webdesigncollected

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If you’re looking for a fast way to learn WordPress, LearnWebDevelopment.com has created the perfect program. It’s their WordPress Bootcamp – a training course that will teach you how to build a fully-functioning WordPress website in just 8 weeks! And, because they give all their students weekly feedback as they go through the course, you’ll never be left alone.

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Jerry Seinfeld’s web video series, Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee is now in Season 2 and just like Season 1 it features a handful of comedians driving in cars & getting coffee.

Last year, I was fortunate enough to do the branding, UX and UI for Season 1 and I am even more fortunate to get to do it again for Season 2.

The Season 2 website is now responsive and has two main views as shown below, one for large displays and one for smaller displays. The clean, streamlined site allows for the content to be king; each video is just a click away and is supported by bold type and optimized large imagery without any clutter. Feel free to check it out, it’s a great show!

Everything was designed and developed in house by the talented team at Ammirati.

Comments always welcome.

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© This article is copyright of JUST™ Creative and should not be found elsewhere.

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The online webfont service Typekit by Adobe is a fantastic business model. Their premium accounts are very affordable in yearly billing cycles and you have access to over 700+ different fonts. These can be loaded directly into your CSS and used as a regular font-family value. Typekit is a quick way to dramatically improve the layout of your website.

I have put together this showcase of 30 personal favorites from Typekit. You can use these fonts in so many different places like your navigation, footer, header text, and even body content. Custom typefaces will take a bit of time to load – so there is a tradeoff for using all custom web fonts. However when used sparingly the Typekit library is a colossus unmatched anywhere else on the web.

Proxima Nova

Chaparral Pro

Adelle Sans

FF Meta Web Pro

FF Meta Serif Web Pro

Iskra

Museo

Minion Pro

Ratio

Brevia

Bello Pro

Kepler STD Extended

Rooney Sans

Alternate Gothic

Kepler STD Caption

Utopia STD

JAF Herb

Acuta

Cronos Pro

Bickham Script Pro

Coquette

FF Market Web

Droid Serif

Skolar Web

Fertigo Pro Script

Foco

Krete

Brioso Pro Caption

Modesto

Cubano

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Here at WDL, we love to gather useful freebies to spice up your design library. So today we will present you with some really cool flat icons sets. Flat design is being more and more appreciated lately. This is why you need some quality flat icons to count on. Enjoy!

Flat Design Icons Set Vol3 by Pixeden

Free program icons by Applove

FREE Flat Social Icons EPS by Jorge Calvo García

Flat Design Icons Set Vol4 by Pixeden

Flat UI by Designmodo

Free Flat Icons by buatoom

Free Colorful Icons by Michael Dolejš

Freebie PSD – Flat Icons by Alberto

Flatties by UI Parade

Flat Icons Brownie Theme by Sunbzy

Flat Icons Freebie by Seevi

Flat Icons Freebie by Seevi

Flat Icons: More Than 3600 Icons by iconShock

Logos are more than a wise combination of text and graphics. They represent the brand. The three vital attributes of a functional logo are – that it must be easy to interpret, simple in design, and of course attractive. Many times logo designers get caught up in the rush to add many frill elements to build robust logos. Well, in my opinion, you must never do that. Remember the rule – K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid).

One of the techniques you can implement is to wisely make use of ‘negative space’. When done properly, this space adds more depth and perspective to your brand logo. If you are struggling with the design of your logo or want some improvisation just scroll down this list of 25 clever, inspiring and beautiful logos that use negative space.

Nexcite By Amore, Blair Thomson

This is one of my favorite because it is simple, cute and uses basic colors to seek attention. Nexcite’s brand identity is aptly conveyed via the logo – a refreshing beverage that kicks energy in you as soon as you consume it. The heart and the red color in the logo states that the drink is often marketed as a romantic drink from Sweden with love.

WWF By Sir Peter Scott, later modified by Landor

Extremely good use of negative space to represent an otherwise large animal in the logo. Panda in the logo also represents an endangered species which the WWF is striving to conserve.

Guild of Food Writers By 300million

There is a spoon in the middle representing food and a nib of an ink pen that stands for writers. This is a fine example of a precise and sophisticated logo making the best use of negative space.

