Tweet-Parade (no.8 FEB 2012)
25/02/2012 | Comments Off
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.
List Of Highly Useful JavaScript Libraries For Developers - jQuery can be most simply defined as a cross browser JavaScript library that is used to simplify the client side scripting of HTML. It is also the most popularly used java script library.
Easily Create A Table In PHP - Here is a small PHP snippet to easily create a table in PHP. First create the draw_table function. To draw the table on your page use the function we just created.
Understanding CSS Shorthand - When declaring certain CSS properties, you have the option to use either the longhand, explicit declaration of a single CSS property, or a single-line shorthand declaration that combines a number of properties.
Design Centric And Layered CSS Files - My thinking is a design centric approach to stylesheet organization would allow for better experimentation and learning and possibly make maintenance easier.
Rethinking CSS Grids - The underpinning unit of measurement in a grid is The Module. From that starting point, Modules are combined to create columns and fields. Grid Layout doesn’t acknowledge the existence, let alone use, of the Module.
13 Chart and Graph plotting javascript plugins - There are more and more Javascript chart and graph plotting solutions are being released and available for free online, we can easily find many very capable charting libraries.
5 Fantastic HTML5 and CSS3 Snippets for Your Website - Here’s a shortlist of five simple yet cool HTML5 effects that can add life to your website! No images and JavaScript are necessary, as all of them are accomplished using only a combination of HTML5 and CSS3.
Useful Sites to Learn How to JavaScript Code Easily - JavaScript has been described as a prototype based scripting language. This language has various features like it is dynamic and weakly typed. This language also has first class functions. Another feature is that JavaScript is a multi-paradigm language. It supports object oriented, imperative and functional programming styles.
Usability, User Experience, Responsive Webdesign, Mobile, etc.
Finger-Friendly Design: Ideal Mobile Touchscreen Target Sizes - Smaller touch targets are harder for users to hit than larger ones. When you’re designing mobile interfaces, it’s best to make your targets big so that they’re easy for users to tap. But exactly how big should ..
Elegant CSS and jQuery Tooltip: Responsive, Mobile-Friendly - Small detail in web design that plays a big role when it comes to user experience. Usually, tooltips are used to present a tiny amount of hidden content, that pops up when user moves a cursor over or clicks (less common) on a special target.
Responsive Design: Why You’re Doing It Wrong - Let’s discuss why media queries exist and how we can leverage them to truly solve the quandary of the ubiquitous web. Let’s talk about why you should let your content determine the breakpoints of a layout, not hypothetical screen sizes.
Tips for Responsive Corporate Design - With this concept, you do not need to create a mobile version for your website and you also wouldn’t have to bother creating an application for every popular device that is released.
Common mobile web design mistakes - Just thinking about mobile users isn’t enough to address the situation. Many mistakes are still committed during the process, and knowing what they are is the first step in effectively avoiding them in future projects.
Ultimate Guide to Responsive Web Design: 55 Stunning Tools, Tutorials, and Examples - Mobile is the new trend and most of the businesses are recognizing it. Having a fluid and responsive website will not only make you cooler, it’s the new way of increasing conversions and engaging your visitors.
Responsive Navigation Patterns - Top and left navigations are typical on large screens, but lack of screen real estate on small screens makes for an interesting challenge. As responsive design becomes more popular, it’s worth looking at the various ways of handling navigation for small screen sizes.
Webdesign in Common, Web Typography, jQuery, Tools, etc.
14 Amazing And Fresh CSS3 Effects 2012 - CSS or cascading style sheets is basically a style sheet language that is used to describe presentation semantics and also the looks and formatting of a document that is originally written in a mark-up language.
Using Multiple Backgrounds for Flexibility in Web Design - One of the most common design challenges is creating a customized background that expands and contracts to accommodate varying browser heights.
How to Test your E-Commerce Site Effectively - The design and usability of your e-commerce site has a huge impact on driving sales. With A/B testing, you’re able to isolate what is causing a spike or decline in interactions on your site, which in turn can help you improve your marketing.
Good Old Static HTML Sites Aren’t Dead Yet. Should They Be? - I am not saying this is wrong but sometimes all you need is a small static HTML site rather than a CMS-powered monster. I sometimes have such arguments with clients who always want a CMS, while a good old static HTML site is exactly what they need.
