thousand words - Wireframing is important.  I don’t think I need to labour the point about this, Its something most designer folk involve themselves with at the start of the design process.  If you don’t, you really should.

Feedback in interface design - Visual feedback is extremely important in User Interface Design. It tells the user what’s happening, or what’s going to happen next, and without it the user is left guessing or frustrated.

 

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

How to Design the Best Navigation Bar for Your Website - The navigation bar is the most important design element on a website. Not only does it guide your users to pages beyond the homepage, but it’s also the singular tool to give users a sense of orientation.

The 50 Most Useful jQuery Plugins from 2011 - To help you find a specific solution, we have split all of the plugins into the following categories: Form & Validation Plugins, Plugins for Responsive Layouts, Sliders, Galleries & Carousels, Modal Window Plugins, ..

What’s new for designers, December 2011 - The December edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, frameworks, some JavaScript tools and resources, color tools, e-commerce platforms, and a number of great new fonts.

15 jQuery Functions You Didn’t Know About - In this post I will list some of the less commonly known and some unusual jQuery functions and how you might go about using them to enhance your jQuery knowledge and improve your coding ability.

Displaying Icons with Fonts and Data- Attributes - Traditionally, bitmap formats such as PNG have been the standard way of delivering iconography on websites. They’re quick and easy, and it also ensures they’re as pixel crisp as possible.

12 Design Features Web Designer Should Avoid - What to leave out is perhaps one of the hardest task to deal with. Hardest in a sense that until now, many webmasters still did not realize what netizens dislike in a website.

Your jQuery: Now With 67% Less Suck - A few very simple things anyone can add into their jQuery workflow. When undertaking code reviews, three of the areas where I consistently see the biggest problems are: inefficient selectors; poor event delegation; and clunky DOM manipulation.

Web Strategy Guidelines: Building A Website From Start to Finish - Whether you’re a novice or veteran, the process of building a website is a complex task. It’s important to begin the project thinking of the new website as a whole. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Our 50 Favorite Web Developers Resources and Tools from 2011 - That includes frameworks, boilerplates, apps, Javascript resources, CSS3 animations tools…and on…and on. So, no matter what, you are guaranteed to discover something completely new and really, really useful.

 

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

Is It a Good Logo? 5 Criteria to Help You Decide - Creating a good logo is harder than it sounds. It requires creativity, skill and vision. There are some definable criteria to help you evaluate the effectiveness of your logo. Here are five factors that make up a good logo.

The Psychology of Fonts - Font is just one of the many factors that must be considered when making web design decisions. Tens of thousands of fonts are available for use by web designers and developers, and it doesn’t take a master’s degree to see that more are created each day.

Product Graphics: 6 Techniques to Make Images More Informative - Web designers have become very crafty with marketing techniques. Luring page content is always good, but when it comes to grabbing your visitors attention images are the most popular form of media.

Color Concept for Professional Designers, Traditional Color Schemes - A very instinctive part of a design is its color and it plays a major role in stimulating a person’s reaction or attitude which may vary from individual to individual.

Tips and Ideas for Designing With Blurred Images - We’ll learn all about how to use blur effects to help make text more legible, direct the viewer’s attention, and just make backgrounds more fun. We’ll also take a look at some different types of blurs and how to properly apply selective blurring.

 

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

30 Brilliant Social Media Marketing Tips From 2011 - With so many great social media marketing tips getting shared in the blogosphere, we wanted to pass along some of the best tips and ideas that came up in 2011. These are tips that, if you haven’t benefitted ..

Content Marketing Made Simple - Without a carefully thought-out plan of action for your content, your blog will never get off the ground. Think about your teeth for a moment. You probably go to your dentist once every six months or so to have that all-important cleaning and exam.

Forget Blogging. Network, Now. (Part 2) - Being a blogger means mastering a bunch of stuff you no longer need to master to contribute to the online conversation in a way that gets the greatest possible impact with the least possible effort.

What Elements Are Necessary In The Design Of A Blog Post? - In the spirit of design simplicity I’ve been thinking about the essence of a blog post. What’s absolutely necessary and what’s desirable to include in the design of a typical blog post?

How to Create a Distinctive Blog - There are millions of blog pages on the internet, and many of them are extremely good; a higher percentage of them, however, are lacking in many areas. So, what turns a good blog into a great blog?

