Programming Blog » well design

A Developer’s Job Mirrors The Project Lifecycle

Facebook-Web-Design — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 23:38:32 +0000

The topic of what is a software developer’s job comes up quite often. Obviously, they are paid to write code, but that is a very narrow definition. As a developer gets more senior, they are asked to design the various components of a system, instead of just coding a task. With agile development, the idea of unit tests crept into the job description as well. Lastly, the developers need to be able to deploy the application in a local development environment on their computer as well as possibly deploying it to a testing server as well. So, even though the primary task of most developers is to write code, their whole job mirrors the software project lifecycle of Analysis, Design, Development, Testing, and Deployment.

Analysis

As a junior-level developer, analysis is limited to the tasks assigned to you. You need to review the requirement and understand what needs to be done. This is a fairly simple task, and very limited in scope. This allows you to affect small portions of the system as you learn and grow. As you become more senior, analysis is done at the groups of features because the group of features could affect the design of the system as a whole. As you review the features, you may start thinking about the types of technologies used. Does it make sense to implement a message bus or should you use a publisher/subscriber (pub-sub) model? This starts to bleed into the basic design tasks as well.

Design

Design is the basic task of determining what components and methods to create , and how they interact. For a junior developer, this is typically limited to just some methods within an object, or a very small group of objects. Senior developers get the more interesting task of determining what the major components are that make up the system and potentially breaking these larger components into smaller ones. The design is also greatly affected by the technologies being used. Continuing with the same example, a message bus implementation will require components that listen to the bus and parse messages before passing information to the core business objects. In a pub-sub model, the business objects themselves could be the subscribers and will receive notifications directly.

Development

This part of the job is the reason you became a developer in the first place. The majority of a developer’s job is to write code, and many take much joy from the process. Junior and senior developers all write code typically, though a senior engineer may write code for more interesting problems, while the junior developers are focused on less critical tasks. There are a few important things to note. First, development in a project is normally one of the longer phases. Second, writing code is likely 50% or more of the developer’s day. This keeps most developers happy enough, but developers tend to complain a decent amount anyway.

Testing

For the early part of a developer’s career, testing will be considered the bane of their existence. However, as agile processes have gained adoption, a lot of this can change. Unit tests are being written by most developers now, even in the most waterfall-process-driven companies. The value of unit tests is very high, and there are huge benefits of having unit tests during the maintenance of a product. I have written before about the importance of unit tests, and no developer should consider their code complete without some level of automated testing. Another part of a developer’s job is writing scripts that make the QA process easier. Developers may need to script automated loading of data, or even creation of the entire testing environment. The benefits of this may not be obvious, but how much time is lost in creating an appropriate environment to do testing in, and recreating that environment when QA testing needs to be repeated.

Deployment

Production deployment, or even deployment to the QA environment, is a current thorn in my side. In many larger organizations, there is likely an IT group that controls the production and QA deployments of all applications. This means that the development team needs to write detailed instructions on the correct way to deploy the application. In smaller companies and consulting agencies, developers will need to script the deployment activities so that the installation is as simple as running one command. Why is this needed? There is always more than one thing that needs to be done to install an application. At the minimum, there is basic configuration that needs to be modified for the installed application. In some cases, there is some data initialization that is required in order for the application to function correctly. If the installation is a little more complicated, there is the application deployment, and copying files to various locations. All of this is fairly easy to script and allows you to recreate a development, test or production environment very quickly.

In larger companies, developers may not get a taste of all of this, and it is disappointing. Without feeling the pain of each part of the job, you do no understand the difficulties within each phase of a project. If you are a product development company, you should be deploying your own application to determine how difficult or complicated it is to install. As a developer, you should be writing tests in order to feel the pain that QA goes through when testing the application. If you are not doing these things, then you are not really doing the full job of a developer and will be missing some experience along the way.

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Your Client Knows More Than You

Facebook-Web-Design — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:55:10 +0000

"The customer is always right." It’s an often disagreeable adage, but it exists for a reason. Those of us who have had any direct client experience understand that a happy customer makes for a happy business. Return customers account for the bulk of any good design business.

So, is the customer always right? Of course not. How many of us have had to change our carefully chosen modern color patterns to an uglier outdated version to please someone down the line? How many have had to increase a logo size two-fold so that people really know what company they’re looking at? Or take our finely tuned copy and add two more paragraphs to fully detail a service?

Image source: blog.kiwicreative.net

As wrong as a client may be at times, there’s always a reason behind their requests. More than any other field I’ve observed, designers have gotten to the point where we think we’re so much more educated and so much better at what we do that, to many, the customer’s opinion is nothing more than an annoyance.

What if your waitress told you that your steak can’t be cooked to well-done because the chef thinks this cut of beef tastes better with some red in it? What if your painter spent two days arguing against the color you want your living room to be because it doesn’t complement the rest of the house? What if your dermatologist refuses to prescribe you any medication because you’re beautiful the way you are? You get the idea.

Image source: on.ec.gc.ca

You may be thinking: "Well, design is different, our role is more specialized." I disagree. In the end, a business is a business, profit is the key to survival and principles that apply to any other professional field also apply to us. We are not higher up in the food chain.

This isn’t to say that we should throw our opinions out the window; we did go to school and/or went through years of experience for a reason. We should always guide a client — that’s what we’re paid for.

But the reason a lot of these oft-annoying revision requests take place is due to our lack of information-finding, initial explanation/project layout to the client, and inability to properly communicate the reasons behind our choices.

Before any of us even begin to think about how a project will look, we should know a business inside and out. How can we communicate to a bakery’s customer base if we don’t know why their customers go to them for their baked goods? If we had known that the bulk of Joe Schmoe’s carpet cleaning business consisted of senior citizens, we would have already been incorporating larger, easier-to-read copy. If we knew Sally Sue’s massage therapy used a revolutionary technique, then we could’ve had a unique selling point to use in our design.

It doesn’t matter how much training we go through, our customers are always more knowledgeable on what works for them than we will ever be. It’s our job to take that material and translate it into a visual medium.

Designers will always fall short if they try to change a company without intimately knowing that company first. Design is a language; it’s your job to communicate what others can’t.

