Tweet-Parade (no. 52 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.

What is Microdata and Microformats? - Microdata is a set of human-readable libraries added to HTML to make that HTML more semantic, and thus more computer-readable as well. You use microdata with existing HTML tags and attributes ..

Source Code Comment Styling: Tips and Best Practices - Developers who have spent any time on large projects understand the importance of code comments. When you’re building many features into the same application, things tend to get ..

10 Things Beginner Developers Should Know - If you are a novice developer, it might be confusing about where you should start, because the field is broad and provides many options for you.

Interesting -moz CSS Properties -  interesting vendor-specific features and prefixes. The beauty in them is that they allow developers to enhance where possible; they aren’t taken into account as core design, but provide nice little touches

Effects for the Web! - how to use the new filter-properties for CSS3 and combine them with methods implemented by most modern browsers. In the late nineties CSS 2.1 brought us a basic set of good-enough tools to finally get table-free layouts en route.

LessWork.less - LessWork is a super awesome pack of mixins and variables to be used in conjunction with LESS, a CSS preprocessor for faster and easier web development.

Top 50 JavaScript, jQuery Plugins and Tutorials From 2011 - jQuery is amazing as you can find plugins to accomplish almost anything you want. It makes your work easy and quick. And Javascript has always been a favorite of people. we have a list of top jQuery, Javascript plugins ..

How to Properly Design a Print CSS Stylesheet - I’ve put together this small guide for beginners to quickly craft a print-based design. There are standard concepts and layout techniques you should utilize for quicker loading speeds.

 

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

Good User Experience is Good Business - It may happen so that you do not have a copybook style ecommerce site and all you do is provide information about your brand or company to the visitors.

10 Important Web Usability Testing Tools - To developing a website Usability and User Experience are two most important factors. To make your Website more usable you have to look through this article for 10 Important Web Usability Testing Tools.

Johnny’s Top 10 UX Articles of 2011 - The end of the year is approaching and especially for you we created this list with our most popular articles of 2011. Enjoy and see you next year.

10 Crimes a Web Designer can Commit on Call to Action Pages - Call-to-action pages are dedicated to prompt visitors to take a desired action, whether an opt-in, a sale or any type of click that brings a user one step closer to a company’s goal.

A Responsive Design Approach for Complex, Multicolumn Data Tables - In responsive web design, one of the toughest design problems to solve is how format complex tabular data for display on smaller screens. In this post, we’ll explore an experimental approach to ..

State of the web: of apps, devices, and breakpoints - I respect those colleagues who say breakpoints are dead, understand how they reached this conclusion, and am eager to see where it takes them in the coming months as they experiment with new methods, perhaps developing ..

Less Is More: Calls To Action Under The Influence of UX & UI Design - Appearing on public-facing websites, CTA’s can make a big impact on site conversions when used effectively.  A homepage CTA is often the entry point to the most direct user path towards conversion.

The Goldilocks Approach - A good starting point for design that takes device resolution out of the equation. Download our boilerplate CSS and HTML files based on current best practices that will give you more time to focus on what is unique to each project.

 

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

How to Increase Your Website’s ‘Sign Up’ Rate - If you really want to increase your conversion rate, you should focus more on providing quality product to your users. It is a fact that the quality of the products is very important however, the increase in conversion rate can ..

10 Useful Wireframing Tools for Designers and Developers - Designers and Developers have to find out some Wireframing tools that can help their layout with various types of concepts. You can test these tools to come up with a best layout or design.

Tools of the Trade - The list was getting quite long so I decided to clean it up a little, and I thought it would be interesting to share the result. Without further ado, here are the sites, bookmarklets, and apps I use regularly in my design work.

Mastering The Basics Of Success In Minimalist Web Design - The more, the better. Nope. Not always, of course. Sometimes, we love simplicity over excess and from this weird human psychology, born a new concept, code named – Minimalist.

htaccess tester - To test your htaccess rewrite rules, simply fill in the url that you’re applying the rules to, place the contents of your htaccess on the larger input area and press “Check Now” button.

How to Create a Unique Selling Point for Your Home Page - Your website may get a lot of visitors, but how many of them actually subscribe to what you’re selling? Whether you’re asking them to sign up for a service or buy a product, ..

33 Fresh jQuery And CSS3 Tutorials – In this post we have compiled some useful jQuery and css3 tutorials.

40+ Fresh jQuery Image and Content Sliders Plugins - In this round-up, you will find the best of the freshest jQuery Image and Content Sliders Plugins so that you can take advantage of them and produce startling image and content sliders.

