Tweet-Parade (no.4 Jan 2012)

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.

Useful Online CSS Gradient Generators - Lately HTML5 and CSS3 tools have charmed the hearts of the web developers so deeply that it is hard to imagine the process of creating website or important design element without using CSS3 or HTML5 ..

HTML5 Please - Look up HTML5, CSS3, etc features, know if they are ready for use, and if so find out how you should use them – with polyfills, fallbacks or as they are. Use the new and shiny responsibly.

40 Essential CSS Templates, Resources and Downloads - Every web developer should have in their toolbox a collection of CSS tools and resources like the ones outlined in this article. A set of techniques that you rely on and that are always at the ready to cover any possible eventuality.

.htaccess Files for the Rest of Us - .htaccess files are used to configure Apache, as well a range of other web servers. Despite the .htaccess file type extension, they are simply text files that can be edited using any text-editor. In this article, we’ll review what they are, and how ..

Modular front-end development with LESS - The whole movement to make this sector of front-end development easier started with grid systems and the idea of object-oriented CSS, and has since been made easier with extensions to the language itself in the form of CSS pre-processors.

Bulletproof CSS3 Dropdown Navigation Menu - One of the most critical aspects of web design is the navigation. The navigation, above all else, must be clear, usable and cross-browser compliant. But the tragedy is in the fact that most websites have awful navigation designs that ..

New CSS3 Properties to Handle Text and Word Wrapping - CSS3′s word-wrap property was a feature that was new in CSS3 and it worked in just about every browser. The word-wrap property has been removed from the CSS3 spec and other related properties have been added.

Useful CSS Snippets for Your Coding Arsenal - Thankfully there are lots of great CSS snippets available online that fix common problems and design issues. In this article we have listed 30 CSS snippets that we think you will find very useful.

 

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

Love your devices: adaptive web design with media queries, viewport and more - What we need is a different way of thinking. We need to accept the inherent variability and unpredictability of the Web, and design sites that can breathe a little and adapt to such variations as ..

How Profile Photos Can Affect the User Experience - Web designers don’t often realize how important this profile photo can be. It distinguishes a blend of personality between each member. And this feature also has quite a few other handy applications to the user experience ..

Developing a Responsive Website Part 2: Navigation and Content - To start, let’s create a new php file, I named my “header.php” in order to keep things simple. In my header.php file I have placed my header, which simply contains the logo (I used the Developer Drive logo ..

Content Strategy and Responsive Design - The point of using a responsive approach is to allow the same content to work across multiple devices. This can make your job easier, because you don’t have to update content in multiple places.

5 Signs That Indicate Website Usability Problems – Web site usability is based on the factors that make it easy for a visitor to your website to accomplish his goals. The average visitor to your website will spend less than one minute trying to find information.

Rich JavaScript Widgets - This tutorial looks at how rich JavaScript widgets can be made responsive in order to improve the user experience of mobile visitors to your website.

A Responsive Design Workflow - Designing responsive website can take a little while to get used to because some of the layout techniques and the ways we’ve created mockups over the years are no longer practical. If you are accustomed to using Photoshop or Fireworks ..

Device Experiences & Responsive Design - While the task of designing Web applications and sites for multiple devices can be daunting, two techniques can make the process more manageable: classifying device experiences and designing/building responsively.

Helpful Tutorials To Become Responsive Design Pro - a collection of informative responsive web design tutorials that will help you master responsive design aspects of different complexity level. The mobile era is here and you have to stay tuned with all its trends and ..

A Smashing Redesign - Given that we love everything UX and design related, it must come as no surprise we are big fan of Smashing Magazine. Their choice of subjects is always spot on, and their articles show an impressive amount of attention to detail.

What Does It Take to Be a User Experience Designer? - That’s why I love writing about the importance of good user experience design, and that’s also why I get uneasy when I see “user experience design” reduced to nothing but the act of making good design decisions during implementation.