Give your clients more credit; they hold their views for a reason. Figure out the "why" before fighting it.

About the Author

John Scianna is a young graphic designer and entrepreneur from Grand Rapids, MI who currently co-owns his own business. He specializes in corporate branding and minimalist design. His personal portfolio can be seen at designjohn.com. Connect with John on Twitter @john_scianna.

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Make a Christmas Card Using Words From Google Instant’s Blacklist

Facebook-Web-Design — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:55:26 +0000

Still looking for the perfect holiday card for your geeky pal? Well, design studio Nation has you covered — it recently put out a fun little tool that creates greeting cards from words found on Google’s blacklist.

Back in September, Google faced scrutiny when its new Instant Search feature was found to be filtering out certain terms (“porn,” various parts of the human anatomy, etc.). You could still search for said terms, but results wouldn’t come up instantly — users had to click “Enter” to check out all the steamy/seamy action.

Such words were, in a sense, “blacklisted” (Hacker publication 2600 compiled a full list), to prevent users from happening upon violent or explicitly sexual images (of course this stirred up some controversy when words like “bisexual” and “lesbian” were also censored — although it appears as though “lesbian” has since been taken off the blacklist).

Nation — who created last season’s “Home Alone Project” — created Google Blacklist Christmas as an homage to the search giant’s censorship-tinged mini snafu.

Give it a whirl, send some epistles to pals, and let us know what you think. (It took us a while to find one that wasn’t too rude.)

Reviews: Google

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How to Create “Touchable” Web Designs

Facebook-Web-Design — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 07:48:29 +0000

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? In my experience, when I think of “web 2.0” and “great web designs” I think of modern web designs that look touchable. In other words, the elements on the page almost look real, as if they have depth and take up space.

The purpose of this post is to explore how this effect can be achieved, outline the major strategies for creating your own touchable web designs, and give examples of some great web designs out there that have mastered these techniques. Let’s get started!

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How to Create “Touchable” Web Designs

Creativity means a lot in any kind of presentation. Whether it’s a logo, banner or a complete design; being able to inject creativity into it not only helps in floating the message around, it also leaves solid impression on the viewer. Good design is not easy thing to emerge, or it is often a very challenging job to discover creative designs. However, there are few ways by which you can improve your designing skills. Here we are talking about “Touchable” Web Design. Let’s start with basic elements.

Light

Touchable web designs are created by mastering the illusion of light sources. In real life, in order for us to perceive something that has depth and takes up space, we subconsciously notice gradations, shadows, textures, and layers. These effects are created by a light source, such as the light bulb in the room you’re sitting in. When creating a website that looks touchable, you’ll first need to imagine that your web pages have a light source, say for example, somewhere towards the top of the page – a commonly used location. Once that’s been established, you can use the following techniques to create the illusion of web elements that seem touchable.

Gradations

The most common technique to create the illusion of a touchable web design is to use plenty of gradations. All flat surfaces have gradations of color on them unless the light source is directly perpendicular to their surface. By using linear gradations throughout your website, you’ll create the illusion of flat surfaces that take up space. Common places to use gradations are backgrounds, headers, and navigation bars.

Gradations also help define free form surfaces by using non-linear gradations. When light hits an object, the parts of an object closest to the light source will be lighter in color, while the parts furthest from the light source will be darker in color. For example, if you shine a light onto an apple, you’ll notice that the parts of the apple closest to the light source is very light in color, while the parts furthest away from the light source are darker in color.

Highlights

Shadows

The second most common technique to create the illusion of a touchable web design is to use plenty of shadows. Shadows help define the spatial distance between near objects. In the picture above, the plant’s shadow casted onto the wall helps define the distance between the plant and the wall. A common implementation of shadows in web design is to cast shadows from web elements in the header onto the header background, or to cast the header shadow onto the body of the page.

Textures

Another common technique to give web designs a more three dimensional feel is to implement textures. Textures automatically have highlights and shadows built into them, giving them the illusion of depth. Textures are often used in backgrounds, headers, or other parts of the page where the designer intends to draw attention.

Layers

Finally, the last technique to create the illusion of depth is to leverage layering. This is achieved by creating elements that seem to overlap one another. A common implementation of this technique is to make logos or other artistic designs overlap from the header section of a page onto the body section.

Examples

To get the clear idea, Let’s take a look at some examples which using the properties which we described above.

Webdesignerdepot.com

Light Source – The light source is positioned centrally on top.
Gradations – Many of the elements in the header have gradations, giving them the illusion of depth.
Layers – Dozens of objects in the header are layered on top of each other, creating a sense of rich, overflowing content.

Marcofolio.net

Light Source – The light source is positioned centrally on the bottom.
Shadows – Since the light source is coming from the bottom of the page, you’ll notice that all of the casted shadows are upwards, such as the shadows from the body of the page, the torn leather texture in the header, and the navigation buttons in the header. This design also has a faint shadow behind the body of the page, giving the impression that it’s raised slightly above the background texture.
Textures – What makes this design stand out from others is the abundant se of colored texture in the background, which looks almost like irregular puzzle pieces fitting together.
Layers – There are three layers in the header portion of the page. The back-most layer consists of texturing and an RSS icon, followed by the navigation layer, followed by the logo section of the page which is the font-most layer.

Designora.com

Light Source – Here the light source is centered directly on the logo, creating a spot light effect.
Gradations – This design showcases great use of gradations in the blue arrows and the “Subscribe Now” section of the page.
Shadows – The shadows from the “Subscribe Now” section are correctly pointing downwards and to the right because the light source is located above and to the left.
Layers – The “Subscribe Now” section of the page is layered on top of the intersection between the header and body, effectively giving the illusion that it’s floating above the page, while tying the header and body together. The squares in the background also appear layered because they have varying levels of lightness and darkness, creating the illusion that some of the squares are farther back in space, while others appear closer in space.

Blog.Spoongraphics.co.uk

Light Source – The light source is positioned centrally on top.
Gradations – The header uses an exaggerated gradation which moves from light to dark and creates the illusion of a slightly curved surface.
Shadows – Plenty of shadows are used in this design, including a drop shadow from the paper airplane, the post-it note logo, and the shadow casted onto the body from the header. This design also has a faint shadow behind the body of the page, giving the impression that it’s raised slightly above the background texture.
Textures – This design uses textures for every part of the page, including the header, the post-it-note, and the body.
Layers – This design uses two major layers. The back layer contains the textured header and body, while the front layer consists of the header elements.