London Underground Designed by Edward Johnston

Using only very simple sans-serif font and effective use of negative space London Underground got a stylish yet functional logo. The colors stand out as they can be easily visible from far, as well.

Penguin Designed by Edward Preston Young

The logo oozes class and mass appeal in the use of its design and coloring. Do you know that Edward Young spent a day in the zoo to actually draw penguins in all poses. After a series of modifications the final logo appeared ‘dignified but flippant.’

Message Designed by Sam Dallyn

Great design by the art director and designer presenting a complex idea in a clear and pretty way. The logo is more about the strong association one experiences with the word ‘message’ and the ‘brand’ in a broader sense.

Height By Strizhart

A well balanced and fun logo that makes wise use of the negative space between the arrows and around it. It is an easy to transport medium among various platforms and can be stacked with colors, in cases needed.

Estantial By Ocularink

Concise and smart logo using negative space to make its point. The upward pointing arrow shows the forward thinking of the designer and brand.

8 Fish By Jerron

This logo is a cool work to actually see negative space in action. It conveys the message accurately and is really outstanding in its regard.

Broentech By DP Designs

Use of negative space makes the design remarkable and refined in more than one way. It has a dual personality of being suave yet robust in its appearance.

Panda Bowl By Almosh

Amazing negative space variations in the design and bright colors gives the logo a comprehensive look. It has its unique personality and is very welcoming.

J/S By Jose

A very simple yet attention grabbing way of designing a logo. A monogram has been creatively worked around using negative space.

Totem Media By Olaru

This logo is a combination of various techniques such as vertical writing technique, negative spacing and bold fonts to make it attractive. It conveys an immense depth and meaning.

5 Locks By Dalius Stuoka

Extremely clever logo that does little to enhance its overall appeal. The strength of this design lies in its simplicity and instant association that anyone can have with it.

Motion By Nickhood

Awesome work of combing arrows to make a holistic design using negative space. It is modest, representative and very classy.

Magic Carpet Productions By Captiv8

The logo reminds you of our favorite fairy tale and builds a strong association with the brand. It uses negative space properly to develop a strong sense of production(s) the company overtakes.

VinoPiano By Mootto Studio

All I can think of this logo is – elegance at its best. Negative space used just at the right proportion makes it a very tempting brand to indulge in.

Pencil By Reghardt A very clean, simple and functional logo depicting the brand. What attracts me most is the effective use of color and font with negative space.

Royal Clothes By Abdallah Ahizoune

A cutely used negative space spelling the core message of the brand. The proportions are just right neither more or less to pass on the brand’s work.

Waiter By Dan

This logo design has used negative space to depict the many aspects of the brand. It is nonetheless a clever approach to design methodology.

In-Shop By Srdjan Kirtic

Inspired from bar-codes this logo has a nicely done background which helps to easily interpret the brand. Usable yet playful at the same time.

Elephone By Jan Meeus

A thought provoking logo, represents the brand as being innovative, smart and performance centric. Besides, having tons of mass appeal.

Bull By dodongjohnjohn

Interesting logo that shows the bull horns in its logo. A crisp and innovative idea in action. A thumbs up from me!

Moon By Joe Prince

Brilliantly executed moon logo design. The logo helps to build an easy recognition and recall for the brand by using negative space to spell out m-o-o-n.

The Robin’s Nest Barber Shop By Double A

This logo had to make to my wonder list. Expertly made logo using negative space renders it a rather wholesome and awesome look and feel.

To Summarize

It maybe small in its form but it holds great value for any brand which not only wants to gain a large market share but have a brand market of its own. A logo conveys the passion and enthusiasm that the brand wants to share among its users.

About the Author:

Skylar Barret works for PLAVEB, a custom logo design company located in Los Angeles. He is a passionate web and logo designer and enjoys brainstorming ideas with friends and colleagues. Whenever he gets time he loves to draw design inspirations from around the globe.

