Sunday, June 28, 2009

Web Strategy: The Three Spheres of Web Strategy (and the skills required)

Web Strategy Spheres

What’s a Web Strategy? It’s the balance between the three spheres for effective long-term planning of a website.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Web Strategy: What the Web Strategist should know about Twitter

twitter

If you’re responsible for the direction of your online strategies for your company or organization, you’ve probably been hearing buzz about Twitter, a next-generation instant messaging tool. Even if you’re new to Twitter, this will serve as a guide to educate you, help you make a decision, link to resources, and provide a starting point for your strategy.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

15 Grandiose Green Website Designs

green-website-12

Many of the sites deal directly with the environment or nature in some way, but others simply enjoy the emotion green color and imagery inspire in a viewer.

20 white and clean website Designs for Inspiration



White the color of peace is also one of the best color which inspires me while designing any website. The main thing I like about the color its easy to use (not like gradients, image effects, etc.) giving a more clean and professional look to a website.

What's Niggle all about?

Niggle is an independent feedback service that delivers your feedback directly to business owners and managers.

Overview of the New AdWords Interface

For years, the Google AdWords interface has maintained the same look and feel, leaving advertisers comfortable with navigating around campaigns and making adjustments. Google has decided to shake things up with their AdWords appearance by not only giving it a fresh coat of paint, but an extreme makeover.

How Much Weight Do Keywords in the Domain Name Still Have ?

Keywords in the domain used to be a very powerful way to be the first in Google SERPs for those keywords.

Whiteboard Friday - SEO for Local Search

David Mihm takes us through some of the fundamentals of performing SEO for Local Search by explaining how Google uses information from different sources, and what you can do with those sources to help your local rankings.

How AJAX Works: 10 Practical Uses For AJAX

Ajax Post Image

AJAX can provide a lot of additional functionality that could not be accomplished any other way.

Switching to Freelance: How to Negotiate to Work Less Hours in Your Job

Freelance businesses can have small beginnings.

webdesignfanboy

Twitter site, Webdesignfanboy is a self-proclaimed web design fanboy! I enjoy browsing designs and learning jQuery, Wordpress and Expression Engine.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Users Place More Weight on Design

The demand for good web design is increasing, revealed a recent Webcopyplus online poll. Almost 25% of web users indicated "poor visual presentation" as the number one element that drives them away from websites.

12 Excellent Free Tools for Monitoring Your Site’s Uptime

Site24x7

A website or web application’s high availability is very crucial; users who constantly encounter problems accessing the content of a site will not likely come back.

Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts For Your Designs

Every now and again we take a look around, select “fresh” high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually the time you should be investing in your current projects. Here are a few to check out.

Why Web Developers Don’t Need A Mac

As Web developers, we never stop hearing about the Mac. A lot of people love to talk about their Macs, but despite the “elite” status of the Apple computer, is there any need for a Web developer to splash money on one?

Friday, June 12, 2009

Indexing the web - it's not just Google's business

Indexing the Web—It's Not Just Google's Business

Interface responsiveness is one of many details web developers must consider in their quest to deliver a good user experience.

Why designers should learn how to code

For optimum efficiency, designers should not only be concerned with painting the bigger picture but also building it! In this article, you'll read about some reasons why designers should learn how to code.

30 Best Photoshop Web Layout Design Tutorials to Design Decent Websites

Photoshop is an excellent tool. No design software gives you quite so much control as Adobe Photoshop in designing a website. Here is a collection of 30 layout design tutorials that will help you with designing a decent looking website.

Six Useful Tips for Web Designers and Developers

Here's six useful tips for all you web designers and developers out there. They cover various topics including: accessibility, SQL, web developer plugins for Firefox, HTML emails, design and jQuery.

Effective Maintenance Pages: Examples and Best Practices

Every website has to perform maintenance at some point or another. Whether it’s just to upgrade a portion of the site or because of some problem with the site, it’s an inevitable fact of website ownership. And in many cases, maintenance requires taking your site offline for at least a few minutes.

Maintenance Page Screenshot

Notable


A feedback application for teams to quickly and easily provide feedback on design, content, and code on any page of a website or application without leaving the browser.

Friday, June 05, 2009

Drop down menu with jQuery & CSS

Studies show that top navigation's tend to get the most visual attention when a user first visits a site. Having organized and intuitive navigation is key — and while most drop down menus may look aesthetically pleasing, developing them to degrade gracefully is also essential.

Changing outdated information architecture

cm-homepage

Shifting user needs and an older, outdated information architecture and design demanded a revolutionary redesign of the Changemakers site.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

13 Beautifully Designed Mac and iPhone App Websites

The Apple brand is synonymous with good design. It also seems that a lot of applications made for Macs and the iPhone seem to possess a little something extra when it comes to aesthetics.

Tea Round App

How to Recruit Participants for User Research

Conducting user research and usability tests with real participants who match the audiences you’re targeting for your site or application is a perennial challenge.

Design and Code a Slick Website from Scratch – Part I

With the Internet becoming more and more popular every minute, a great-looking website is somewhat of a must-have.

In this first part, you'll learn how to design a neat-looking website that you can easily adapt to your business. After going through part 1, jump over to part two.

40 of the Best Websites of Non-Profit Organizations

Budget limitations are common with non-profit and charitable organizations. As a result, organizations often compromise on the need for an effective and attractive website. However, the websites shown here represent some of the most well-designed websites of non-profits.

Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research

The CSS Box Model

Every element in web design is a rectangular box.

A self-defeating design process

Designer Dustin Curtis was so disgusted with the American Airlines Web site that he redesigned it, and posted the results as an open letter to the company. Guess what?

Monday, June 01, 2009

How To Make Your Next Website Design Pop

Web design is one of those areas that when done right, you know it. It looks polished, refined and generally, just well done - it pops! There are a number of ways that you can achieve this and that is by ‘polishing’ off your design. Here are some ways to do it.

Just Creative Design Goes Mobile

Just Creative Design now has a mobile version. This means you can read JCD’s articles on your iPhone or mobile device while having the pages & images load up to 7 times faster.

iPhone JCD

45 Step-by-Step Tutorials on Web Design with Photoshop

While many web designers create mockups in Adobe Fireworks and Dreamweaver, no design program gives you quite so much control as Adobe Photoshop. The lessons collected here will show you how to create gorgeous and functional complete websites, blogs, layouts, nav menus and headers in Photoshop.

12 Tips For Designing an Excellent Checkout Process

Shopping online can be a great experience. You don’t have to leave the comfort of your home and you can quickly compare and read about all the competing products in order to pick the best one for you. But it can also be a little frustrating if the process isn’t designed correctly.

How to Brand Yourself with a Twitter Background



When marketing yourself, you want all pieces to look similar and cohesive: logo, business cards, letterhead, envelope, website, brochure, media kit, marketing materials, signage, etc.

Twitter profile backgrounds are another tool to help market and promote your self. The background should match your existing brand or look. Twitter backgrounds get noticed: if they’re unique, fresh and stand out from the crowd.

Apple vs. Microsoft - A Website Usability Study

Microsoft vs Apple

The two giants pride themselves for producing cutting edge consumer and business products, and are leading the developments in software and hardware.

But what about their websites? How do they both compare, and more important, which one is better and more usable?