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Case-Study: Make Web, Not War

Facebook-Web-Design — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 13:32:41 +0000

Internet is the most important scientific and technological discovery since mankind conquered the Moon in 1969. No discovery over the last years had such a great influence on our civilization. Since the 90’s a new step in human evolution was written, the new “Homo digitalis” makes room for a new era, driven by technological and scientific development, filling it furthermore with an essence of life. All the main discoveries in the post Internet period were helped by it due to its capability of showing everyone, everything at anytime. For instance, the human genome was decrypted more easily and faster because of the possibility of changing information almost instantly between scientists situated all over the world.

It was the perfect situation that revealed to all people from all over the world that without communication and collaboration (which is the same as without Internet) the great discoveries would have remained still hidden. From this point of view the Internet is not only a discovery, it is a catalyst for changing and finding information or why not for a better life.

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This article doesn’t fulfill the purpose of another tutorial on how to design, nor gives it explanations on how to became a better designer, developer or freelancer but I hope to give you an inside over the power of the www. No one appreciated at its beginning the power on all aspects (economical, cultural, social, entertainment, informative); it was only a good way to communicate between scientific men at CERN…now it is a way of life.

The worst thing is to deny its importance and power of manipulation. Nowadays a single day without Internet is a complete disaster for many of us. Some of us hate it because of its importance, “it is impossible that something invisible and untouchable can be more important that a human being”. This is the most common reason to ignore the Internet. Another reason that makes people skeptics about it is that many people are manipulated by the Internet, and it is happening more often that people are fooled in their online business.

Pros and Cons

Like all the great discoveries, the Internet has many friends and at the same times many enemies, so we should compare the positive and negative points to establish and to determine the character of the Internet. In my personal opinion is that in this world no object, thing, instrument is negative or positive; the way of how you use it is the defining element in this classification. Let’s compare the pros and cons:

Problem: Healthy (mental and physical)

Many people believe that the Internet has a negative influence, because it captures the free time of all users (especially the young ones became addicted to it). Spending so many hours in front of the PC can cause multiple diseases, some of them with severe effects.

On the other hand, spending every minute of your life surfing on www can transform you in a person who has no connection with reality, a stranger in your own life. In these conditions unfortunately human being is not a natural creature; he becomes a digital addicted one.

Replay:

All of us forget a crucial piece of information (some on purpose, some by mistakes): the Internet is only an instrument, not a creature, a diabolic entity or something like that. It is simple to realize: if you shut down your PC, there is no Internet. Being addicted to the Internet is not the guilty of it; only the addicted person is guilty. I am seeing this problem so clear that I do not have any doubts: it is the same situation as a criminal shooting his victim and defending himself by saying that the bullet was killing the victim; he only triggered the gun… so the trial should punish the bullet. The same situation is happening with the consumption of alcohol; shouldn’t we produce alcohol to not drink in an abusive manner or just punish the people who drink in excess (and of course interact in a negative way with other people)? Thinking in this wrong mentality we should travel with horses and camels because cars have greater speed and if you have an accident the injuries are more severe compared to the ones resulting from an accident with a horse.

Regarding the problem of socialization the answer is the same: a moderate use of the Internet is the best solution. A new kind of making friends and socialization was born after a few years of the Internet development: the socialization networks increase constantly their number and their application; I can’t imagine a normal user of Internet without an account on Facebook, Twitter or Hi5.

It is true that ten years old children spent many hours in front of the PC and parents are somehow worried about it. Another very important point in this problem is the modality of how Internet is used: you can use it for entertainment, to find news, listen to music, watch videos and so on and so forth. As a parent you should guide your children for appropriate websites. Once again, Internet is a very powerful instrument and in few years probably a person without knowledge in surfing on the www will be considered an analphabet. Your children can use Internet as a modality to find out who was Albert Einstein and that is very good, but it can be also used it to get access to xxx websites. I am not a parent yet and my advices are superficial but surely good: protect your family from these websites, but consider the Internet as an object of study. I bet you: in ten years in all societies the use of Internet will be considered something as compared to writing (I know that in some country this level was already reached but I mentioned all societies, including the poor regions of the Earth).

In conclusion to this cons: shut down your PC and you will see that it can’t do anything to come back. Addiction is the problem of the addicted one not of the source of addiction, the key of this situation is moderation.

Conclusion: Internet is a great instrument but you should know how to use it, otherwise it can be sometimes a dangerous enemy.

Problem: Hackers

According to Wikipedia, a hacker “is a person who breaks into computers and computer networks, either for profit or motivated by the challenge”. Many business and enormous amounts of money are being moved from one party to another on the Internet and this is a great come-on for users with experience; simply break a password and get access to many accounts and obviously you take some money from these. I totally agree, the Internet needs more security, it is vital for future; much more if we look at statistics we will see that the online trade and financial transfers are increasing in a manner that could scary some elderly people.

Replay:

This is only my opinion (if you subscribe to it, it’s perfect or if you do not agree with me let me know your opinion in a comment) but hackers should be divide in two categories: Larceners and Specialists

Larceners: The larceners are the people who deserve to be put in prison because they steal. Even if the account which was broken by him is owned by a corrupt person it is not his right to take money…in this case he is also a scoundrel. I really hate people who use the Internet to make robberies; indeed for these persons an online police is needed.
Specialists: I see hacking as a good thing and I am conscious about what I wrote. The real hacking is very good, once again. A true hacker never takes money or produces negative effects for users from his work, he wants only to show that some financial algorithms are very weak and somebody with bad intentions can profit very easy. The hackers find a very good way to show their ideas and problems: break the main websites and put their message to be read by all potential surfers. It is a controversial problem with a group of hackers from Romania called Romanian National Security that broke the online editions of Daily Telegraph, Corriere de la Serra, La Stampa, RAI, Le Monde. It truly produced significant loss of traffic and that means a decrease of profit, but the message posted was more important than money. The idea of the messages was to not offence Romanian people and to not categorize them as gypsies or beggars; I want to emphasize their message “Romanian are not gypsies” and detail it, no one in Romania hates or discriminates a person because he is gipsy, we as Romanian (I come from Romania) do not like to be put equal to a person who kills, robs, rapes etc. in Western Europe or elsewhere. In this situation an attack of this team is a bad thing but the purpose is good, they try to show the truth.