 

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

10 Professional Free CSS Editors - A few free CSS Editors will give the users the chance to create the basic design very easily. They can select the one you need from as many as seven various types of tabs and a number of options of editing those the user will find embedded within the ..

50 Best jQuery Visual Tutorials Every Web Designer Must Look At - This article contains 50 visual tutorials intended for web designers and newbies on how to apply effects with jQuery. There’s stuff all over the Web about jQuery, but finding the best tutorials to get you started can be tough.

20 Useful Free Google Docs Templates - A Google Docs Template allows us to upload, download and create documents with file extensions such as .ppt, .xls, .doc, .jpg, and .bmp to access on our personal computers.

How to Improve your Web Designing Ability - In this article I’m going to confront a few ideas that I’ve had rummaging around in my head on what web design really is, and how we can all work towards a better looking web. I think this is especially important if you’re a programmer.

Nailing Browser Support in CSS3 and HTML5: Invaluable Resources to Use Today- How can you know which techniques are safe to use now and which you should either provide alternatives to or avoid altogether? Join us as we take a look at a handful of our favorite resources ..

15 Free And Useful jQuery Image and Content Sliders Plugins - Content and image sliders have become very popular in recent years. With jQuery you can enjoy new way of web development and image galleries are the best way to use it effectively!

How to Design an Awful Looking Sign-Up Form, 10 Step Guide - When signing up for something – whether you’re opening a new bank account, registering for an interesting new app or trying to buy a flight – you want the process to be simple and quick.

5 Unbreakable Rules of Landing Page Design - When creating a landing page for your website, it is important to make sure that it is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and free of errors. This article will tell you the five unbreakable rules of landing page design ..

The separation of structure, presentation and behavior is dead - In principle, the rule of separation was good. It helped us explain the best practice and implementation of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It spun the web toward a brighter future.

Be Less Annoying: Reduce Bounce Rates through Better Web Design - A properly designed site can reduce bounce rate and increase engagement significantly. In this article, six important elements are introduced that are important for reducing a site’s bounce rate.

7 mistakes developers make - Great websites always seem to combine great design with great code. Since building a website is a pretty simple task you find many people learn HTML and CSS and figure that if they can learn that then they can design any website they want.

Knowing the Right Time to Redesign a Website - Your website is something that you cherish. It is valuable for you because you have spent a lot of time working on it and you always see to it that it is improving. You also make sure that you have reached every goal ..

 

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

Extracting Logos Using Levels In Adobe Fireworks - In all the years that I’ve been using Adobe Fireworks, I have always had to perform one task in every project: remove the background from a logo.

Typography and readability: 5 golden rules to follow - The graphic designers love to use a number of exciting and interesting fonts. However, there is a very thin line difference between fun typographic alphabets or character and some unreadable or jumbled mess.

Tips to Create Business Cards Attractive Design - Corporate logos, branding and packaging design are incredibly important components of a thriving business. Effective, attractive corporate design elements are instantly recognizable, and they convey more than a company or brand ..

10 Reasons Every Small Business Needs to Brand with a Logo - Pretty much every marketing and business expert strongly encourages the owners of small businesses to “brand” their companies with a logo, as well as marketing materials that are consistent across all channels.

Guidelines For Creating Your Own Icon Set - Iconography is an integral part of any UI design project these days. Icons have the ability to communicate ideas, functions and meanings in a common visual language. Let’s examine the amount of work that goes into creating an icon set, as well as the logical phases to follow when doing so.

How LO can you GO?- One of the services we offer as a design agency is logo design. No surprises then when we recently stumbled upon another agency offering the same service. So far, so average – the majority of graphic design agencies throughout the world do exactly ..

10 tips for creating the perfect logo - Get your branding right every time with our guide to creating brilliant identities

15 Brilliant Tutorials On How To Design A Logo - Many people think that they know how to design a logo, but the process is actually much more in depth than many people give it credit for. As such, many clients believe that logo design should be very cheap, and even ..