36 Awesome jQuery Accordion Plugins and Tutorials - In today’s post,we have compiled jQuery accordion plugins,tutorials and implementation methods.If you want to implement accordion effects into your websites the below plugins and tutorials will help you.
The 4-Point Minimalist Guide to Web Design - A typical webpage has images sliders, videos, social media widgets, blog summaries and advertisements vying for our attention. But more is not always better. Sometimes, more is just more.
Why is Easy and Good Navigation Important and How is it Possible? - if you do not want to loose your visitors for-ever then should work on making your website easily navigable and all the links on your site should be easily accessible so that your visitors do not find any ..
Principles for Successful Button Design - Here are ten quick and simple things that I always think about when designing buttons. Some simple, general design principles that can go a long away in optimizing the design of your buttons and other UI in general.
10 Cool Tools for Easier CSS Development from 2011 - These tools have greatly improved the work-flow, took care of many of those tedious repetitive tasks that every project required, or by simply offering solutions to many of those tasks that were time consuming ..
Graphic Design, Brand Identity, Typography, Print Design, etc.
How to Choose the Perfect Font for Your Needs - The design of a font matters a lot in every format of text. It takes years of experience and plenty of intuition to develop that gut feeling required to analyze a font for a respective situation.
How to Build a Brand for Your Business - I’m going to put this as simple as I can: A brand is consistant message of who you are. It’s your business’ identity, and should be the same over all of the branding you do, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Google+, you website, or even your business card.
Six important questions to be asked before you start a new logo design project - A logo designer should be very technical and loyal in his profession. They should have the entire knowledge of the creation and also about the enterprise they designing for. Thus all among these some important questions are to be asked before taking a new logo designing project.
Blogging, Social Media, Writing, Content Strategy, etc.
How to Create an Effective Google+ SEO Content Strategy - I’ve recommended from the beginning that businesses should use Google+, but with the launch of Search Plus Your World, the web marketer’s game has changed…
Give Them What They Want: Targeting Your Audience with Blog Design - You may already know that a blog design should be highly customized to an audience. What many blog owners do not know, though, is how exactly to find their audience and incorporate what they want into a blog.
9 Ways to Make Your Marketing Analytics Actionable - Tracking your marketing analytics can provide a ton of great insight into the performance of your marketing initiatives, show your boss how marketing is faring, and help you to prove that inbound marketing is really paying off.
Bloggers: 10 SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid - Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to any successful blogging campaign. Therefore it should be implemented in the right manner. SEO itself is quite intricate for numerous reasons, but mainly because Google uses an algorithm, ..
7 Winning Facebook Page Strategies Every Company Should Know - we take a look at 7 strategies to point your brand’s Facebook page in the right direction. Social media can be the powerful tool for your business everyone says it can be. You just have to work for it if you’d like it to work for you.
How Google’s +1 Button Affects SEO - A Google +1 can indirectly lead to a better page rank. A greater number of +1’s increases a link’s potential for a high CTR, which could lead to increased social sharing, and in turn can increase its Google search rank.
WordPress
Five Important Steps in Securing Your WordPress Blog - Unfortunately, there is a downside to free software – it is also available to hackers and people who have less than honorable intentions. This is why it is imperative that you run necessary measures in securing your WordPress installation.
How to Build a Custom Login Page Design for WordPress - Thanks to a few genius developers there are simple guidelines to including your own custom styles. In this guide I’ll walk you through the process of designing a totally customized WordPress login form.
Introduction to WordPress Shortcodes - Today we’ll show you some useful codes that you can use on your WordPress website. These codes add excellent functions in the easiest way. This post features some of the most useful and popular short codes that can improve usability, increase traffic and engage audience to be more sociable.
Setting up a local server for WordPress development - Using a local server is important for many reasons, if only to keep you from having to upload and download your files all the time. To keep your website live without putting it in maintenance mode for a very long time, we can use the local server.
9 Free and Premium WordPress Ebooks - There are already lots of tutorials available on Internet to learn about WordPress. But if you don’t like to visit each page on web sites and want everything compiled in an ebook form, here are some free WordPress ebooks which covers from basic to advance.
Plugins to Manage Custom Post Types, Fields & Taxonomies - Custom Post Types in WordPress allow users to define different content type. By default WordPress comes with Posts, Pages, Attachments, Nav Menu and Revisions post types. Custom Post Types allow users to define ..