Devo fare i miei complimenti a Matteo Achilli. Davvero sinceri. Forse avrete sentito parlare di lui come lo “Zuckerberg italiano”. Il nomignolo affettuoso non gliel’ho affibbiato io. L’idea risale a un annetto fa ed è stata di qualche geniale titolista di Panorama. Nella copertina dell’ultima uscita dell’inserto Economy, Matteo Achilli lo battezzavano così. Anzi, per rendere la cosa ancora più verosimile, in inglese, come “Italian Zuckerberg”.

Matteo è il fondatore di Egomnia. Un social network tutto italiano sul mondo del lavoro. La stampa nostrana, a caccia del fenomeno di turno, gli ha sempre rivolto una particolare e quasi morbosa attenzione. Per togliervi lo sfizio, della vicenda Egomnia ne avevo parlato in questo articolo datato luglio dello scorso anno. Leggetevelo se ve lo siete persi allora. Perché fece il botto. E come in tutti i film di successo che si rispetti c’è stato anche il seguito. E visto che vanno di moda le trilogie, questo sarà l’ultimo capitolo dedicato all’argomento. Lo giuro.

Oggi il Corriere della Sera è tornato alla carica. Video intervista a Matteo Achilli. Per la serie “L’Italia che riparte”, presentiamo “Matteo Achilli, lo Zuckerberg Italiano”. Ve la faccio breve. Egomnia nei primi 5 mesi del 2013 ha fatturato 500 mila euro. Alla faccia della crisi e della morte dell’imprenditorialità giovanile che affliggono l’Italia.

Complimenti Matteo. Davvero tanti e sinceri.

Faccio una domanda. Come fa un “social network” (le virgolette non sono messe lì a caso) come Egomnia, verosimilmente con non più di una decina di migliaia di iscritti e con un traffico – a guardare certi siti pubblici di statistiche – così avvilentemente basso a fare certi numeri?

Ci sono dati ufficiali, certificati da terze parti che si possono consultare? Tanto per dire: numero di utenti, traffico giornaliero, tempo medio degli utenti sul sito. Cose di questo genere.

Ora. Non è accanimento nei confronti di Egomnia, il mio. Anzi, esterno la mia più profonda e assoluta stima per chi riesce a raccapezzare certe cifre. Però 500 mila euro in cinque mesi, sono sempre 500 mila euro in 5 mesi. Fatemi contento per una volta. Voglio togliervi la soddisfazione di darvela vinta e vedermi costretto a rimangiarmi tutto quello che ho detto fino ad oggi sul fenomeno italiano delle startup. Perché, a guardare certi numeri, queste diavolo di startup fanno miracoli. Almeno così dicono.

New poll! Just for funzies. Do you prefer...

Light Code on Dark Background

Like this:

or...

Dark Code on Light Background

Like this:

Those are just examples. Doesn't have to be those exact syntax highlighting themes. But I believe all themes fall into those two categories.

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New Poll: Light on Dark or Dark on Light? is a post from CSS-Tricks

This is the story of what we learned during a redesign for our most demanding client — ourselves! In this article, I will explain, from our own experience of refreshing our agency website, why we abandoned a separate mobile website and will review our process of creating a new responsive design.

At Cyber-Duck, we have been designing both responsive websites and adaptive mobile websites for several years now. Both options, of course, have their pros and cons. With a separate mobile website, you have the opportunity to tailor content and even interactions to the context of your users, whereas a responsive website means better content parity for users and a single website to maintain.

Why Adapt To A Responsive Design?

Our redesign story starts in August 2012. Until then, our previous strategy of having separate mobile, tablet and desktop websites didn’t exactly perform badly; they drove conversions, and user engagement appeared to be good relative to our desktop website. I should mention that this strategy was borne purely out of the need to quickly tailor our ageing desktop website to the increasing number of tablet and mobile users at the time.

We used jQuery Mobile to create our previous mobile-optimized website as a quick fix for the increasing number of mobile users on our ageing desktop website.

We produced our tablet and mobile websites specifically with users of these devices in mind — performance was our top priority. We wanted to improve on the loading time of our “desktop” website dramatically; the desktop home page was 2.2 MB, with 84 HTTP requests, and the mobile home page was still quite large, at 700 KB, with 46 HTTP requests. We had also designed the interfaces specifically with touch in mind, using jQuery Mobile to enhance the user experience with touch gestures.

