Tweet-Parade (no.51 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.

The problem with CSS pre-processors - I’ve been considering to use a CSS pre-processor like SASS, LESS, Stylus, etc, for a very long time. Every time someone asked me if I was using any of these tools/languages I would say that I’m kinda used to my current workflow and I don’t ..

Meet the CSS4 selectors - CSS3 and HTML5 are the two main buzz words. This matter might change in the future because, almost two months ago, the latest CSS Selectors Level 4 Working Draft was released by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

5 Incredibly Useful Tools Built Into Twitter Bootstrap - Bootstrap is an interesting framework or “toolkit” offered up to developers completely free of charge by none other than Twitter.com. According to Twitter, Bootstrap is “designed to kickstart development of webapps and sites.”

Learning how to use CSS pseudo-elements: :before & :after - Most people know everything about CSS transitions, rounded corners, box shadows and a bunch of other cool stuff, but I came to notice that not a lot of people know about one of my favorite highlights about CSS: Pseudo-elements.

The Definitive Guide To HTML5: 14 Predictions For 2012 - From tech titans like Zynga, Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple, to startups just launching, the battle lines of 2012 will be drawn across the landscape of HTML5. Below are 14 bold predictions for how HTML5 will evolve in 2012.

Multiple Attribute Values - Class names are unique in the ability outlined above. Other attributes are not treated as “multiple values” just because they have a space in them. But let’s say we wanted to be able to select elements based on individual values like we can with class names.

CSS Filter Effects Landing in WebKit - Filter effects have been around for awhile but were designed to work in SVG. They’re fantastically powerful at applying effects like color intensity, warping, or blurring to an image before it’s composited and rendered into the document.

 

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

Mobilise your website - When trying mobile design for the first time, not everyone has the time and resources to build a new mobile site or begin with a mobile first redesign. This articles explains how you can take mobile baby steps to design a decent mobile presentation for an existing site.

How to Make Your Website More Accessible - Constant improvement is imperative to a world of progress, including the web world. Designing an effective website requires a lot of techniques, skills and testing. Testing determines the usability of the website, which ties into accessibility.

A Look at Responsive Web Design - It is an approach to web development that allows a website to break itself down smoothly across multiple monitor sizes, screen resolutions, and platforms.  It allows the developer to create a site that is optimized for each platform, both in navigation, readability and load time.

Raising the Bar on Mobile - as my humble contribution to this most festive of web publications, today I’ll dig into the approach I used to hide the address bar in a browser-agnostic fashion for sites like BostonGlobe.com, and the jQuery Mobile framework.

There’s No Formula for Great Designs - But fluid grids aren’t perfect and, unless we’re careful when applying them, they can sometimes result in a design that feels disconnected.

Mobile WebSite vs Responsive Web Design - It’s been obvious for a while now that mobile internet use is on the rise, in fact some estimates suggest that as early as 2013, more people will use mobile devices to access the internet than desktop computers.

 

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

Microsoft Security Essentials vs Avira vs avast! vs AVG: Best free anti-virus/anti-malware program for Windows [3rd Edition] - Without a doubt one of the most popular questions I am asked is “which security software should I use for my computer?”

Importance of Typography in Web Design - Good typography can be a foundation stone to a flourishing web design. Web design comprises of a lot of text and hence making the right mark for your typography is a major factor in the overall achievement of your site.

Excellent and Useful jQuery Plugins - jQuery is the most accepted and most extensively used JavaScript frameworks among all the available JavaScript frameworks. Plugins are there to assist you and let you perform the desired action in a more convenient and speedy manner.

NikeBetterWorld Parallax Effect jQuery Plugin - a tutorial that took the original jQuery Parallax script he wrote and recreated a webpage with Nikebetterworld Parallax Effect. And also, he has turned the tutorial into a jQuery Plugin, you can download and fork it on Github.

21 Ways to Screw Up Your Website Design - Find Out 21 Ways to Screw Up Your Website Design. Screwing up your website design is very easy. The following lines are going to explain you a few things about this aspect.

 

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

Create a 3D Grungy Text Effect in Illustrator - In the following tutorial you will learn how to create a grungy, 3D text effect. Draw highlights and shadows on your text to give it that 3D punch, grunge effects using blending modes and other ..

Beginners Guide to Designing for Print - When it comes to print many graphic designers feel a degree of uncertainty. What may look really good, might not look same on the screen. There are certain guidelines you have to follow.