How to Create and Use WordPress Custom Menus - Now, without the need for plugins, we can exclude, include, and rearrange our page links at will, displaying a different menu for different pages, and with some code, even different users entirely.
Five top tips for building responsive WordPress sites - WordPress is quickly becoming a household name and the gold standard of content management systems. While relying on WordPress is becoming the norm for delivering content, users are increasingly using mobile devices to consume that content.
30 Free Slider jQuery Plugins for WordPress - There are plenty of free WordPress slider plugins to choose from that contains multiple transition effects, navigate through the buttons or image thumbs, with 3D transitions, flickr like style, autoplay option, audio and video support.
Taking Control of WordPress 3.0 Admin Bar - Today, we optimize our WordPress Admin Bar (like we optimize everything WordPress) and tell ourselves that we have to love it no matter what. Let us “try” and fall in love with the WordPress 3.0 Admin Bar.
Create a Quicksand Portfolio With WordPress - I will be going through a simple step-by-step guide to get you from a blank WordPress theme to a beautiful custom portfolio with the use of Quicksand. I’ll be using a custom theme which has been stripped down for the purpose of this tutorial along with WordPress 3.0+.
Search Engine Optimalization, Rankings, Analytics, Loadtime, etc.
7 Tips To Help Your Website Load Faster - There are several things to look at when your website has bad latency. Slow loading pages can be frustrating for viewers and can be loss of business for you. Things that cause latency issues on websites.
How you can change your URL structure for better SEO - There is a checklist below to first make sure that it’s important to modify your URL structure or not. If it is, then the rest of the list will assist you to make sure that you can be updating everything that you want.
Guide to A/B Testing with Google Website Optimizer - Google Web Optimizer will tally all your total visitors and split traffic between both pages evenly. Stats are provided regarding the total number of conversions onto a landing page, so you are able to compare which changes are leading to more signups.
SEO & PPC: The Facts on Integration, Cannibalism & Synergism- One of Internet marketing’s important questions is whether it makes sense to put a marketing budget toward search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC), or both? You’ll find a mix of opinions on the issue.
Designing for search engine optimization - Aside from having some great promotional strategy, the best way to get your web site discovered is through optimizing that site for the big search engines like Yahoo! or Google. For designers, we’ve got to be prepared and contribute as best we can to exceptional SEO.
Useful Analytics Tips and Resources for Designers and Marketers - The success of a website is far more dependent upon performance than it is on looks and appearance, although design certainly has an impact on performance. Being able to use analytics programs proficiently will make a designer more effective and more valuable to clients.
9 Ways to Make Your Marketing Analytics Actionable - Tracking your marketing analytics can provide a ton of great insight into the performance of your marketing initiatives, show your boss how marketing is faring, and help you to prove that inbound marketing is really paying off.
Changing the look of your Search Result Pages - I love Google, I seriously do. What I don’t like too much is them adding more and more fluff to my search result pages (or SERPs) that I really don’t want or need. Luckily, this is all easily fixed.
Tutorials
15 Tutorials To Help You Build WordPress Themes - This post rounds up 15 of the best WordPress theme tutorials, each taking you through the process of building your own WP theme from scratch.
Fancy FAQ page using CSS3 only - The technique we will use today is called the checkbox hack and it relies on the ability of toggle-ing an <input type="checkbox" id="abc"> using the <label for="abc">. Also, in the same time, the checkbox input will be hidden.
Create your portfolio gallery using html5 canvas - In this tutorial we will build a photo gallery and enhance it with html5 canvas and css3 transitions. The grayscale “copies” of the images are created with canvas and we use pure css3 for the smooth changes.
16 Must-Read Tutorials for New HTML5/CSS3 Techniques - These tutorials I’ve added below are fresh off the presses and will help you catch up on all the latest HTML5 & CSS3 trends. With just a bit of practice you can pickup on all these skills and really improve the quality of ..
Accordion with CSS3 - Today we’ll experiment some more with the adjacent and general sibling combinator and the :checked pseudo-class. Using hidden inputs and labels, we will create an accordion that will animate the content areas on opening and closing.
Pure CSS3 Accordion - we always can use javascript (jQuery) plugins in order to set accordion, but sometimes this is not so necessary. We can use only CSS3 to achieve the same effect, today I will tell you exactly how this can be done.