Excellent Tips for Branding Your Blog - Branding is an important factor behind the success of all business. Whether you are selling a pen or a car, brand names work everywhere. People still prefer buying a Pelikan and a Toyota. This is because these names have grown up as big brands ..

Twitter, Facebook, Google+: Which Business Page Is Best? - The usefulness of each service depends on your company’s needs, but to help you prioritize your efforts, here’s what each has social network has to offer companies looking to engage with the public.

The most reliable (and unreliable) blogging services of 2011 - There are millions upon millions of blogs available today, and many of them are hosted on dedicated blogging services. These kinds of services have been around for a long time, with pioneers like Blogger paving the ..

Five Tips for Squeezing Social Media Into Your Workday - Maintaining a presence on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and other social networks is practically like having children. In either situation, you’ve got dependents that need to be fed regularly.

 

WordPress

Everything we know about the newly released WordPress 3.3 - With a new version of WordPress out and about, one might wonder just what’s new under the hood. Wonder no longer dear friend, because in this post I’m going to walk you through everything about WordPress 3.3 “Sonny” that we’re aware of.

Including content in WordPress posts using custom shortcodes – A shortcode is a text string between square brackets (e.g. [cta] ), which you can place anywhere in a post or page, to execute a function, which you should define in functions.php

How To: Show Different Icons for Each WordPress Category - Use icons for each category as a visual clue to help people identify content on the homepage. Fortunately this is pretty easy to accomplish in WordPress as each category has its own ID number which we can use to display the images.

Website Speed Part 3 – Caching WordPress - Now you understand the scene of what we need to achieve, a cached homepage which could have items within it updated regularly, that did not use the page cache of W3TC.

Displaying Theme Data with WordPress - A cool trick you can do with WordPress is display information directly from your theme’s style.css stylesheet. I recently used this on a site where the theme’s version number is used throughout the template to keep things current ..

Boost Your Likes by Creating a Facebook Giveaway Using WordPress - One of the things we did to give this site a boost start on facebook was creating a facebook giveaway campaign. For which you see the ad in the sidebar of WPBeginner. In this article, we will show you how ..

Creating your first WordPress child theme - We’ll be creating a child theme based on the newest WordPress default theme, Twenty Eleven. We’ll also be using some handy plugins and other tricks to make it even easier to create a child theme.

Responsive Web Design for WordPress Theme Designers - Responsive web design really took off in 2011 and I can see it becoming the standard by the end of 2012 – there really is no reason not to include it in your planning and build of new web sites ..

 

Search Engine Optimalization, Rankings, Analytics, Loadtime, etc.

How To Identify Your Site’s Most Important Traffic Metric - Visits, pageviews, bounce rates, conversion rates, pages per visit…which is the primary metric you should be using to evaluate your website’s performance? The answer to that question depends in part on ..

21 Types Of Social Content To Boost Your SEO - As search engines pay more and more attention to social signals, going viral is rapidly becoming one of the best ways to build links, attract attention, and establish authority and legitimacy in your field.

What is Duplicate Content and How Does Google Look at It - When you work on SEO, you’re warned about duplicate content. There are a number of suggestions on how to handle duplicate content on your website to be sure that it doesn’t affect your search engine rankings.

The Art of the Link: What Content Creators Need to Know About Linking - In today’s digital ecosystem the precious link is what feeds Google’s search algorithm, keeps content free and connects brands to new audiences. Business writer Amanda DiSilvestro unpacks the importance of linking.

SEO Strategy: 10 Reasons why SEO Fails - If businesses desire to learn from the mistakes of others and not have to make them all themselves, then a well-founded SEO strategy should start with an understanding of why SEO fails.

Using Cornerstone Content to make your Site Rank - The most common question we answer in our website reviews is “how do I make my site rank for keyword X?“. What most people don’t realize is that they’re asking the wrong question.

Modern Day SEO Practices That You Must Follow - Search Engine Optimization tactics have changed over and over. Webmasters have always been trying to figure out how to fight Google but every time Google seems to be the last man standing.

 

Tutorials

jQuery Fancy Switch - coding an iPhone style switch using jQuery. I’ve now put together a simple tutorial demonstrating how simple it is to build a switch that triggers two radio buttons in a field set. It also degrades gracefully if JavaScript is disabled just displaying the 2 radio ..