Changing Our Approach

Despite this, several factors led us to decide that this approach was no longer sustainable for our own website:

• having to support multiple code bases,
• content management,
• the emergence of new mini-tablets and “phablets.”

The first two were not ideal, but at least manageable. The third, however, was a deal-breaker. OK, so we could have designed a website optimized for mini-tablets, but with so many more Web-enabled devices of all shapes and sizes entering the market every day, it would have been only a matter of time before we needed to think about optimizing for new form factors.

We wanted our new website to be easier to maintain and more future-friendly for the inevitable influx of new form factors.

It was at this point that we decided to completely overhaul all three websites and create a responsive design that would provide the best possible experience to all of our users, regardless of how they accessed our website.

Setting Goals for the Responsive Design

At the very start of this overhaul, we set ourselves some simple goals, or principles if you like, that we wanted to achieve with our responsive design:

1. Speed Performance affects everyone.
2. Accessibility It should work with no styles, backgrounds or JavaScript.
3. Content parity The same content and functionality should be on all platforms.
4. Device-agnostic Leave no platform behind.
5. Future-friendly Cut down on maintenance.

Based on these goals, our starting point for the design was to review our existing mobile website and to use it as a base for our responsive design. We explored how we could enhance for wider screens, rather than attempt to squeeze our previous desktop website down to mobile.

We started by speaking to some of our trusted customers about what they liked about our website, what they didn’t really like, and what was important to them when searching for a digital agency.

We also used analytics data from our previous website, using a mixture of Google Analytics, Lead Forensics and CrazyEgg to help us better understand what existing users wanted and needed from our website. As a result, we were able to streamline and prioritize a content strategy based on how our users actually interact with the website.

Our design team used card-sorting exercises to reorganize our existing content for the new website.

Making Performance A Priority

A potential pitfall of responsive Web design, which you don’t find with a separate mobile website, is that performance can suffer, especially if you are simply hiding content using display: none at certain screen widths. We wanted to avoid this issue by putting the speed of our website at the heart of all design and technology decisions. The advantage is that a better performing website would benefit all users, not just mobile users.

To achieve this, we set a performance budget — a set of targets to improve the speed and size of our new website. For mobile users, we wanted a website that performed at the very least comparably to our existing mobile website; so, we wanted to load no more than 40 HTTP requests and 500 KB of data for our mobile breakpoint. (This was just the start. Our next step was to reduce this to less than 100 KB.)

Third-Party Scripts

The easiest way to trim the fat was to strip down third-party scripts as much as possible. According to Zurb, “to load the Facebook, Twitter and Google social media buttons for a total of 19 requests takes 246.7 KB in bandwidth.” As a result, we replaced heavy social-media plugins with lightweight social media links.

Replacing heavy third-party social buttons with simple social media links can significantly reduce HTTP requests and page-loading times.

While some essential tracking scripts had to stay, we ensured that they would load after the content by putting them at the bottom of the body element in the HTML document and in an external scripts file.

Did We Really Need A CMS?

Early on in discussing the requirements for the new website, we considered whether we even needed a content management system (CMS). After all, as you’d expect in a digital agency, most of the team members are familiar with HTML, CSS and Git, so we could certainly manage our content without a CMS.

By using server-side performance-monitoring tools such as New Relic, we could see that our previous CMS was a key factor in the slow page-loading times. Thus, we took the fairly drastic decision to entirely remove the CMS from our website. We made an exception for our blog, which, due to the volume and frequency of content being published, still required a CMS to be managed effectively.

The previous home page queried the database server 1,459 times, for a total execution time of 2.34 seconds.

Our old website was built with a model-view-controller (MVC) architecture that connected with the WordPress CMS. To give you an example, a typical page with WordPress uses around 600 to 1,500 queries to load; the database server is queried hundreds of times, and by simply removing the CMS, we managed to reduce this to zero in one fell swoop.

The team developed early prototypes to see how we could improve performance and responsiveness.

