Mobile Web Design: Is it Worth It?

A growing number of web companies have done their best to ensure that web services—whether essential or not—are accessible virtually anywhere with an internet connection. By Mathew Carpenter

Podcasts from the IA Summit 2010 in Phoenix, AZ

IA Summit 10 - Day 1 and IA Summit 10 - Day 2

Design Patterns: Faceted Navigation

Also called guided navigation and faceted search, the faceted navigation model leverages metadata fields and values to provide users with visible options for clarifying and refining queries. By Peter Morville, Jeffery Callender

Better JavaScript Minification

In the past few years, performance research has become more prevalent thanks to research by the Yahoo! Exceptional Performance Team and Google’s Steve Souders. Most of that research studies not the individual HTML page, but the resources the page requires to display or behave correctly. By Nicholas C. Zakas

How To Successfully Educate Your Clients On Web Development

If you are running a design agency, your job is very likely to combine business development, graphic design, technology and user experience design: a basketful of very different fields. By Aurimas Adomavicius

Seven Must-See Web Design Videos and Presentations

This list includes a brief description of each video, some notable quotes from the presentations, and related links. By Louis Lazaris

Usability Do’s And Don’ts For Interactive Design

We often talk about how to make our websites more usable, whether it’s tweaking the HTML structure of pages to benefit the user’s process or figuring out how best to display a message via CSS. But we never bring this thought process into our jQuery-based (and other JavaScript-based) elements. How can we enhance the user experience and usability of our jQuery events? By Ben MacGowan

Navflow

Navflow is a usability test for designers that helps analyse how people navigate around your applications and websites.

Mary Meeker: Mobile Internet Will Soon Overtake Fixed Internet

What does Meeker see in her crystal ball? Two overwhelming trends that will affect consumers, the hardware/infrastructure industry and the commercial potential of the web: mobile and social networking. By Matthew Ingram

Why you need a content strategist

Are you investing in your content? Do you have a strategy? If not then help is at hand. You need a content strategist, but who are they and what do they do? Relly Annett-Baker

Content Strategists gather in Paris!

If it seems like a whole lot of the smart folks you know in the Content space are out of the country right now, you might check #CSforum10 on twitter to see where they are. By Steve Rosenbaum

60 Beautiful Clean and Light Web Designs for Inspiration

To be unique and original, you need to have a good source of inspiration. You can get inspiration from music, family and friends, even other people’s work, to get a great design idea. By Mladen Berakovic

9 Ways To Improve the SEO of Every Website You Design

One of the biggest challenges that online businesses face today is maintaining relevance in the eyes of the search engines, especially Google. By Alex Cleanthous

Easiest way for teams to provide feedback on websites.

Quickly and easily give feedback on design, content, and code on any page of a website or application without leaving your browser. Works on iPhone, too! By Notable

Google and page speed

Google’s addition of a page speed signal to its search rankings algorithm officially links performance with search engine marketing. The loading speed of a web page affects user psychology in a number of ways, and now it can effect its rankings as well. By Zeldman

CSS Specificity And Inheritance

CSS’ barrier to entry is extremely low, mainly due to the nature of its syntax. Being clear and easy to understand, the syntax makes sense even to the inexperienced Web designer. By Inayaili de leon

Dealing With Clients Who Refuse To Pay

At some point in your freelance career, you'll encounter a client who does not respect the work you do. The most unfortunate part of this unfortunate truth is that it will all too often present itself in the form of a client who refuses to pay for your services once all of the work has been completed. By Robert Bowen

Holistic Web Browsing: Trends Of The Future

The future of the Web is everywhere. The future of the Web is not at your desk. It’s not necessarily in your pocket, either. It’s everywhere. By Christopher Butler

The Gradual Disappearance Of Flash Websites

If you want to "go big" visually with a website, delivering complex interaction and a rich experience across a wide range of browsers, Flash is the only way to go. Right? By Brad Cooper

Rick Barron: User Experience Testing Methods

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Rick Barron: User Experience Testing Methods

View more presentations from Rick Barron.

Should Web Design be Timeless or Trendy?

Logos last a lifetime. Does this rule also apply to web design? By Leighton Taylor

Why You Should Create PHP Powered Websites and How?

PHP :Hypertext Preprocessor is very useful, dynamic scripting language. You can create a simple website to powerful web application with PHP. By Design Tech

12 Useful and Free Downloadable Web Design Books

There are a multitude of books (whether in digital format or print) that cover every possible aspect of web design, each one is unique and offers a personalized opportunity for the author to both educate, inspire, and guide the reader through there knowledge. By Speckyboy

25 Flash Portfolio Sites for Your Design Inspiration

Recent improvements in the SEO capabilities of Flash, along with improved connection speeds of the average internet user, have made it more practical for designers to use Flash-based sites for their portfolios. By Steven Snell

Onboarding: Designing Welcoming First Experiences

What is onboarding, and why is it important? By Whitney Hess

Eye Tracking and Web Usability: A Good Fit?

