Yearly Archives: 2013

Infinite Scrolling in Web Design and Mobile Apps : Let’s Get To The Bottom

Infinite scrolling promises a better experience for users. However, the good is often accompanied by the bad and the ugly. Once we understand the strengths and weaknesses of infinite scrolling, we can begin to use it to enhance our interfaces.

Human nature demands hierarchy and structures that are easy to navigate. But infinite scrolling sometimes leaves users feeling disoriented as they travel down a page that never ends. Long lists are not new, but the way in which we scroll these lists has fundamentally changed since the arrival of mobile interfaces. Due to the narrowness of mobile screens, list items are arranged vertically, requiring frequent scrolling. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… a young designer embarked on an epic journey strewn with perilous layout challenges, constant procrastination, devious jQuery errors and deadly Internet Explorer bugs.

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Migrating A Website To WordPress Is Easier Than You Think

Now powering over 17% of the Web, WordPress is increasingly becoming the content management system (CMS) of choice for the average user. But what about websites built with an outdated CMS or without a CMS at all? Does moving to WordPress mean starting over and losing all the time, energy and money put into the current website? Nope!

Migrating a website (including the design) over to WordPress is actually easier than you might think. In this guide, we’ll outline the migration process and work through the steps with a sample project. We’ll also cover some of the challenges you might encounter and review the solutions. Responsive Web design has transformed how websites are designed and built. It has inspired us to think beyond device classifications and to use media queries to adapt a layout to the browser’s viewport size.

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What’s New for Web Designers and Developers in Illustrator CC

On May 6th Adobe announced its latest updates to its creative software. Some of these updates have big implications on how users work with their tools. In this article, I’d like to review what Adobe has changed in Illustrator and specifically how it impacts web designers.

Of course there are a several new features, like AutoCAD libraries, white overprint, fill and stroke proxy swap for text, automatic corner generation, indic support, package files, unembed images, multiple file place, touch type tools, free transform tools, and images in brushes. If you’re an Illustrator junkie, these are all worthwhile features, but what I want to focus on specifically are the core improvements that will help anyone creating artwork for on-screen delivery.

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Facing The Challenge: Building A Responsive Website

We are talking and reading a lot about responsive Web design (RWD) these days, but very little attention is given to Web applications. Admittedly, RWD still has to be ironed out. But many of us believe it to be a strong concept, and it is here to stay. So, why don’t we extend this topic to HTML5-powered applications?

Because responsive Web applications (RWAs) are both a huge opportunity and a big challenge, I wanted to dive in.Building a RWA is more feasible than you might think. In this article, we will explore ideas and solutions. In the first part, we will set up some important concepts. We will build on these in the second part to actually develop a RWA, and then explore how scalable and portable this approach is.

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Email Templates For Web Designers And Developers

You know how it goes: you are facing a difficult situation with a client, and you aren’t quite sure how to respond to it to navigate the conversation into a meaningful direction. This is where email templates can come in handy. This article features email templates for communicating with clients, superiors, teammates and the like. You can easily customize them. They balance firmness and tact, professionalism and friendliness.

Please note, though, that these templates are subjective. They’ve been created to the best of my ability, with the help and input of dozens of designers and developers. Once you load the templates into your email program, remember to format them first, OK? Use the “Paste as plain text” command and you’ll be fine.

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Converting Our Stories Into Multi-Screen Experiences

Storytelling takes many forms. In the past, stories were told orally, with people telling and retelling myths, fables and even histories. As writing technology became more prevalent, we began to record our stories, and we told them in the pages of books.

Now, our society is awash in different devices and technologies, and those traditions of spoken stories and printed stories are blurring. Multi-screen narratives are being told across all kinds of platforms, pages and devices, making for truly immersive experiences. We are watching them, tapping them and learning from them. I recently redesigned my own portfolio website. It was a challenging but enjoyable experience that I really learned a lot from. My goal was to create a unique online presence that represents my personality and displays my design work in detail, while of course serving as a promotional medium to gain more exposure and business.

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Perfection in a Portfolio Showcase and Web Design

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Web design is a subtle science that is lost to most who are not in the field. The amount of choices that go into building the perfect presentation for the content the client has to offer are so vast, that often the best way to demonstrate the full scope of this spectrum is to showcase a particular type of focused site. Through the multitude of examples one can begin to see how thematically similar yet still so different and complex these designs are.

Today, we intend to do just that. By showcasing a handful of portfolio websites, we can see how the depth of design choices and techniques can really separate these examples all built to showcase the work of an artist or designer. Even with their common mission, and even at times structural parallels, they still stand apart and each in their own unique ways encapsulate what a portfolio should be.

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