Top 7 Web Design Trends In 2012 - As 2011 draws to an end, emerging trends in web design for 2012 have already started doing the rounds. The year that is about to end has been good for some as well as bad for others but it somehow served everyone. Famous blogs are ..

Most Useful jQuery Plugins from 2011 – Responsive Layouts - Here are 8 jQuery responsive layout plugins highlighted by Speckyboy that are not only the most useful and popular from the this past year, but also the most ground-breaking.

Public Service Announcement: Watch Your @font-face font-weight - The problem is the font is muddier than you originally saw it, and it’s all about font-weight. You see, the default font-weight for headings in browsers is “bold” (or more specifically, 800). And if you looked ..

Create amazing newsletters - Email newsletters may not be the sexiest or newest topic in web design. But they’re still a massively useful way to spread your message, promote your product and get people visiting your site.

Web Design Mistakes and How to Solve Them - Web design is such a broad field that mistakes can be spotted all over the place – it is almost impossible to deliver a product without a mistake until you undergo full testing, which not everybody has the financial power or time to do.

Top 50 Free Online Web Apps For Designers and Developers From 2011 - So today we have a list of some web apps, that will definitely prove to be helpful for you. Those web apps include designers and developers toolbox, webmasters tools, developer toolbar and apps to create ..

31 Fantastic New jQuery Plugins for Web Developers - jQuery has dramatically changed the way we view frontend scripting. JavaScript was always a popular language even during the 1990s. But in the new millennium web developers have been smart and observed ..

23 Useful Online HTML5 Tools - Some of the latest versions of online tools are not well-known to web designers. The showcased tools are noteworthy for their creativity and innovativeness.

 

 

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

Company Logo Design Should Be A Perfect Combination of Fonts, Icons, Colors, and Tagline - A company is known by its logo first and therefore special care should be given to its design to ensure its relevance and uniqueness. A logo symbolizes the enterprise and ..

Top 90 Best Photoshop Tutorials From 2011 - Photoshop tutorials that are extensively available on the internet, but using search engines to find high quality Photoshop tutorials can be very time consuming and hectic.

5 Tools to Help You Identify any Font - The Internet is full of gazillions of fonts that can, at times, make life tough if you are looking to find the name of a particular font. You know, those situations where you have the font but you don’t ..

10 Tips to Improve Your Workflow and Work Faster in Illustrator - I found that I worked more quickly with Illustrator than with Photoshop. In this article, you will find some of the tricks that help me work faster and considerably helped to improve my day to day workflow on Illustrator

Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Icon Design - Designing an icon can be tricky as it is very important to balance good design and color with clarity. An icon, no matter how artistically designed will lose its value if it does not communicate to the viewer.

Quick Tip: How to Evenly Distribute Different Size Objects along a Path in Adobe Illustrator - In this Quick Tip we will use the Art Brushes and the Blend Tool to evenly distribute different sized objects along a path in Adobe Illustrator. I’m sure that techniques described here ..

How to Improve your next Graphic Design Project – We hear Graphic design tricks from experts for unloking your creative juices and smoothing your workflow.. Whether you’re fresh out of university or the creative director of a huge studio, some days there will be a sneaky ..

10 Icon Design Mistakes Commonly Overlooked - Icon design these days are being faced with the challenge of increased screen resolutions and retaining the old pixels of small icons. Aside from that, there are still other challenging tasks an icon designer should take note of.

How a Logo Design Can Bring Success to Your Company? - Every company has an exclusive logo of itself, which in turn is distinct from the logo of other companies. It helps to project the image of the organisation as well as assists in attracting customers.

 

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

12 Google+ Marketing Tips From the Pros – Are you struggling to figure out how to market your business with Google+? Looking for some tips and ideas? You’ve come to the right place.

Design Tips for Building Magazine-Style WordPress Themes - This not only reaches a wider global audience but also allows for the free flow of information. Without constraining signup fees these magazines can grow much faster with a lot less marketing. But to design such a theme ..

Why You Should Be on Google+ in 2012 - Do you have an account on Google+? Does your business have a Brand Page? If you answered “no” to either of these questions, here are some compelling reasons why you shouldn’t wait any longer — and why you should be on Google+ in 2012.

List Of Websites To Submit Web Development Articles - Promoting a site can be a time consuming task but it is an essential task if you want traffic to your site. The best way to get instant traffic to your site is to submit your site to article directories, website directories, social media sites, ..

 

WordPress

Display number of Facebook fans in full text on your WordPress blog - If you have a Facebook page for your blog, you might want to display how many fans you have. Today’s recipe will help you to get your Facebook fan count, in full text!

