Tips on How to Code Web Designs Better

Writing semantic, efficient and valid HTML and CSS can be a time-intensive process that only gets better with experience. While it is important to take the time to produce high-quality code — as it is what separates professionals from hobbyists — it is equally important to produce websites as expeditiously and efficiently as possible. By Kayla Knight

Fat Free Web Design

For web designers, coming across an awesome WordPress or jQuery plugin can be a lot like opening up an awesome gift on Christmas morning. But once that initial burst of joy wears off, we realize that we may not need this junk at all; it’s just a burden and another thing we need to deal with. By Jason Gross

22 Excellent Tips for New Drupal Developers

Here are some basic tips and tricks geared towards new Drupal developers. By Monica S. Flores

How to Make an Elegant Patterned Web Design Using Photoshop

This web design tutorial on Design Instruct (our other website) walks the learner through the creation of a beautiful and trendy web layout using Photoshop. The web design is best used on a personal portfolio site. By Jacob Gube

Essential Web Design Advice From a Wireframing Master

Travis Isaacs, is a seasoned user experience designer and creator of Keynote Kung-Fu, who, in his words, specializes in “bridging the gap between visual and interaction design, information architecture and web development.” By Christina Warren

10 Tips To Design Effective Newsletter Sign Up Forms

Today most websites has Newsletter Subscription Sign Up Form. The concept behind it is Email Marketing. By DzineBlog

30 Interesting Simple WebForm Design For Your Inspiration

Web Form is one of the crucial design elements in web development. Web form will be one of the most frequently visited or at least one of the most visible area. Web form must have a good design integrated with the overall website design. By DzineBlog

Ultimate Guide to Website Wireframing

Most designers wireframe their designs in one way or another, even if it just involves them making quick sketches on the back of some scratch paper. Wireframing is an important part of the design process, especially for more complex projects. By Cameron Chapman

Should Web Designers Know HTML and CSS?

This article discusses the debate of whether or not knowing HTML and CSS is required for web designers. By Michael Tuck

Top 15 Points To Consider Before Redesigning A Website

It is very common that some years ago a website had all the bells and whistles of appreciation but now it is going to be lesser and lesser. By Cyber DesignZ

HTML5 Empowers The Web Designing Experience!

Html5 is considered to be the updated version of Standard HTML. Currently it is in designing phase. Moreover Html5 is the next generation of web markup language created in the era of web applications. Html5 is the advance version of HTML with more incredible features to enhance web designers experience. By Cyber DesignZ

Showcase Of Hand-Drawn Web Designs

Most designers reveal their creativity on paper in the form of sketches. So why not in web design? Here we showcase web designs that are hand drawn. By Brant Wilson

How to write Better CSS Code

Before coming to the main point, it would be better to have some brief description regarding CSS so that it will be better to learn how to write better CSS code. By Pixel Crayons

Scalable JavaScript Application Architecture

Nicholas Zakas, who is an engineer for the Yahoo! home page,has an uncanny ability to turn high level, and confusing concepts – particularly JavaScript related – into something consumable by the general development community.

View the slides or see the video

10 Design Lessons From HTML Email Templates That Actually Sell

Great tips on the design of HTML email templates. By Joshua Johnson

Adobe Releases HTML5 Video Player Widget

Perhaps Adobe realizes that video won’t be an all Flash affair in the upcoming HTML5 years and this is just their first foray into a new and foggy future. By Scribe Tribe

Tips For Negotiating Budgets

Liaising with potential clients is an art, especially when it comes to money. It takes a lot of practice to be able to gauge your client’s needs & budget (or lack of) and negotiate an outcome that both the client and yourself are satisfied with. By Just Creative Design

Art Direction and Design

Glorifying the supposed arrival of art direction on the web is one of the latest trends in interactive design. There are several galleries devoted to it. There’s even a plug-in for it. By Dan Mall

How to Design a Great User Interface

When designing a web app, functionality is often placed above everything else. For the most part, this is a good thing. By Webdesigner Depot