Since its inception, eye tracking has been employed by cognitive scientists to study reading, learning, attention, and neurology; by marketers to examine the effectiveness of ad and package designs; and by human factors engineers to guide automotive and airplane cockpit design. By Nick Gould

Effective Pitch and Registration Page Design

Getting a user to visit your site is only step one. If you’re interested in maintaining a long-lasting relationship, it’s going to take some commitment. By Zach Dunn

5 Simple Social Design Tips From the Masters

With so much content competing for users’ attention, it’s important for content creators to have websites or applications that are accessible, clean and interactive. For sites with a social media focus, a solid user experience is even more important because if users can’t easily navigate a site or connect with their existing networks, chances are, those users won’t return. By Christina Warren

15+ Great Ways to Find Web Design and Development Work

For web designers and developers looking to take on new projects, the Internet offers a great number of online resources that can help them find work. By Amy-Mae Elliott

Wacom Intuos4 Wireless Review

Review on the Wacom Intuos4 Wireless. By Fabio Sasso

10 Excellent Tools for Creating Web Design Wireframes

When starting a new web design project, it’s always a good idea to begin with a wireframe. The purpose of a wireframe is to communicate the layout of a page without getting caught up in color and design elements. By Henry Jones

Preparing Your Web Content for iPad

Platform-specific considerations for web content in Safari on iPhone OS devices, with specific information for iPad.

How to create your best layouts

When approaching a fresh site design, what’s the best way to tackle layout and ensure a guaranteed win? Elliot Jay Stocks shares his top layout tips. By .net

Win Video Streaming Service for your Website through Twitter

To celebrate their recent launch, VP Factory, the pioneer of "Video Players as a Service", is giving away 10 Start subscriptions for 1 year (worth $168). By Jacob Cube

Eight Rules for Effective Web Forms

If you're looking to collect information from your users, there isn't a much easier or more straightforward method than a Web form. By Martin Ludwig

How to Make a Screencast for Your Website

Having a video on your website can vastly improve your conversion rate. Whether the goal is for users to sign up for your web application or simply to get users to contact you via a web form, a video improves the likelihood of this happening. By Stu Green

Coding a Web Design for Speed and Quality

The beauty of being a web designer is creating a detailed, creative, and original web design in Photoshop, without having to (for the most part) think about how it will be coded. By Kayla Knight

Preparing Photoshop Files for Web Developers

Whether you’re a freelance web designer or part of a team at an agency, handing off Photoshop files to a client, developer, development team or even another designer is part of the process of building websites. By Brian Rhinehart

50 Stunning Typography Wallpapers For Inspiration

Typography is said to be the backbone of web design, but it’s also considered art all by itself. And, let’s face it, most designers are obsessed with it. By János Rácz

Women in Web Design and Development

One could argue that women—at least professional ones—now have more control of their own lives than at any other time in history. Yet, there is still a lot of unease among women in the Web design and development industry about their subordinate position in what is widely viewed as a Web patriarchy. By Andy Walpole

Case study of agile and UCD working together

Large scale websites require groups of specialists to design and develop a product that will be a commercial success. To develop a completely new site requires several teams to collaborate and this can be difficult. By James Kelway

How to Win Friends and Influence People Remotely

Tools to enable simple online collaboration of design and distribution of usability testing. By Patrick Stapleton

Forms On Mobile Devices: Modern Solutions

Mobile forms tend to have significantly more constraints than their desktop cousins: screens are smaller; connections are slower; text entry is trickier; the list goes on. By Luke Wroblewski

45 Fresh Useful JavaScript and jQuery Techniques and Tools

Yes, this is another round-up of fresh and useful Javascript techniques, tools and resources. But don’t walk away yet. By Smashing Editorial

Showcase Of Web Design In China: From Imitation To Innovation

China is a country with five thousand years of civilization. It is a multi-national entity extending over a large area of East Asia. By Kejun Xu

Starting Out Organized: Website Content Planning The Right Way

So many articles explain how to design interfaces, design graphics and deal with clients. But one step in the Web development process is often skipped over or forgotten altogether: content planning. By Kristin Wemmer

Showcase of Academic and Higher Education Websites

College and university websites have a lot of roles to fill. By Cameron Chapman

CSS Sprites: Useful Technique, or Potential Nuisance?

Ah, the ubiquitous CSS sprites — one of the few web design techniques that was able to bypass “trend” status almost instantly, planting itself firmly into the category of best practice CSS. By Louis Lazaris

Free Printable Sketching, Wireframing and Note-Taking PDF Templates

Sketching and wireframing are a specialized style of drawing, used for fleshing out preliminary complex ideas, group brain-storming, a lo-fi method for evaluating interaction concepts, and as a way of roughly perfecting a design technique. By Paul Andrew

Contrast is King

Remember thrusting your hand into a big pail of mixed-up, broken crayons (or gently reaching for your box of perfectly ordered, mint-condition crayons), then leafing through your construction paper to find the perfect hue to go with your chosen sticks of pigmented wax? By Leslie Jensen-Inman