A simple image gallery using only CSS and the :target selector - So today let’s take a look at an image gallery using the target selector. This has been done before but I thought it’d be good to explain the details of what is going on.
Illustrator Tutorials: 70+ Awesome Hot New Tips - articles that really expose my viewers to the various types of tutorials that they need to get their latest designs off the ground, a collection of high quality Illustrator CS5 tutorials that you will definitely benefit from.
Showcase Of Useful CSS3 Tutorials And Techniques - we list down some of the best tutorials and techniques related to CSS3. We hope that this assortment will help you in creating eye catchy and visually appealing designs.
Freelance, Business and Workflow Related Stuff
7 Skills a Print Designer Needs To Become A Good Web Designer - Many that trained in traditional print design are trying to make the transition over to the web to keep up with the competitive design landscape.
How Having Boundaries is the Secret to Being a Sought After Professional - This might seem like an odd suggestion, but having boundaries is a major secret to professionalism and coming across as such.This means being someone who sticks to their own defined values, ..
How to write a Design Brief? - Design Brief is an essential written document which facilitates the Client’s Company and designer to successfully complete the project. In this post we will share the elements of Design Brief so you can draft and can get results.
What Should You Charge? 4 Methods to Avoid - So what should you base your pricing on? The answer lies in why people buy. Remember, people buy for their reasons, not yours. If you don’t know what those reasons are, you’ll have a difficult time determining what to charge.
How to Overcome the Bad Moments of Your Career Like a Boss - Being able to create high quality websites is not enough anymore. Freelancing is a total challenge as you also need to be able to manage yourself, your work and your problems.
5 Ways to Strategically Price Your Freelance Rates - How you price your services makes a big difference in how your business is viewed by prospective clients. For freelancers, especially those just starting out, the tendency is to price work on the low end to generate client leads and interest.
10 Things You Can Do Today to Become a Better Designer - One of the challenges of being a web designer is the need for continual improvement. While you will certainly gain experience and improve skills through client projects, it’s also necessary to dedicate some time ..
The Benefits of Working in Short Time Blocks: Part 2 - Choose to make progress on one (or more) steps on your list. But don’t aim too high. The story that was the inspiration for this post, published on The 99%, suggest that you “just tackle a small amount of work that you know ..
Gearing up to Become a Professional Freelancer - Being a successful freelancer requires both hard work and planning. One needs to focus on productivity; for that, a freelancer needs a proper workplace. A proper working space, a system, and the zeal to work hard are the beginning guidelines for freelancers.
Writing better project specifications - Specs, along with testing and managing deployments, are time sinks. They swallow days of a project’s life and don’t do what they promise. But they’re needed. Whether you need a short brief or something to sign off with the head of marketing, ..
F*cking Brilliant, a great Read or just magnificent Tips!
7 Solutions to the CSS3 Vendor Prefix Crisis - While this is largely a marketing decision, it’s a real problem. The solution appalls many web developers but we deserve our share of the blame. In this article we’ll discuss the options, pros and cons.
3 Ways To Predict What Consumers Want Before They Know It - The insight that sparks innovation appears to occur randomly. After all, the iconic shorthand for innovation is a light bulb, implying that ideas come from sudden flashes of inspiration. While such flashes are surely good things, it is hard to depend on them, particularly if you are at a company that needs to introduce a steady stream of innovative ideas.
14 Tips to Help You in Your Future Creative Projects - Passion for creation is what designers love the most. However, creating and designing different projects at the same time is not an easy task. It requires a lot of fresh thinking, observation and work.
What’s All The Fuss About Vendor Prefixes? - You’ve probably seen talk the last couple of weeks about browser makers moving to adopt the -webkit prefix in their non-WebKit browsers. Mozilla appears to be leading this move and the response from the developer community has ..
What Your Product’s Design Says About You - Web/interface design trends explode into life overnight and spread like a wildfire. Using these cues is fine. We know everything is a remix of something that came before. But, before you begin to design, it’s important to understand ..
To Innovate, You Have To Stop Being A Slave To Data - We live in a quantitative, data-driven world. Design, product development, and marketing decisions are all based on careful analysis of data that have been gathered through sales, market surveys, clicks, eyeballs, and focus groups. At the same time, there’s a clarion call for brands to innovate and differentiate.
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
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