The (Re)Convergence of User Experience? - Continuations The (Re)Convergence of User Experience? Something big may be happening to user experience. Bing and Google will soon be showing tweets as part of the search results (they have both licensed the full Twitter firehose and Marissa Meyer yesterday demoed a version of “Social Search”). Google is already returning videos from Youtube as search results and apparently will soon be offering music. For some time now we have taken tree like navigation as a given for the web user experience, with the root of the tree being search. The reason I put a “re” in front of convergence in the title of this post is that of course the early walled gardens, such as AOL provided a converged user experience.
University Writing Center @ TAMU - Home Consultant Web - Graphiste & Web Designer - Lesly Garreau What the Heck is Twitter? - Articles - Baekdal.com There is a bazillion articles and videos, trying to explain what Twitter is all about. There is also a ton of surveys, most noticeable a recent one telling you that only 10% of all Twitter users actually post tweets on their own. But here is the thing... They are all giving people the wrong ideas! Twitter has changed tremendously since it was first invented. At first it was merely a place where you could tell people "what you are doing", like when you told people that you were "sitting at Starbucks having coffee". Twitter is not a traditional social network. So what the heck is Twitter? Well, Twitter is... a place where you can follow interesting people You can follow business leaders, trendsetters, people who invent stuff, or create things. You follow what they think, what they do, what they find, what they like you to see, and how life is working out for them. It is a place where you can follow companies or communities You can tap into the collective conscious of the world
35 Mac Apps to Improve Your Web Browsing Experience – Mac.AppStorm Now that widespread connectivity means you’re rarely without a web connection, the Internet has become a huge part of the way in which we use our computers. Out of the box, your Mac is a powerful machine for making the most of everything the Internet has to offer, but there are a few tweaks, plugins and applications that can make it go a little bit further. Today I’ll be taking a look at 35 different plugins and applications that will help improve your web browsing experience. Safari on Speed Safari is undoubtedly the most popular browser on the Mac, and also a fairly difficult application to extend. Click to Flash – Click to Flash is a plugin for disabling Flash on every webpage by default, providing a simple placeholder instead. 1Password – A Safari plugin which can help enormously with password storage, and remains incredibly secure. Glims – Glims offers a wide “cocktail” of different features to Safari and can improve many different aspects of the user interface. Bookmarking Tools
The Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page Placement and Content 7. Keep It Above the Fold The space a visitor sees without having to scroll is where the most important parts of the webpage should be. 8. Optimize a landing page for conversion over time. 9. Implementing motivational speeches, videos of user testimonials, and product images into a home page can have a positive impact on viewers, as well as give shoppers an extra push to look further into a product. Bellroy uses great imagery and videos on many of their pages. 10. Links connecting the user to a bunch of other sites or pages will distract them and have a negative impact on conversions. This landing page is designed well, but look at all those header links getting in the way of the message!
Firebug :: Firefox Add-ons a little bit of something - not shit web design. in cornwall Ten Simple Rules for Choosing the Perfect CMS + Excellent Options Jul 13 2009 The content management system you choose can really make a huge difference in how much time you (or your clients) spend keeping a site updated and maintained. There’s a huge variety out there—some estimates put the number at around 1700 different options. Some are great…some, not so much. Below are ten useful guidelines to consider when choosing a CMS, followed by rundowns on ten great CMS options available and how they stack up based on the guidelines. Ten Simple Guidelines for Choosing the Perfect CMS 1. What do you want your website to do? Whatever your site’s primary function is going to be, you need to define it and then find a CMS that does that particular thing really, really well. 2. When you average user opens up the backend of the site, they should be able to figure out how to do basic functions without too much instruction. 3. Things should all work basically the same way in the backend of the site. 4. Things should be laid out logically in the backend. 5. 6. 7. 8.