Pick the Right Typefaces for Your Project - The key is for your print or web project to have pop and be easy to read and understand. Experiment with a variety of font options and listen to your instincts when making a final selection.

A Beginner’s Guide to Pairing Fonts - Pairing fonts can be a challenge. Selecting two or more fonts which work well is one thing – selecting two which work together to achieve your typographic aims may have you reaching for the aspirin.

 

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

Blogger’s – Make StumbleUpon your Best Friend in 2012 - Back in August 2011 Statcounter came out with some surprising numbers. StumbleUpon (50%) has surpassed Facebook (38%) in referral traffic from Social Media sites.

23 Essential Elements of Sharable Blog Posts - What makes a blog post something worthy of links? What makes a blog post something that people will send around to their friends? If you’re looking to find some kind of value and impact in your blog as a communication tool, it might ..

10 Signs You’re Not Engaging Your Readers Enough - If you have a blog or website, it is important that you keep your readers engaged and interested in what you have to say. To determine if you are engaging your readers enough, pay close attention to the following 10 signs.

How To Build a Customer Base - Every business wants customers that bring a lot of website traffic and profits. A strong customer base is the foundation of a successful business. Whether you’re marketing for a blog or for a huge brand, every business needs to focus on its customers.

How Great Web Design Grows Your Audience - Let’s quickly review: Email marketing works. In fact, none of the shiny new communication technologies even come close. With more than 188 billion messages sent every day, email is a more important and influential tool for your ..

26 Tips for Writing Great Blog Posts - Do you blog? Feel like you’re trying to reinvent the wheel time and again? Looking for some ideas to simplify your content creation process? 26 tips, from A-Z, to help you create optimal blog posts every time you sit down to write.

What Should You Do Before Launching a (Successful) Blog - This post represents a complete strategy of what should be done before launching a blog, each checkpoint having a clear explanation, therefore the lecture will be enjoyable and the learning process ..

9 Tips for Integrating Social Media on Your Website - In this article, I’ll dive into a quick how-to guide to ensure your business website and social media platforms are working together to maximize your online exposure.

11 Reasons Why My Blog Is Better Then Yours -  In this post, I want to run over the things I find most important, things that make my blog stand out from the crowd and the things that help the site run so smoothly. Here’s a list of 11 things that make my site better than most

Why Most LinkedIn Users Don’t Get Results - A lot of professionals are on LinkedIn but few are maximizing it as a networking, branding and career tool.

7 Reasons Why Blogging Is Still Important in 2012 - Some people would like you to think blogging as we know it is over. But publishing content on a blog is superior to these platforms in many ways, like putting a human face on your brand, ..

7 Simple Ways to Get Your Readers to Spend More Time On Your Blog - Readers are precious and their attention is scarce.  Your challenge is to get your  readers to spend time with your content, get comfortable with your vision, and take steps to build a relationship with you.

5 Must-Read Links About Improving Your Blog - Today, I’ve got five quick links for you.

The Truth About Content - I spend a lot of time creating content, talking about content, and creating content about creating content. So much so that the word content is hard for me to even say without feeling a little weird about it. Say any word enough and begins to lose meaning.

 

WordPress

Learn How To Search The WordPress Codex More Effectively - The WordPress Codex is a wonderful resource for all WordPress users. In true open source style, it was created and is maintained by folk just like you and I. If you have a question about WordPress, your first port of ..

How to Add a Login/Logout Link to Your WordPress Menu - Almost nothing is more frustrating for a user than searching around for a login link in order to get to important content (this method only works when you are using WordPress’ custom menus).

35 Interesting And Useful WP Plugins Released In The Last Five Months - There are a few types of plugins that you often see, for examples the ones related to social networks, but most of the ones that you’ll find here have a very particular utility and plugins like them are not seen very often.