All the attacked agencies recognized that the attack was one of the most efficient ones and done in a very professional way- it really shows that the hackers are very intelligent.

Another important attack of hackers was committed by a Greek team who broke all the passwords and security codes at the most important scientific experiment ever seen called “The experiment of century” which was hold last year/this year in Switzerland. Breaking all the passwords gave full access to the hackers and if they intervened in this project the effects would have been unbelievable and the word “catastrophe” probably wouldn’t be enough. The good part of this attack was that the Greek team wanted only to highlight that the security measures weren’t barricades for them. They posted that they weren’t following a financial motivation; the main idea was that such an important and dangerous project needed more security and attention. I believe that it was a very interesting point of view: the authorities confirmed that all the measures are unbreakable but it wasn’t true. The team raises an important idea: what could have happened if a group of hackers with bad intentions would have broken the codes and passwords? I really do not know…

Conclusion: hackers are very intelligent so we should pay attention to their ideas sometimes; only the ones who want to profit from their activities by e.g. stealing should be punished and forced to stay in prison.

Problem: Everything Will be Online

The entire population of the Earth is moving towards an online life, to a world where www applications will be the new laws and everything depends only on two clicks. A failure of this huge network won’t be as a nuclear bomb? The authorities of USA recognized that even if they spend uncountable amounts of money for safety of their information a very powerful and successful hackers’ attack would have apocalyptical effects.

Replay:

It can’t be exactly predicted how the future will look like, surely the Internet has its role but we should be prepared for the next level: how will the world behave with the invention or discovery of a new internet network? I am sure that some companies prepare in secret a new internet network…sounds like a little bit of conspiracy, but this is my point of view. Anyway the men behind the Internet are smart enough to solve all the potential problems and the tendency of being online can’t be removed.

Conclusion: We are still the leader of our life and even if the Internet is super powerful, it can’t conquer us. Who is afraid about it is afraid about evolution.

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A Guide to Premium WordPress Themes

Facebook-Web-Design — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 13:52:06 +0000

The premium theme market has really exploded in the past few years. There are now many of premium themes sites (i.e. WooThemes) for WordPress alone, and that’s not even counting the hundreds of authors who publish themes on marketplaces like Themeforest or Mojo Themes.

With so many options out there, it can be hard for buyers to know which theme to buy, so here are a few key elements to pay attention to when shopping around.

Although this article applies mainly to WordPress themes, most of the advice here can be applied to any theme out there.

Whether you’re a designer looking to put up a blog or portfolio, a developer looking for a quick way to get a client’s WordPress site up, or a WordPress theme developer wanting to know how to make your theme more attractive to theme buyers, this guide should help you see what makes a premium WordPress theme great.

Popularity

Whether you’re shopping for a car, a computer, or a WordPress theme, popularity plays a huge role in your decision, often subconsciously. Psychologists call it social proof, and it’s a simple principle that states that when we’re not sure how to act, we take our cues from our peers’ behavior.

Sites like ThemeForest publish weekly popularity rankings, and you can usually assume that if a theme is popular, it’s because of its high quality. But other sites don’t publish rankings or sales number, so you’ll need other criteria as well.

Design

The second most obvious criteria on which to judge a theme is its appearance. After all, that’s what the word "theme" originally described: alternate graphics that let you style an interface the way you want. It’s only later that themes began to include advanced customization options.

Although everybody has their own taste, you can look for a few common elements.

Make Sure the Text is Readable

Many themes look good at first sight, but poor color combinations can make it hard to read your content. This is especially important for a blog or any other site with large quantities of text.

Pay Attention to the Typography

This is an area that a lot of theme authors still overlook. Watch out for insufficient leading (or line height) and tiny font sizes.

Does the Homepage Have a Clear Focus?

Most themes these days use a homepage slider to put a few key elements forward, and although it’s starting to get a bit overused, it’s a good way to ensure that your featured items stand out.

Will the Design Match Your Branding?

If you already have a logo and company color scheme, make sure that the theme’s colors don’t clash with it or make sure that the theme is easily customizable to fit your brand.

Features

A lot of the latest WordPress themes include extensive back-end options panel. Some of them even use customized user interfaces to the point that it doesn’t even feel like you’re in WordPress anymore.

You should be careful not to assume that more features will automatically make a theme better. And after all, more features will also mean more time spent reading the documentation and configuring the theme.

Now that you’ve been warned, here’s a few useful theme features to look for.

Multiple Color Schemes

Being able to switch between multiple color schemes is a great way to make sure the theme will match your branding and message.

Shortcodes

WordPress shortcodes are codes that you can include in your posts. They get automatically replaced when the post is displayed, which makes it very easy to include buttons, drop caps, and other elements.

Unlimited Sidebars

With unlimited sidebars, any page you create can receive its own custom sidebar with different widgets. For example, a Google map widget on the "contact us" page, a Flickr widget on the About Us page are just a couple of benefits of having unlimited sidebars.

Custom Widgets

Themes sometime include their own custom widgets that you can place in any sidebar you want. This means you won’t even need to install a plugin.

Multiple Page Templates

The best themes include multiple page templates for maximum flexibility: with sidebar, full width, contact page, about page, etc.

Contact Form

There are tons of WordPress contact form plugins, but a lot of theme authors like to include their own working contact form. This way, they can control the markup and make sure it looks as good as the rest of the theme.

Flexibility

You’ll quickly find that a theme is not much use if it can’t be customized to your needs. No matter how great the theme looks out of the box, there will probably be a lot of things that you needs to tweak. Here are things that indicate a WordPress theme is flexible.

Logo Uploading

Is it easy to upload your own logo instead of the default one?

Custom CSS

If you have to manually edit one of the theme’s CSS files, your edits will get overwritten every time you update the theme. Instead, look for themes that provide a theme option that stores your custom CSS code inside the database.