How to Change Your WordPress Username – Although we may smell as sweet no matter our name, sometimes we’d like a name that’s as sweet as we are. And in WordPress, that appears to be a problem if you didn’t choose a username wisely when you first set up your site.

 

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

10 Essential Tips and Tricks about New Google Analytics Features - today I’ll provide you essential tips & tricks about new Google Analytics features. So, it’s my minor effort to provide you something special which is related to Google Analytics that you can see below steps.

Importance of Keyword in SEO : Beginners Guide - Many bloggers are still not aware of importance of Keyword targeting and how a simple Keyword research will help you. It’s true that writing quality posts will help you to drive traffic
The Importance of Link Building - Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to your website to promote popularity and other benefits throughout the online world. Link building is one of the core tasks of SEO. It not only helps promote popularity among users, ..

Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid - SEO certainly isn’t rocket science, but it takes a certain level of understanding to implement well. Unfortunately, mistakes made along the way can affect the success of the campaign as a whole over the long term.

Start Integrating Your SEO and Social, A Blueprint - Can social media improve SEO, and vice versa? The short answer is “yes.” But, combining the traction of social media with the power of search marketing is a bit more complicated than it looks, and will require a ..

 

Tutorials

20 Useful CSS3 Menu and Navigation Tutorials - We can use the features of JavaScript and images to create website in good performance with features like navigations menu. Here are some great tutorials from the professional designers and developers that may be useful for you to ..

Brilliant Articles and Tutorials That Will Help You Improve Your CSS Skills - CSS is the second-most-important thing you can master when it comes to web design, right after HTML. Below are brilliant articles and tutorials they can help you master the techniques that will help ..

Journey Into Mordor With CSS - Today’s project is silly and fun, but it does have a real point and educational purpose. In a recent article, I explored five ways to use multiple CSS background images to create cool hover effects.

 

Freelance, Business and Workflow Related Stuff

9 Metrics to Help You Make Wise Decisions About Your Start-Up - Revenue is the most important metric when it comes to starting a business. In the end, it’s watching and learning from the traditional metrics that will help you grow your startup into a real business.

Best Online Invoicing Tools for Freelancers - Invoicing is an integral part of every business whether you are working as a freelancer or associated with a company. Don’t get cheated and try to keep tracks of your work in a professional way.

How to Use Great Testimonials, Once You Get Them - As freelancers, we’re told to collect as many testimonials as possible — but what do we do with all those great descriptions of how amazing we are to work with?

Setting up Freelance Business, Pay Attention to Details - In this post today, we will tell you of some important aspects that are required for setting up a freelance business on a permanent basis.

18 Speedy Ways for Freelancers to Earn Extra Money that Actually Work - There are a few ways to generate extra cash quickly, for support when you experience a lull, at any point in your career. 18 ways I’ve discovered that could earn ..

How designers and engineers can play nice (and still run with scissors) - As a designer at engineering-centric companies for the last 10 years or so, I spend a lot of time working with engineers. These collaborations are the most functional and fruitful work relationships I’ve had.

10 Ways to be a More Efficient Freelancer that may Affect Your WOW Career - Working as a freelancer has many benefits, you work your own hours, you don’t have to worry about a nagging boss, you can work in your underwear.. the list goes on.

How to Improve Designer and Client Relationships - A designer-client relationship is more like an enchanting relationship with your loved one. In both cases, they have their own individual requirements and there are certain essential tips to be followed that would definitely ..

Freelance Designing in the Long Run, Points to Ponder - Before you get into freelancing you have to ask yourself a few questions so that you can decide if this is the right thing to do or not. We will be discussing a few points to consider if you plan opt for long-term freelancing.

13 Useful Tips to Get your Freelance Business Started in 2012 - The thought of becoming a freelancer sounds very intriguing. In todays article I will give you some tips that will help you for the new year when starting or taking the leap to freelancing.

 

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

There Is No Box! - However extensive your approach, the idea is to preserve the consistency of content while creating a container that responds to its context. Ethan Marcotte has gone on to write a book on this method, again simply titled Responsive Web Design ..

In 2012, let’s stop talking web design and start talking product design - My hope for 2012 is that some of the old guard of well-respected web gurus stop talking HTML and CSS and start talking serious development. I love the way many of the old guard write and evangelize ..

Everything for free, always: how Facebook ads show us the sad state of the Internet - I don’t like anonymous sources, but this post by “a former CTO [who] was briefed on Facebook’s advertising strategy” caught a lot of people’s attention last week.

How Often Do You Try New Things? - Web design in complicated and requires a lot of time and knowledge — and patience. It’s no longer just embedded text background images and slices; it’s interactivity and dynamic content, it’s HTML5 and mobile development, it’s JSON objects ..

 

 

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