Plugin. 22 Things You Don't Know About Your Customers | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing. There are things you don’t know about your customers. It’s not you, it’s them. But you need to figure it out. Here are some hard lessons I’ve learned over the years – they apply to usability, pet peeves and other fun stuff. Learn these and you’ll have more, happier customers/visitors/readers/fans: 1. The most basic principle of usability: It’s hard for folks to read online. 2. Oldest rule of marketing, from way back when we printed on paper and used mail and stuff: Write no more than 4-5 lines in a paragraph.
To learn just how little the rules have changed. 3. Reading onscreen is hard. 4. Also know as ‘leading’, wide line spacing makes text easier to read. 5. We are trained to read dark text on a light background. 6. With those nifty mouse wheels, folks stopped getting unhappy about scrolling – it’s no longer a usability issue, unless you create a 5000 word page or some silliness. 7. You can write a list in a paragraph, so that colors look like red, green, blue. Red;Green;Blue. 8. 9. 10. Beautiful Word Clouds. Things You Should Do Immediately After Launching a Website. So you’ve just launched your website. The only thing left now is to start creating content and arranging for some promotion, right? Well, not so fast. You first have to do several things to ensure that your site is set up properly and ready for the public. Here are a few things you should do right after launching a website (and if you can, do them prior to launching your website publicly).
Create a Sitemap.xml File and a Robots.txt File What are these files? These files are essential for search engines and other web services. The Sitemap.xml file is a standard protocol for listing all the URLs that are contained within your website. If you’re using WordPress, you’re in luck: The only thing you need to do is to install a plugin called Google XML Sitemaps, and it will do all the work for you. If you’re not using WordPress, you can have a look at XML-Sitemaps.com, a simple tool for generating a Sitemap.xml file just by providing your website’s URL.
Set Up Web Analytics Check Your Site’s Speed. Perfect Full Page Background Image. Learn Development at Frontend Masters This post was originally published on August 21, 2009 and is now updated as it has been entirely revised. Both original methods are removed and now replaced by four new methods. The goal here is a background image on a website that covers the entire browser window at all times.
Let’s put some specifics on it: Fills entire page with image, no white spaceScales image as neededRetains image proportions (aspect ratio)Image is centered on pageDoes not cause scrollbarsAs cross-browser compatible as possibleIsn’t some fancy shenanigans like Flash Image above credited to this site. Awesome, Easy, Progressive CSS3 Way We can do this purely through CSS thanks to the background-size property now in CSS3. Works in: Safari 3+Chrome Whatever+IE 9+Opera 10+ (Opera 9.5 supported background-size but not the keywords)Firefox 3.6+ (Firefox 4 supports non-vendor prefixed version) View Demo CSS-Only Technique #1 Big thanks, as usual, to Doug Neiner for this alternate version. CSS3.0 Maker | CSS3.0 Generator | CSS 3.0 Generator. LavaLamp for jQuery lovers! | Ganesh.
Hover above and feel for yourself, the nifty effect of Lava Lamp. What you just experienced is nothing but the LavaLamp menu packaged as a plugin for the amazing jQuery javascript library. I personally believe that the effect rivals that of flash – Don’t you? Especially considering the fact that it is extremely light weight. Just so you know, it weighs just 700 bytes(minified)! Often I have noticed, that the credits are usually granted towards the end. As User Interface developers, we know that one of the first widgets our visitors use is a “Menu”. I hope you agree that a typical HTML widget consists of 3 distinct components. A semantically correct HTML markupA CSS to skin the markupAn unobstrusive javascript that gives it a purpose Now lets follow the above steps and implement the LavaLamp menu for your site.
Step 1: The HTML Since most UI developers believe that an unordered list(ul) represents the correct semantic structure for a Menu/Navbar, we will start by writing just that. Bonus. 50 Powerful Time-Savers For Web Designers - Smashing Magazine. Being a web designer is not easy. Not only do we need to have a good understanding about visual design, typography, information architecture, psychology and a plethora of other disciplines; in our work, we need to take care of so many details, so that our job becomes more and more time-consuming, requiring dozens of tools, attention span and an effective workflow for beautiful, timely and functional results.