WordPress Transients API – Practical examples - The WordPress Transients API is a very useful tool which allow developers to cache data such as the result of a query for future uses. In this article, I’ve compiled a list of useful practical example to div into the power of WordPress ..

7 code snippets you should use on every site- After building dozens and dozens of WordPress sites I have come up with sort of a boilerplate-functions-file I use as a starting point when developing a new theme. In this post I’ll share some of the snippets included in that ..

The Ultimate Quickstart Guide to Speeding Up Your WordPress Site - In this tutorial we will cover all aspects of W3 caching, ySlow, Google page speed, CSS sprites & htaccess rules, to achieve a high ySlow score like i have done on my blog.

5 Must-Know Tips for Better WordPress User Management - But if there is one thing that I think that needs to improve yet is its user management settings. I mean, even basic functions need to be coded, like editing a user’s profile fields, add roles, ..

13 Free E-Commerce Plugins For Your WordPress Blog - We have evaluated various plugins and have selected 13 free WordPress ecommerce plugins that can be used to make a ecommerce store.

15 useful plugins for multi-author blogs - Below are fifteen plugins that can make managing your multi-author blog a lot easier. They include editorial workflow plugins, scheduling and calendar plugins, and plugins that will benefit your authors or make it easier to communicate with them.

Limiting The Visibility Of Posts Via WordPress Usernames - Controlling who is able to view a post is a simple task once the system is established. Limiting access to certain users has several applications, such as enabling a design studio to distribute artwork to its various ..

 

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

Quick Guide To Choose Right Keywords for your Website - Most small business owners think that by simply launching a website, they’ll automatically start getting traffic through search engines.  Now you have to carefully optimize ..

Making Sense of the Data, Part 2 - Google Analytics is a big world. I just want to scratch the surface with you here and provide a basic approach that you can use on a regular basis. Once you’ve been using it for a while, you can probably stick to a weekly to biweekly schedule.

How to Increase Pageviews and Reduce Bounce Rate in WordPress - On a bigger picture, it decreases your ad revenue. In this article, we will share with you tips and tricks that will help you increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate in WordPress.

5 Google+ Tricks to Dominate Google Search Results - There are a number of ways using Google+ for marketing can have a beneficial impact on your business’ search engine optimization efforts. Because Google is so eager to provide plenty of incentives for people to ..

5 Basic SEO Troubleshooting Tips for Content Marketers - The effect of best practices SEO on content to attract relevant audiences can be substantial. However, search is a dynamic marketing channel requiring ongoing attention.

 

Tutorials

CSS3 Modal Popups - Today I will tell you how to create cool CSS3 modal popup windows (or boxes). Literally, not so long ago, in order to achieve such effects, we used jQuery. But, as it turned out, CSS3 has all the necessary tools for making modal windows too.

How to spice up your menu with CSS3 – The idea is to slide an image out to the right when hovering over a menu item. Each menu item (which is a unordered list item in this case) will have an anchor containing two spans and an image

Full CSS3 HTML5 Contact Form with No Images - A code step by step to create a full HTML5 CSS3 contact form like the one above, without using any images. First, a little disclaimer. HTML5 and CSS3 are still working drafts; the goal of this tutorial is to show what we can do ..

How to make your own icon webfont - In this article, I’m going to examine the science behind making successful UI icons before teaching you how to make your own embeddable icon font. From designing the individual icons to converting them for @font-face embedding, ..

Arctext.js – The main idea behind the Arctext plugin is to rotate letters with CSS3 transforms in order to place them along a curved path. The curve is always a segment of a circle (hence arc) for which the radius can be specified.

CSS3 breadcrumbs - A breadcrumb navigation allow users to know where they are in a hierarchical structure and navigate back to higher-level pages in the hierarchy. Also, the breadcrumbs can reduce the number of actions a user need to perform in order to navigate ..

Roundup Of 26 Truly Helpful HTML 5 Tutorials - HTML5 a newly launched web structural language. HTML5 is a language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, and is a core technology of the Internet originally proposed by Opera Software.