JavaScript and CSS frameworks

The theme author is probably a JavaScript and CSS pro, but you might not be. Themes that use frameworks such as jQuery (for JavaScript) or Blueprint (for CSS) make your life much easier because there’s already a lot of documentation for those libraries.

Sliced PSD

If you ever want to change some of the theme’s graphics, it can be a real pain to find the right Photoshop file, extract an element, modify it, and export it. It’s much easier when the author provides you with a pre-sliced Photoshop file, or even better, separate files containing only the elements.

Documentation

This is probably one of the most overlooked aspects when selecting a theme. After all, when buying software, you typically don’t read the documentation first, you just assume it will exist and provide all the required answers. Sadly, this is not always the case for themes.

The ideal documentation should include a description of all theme options, as well as walkthroughs of the most common tasks (installing the theme, adding an item to the homepage slider, etc.).

The best themes even include screencasts. You can convey as much information in a 5-minute screencast versus a 3-page article, so they’re a really good way for the user to quickly get up to speed.

Support

Even the best theme authors can’t anticipate every possible bug, and even the best documentation can’t answer every question. Responsive and helpful support is a must and will make your life much easier.

Of course, if you’re a buyer of premium WordPress themes, you shouldn’t abuse customer support either and understand that although authors are usually ready to help, it’s not their job to teach you basic CSS or WordPress skills, or help you customize the theme to your liking.

The best way to get support is probably forums. Contrary to email, you can see if someone else already asked the same question, and you can also see how fast the author usually answers user questions. And a big advantage over emails is that you can have sub-forums, so bug reports don’t get lost among feature requests and other inquiries.

Price

I hesitate to include this as a criterion for selecting WordPress premium themes because it’s so obvious, but price, of course, plays a big role in every purchase we make.

Different sites use different pricing schemes, but you have three common ways to buy a theme.

Single Theme Purchase

This is the most common and simplest way to buy a theme. Prices range from $10 on the low end all the way to $80 or $100 for the most expensive premium WordPress themes. $25 to $75 is a fair price for a theme these days.

Subscription Purchases

You pay a monthly or yearly fee, and you get to download as many themes as you want. This is a great deal for web designers who resell the themes, but if you’re buying a single theme for yourself, the first way is usually cheaper.

Non-fixed Prices

Some sites (like TemplateMonster) also give you a unique price that lets you buy the theme for your own exclusive use (of course, people who already bought the theme can still use it, so it’s not really exclusive). This is not really worth it in my opinion, because for that price (in the thousands of dollars) you can either get a regular theme customized to your needs, or even maybe get a custom theme built from scratch.

Adequacy

The last thing you need to ask yourself after you’ve found a popular great-looking theme with great documentation and support that’s also flexible and has tons of features, is simply, "Is it really what I need?"

It’s easy to be so dazzled by a beautiful theme that you forget to even consider what you’re going to use it for.

Don’t pick a theme with a huge homepage slider if you don’t have any images to put in it. Don’t pick a blog theme if you don’t plan on writing a lot of content. Don’t pick an experimental theme with lots of JavaScript effects for commercial purposes.

For the same reasons, beware of flashy themes that look really impressive. They might look so impressive that they end up overshadowing your own content. Sometimes simple is better.

Wrapping Up

So there you go, these principles are key to picking a good theme. Of course, part of the fun is also falling in love with that perfect design, so feel free to disregard everything I just said if this ever happens to you.

And if you’re looking for themes to buy, here are a few links to get you started:

About the Author

Sacha Greif is a web designer from Paris, France who specializes in user interfaces and theme design. Visit his personal site at sachagreif.com. He blogs about design at AttackOfDesign.com and his latest WordPress portfolio theme is Silverio.

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70+ Promising Resources and Tutorials Especially For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In December

Facebook-Web-Design — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:49:10 +0000

We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web” on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list of 70+ Promising Resources and Tutorials Especially For Designers. We obviously cannot cover all the best from the web, but we have tried to cover as much as possible.

You are welcome to share if you know more best of the web in the month of December which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

Design Tips, Tricks and Tutorial

”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

45+ Truly Stunning Digital Painting Tutorials

Create a Watercolor-Themed Website Design with Photoshop

How To Create a Sleek Audio Player Interface in Photoshop

65 Mold-Breaking 3ds Max Tutorials

Creating a Modern, Glossy Mouse Icon in Photoshop

40+ Excellent Adobe Illustrator Cartoon Tutorials

25 Photoshop Tutorials for Designing Portfolio Sites

How to Create a Curious Owl in Illustrator CS4

30+ Useful Logo Design Tutorials for Photoshop and Illustrator

72 Magnificent Maya Tutorials

22 Tutorials To Create Shiny Effect Using Photoshop

The 50 Best Photoshop Tutorials of 2009

Artwork, Digital Photography and Inspiration

Visa Campaign does Amazing Arts on the Go

32 Superb Examples of Photo Manipulation

Logo Design A to Z

Stunning Mosaic Illustrations from Charis Tsevis

Data Tables In Modern Web Design

50 Beautiful Watercolor Paintings

25 Ultra-Creative Packaging Designs From DeviantArt

Changing Design Trends for Site Maps

Logo Design Inspiration: 70 Creative Fresh Designs

35 CSS-based Layouts that Look Awesome

25 Beautiful and Creative Artworks Featuring Year 2010

The Best of 2009 in Flash Web Design

Talented Landscapes and Scenery Artist Ksenia

50 Creative Examples of Illustrations in Web Design

Business Cards: Collection of Inspirational Designs

30+ Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography And How To

Headers and Footers that Grab You Coming and Going

Go Bananas with 50+ Vector Illustrations that Monkey Around

30 Examples of Beautiful Portfolio Designs

28 Breathtaking Nature and Wildlife Photos

24 Typographic, Clean and Minimalist Motifs to Inspire

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography: Tutorials, Tips and Stunning Examples