And this is where small time-savers become handy. Be it a handy checklist, batch installer, dummy image generator or converter from Excel spreadsheet to HTML — all these things can save us a couple of minutes every day, making our work easier and more efficient. And this is why we keep collecting them for Smashing Magazine’s readers. Whether you like lists or not: this one will probably help you find those little nuggets out there that will help you avoid headaches and stress. Below we present useful time-savers for web designers.
Time-Savers For Web Designers Link try ruby! Color Palette Generator. JotForm · Easiest Form Builder. What is Opacity - CSS 3 Opacity. One of the things that you can easily do in print design but not on the Web is overlay text on an image or colored background, and change the transparency of that image so that the text fades into the background. But there is a property in CSS3 that will allow you to change the opacity of your elements so that they fade in and out: opacity. How to Use the Opacity Property The opacity property takes a value of the amount of transparency from 0.0 to 1.0. 0.0 is 100% transparent—anything below that element will show completely through. 1.0 is 100% opaque—nothing below the element will show through. So to set an element to 50% transparent, you would write: opacity:0.5; See some examples of opacity in action Be Sure to Test in Older Browsers Neither IE 6 nor 7 support the CSS3 opacity property.
Filter: alpha(opacity=50); See the alpha filter in action (IE only) And Use Browser Prefixes You should use the -moz- and -webkit- prefixes so that older versions of Mozilla and Webkit browsers support it too: Pixie - The Small, Simple, Site Maker - Home. 12 Inspirational Big Header Websites | My Pixelbox. 20 Websites With Unique Layouts. When you are creating a new website you may be inspired by seeing other sites that feature unique layouts. The 20 sites listed here don’t simply use a typical two or three column layout. Many of them use background images to interact with and control the layout in some unique way. Some of them I really like, and some I’m not sold on, but all are unique in one way or another.
For more design inspiration, see: Popmatik – Freelance web designer Rob Leach uses a unique layout for his portfolio site. The site uses a background image of a bottle and the content of the site appears to be on the label of the bottle. Digitalmash.com – Digital Mash is the home of Australian web designer Rob Morris. Melissahie.com – A portfolio site with a different twist, MelissaHie.com leads the visitor through a series of different sections of one page that include links to websites in a portfolio, a brief bio, and contact information. Dinulovic.com – The Dinulovic homepage contains no real content. 27 Cool Coming Soon Pages | Dzine Blog.
Learn how to earn $125 or more per hour as a freelancer - Click Here Looking for hosting?. We recommend MediaTemple for web hosting. Use Code MTLOVESDESIGN for 20% off The Coming Soon page is simply the modern version of the under construction page, There are many advantages in coming soon page it’s a good way to mark your presence early in web , as google search algorithm consider the domain age as one of it’s major factors .
Here are 27 examples of Coming soon pages ,Check it out (while its still coming soon) 1- leihi2.nl 2 – silverbackapp.com 3 – aka.jp Using sound and fancy equalizer visuals, Akari Inc. has created what could possibly the coolest “coming soon” page ever 4 – lesstimespent.com 5 – stylelounge.co.za 6 – propod.com 7 – corptelserv.com 8 – mosesmehraban.com 9 – suskeenwiskeshop.nl 10 – celmates.com 11 – randomcolors.com 12 – clockme.in 13 – getsignoff.com 14 – investobiz.com 15 – leaf-ordinary.de 16 – myblogjournal.com 17 – wedudes.com 18 – ratemyarea.com 19 – studio291.com 20 – genetify.com. 50 Websites to follow if you're into Web Design | The Interactive Wall.
The best thing about being a web designer is being able to easily stay current with trends, news and inspiration. How can you do it….? Well, using the web of course. There are hundreds of different websites out there to use as tools that cover every field relating to web design and development. Below I’ve listed my favorite 50 sites that I check out on a daily basis with Google Reader. . - – Download All Subscriptions as an OPML file – - digg Written by Louis Gubitosi.