 

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

5 Sure-Fire Signs Your LinkedIn Company Page Sucks - If you are using LinkedIn to market your business online, you know how tricky it can be to set up your LinkedIn’s Company Page.  Who knows if you have all the apps you should? How can you tell if people are visiting your page?

The Comprehensive Guide of a Guest Post Writer - A guest post is nothing more than an article written by anyone different from the blog administrator or the team hired to write articles. To quickly recognize a guest post is recommended to search for the personal bio, ..

An Advanced Guide To Using LinkedIn - Like all of the other social media tools out there, LinkedIn is a way of creating and nurturing relationships. It’s a way of allowing you to be approachable, visible and helpful to those in your circle of influence.

How to Promote Your Blog with Irresistible RSS Feeds - I listened to some savvy writers and decided to slow the car, reach across, open the passenger door, and shove my RSS feeds out of the Pushing Social express. I believed that RSS feeds were dead and I wanted to do my part.

Content Mosaic: The 6 Most Common Posts on Design Blogs - Today, we’re going to look at six common types of blog articles and look at the benefits and drawbacks of each. At the end, we’re going to look at some things that you might want to consider when planning and/or creating content!

7 Reasons to Rethink Your Blogging Strategy: New Research - If people are adding nearly 3 million blogs per month, surely this is a tool worth understanding and maximizing. That is the conclusion Technorati reached in their 2011 State of the Blogosphere Report.

How to know what your audience really wants - They are looking for answers to questions, advice, and resources that help people like them get the stuff people like them want. When someone seeks out and clicks on your content it is only as a means to that end ..

How Safe is Your Blogging from Thieves? - As a blogger who spent 10 hours writing that EPIC post that almost nobody read, and as a blogger who paid more than a thousand dollars to get your current design done, there is nothing excruciating than seeing your work being ..

Top 5 Reasons Your Blog is Useless - Business blogging can be extremely beneficial, but only if you are doing it properly. If you find yourself frustrated that you’ve invested time and money into your blog but aren’t seeing any kind of return

The comments question – on or off? - As I often do, I threw the question of whether to keep comments or simply turn them off on this site and I got a lot of great response.

 

WordPress

Guide to Managing Premium WP Projects – Planning The Project - There has never been a better time to be a WordPress developer. The platform is under active development, the community is growing, the marketplace for both free and premium projects has exploded, ..

Create A WordPress Archives Template for Your Theme - An archives page is great way of linking to all of your important archives such as monthly archives and category archives on one dedicated page. It’s a great alternative to simply linking to your older posts in your sidebar and footer.

How to disable a Plugin’s Styles - At times you might need to disable a plugin’s styles, this might be for speed optimisation purposes for example. In this case you might be aiming to minimise requests for scripts by combining 2 or more stylesheets into one file.

Free Themes vs. Premium Themes – The Big Debate - Choosing a theme for a WordPress website is not an easy task. There are so many beautiful themes with amazing features and browsing them to choose one can be an overwhelming task. This freedom and abundance of choice ..

Create A Product Listing With Infinite Categories Using Custom Post Types - In today’s tutorial we’re going to leverage the power of custom post types, taxonomies, and custom loops to create a dynamic products listing.

Super useful WordPress hacks and snippets - For one of my last posts of the year, I have decided to share with you a list of the most exiting, useful and awesome WordPress hacks and code snippets to make your blogger life easier.

Include a Post within a Post or Page – How do I put a post into another post? How do I include a post inside a page? I always thought it was a really rookie question by people who didn’t understand WordPress and how it works.

How to Use WordPress Category and Tag Base to Improve Your SEO – There are two little boxes in your WordPress set up that many people ignore; however, taking a few seconds to fill these boxes in may just help your SEO efforts. These two boxes are your “Category base” and your “Tag base”.

70+ Resources on How to Start a WordPress Blog - One question I get asked often is how to start a blog. While there are many platforms to choose from, I always suggest that if your purpose for blogging is anything related to branding, business, or making money online, ..

Reduce Image Bloat in WordPress And Get Rid Of Unused Files - If you use a lot of photos and graphics on your WordPress site, you’ve probably accumulated a tonne of image files on your server that you have no use for. This is a quick and effective strategy for cutting ..