30 Must See CSS3 Animated Button Tutorials and Experiments - Web standarts are changing and being improved day by day so CSS3 became one of the most important element of web design and development.You know,the websites of today need ..

A New Year, A New Responsive Dribbble Portfolio – Part 1 of 2 - We will be creating a HTML5 one page portfolio which pulls your Dribbble information and is responsive in all browsers. This little project will be presented in two parts.

How to Design a Dribbble-Style Homepage Layout -Let’s build the default HTML template. The basic HTML5 construct requires a simple doctype declaration. In the code below I’m also including some meta tags along with an external CSS stylesheet.

 

Freelance, Business and Workflow Related Stuff

Productivity Papers: Work Like an Expert, Become One - Many have wondered whether experts are born or made. If experts were born, it would mean that they wouldn’t have to make an effort to excel in their domain. They would coast through activities without struggles or setbacks.

From Noob To A Good Web Designer – A Step By Step Guide - Becoming a web designer requires a lot of learning. Unlike other domains, in web design  you need to develop more than one skill and you can’t do that without hard work.

How to Set Personal Boundaries When You Work From Home - Most freelancers do, but the challenges of working from home can sometimes make life/work balance seem unattainable. You may feel like you are constantly being pulled towards both family and work  ..

How To Deliver Exceptional Client Service - When the client hired you, they expected that you would design and develop a great website. They also expected it would be done according to the timeline and budget set during the planning stages of the project.

Managing an Organized Freelance Work Schedule - It takes a lot of time and dedication to build a freelance career. The hours are long, work can be tedious, and often you need to multitask like crazy. But the freedom of release from a regular work schedule can be fantastic.

How I got tons of new design clients with this small freebie - How could I find a bunch of potential new clients? How could I convince them they needed my services? And how could I convince them I was the best choice for redesigning their web site?

How to Deal with the Unique Challenges That Freelancers Face - In this post, I’ll outline some of the common challenges that freelancers face. I’ll also discuss how to handle those challenges that are most unique to freelancing.

9 Steps to Starting Your Freelance Web Design Business - In this post you’ll learn the main issues you need to consider to set up your freelance web design business. Up front though, I’m going to make some assumptions about you – I’m going to assume that you’re motivated to do this.

 

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

Is it okay to use templates and themes as a freelance designer? - If you’re a freelance designer, do you use templates and themes, or do you always build from scratch no matter what?

Everything is a grid - When you design or build a website, app, icon or UI element, you’re designing to a grid. It doesn’t matter if that grid is pixels, points, percentages, inches, centimetres or some other kind of measurement. It can be as abstract or specific as you like. It’s still a grid.

How To Design In An Unknowable Canvas - Have you changed your own process? Are you still starting with the cancans or have you made the switch to starting from the content and designing out?

Coding efficiency for beginners: write reusable code - Senior Designers learned how to code efficiently and how to leverage old code to be reusable. In this article I’m going to share with you some of the tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years.

The New Redesign Rules of the Web- With the ever-changing landscape that is the internet, web designers and developers are constantly tasked with redesigning some part of the web. Whether it be for our own sites or for those of a client, redesigning is a big part of working ..

Great Design is more a Play of Emotions Rather than Aesthetics - Aesthetics is a part and parcel of website designs and there is no shying away from designing aesthetics. But website design needs something more, the proverbial ‘x’ factor that can help it stand out ..

Is Web Technology Rapidly Progressing or at a Standstill? - Take a moment and realize how far our industry has come from where it originated. It seems like centuries ago since IE6 was considered the top browser and when being able to use CSS in conjunction with ..

On the Sails of HTML5: How New Technologies Change Modern Web. Part 1 - Today, from a number of those people who are somehow related to web development, only lazy ones haven’t heard about HTML5. You won’t be mistaken, supposing that at every modern ..

 

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