Create Elegant Tags With Sliding Post Count For WordPress - Our starting point will be a cool sliding tags design. Then we’ll learn how to use WordPress wp_list_categories function, how to edit its result, how to code CSS and finally a little of jQuery “Black Magic”.

Item Blur Effect with CSS3 and jQuery - Today we want to show you how to create a simple blur effect for text-based items. The idea is to have a set of text boxes that will get blurred and scaled down once we hover over them (CSS3 transitions and some jQuery).

Creating a Vintage Typography Layout in Adobe Illustrator - Vintage style typography is classic and remains popular still today. There’s something about the hand drawn and hand placed feel of these types of layouts that is appealing and draws your eye [Illustrator].

 

Freelance, Business and Workflow Related Stuff

Email Do’s and Don’ts - Despite the fact that social networking is anticipated to replace traditional email, there is still some resonance with the electronic exchange of messaging. One thing I’ve noticed as a young professional is the messages you communicate other ..

How to Take Control Over Your Personal Career Evolution - It is only a year since HTML5 and CSS3 were released, but we are already thinking how to improve these versions. I am not the new Nostradamus but, in two years the developers will find some issues with these and there will be a critique need of updates.

How to finesse 156% more referrals - Yes, we want referrals. We want a plethora of referrals.  A veritable parade of referrals. Even if they don’t actually say ‘genius’ (which I tend to hear whether they say it or not) a referral is always a stroke to the ego.

Winning Approval in Design Presentations - This article is an overview of how to deliver completed designs to other teams or stakeholders in the highest levels of design. I’ll specifically tackle how to walk into a large meeting to present deliverables and get the best reception possible.

9 Ways to Market Yourself in 2012 - Marketing and self promotion today is pretty straight forward. Think about what you do in your everyday life when its time to make an informed decision. Personally if I want to find the best deal on computer hardware, I do a Google Search.

10 Personal Finance Mistakes Freelance Designers Should Avoid - These are ten of the biggest mistakes you could make as a freelance designer, and you should definitely avoid making these mistakes if at all possible.

Keys to On-Going Work for Freelance Designers - The biggest challenge that most freelance web designers face is the constant need to find new projects. Having enough work from paying clients on a consistent basis is of course necessary in order ..

Tips For Living A Long-Term Freelancing Life - If you’ve just begun your journey into the exciting world of freelance work, welcome! Freelancing is an incredibly rewarding way to make a living—it enables you to pursue your passions freely ..

 

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

How to Establish Influence from Scratch - This article is the first time I’ve ever written about why I carefully hand-picked the people to be involved in my site and how the power of my idea has grown to both a money-making enterprise and a beacon of change in a badly controlled industry.

The Art of Visual Storytelling - What does it take to tell a story?  A talented writer might tell you that all it requires is a pen and a piece of paper, but storytelling doesn’t come the same way to all of us.

Design the Invisible to Tell Better Stories on the Web - For design to be meaningful we need to tell stories. We need to design the invisible, the cues, the messages and the extra detail hidden beneath the aesthetics. It’s all about the story.

Best CSS practices are killing us - She argued that it’s a myth that pixel-oriented site elements are bad, noting that the anti-pixel movement gained most traction due to Internet Explorer 6 not allowing fonts to be resized when they were defined in pixels; however, all ..

Yes, Experience Can Be Designed - Experience is one of the most compressed areas in human life. It brings together many complex factors such as emotion, perception, reason, memory, and intuition. In itself, it is an immensely complicated concept and it imposes a sometimes ..

A Guide To Heuristic Website Reviews - In this article, we’ll explore a scoring system for rating and comparing websites, we’ll visualize those ratings using infographics, and we’ll see what data and structure this method provides for reviewing websites.

Designers, what’s the rush? - We, as a professional community, often get into a conversation about what skills are required to be an interaction designer, or any type of designer. Some people think you need to code, some think you need graphic design, some think you ..

10 tips and resources for creating a stunning web presentation - A visually stunning presentation is sure to leave a positive impression on your audience, whether you are using it to market a product, introduce your services or communicate information.

Tips for Designing Your First Email Template - If you thought developing websites that work in IE6 was bad, wait until you start working with email templates. If you were developing websites 10ish years ago, the markup you were using then is what you use in email templates today.
 

 

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