 

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

Algorithm changes: Ways to improve your Google ranking - Google has recently made some algorithm changes known as Panda. With these changes come various tips which can help you to enhance your Google rankings on the internet and increase your Google rankings.

Why Brands Can’t Ignore the SEO Potential of Google+ - The ability to create a new touch point with consumers, share content, build links—it’s an SEO goldmine in the making. Their wish was granted in November, when Google launched Google+ pages for companies.

 

Tutorials

How to Create a Pure CSS3 Slideshow - Today we will develop cool css3 slideshow (without any javascript). Slideshow will contain left and right navigation buttons, images, and tracker bar. We have to use left/right buttons or extra tracker ..

Slopy Elements with CSS3 - Inspired by many superb designs that use non-straight elements, I want to show you some simple examples and ways how to create slopy, skewed elements with CSS only.

Spectacular CSS3 Hover Effect Tutorials - The power of CSS3 is truly unconquerable and with the lapse of time more and more web developers and designers follow the cult of this technique. Today we would like to present you a collection of CSS3 hover effect tutorials.

 

Freelance, Business and Workflow Related Stuff

Are You Losing Sales By Giving Customers Too Many Choices? - Contrary to popular belief, too many choices can be bad for sales. Customers can be attracted to a large number of choices, but when it comes time to make a purchase, too many options can make decision making difficult and lead to fewer sales.

Turning Small Projects Into Big Profit, A Case Study - We knew that there was money to be made on smaller projects, but it wasn’t until we sat down and did some simple math that we realized the business opportunity we had been missing.

7 Ways to Ask for Testimonials – The right testimonial can help potential clients see how valuable your services are and win over someone who might have been on the fence. But actually getting those testimonials in hand can be a tough ..

Creating a Well Designed Invoice: Step-by-Step - Today we’ll walk through designing an invoice from scratch. I’ll be as in-depth as possible and include everything you need to know from the absolute basics to advanced features and even a little design theory.

It Will Happen to You – The truth is that no one is immune from life’s troubles. In this post, I’ll share ten common problems that most freelancers eventually face and talk about how to deal with each of them.

6 Groups of Hard Clients and 6 Solutions - This post isn’t about all clients, but hard clients specifically. I am sure you have come across them once in a while. It will help you detect their categories right from the beginning, before even starting the job.

Software for Web Designers on Budget – Ultimate Guide - Web design can be costly for designers; not only its process is time consuming, its tools involve hefty monetary investment too. Designers on budget are often hit with the same dilemma – powerful machine and lesser software ..

20 Things 2011 taught me about my business - 2011 has been one of the most intense, fun and challenging years of my business life. I’ve had my fair share of insane highs and crushing lows.

5 Easy Tips to Increase Your Bottom Line - In case you don’t know, in a nutshell your bottom line is the money left over after you meet your expenses. In this post I share five easy tips to help you increase your freelancing bottom line.

Streamlining Your Freelance Design Workflow - The creative side can be more difficult to improve upon due to the emotional attachment we may feel toward doing things in specific ways. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t evaluate how we work and aim to make improvements.

Two Weeks to More Client Leads - It’s time to step up your marketing game! Fortunately, there are tried and tested marketing strategies that have proven to be effective for freelancers. No need to reinvent the wheel.

 

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

Design is not Horsepoop - In his impassioned piece Design is Horseshit, YongFook suggests that the increased focus on designers as founders is misguided because design isn’t what makes most startups successful.

Restart With a Clean Slate - Whenever I hit a designer’s block I find that the best strategy forward is to start again with a clean slate. The difference between a writer’s block and a designer’s block is that in the case of a writer’s block, there is usually a blank screen in-front of you ..

Does Good Web Design Really Matter? – Sure, every web designer will tell you that design has a profound impact, which is an intuitive answer, but what evidence is there that supports the claim? Here’s what I found out.

Taming Complexity - I read often that the simpler something is, the more usable it will be. We understand that simple is hard to achieve, but we push for it nonetheless, convinced it will make what we build easier to use. Simple is better, right?

From Side Project to Not So Side Project -  there still seems to be something of a disconnect between having a side project and turning it into something that is moderately successful; in particular, the challenge of making enough money to sustain the project and perhaps ..

How To Avoid Imitation When Being Inspired - The best way to avoid copying is to diversify your sources of inspiration as much as possible in order to not have any one source make up too much of the inspiration.

 

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