Javascript and Ajax

15 Incredible Apple Webdesign Style Coding Tutorials

Solutions to 5 Common Ajax Problems

18 Latest jQuery Plugins for Your Next Project

20 Professional jQuery Image Gallery Plugins

7 jQuery Cheatsheets For Every Designer & Developer to Have

xHTML and CSS

33 Must Read CSS3 Tips, Tricks, Tutorial Sites and Articles

Stronger, Better, Faster Design with CSS3

Fundamental CSS3 Resources for Designers

CSS Techniques I Wish I Knew When I Started Designing Websites

Resources

40 High Resolution Photoshop Brushes

25 Beautiful Free PSD Files to Download

50 Free Resources Of Hand Drawing Style Icons, Brushes, Textures and Fonts

Beautiful Fresh Free Fonts for Designers

30+ Free Online Multimedia (Photo, Audio, Video) Editors

50 Beautiful Free Icon Sets For Your Next Design

25 High Quality Abstract Photoshop Brush Sets to Touch Up Your Design

The Top 50 Web Development Icon Sets from 2009

10 Free Apps for Managing Your Fonts

Ultimate Resource List for Vector Graphics

30+ Free Adobe Illustrator Pattern Sets

Great Free Denim Textures

30 Excellent Fresh Free Fonts For Your Designs

Miscellaneous Articles

30 Powerhouse and Prospective Design Blogs

The 6 Most Common Posts on Design Blogs

7 Tools To Optimize The Speed of Your Website

69 Coolest Web Apps Of 2009

30+ Portable Window apps for your USB drive

35 Adobe AIR Tutorials for Web Developers

How to Build a Shopping Cart using CodeIgniter and jQuery

22 Latest Exceptional WordPress Hacks

How to Find Anything Online: Become an Internet Research Expert

20 Excellent Facebook Scripts and Resources

The Role of College for Web Designers Comments Feed

Useful Suggestions To Secure And Speed Up Your WordPress Blog

25 Graph and Chart Solutions for Web Developers

How Many Ideas Do You Show Your Clients?

60+ Ultimate Resources Especially For Designers

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Did You Accept the Daily Design Challenge?

Facebook-Web-Design — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:11:03 +0000

A little over a week ago, an article that I wrote was published on Smashing Magazine entitled,
Design Something Every Day!

This post was a challenge for all designers to design something daily for the entire 2010. The post actually generated a lot of great response from the design community and there are a lot of people who have decided to make it part of their New Year’s resolution.

Action Speaks Louder than Words

"Your walk talks and your talk walks, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks."

In case you don’t understand what that means, it simply is a quote saying that what we practice speaks more to people than what we preach. I knew that when I started this challenge, there were people who were going to be a little skeptical and they were going to see if I participated in my own challenge. Well, I wanted to put my money where my mouth is so on December 31st, I decided to jump in and take on the challenge as well.

Design Informer’s Daily365

I have already started and so far, I have three designs that I have posted. I also decided that it would be a lot easier to have a theme for the blog, so for January, this is my theme: I will design a typography based design based on a quote using one of my favorite fonts. By the way, please feel free to leave a comment and subscribe to the Design Informer Daily365 feed.

Here are the three designs that I have done so far:

A Few More Pointers

I just wanted to give everyone a few words of advice regarding the daily designs.

Use the #daily365 hashtag so people can see your design.
Please don’t spam the hashtag with you designs. Please only post your design once. I guess retweeting other people’s designs is okay.
It would be good if you had some type of comment system where you post your work. That way, if someone wanted to compliment your work or leave some constructive feedback, they can do so.
If you have some free time, check out the other people’s designs as well and leave feedback. No bashing please! I understand that a lot of beginners are taking the challenge so their design skills might not yet be up to par with yours. As a design community, we should all support each other.

Smashing Ideas and Designs

Just two days into the challenge and I have already seen some terrific designs. Here are a few that have already caught my eye and are worth checking out.

Oddmotion – a daily video

Face Meets Wall – Getting Up After Hitting the Creative Wall

Design It Daily

Briansaar – Make Something Every Day

Subject to Change

365 Logo Project

Foomandoonian Daily365

Did You Accept the Challenge?

The above designs are just some designs that I collected in a short time. I’m sure there are a lot more awesome designs out there that I haven’t seen, so if you weren’t included, please don’t get discouraged or offended.

Have you participated in the challenge? Please leave a comment below and leave a link to your blog or where you have your daily design. Try to leave a full comment. If you just attach the link, Akismet might automatically classify you as spam and we might not be able to see your designs.

Remember, we will do a giant round-up of the top designs over at Smashing Magazine so don’t forget to add your link below. This will be an easy way for us to keep track of the daily designs.

Thank you for reading this post and participating in the challenge. If you enjoyed this post, please retweet it and give it a bump below. You can also subscribe to Design Informer and follow us on Twitter.

No related posts.

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80+ High Quality And Useful Resources For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In October

BlogPoster — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:47:05 +0000

We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web” on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list of 80+ High Quality And Useful Resources For Designers. We obviously cannot cover all the best from the web, but we have tried to cover as much as possible.

You are welcome to share if you know more best of the web in the month of October which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.

Design Tips, Tricks and Tutorial
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

50+ High Quality Icon Design Tutorials (Part 2)