Web Designer’s Guide To Copywriting Profits

If a web design agency wants to increase their sales, there’s one way that’s easier and quicker than the rest: sell copywriting services. By Webdesigner Depot

40 Beautiful Corporate Websites

In today’s marketplace, every company needs an effective website. Of course, the purposes and needs of each company’s site will be unique, but every company should have a site that presents a professional image to visitors. By Vandelay Designs

25 Well-Designed Magazine-Style Websites

Magazine or news-style designs are increasingly common as online periodicals and multi-author blogs continue to increase in popularity. Review this showcase of 25 magazine-style designs for your own inspiration. By Vandelay Design

Weekly Design News – Resources, Tutorials and Freebies (N.60)

Here are some great web posts, articles and resources! By Paul Andrew

30 Fresh Web UI, Mobile UI and Wireframe Kits

Here's a look at some of the freshest freely available UI resources. By Paul Andrew

Awesome Flash Image Gallery Tutorials To Create Professional And Stylish Slideshows

Many people debate on the effectiveness of CSS and Flash in creating an image gallery or a slideshow. Both of the above mentioned options have their own advantages. By Smashing Apps

9 Coolest Web Apps You Might Not Know About (But Should)

Here's a list of he 9 coolest web apps you might not know about but should. Read each entry in the list and see which tool suits your needs best. By Smashing Apps

How to Squeeze the Most out of LESS

This article covers the amazing power of LESS and its ability to streamline and improve your development process. Also covered is rapid prototyping, building a lightweight grid system, and using CSS3 with LESS.

Extreme JavaScript Performance

Thomas Fuchs reviews a handful of tweaks that can be made to your JavaScript to drastically improve performance (at least in terms of percentages). By Nettuts+

HTML5 data-* attributes are great and you know it

It's called custom data attributes (by developers mostly referenced as data-* attributes). By Marc Foli

Top 10 signs of an unreliable web hosting company

A very vital part online presence relies on the web hosting companies. By Desizn Tech

26 fantastic iPhone & Android apps for managing your website

Thanks to smartphones, you no longer have to be sitting in front of your computer to upload, manage, publish and monitor your website. Here's a collection of applications for both iPhone and Android users. By Jonathan Brealey

Designing Hyperlinks: Tips and Best Practices

A hyperlink (aka link) is the most basic interface on websites. By Jake Rocheleau

Becoming a Better Web Designer

Whenever a student wanting to work in the design industry asks me for advice, the first thing that comes to mind is the importance of maintaining a current and up-to-date skill set. Often, we spend so much time focusing on the actual jobs at hand that we neglect to nourish and refresh our knowledge. By Alexander Dawson

Basic Tips for Designing a Quote Request Web Form

Whether you’re a solo freelancer or the head of a huge web design agency (or somewhere in between), your website often serves as the first point of contact with a potential new client. By Brian Casel

Public School Websites Don’t Have to Suck

By and large, American public school websites suck. They suck like an Electrolux. They could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. Getting the picture yet? By Michael Tuck

Transparent CSS Sprites

One of the most useful front-end development techniques of recent years is the humble “CSS Sprites”. By Trevor Morris

Billboard Web Design: How to Win Your Audience’s Attention

Let’s say you’re driving down the freeway at 65mph and you see the roadside plastered with advertising posters on both sides. Some small, some large, all meant in some measure to cause you to remember a brand or identity, to keep that company name in your mind. By Thomas McGee

Test Usability By Embracing Other Viewpoints

As Web technology improves, users expect Web-based widgets to be useful, content to be relevant and interfaces to be snappy. They want to feel confident navigating a website and using its functionality. They crave being able to get things done with little friction and on demand. And demand they do. By Ben Gremillion

Five Useful Design Techniques and Coding Solutions For Web Designers

As designers, we have to create an intuitive user experience, solve design problems and provide a beautiful and functional user interfaces. By Kayla Knight