20 Free Mac Apps For Web Designer’s Toolkit Nov 12 2009 Professional web designers on the Mac platform rely on commercial heavy-hitters like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, and InDesign for their graphic design needs. And when it’s time to slice and dice, some depend on the excellent Dreamweaver CS4 for WYSIWYG design/development; while many Mac code jockeys swear only by editors like Coda, BBEdit or TextMate. Designers also rely on various supporting apps to accomplish every day jobs like FTP uploading, cross-browser testing (important if you’re designing/developing on a Mac platform only), screen-shot snapping, pixel measuring, and the like. While many of these programs are slick, they also of course cost … money. Free Photoshop alternative GIMP (Mac)In a nutshell, GIMP provides designers with the power to accomplish almost any task that Adobe Photoshop is used for. Also check out: SeashoreBased on GIMP, Seashore is a pure cocoa app which makes it very OS X friendly. Free Illustrator alternative Free InDesign alternative
A Design Primer for Engineers For a word that can so vastly change the fortunes of a company, it’s worth noting that no generally accepted definition of the word design exists. This means when your boss stands up in front of the team at that all-hands and says, “We’ll have a design-centered culture,” there’s a good chance he’s saying nothing at all. But you keep hearing this word. There is no more evidence required that a magical focus on design can transform a company. A Fundamental Tension To understand the historic tension between the designer and the engineer, you need to go back to when software became mainstream, and in my mind that was with the arrival of the Internet. The arrival of everyone (and their cats) presented a challenge to these early software development teams. When everyone arrived, everyone didn’t want explosions — they just wanted it to work. Design results in the tangible translation between engineering thought: “fewer explosions” and user thought: “reliable, one-click cat photo mailing”.
Cascading Style Sheets Vorlage:Infobox Dateiformat/Wartung/MagischeZahl fehltVorlage:Infobox Dateiformat/Wartung/Website fehlt Cascading Style Sheets (englische Aussprache [kæsˌkeɪdɪŋˈstaɪlʃiːts]; für stufenförmige oder (hintereinander) geschachtelte Gestaltungsvorlagen), kurz CSS genannt, ist eine deklarative Sprache für Stilvorlagen (engl. stylesheets) von strukturierten Dokumenten. Sie wird vor allem zusammen mit HTML und XML (zum Beispiel bei SVG) eingesetzt. Grundidee beim Entwurf von CSS war es, mittels HTML oder XML nur die inhaltliche Untergliederung eines Dokumentes und die Bedeutung seiner Teile zu beschreiben, während mittels CSS weitgehend unabhängig davon die visuelle Darstellung (Farben, Layout, Typografie usw.) der Elemente festgelegt wird. Elemente eines Dokumentes können z. Mit CSS ist es möglich, für verschiedene Ausgabemedien (Bildschirm, Papier, Projektion, Sprache) unterschiedliche Darstellungen vorzugeben. CSS gilt heute als die Standard-Stylesheetsprache für Webseiten. CSS3[Bearbeiten]
25 Best CSS Web Design Directory Every Designer Should Know This Directories will help Designers to share their Creativity Skills and bringing visitors to their website from all over the world. These Directories are very useful for Web & Graphic designers, Web Developers, Logo Designer, Flash Designer. These directories lists help designers to get idea in color combination, and new trends in designing. By putting some effort and Creativity, web designer will get a good looking design. Here I have listed 25 Best CSS Web Design Showcases Directory List Every Designer Should Know. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 101 Best Websites 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.
13 Tools for Building Your Own iPhone App This article has been updated. A more current list of tools can be found here: "30+ Tools for Building Mobile Apps." Please visit that page instead! These days, everyone wants to build their own iPhone applications, but not everyone knows how write the code necessary in order to create them. Fortunately, there are now a number of tools that allow non-developers the ability to create their own iPhone apps without knowing programming or scripting. Some are general-purpose app builders designed for small businesses while other target specific needs, like apps for musicians or for eBook authors. Below we've listed 13 different tools that let you create your own iPhone applications, none of which require knowledge of Objective C, the programming language used to build apps for the iPhone OS . 1. What it Does: Sweb Apps offers an online service which lets anyone build their own iPhone apps even if they don't know how to code. 2. Our coverage: This iPhone App Helps You Make iPhone Apps 3. 4. 5.