55 Terrific Cinema 4D Tutorials and Techniques

Create a Realistic Looking Nokia 5800 in 3ds Max

How to Create Roads and Rail Tracks on a Path

40 Adobe Illustrator Text Effect Tutorials

A Beginners Guide to Digital Textile Printing

Create a Transparent Text Effect with Fresh Grass Texture and Custom Brushset

75 PSD to HTML Resources for Web Designers

The Ultimate Round-Up of Print Design Tutorials

Design A Killer Fashion Model Poster

How to Create Smoky Brushes and Type In Illustrator CS4

50 Hot New Tutorials From Around The Web

45+ Adobe Illustrator Tutorials for Creating Cartoon Character Illustrations

Design a Minimal and Modern Portfolio Layout with Photoshop

How to Create an Icon in Illustrator

30 Advanced Photoshop Tutorials for Gamers

Blog Headers: 20 Great Examples and Best Practices

Build a Slick Rich User Interface in Photoshop

40 Quality Photoshop UI Design Tutorials

Artwork, Digital Photography and Inspiration

50 Awe-Inspiring Underwater Photos

21 Adorable Pieces Of Manga Art

100+ Clean, Simple and Minimalist Website Designs

15 Fabulous Examples of Origami Inspired logo Designs

39 Astonishing Examples of 3D Typography

35 Smart Logos With Second Thought To Make You look Twice

11 Amazing Photo Manipulated and Digital Art Wallpapers

A Showcase of 35 Beautiful Typographical Illustrations

40 Beautiful HDR Pictures You Would be Amazed

Trends in Pricing Page Design and Layout

14 Bold and Colorful Print Ads from Various Brands

44 Examples of Nature Inspired Website Designs

35 Creative Twitter User Profile Designs

Showcase Of Beautiful Textured Web Designs

Weekly Vector Inspiration #40

23 Eco Friendly Sites that are Using WordPress

30 Superb Examples of Infographic Maps

Website Design Showcase Of 21 Popular Brands

30 Jaw Dropping 3D Character Creations

45 Inspiring Navigation Menus That You Must See

15 Inspirational Single-Page Websites

10 Unforgettable Interactive and Inspirational Business Cards

105 People Photo Manipulation Works You Will Really Marvel

40+ Beautiful Fish Inspired Logos

25 Absolutely Magnificant Landscape Photo Manipulation

Showcase of Social Networking Websites

15 Elegant Cartoon Wallpapers You Can Not Miss

40 Striking Examples of Graffiti Art

24 Awesome Single Page Portfolio Designs

80+ Photo Manipulations Art to Ignite Your Creativity

Javascript and Ajax

How to Build a Simple Content Slider jQuery Plugin

20 Simple jQuery Tricks

35 Fresh and Useful jQuery Plugins

Curtains Opening Animation with jQuery

xHTML and CSS
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

Mastering CSS Coding: Getting Started

The Blueprint CSS Framework – Tutorials, How-to Guides and Tools

Purely CSS – Faking Minimum Margins

Resources

90’s Technology

Most Useful Collection of Premium 3d models

1000+ High Quality Free Grunge Textures, Icons, Brushes and Fonts

45 Beautiful Dual-Screen Wallpapers

30 Stunning Fonts To Enhance Your Designs

Collection of 8 Free and Exceptional Icon Sets

80 Stunning Background Patterns For Your Websites

9 Open Source Microblogging Applications

500+ Free Download High Quality Photoshop PSD Files For Designers

24 High Quality Free And Stunning Symbol Fonts

50 Surprisingly Amazing Themes for Blogger

40 Amazing Photoshop Brush Directories and Collections

Miscellaneous Articles

20 Best WordPress Typography Plugins To Enhance Readability

How to Properly Prepare a Guest Post in 5 Simple Steps

5 Highly Applicable, Yet Easily Overlooked Features in Photoshop

The History and Evolution of Social Media

20 Useful & Nicely Designed Web Applications

24 Useful Tutorials on Creating Photoshop Brushes

30+ Super Secret OS X Features and Shortcuts

15 Most Important WordPress Plugins To Help You Fight Spam

Guide to a Successful Blog Post

8 Powerful WordPress Plugins You Probably Don’t Use But Should

9 OpenSource URL shortening apps to make your own services

7 Key Principles That Make A Web Design Look Good

Windows Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows 7

20 Handy Photoshop Tips For a Faster Workflow

10 Useful WordPress Coding Techniques

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65+ Must See Resources Especially For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In September

BlogPoster — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 04:27:25 +0000

We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web” on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list of 65+ Must See Resources Especially For Designers. We obviously cannot cover all the best from the web, but we have tried to cover as much as possible.

You are welcome to share if you know more best of the web in the month of September which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.