50 New Useful CSS Techniques, Tutorials and Tools

These are great times for front-end developers. After months of exaggerated excitement about HTML5 and CSS3, the web design community now starts coming up with CSS techniques that actually put newly available technologies to practical use instead of abusing them for pure aesthetic purposes. By Vitaly Friedman

The User Is The Anonymous Web Designer

We invest time, money and effort into understanding our audience, and the movement toward a more socially networked Web has made us realize the power that visitors have over how our designs are engineered; and we try to meet their ever-growing needs. By Alexander Dawson

CSS Inventor Talks About the Web’s Visual Future

Web Design Inspiration: 30+ Beautiful Coffee Websites

Coffee is considered as an effective stimulant that keeps the consumer alert and awake. With our usual busy lifestyle, it helps to have a beverage ready to keep us active all throughout the day. By Youthedesigner

10 Random CSS Tricks You Might Want to Know About

CSS is the fundamental way of styling our web pages. Its deceptively easy syntax allows us to do many things to affect the visual layer of our work. And especially with CSS3, the language has gotten even more powerful. By Catalin Rosu

Information Architecture 101: Techniques and Best Practices

Information architecture (IA) is an often-overlooked area of website design. By Cameron Chapman

5 Tips for Developing a Global-Friendly Website

One of the most important aspects of the Internet is that it is location agnostic. Socio-political barriers aside, a website can be accessed by a user in Siberia or Silicon Valley. By Christina Warren

How to Create “Touchable” Web Designs

What are touchable web designs? When most people check out a new website, they sometimes think “yikes, this website looks like crap” or “wow, this is one of the best websites I’ve ever seen!” What is it that makes the great websites look so great? By Eric Rowell

Online Copywriting: Make Your Website Copy Dazzle

If there’s one generalization you should make as a website writer, it’s that your visitors have short attention spans and are overly saturated with information. By Alan Martin

Effective and Powerful CSS Tools & Generators for Designers

CSS has come a long way from formatting the structured content. It was used to control layout of documents precisely and to apply different layouts to media types. By Siva Kumar

Coding a Design: SEO Best Practices and Mistakes to Avoid

For any online business, website has become the foremost important asset. It is really indispensable that it should be designed and developed in a way that it facilitates and boost the business activities and ultimately become the revenue generating medium for the business. By Justin Spencer

5 Ways to Add Value to Your Work as a Web Designer

Let’s face it… we’re in a day and age where someone can buy a domain, hosting, and install a premium WordPress theme in the same time that some designers take to respond with a job quote/request for proposal. By Nathan Hangen

What Is User Experience Design?

Websites and Web applications have become progressively more complex as our industry’s technologies and methodologies advance. What used to be a one-way static medium has evolved into a very rich and interactive experience. By Jacob Gube

How To Convince The Client That Your Design Is Perfect

As designers who deal with clients, we all have to face one situation, no matter how difficult and uncomfortable, and that is guiding the client to accept that your design is perfect. By Robert Bowen

Test Usability By Embracing Other Viewpoints

As Web technology improves, users expect Web-based widgets to be useful, content to be relevant and interfaces to be snappy. They want to feel confident navigating a website and using its functionality. They crave being able to get things done with little friction and on demand. And demand they do. By Ben Gremillion

Five Useful Design Techniques and Coding Solutions For Web Designers

As designers, we have to create an intuitive user experience, solve design problems and provide a beautiful and functional user interfaces. Unlike print design, we don’t have the luxury of designing in a static area; rather, our canvas is ever-changing in its content, browser width, page length and more. By Kayla Knight

Responsive web design

The control which designers know in the print medium, and often desire in the web medium, is simply a function of the limitation of the printed page. We should embrace the fact that the web doesn’t have the same constraints, and design for this flexibility. But first, we must “accept the ebb and flow of things.” By Ethan Marcotte

Findings from the Web Design Survey

The findings are in from the survey for people who make websites. By Ala Staff

11 Useful jQuery Tab Navigation Solutions

Sometimes using tabs just makes a lot of sense. For instance, if you have a limited amount of screen real estate, tabs can allow you to save room by giving the user a way to toggle between several items in a small space. By Henry Jones

50+ Creative Automobile websites for Your Inspiration

Automobiles, which are a comfort and luxury in today’s life has gone through a lot of trials to grow till this stage. With Internet revolution, getting an information has become so easy that you no longer search for an expert advice. By Siva Kumar

Pragmatic Prompt Planning & Prototypes

When your livelihood is dependent on your ability to be creative whether as a web designer, article writer, or something else, it’s important to leverage what little time you have to maximize your idea input and output workflow. By Alexander Dawson

40 Brilliant Examples of Sketched UI Wireframes and Mock-Ups

Creating wireframes and mock-ups is quite easy to do digitally these days. Applications are available everywhere, and there's one for every style. By Hilde Torbjornsen

User Experience: Using Empathy to Empower Your Users

Whenever we talk about the subject of user experience, one word pulls itself to the front of every discussion. This word is empathy. By Alexander Dawson

The Science Behind a Single Page Website

We have all come across them whilst browsing the web, and many of the examples that exist are quite awe-inspiring, the single page website is a paradigm of the modern web in which everything that needs saying can be placed in a single document. By Alexander Dawson

How to make a mega drop-down menu

Mega drop-down menus are not actually new, but more and more we see them on popular websites and blogs. By Jon Phillips

Fusing content strategy with design

The content strategy movement has captured the hearts and minds of Web practitioners everywhere. By David Gillis

40 Powerful Black Web Designs

When making a website it takes more than just being creative and making a lot of new solutions. Using too much color can definitely be a problem as it doesn’t always leave that professional look your client wants. By Hilde Torbjornsen

Usability Tips for Web Designers

With the online competition getting fierce day-by-day there has emerged a need for the web designers to make their website more of its worth. By Pixelcrayons

Some useful HTML 5 web sites

Here's a good list of various HTML 5 websites.

Personal Websites: 25 Examples for Your Design Inspiration

Personal websites are becoming increasingly popular and they are often provide an excellent source of design inspiration. By Vandelay Design

The simpler CSS grid

A grid is supposed to help you in design, not to limit your creativity. By Web Designer Wall

Creating Engaged and Passionate Users, Part 1

Great article about how teams need to rethink their design approach and focus more on the
Usage Lifecycle.By Joshua Porter

5 Fundamental Steps to Deploying a Website

Something that is overlooked by a lot of web designers and developers is what is actually involved in the deployment of a website; the process when you’ve finished developing the site, tested to make sure it works, and are ready to push it to a live web server. By Mark Biegel

I Want To Be A Web Designer When I Grow Up

One of the biggest misconceptions about designers (and usually Web designers) is that they're just Web designers — that the scope of their skills begins with Lorem ipsum and ends with HTML emails. This is ridiculous. By Michael Aleo

When Creative Conflict is A Good Thing

During your career as a web professional, whether you’re a designer, developer or copywriter, you’re bound to encounter creative differences either within your team, or between you and a client. By Rick Sloboda

Take Your Web Designs to the Next Level

When you start out as a web designer, you do all you can to grasp the basic design principles so that you have a solid foundation to start your journey on. By Shannon Noack

How Fun is Your Website?

The secret to success for a website these days is really no secret at all. Websites that really bring home the bacon are the ones driven by loyal visitors who frequent the site on a regular basis. Building a community like this often takes a lot of time and loads of great content. By Jason Gross

Emotional Design with A.C.T.

As UX professionals, we strive to design engaging experiences. These experiences help to forge relationships between the products we create and the people who use them. By Trevor van Gorp

So You Wanna Build a Library, Eh?

Design patterns and modular components are effective techniques for designing and building long-lasting, consistent experiences. You may reach the point where you ask yourself “Is it time to build a library for our team?” By Nathan Curtis