56 Absolutely Brilliant and Intriguing Photoshop Video Tutorials

45 Tutorials for Learning Pixelmator

27 Excellent Digital Photography Tutorials

40 Useful Photoshop Tutorials for Photo Manipulation

10 Wonderful Letterpress Type Tutorials

6 Different Ways to Make Your Text and Images Glow [Tutorials]

11 Fascinating and Educational Tutorials Teaching You How to Produce Better Photo Effects

How to Effectively Use Contrast, Auto Levels, and Batch Processing

50+ Most Amazing Adobe After Effects Tutorials You Need to Learn

20+ Car Pimping and Tuning Photoshop Tutorials

15 Of The Best Character Illustration Tutorials Online

Photoshop Tutorials You Do Not Want to Miss

Urban Art Tutorial in Photoshop and Illustrator

Top Places to Find Quality Illustrator Tutorials Online

Artwork, Digital Photography and Inspiration

Typographic Portraits That Are Absolutely Beautiful

100 Artworks from the Top 20 Designers in The Middle East and Africa

23 Colorful And Smart Examples Of Beautiful Web Designs

70 Fresh and Inspirational Blog Designs

Stunning illustrated typography on dark backgrounds

Best of Best WordPress 404 Error Page Designs

20 Amazing Examples of Vector Artwork

Website Design: Some of the most uniquely designed E-commerce websites

40 Gorgeous Fantasy Wallpapers to Spice Up your Laptop

40 Creative and Inspiring Website Backgrounds Techniques

13 Striking Digital illustrations of Horror Girls by Yoshitaka Kawakami

CSS: Design Out Of The Box

40 Excellent Examples of Interior Designs Rendered in 3D Max

25 Examples of Web 2.0 and Traditional Design Rules Coming Together

33 Creative and Beautiful Logos

50 Inspiring Web Application and Service Web Site Designs

50 Beautiful & Unique Twitter Profile Designs

30 Powerful and Inspiring Street Fighter Characters Artworks

50 Websites (and More) for Your Design Inspiration

20 Creative Illustration Advertisements from behance

40 Breathtaking & Creative Logo Designs Just to Inspire

TOP 35 Grunge Websites

Amazing Character Designs: 75 Brilliant Examples

25 Inspiring Examples of Abstract Vector Design

15 Mind Blowing Dragons Illustrations and Artworks

Javascript and Ajax

40 Super-Neat JavaScript Plugins

25 Useful jQuery Tooltip Plugins and Tutorials

35+ Create Amazing Image Effects and Sliders with These Awesome jQuery Plugins

10 Easy jQuery Tricks for Designers

Create a photorealistic web layout – CSS/XHTML available

CSS Wishlist: New Ideas, Debates and Solutions

51 Form Element Resources and Tutorials Using CSS And Javascript

30 CSS Best Practices for Beginners

Resources
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

60+ Totally Free Rusted Metal Textures for Designers

460 Free High Quality Icons For Web Designers

60 High Quality Photoshop PSD Files For Designers

Massive Collection of Stunning Photoshop Actions

27 Best WebSites to Download Free Seamless Patterns

Fresh Free High-Quality Icon Sets

Style Switchers Showcase and Resources

76 Dirty, Extreme And Creative Free Grunge Fonts

99 High-Quality Free (X)HTML/CSS Templates

Five Free Tools for Multi-Monitor Computer Set-Ups

14 Best Online Typography Tools for Web Designers

16 Free “Premium Quality” WordPress Magazine Themes

13 Excellent Firefox Add-Ons That Are Absolutely Useful

49 Amazing Resources for Free Vector Graphics

Miscellaneous Articles

20+ Powerful WordPress Security Plugins and Some Tips and Tricks

10 Revealing Infographics about the Web

30 Incredibly Useful WordPress Hacks

The Only SEO Tools You’ll Ever Need

The Difference Between Art and Design

Must See SEO Guide for All WordPress Bloggers

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50+ Promising Collection Of Resources And Inspirations For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In April

BlogPoster — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:06:49 +0000

We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web” on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list of 50+ Promising Collection Of Resources And Inspirations For Designers. We obviously cannot cover all the best from the web, but we have tried to cover as much as possible.

You are welcome to share if you know more best of the web in the month of April which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.

115+ Ultimate Round-Up of 3D Studio Max Tutorials

40+ Cartoon Character Illustration Tutorials

40 Apple-themed Photoshop Tutorials

30+ Most Wanted Photo Manipulation Tutorials in Photoshop Part I

101 Examples of Text Treatments on the Web

Create a Cute Easter Bunny Vector

Create a Glossy Volt Icon in Photoshop

30+ Fresh & Useful Adobe Illustrator Tutorials & Neat Tips

33 Tutorials to Unleash the Photoshop Beast in You

Create a Bright Retro Grunge Vector Illustration

25 Photoshop Tutorials for Working with Textures

Create an Asian Inspired Illustration with Impact

How to Make a Stylish Glowing Box in Photoshop

30 Hand-picked Flash and Essential Actionscript 3.0 Tutorials

44 Must Learn Web Design Layout Tutorials in Photoshop

How to Create a Retro Vector Illustration with Stylized Lines

35 Tutorials to create amazing Vector Graphics using Inkscape

14 Tutorials for Creating Photoshop Brushes

Retro Rainbow Tutorials and Design Showcase

Artwork, Digital Photography and Inspiration
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

41 Great Looking Free WordPress Themes

15 Best Places to get Inspirational Web Designs

Vector Inspiration #15

30 Creative Illustrative Website Headers

70+ More Rainbow Colors Inspired Photos and Pictures

50 Great Wallpapers about Design

30+ Cute and Clever Anime Paper Child Art

50 Beautiful Websites with Illustrated Landscapes

15 Stunning Examples of Underwater Photography

40 Stylish, Minimal and Clean Free WordPress Themes

Beautiful And Creative Logo Designs For Your Inspiration

Hover Effects in Web Design: Best Practices and Examples

22 Radiant Red Websites

Wonderful Fantasy Landscape Artwork

Javascript and Ajax

20 More Excellent AJAX Effects You Should Know

18 jQuery scripts and tutorials to improve your portfolio

20 Useful PHP + jQuery Components & Tuts for Everyday Project

Essential PHP Techniques for Web Designer and Developers

Fun With CSS Shapes

100+ Massive CSS Toolbox

30 Exceptional CSS Navigation Techniques

The Mystery Of CSS Sprites: Techniques, Tools And Tutorials

110 Grungy Concrete Blocks

21 Free Apps For Mac OS X That Are Useful and Productive

50+ Sources To Download High-Quality Free Vector Stuff

44 Excellent Free Icon Sets Everyone Must Have

270+ High-Res Rough and Grungey Photoshop Brushes

20 Free Original Hi-Res Ink Stained Paper Textures

Miscellaneous Articles
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory

Beginner’s Guide to E-Commerce Solution

100+ Massive WordPress Tutorial Collection

6 Tips to Help You Get the Most Out of Google Docs

7 More Useful Tips To Help Your Site Convert

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Programming Blog » well design

A Developer’s Job Mirrors The Project Lifecycle

Analysis

Design

Development

Testing

Deployment

Your Client Knows More Than You

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About the Author

Make a Christmas Card Using Words From Google Instant’s Blacklist

How to Create “Touchable” Web Designs

How to Create “Touchable” Web Designs

Light

Gradations

Highlights

Shadows

Textures

Layers

Examples

Webdesignerdepot.com

Marcofolio.net

Designora.com

Blog.Spoongraphics.co.uk

Image Credits

Find Something Missing?

Case-Study: Make Web, Not War

Pros and Cons

Problem: Healthy (mental and physical)

Replay:

Problem: Hackers

Replay:

Problem: Everything Will be Online

Replay:

Image Credits

Find Something Missing?

A Guide to Premium WordPress Themes

Popularity

Design

Make Sure the Text is Readable

Pay Attention to the Typography

Does the Homepage Have a Clear Focus?

Will the Design Match Your Branding?

Features

Multiple Color Schemes

Shortcodes

Unlimited Sidebars

Custom Widgets

Multiple Page Templates

Contact Form

Flexibility

Logo Uploading

Custom CSS

JavaScript and CSS frameworks

Sliced PSD

Documentation

Support

Price

Single Theme Purchase

Subscription Purchases

Non-fixed Prices

Adequacy

Wrapping Up

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70+ Promising Resources and Tutorials Especially For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In December

Did You Accept the Daily Design Challenge?

Action Speaks Louder than Words

A Few More Pointers

Smashing Ideas and Designs

Did You Accept the Challenge?

80+ High Quality And Useful Resources For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In October

65+ Must See Resources Especially For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In September

50+ Promising Collection Of Resources And Inspirations For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In April