By removing the CMS for static pages, we eliminated the need for a database and dynamic templates. Using the popular PHP framework Laravel, we implemented a custom “dynamic route and static template” system. This means that each time a URL is called on our website, the Laravel router knows exactly which template to load by matching the URL to the template’s name, and the template already has all of the content laid out statically in HTML.

As a result of this alone, we managed to improve the processing speed of the website by over 3,900%. Taking the home page as an example, we improved server processing speeds from 2.2 seconds to 56 milliseconds on average.

Server processing speed is now only 56 milliseconds, with zero database queries — approximately 40 times faster than before.

Naturally, this approach wouldn’t suit everyone (nor indeed many of our clients), but we should ask ourselves at the beginning of each project which CMS is most suitable, and whether one is necessary at all. Other options are out there, of course, including file-based CMS’ such as Kirby and Statamic, building or customizing a lightweight CMS such as Perch, or simply implementing better server-side caching such as with Varnish.

Ultimately, we decided to remove the CMS because even the most lightweight, highly optimized CMS with clever caching has overhead and cannot match the performance and server footprint of static files.

Avoiding Off-The-Shelf CSS Frameworks

While CSS frameworks such as Twitter Bootstrap and Foundation are great for quickly building interactive prototypes, they are often far more complex than we need for most projects. The reason is that these frameworks need to be sensitive to and cater to a wide variety of use cases and are not tailored to the particular requirements of your project.

We reduced the size of our style sheets by creating a custom responsive grid system that was simple, fast and extremely flexible to our needs.

We designed from the content out, meaning that the content shaped the layout and grid, as opposed to having the layout define the content.

Clockwise from top: The layout is three columns on a desktop, becomes a single column stack on mobile, and takes advantage of the extra space on tablets by floating the image to the left of the content.

@media only screen and (min-width: 120px) and (min-device-width: 120px) {

   // Uses mobile grid
   .container {
      width: 100%;
   }
   .col12, .col11, .col10, .col9, .col8, .col7, .col6, .col5, .col4, .col3 {
      width: 92%;
      margin: 0 4% 20px 4%;
   }
   .col2 {
      width: 46%;
      float: left;
      margin: 0 4% 20px 4%;
   }
}

@media only screen and (min-width: 600px) and (min-device-width: 600px) {

   // Uses custom grid to accomodate content
   .home-content {
      article {
         width: 92%;
         clear: both;
         margin: 0 4% 20px 4%;
      }
      .image {
         float: left;
         width: 40%;
      }
      .text {
         float: left;
         width: 50%;
         margin-left: 5%;
         .btn {
            @include box-sizing(content-box);
            width: 100%;
         }
      }
   }
}

@media only screen and (min-width: 1024px) and (min-device-width: 1024px) {

   // Uses regular desktop grid system
   .container {
      width:960px;
      margin:0 auto;
   }
   .col4 {
      width: 300px;
      float: left;
      margin: 0 10px;
   }
} 

We used Sass for the front-end development to avoid any repetition of code, making sure every bit of CSS is actually being used. Sass can also minify the output to ensure that the CSS is a small as possible.

$sass --watch --style compressed scss:css

We also made use of functions within Sass to build our custom grid. Here is the code for the desktop grid:

@import "vars";

// Grid system
$wrap: $col * 12 + $gutter * 11;
@for $i from 2 through 12 {
   .col#{$i} {
      width: $col * $i + $gutter * $i - $gutter;
      float: left;
      margin: 0 $gutter/2 $vgrid $gutter/2;
   }
}
@for $i from 1 through 11 {
   .pre#{$i} {
      padding-left: $col * $i + $gutter * $i;
   }
}
@for $i from 1 through 11 {
   .suf#{$i} {
      padding-right: $col * $i + $gutter * $i;
   }
}
.container {
   width: $wrap + $gutter;
   margin: 0 auto;
   padding-top: 1px;
}
.colr {
   float: right;
   margin: 0 $gutter;
}
.alpha {
   margin-left: 0;
}
.omega {
   margin-right: 0;
}

From here, we could customize the width of columns and gutters within the grid simply by editing the vars configuration file.

// Grid
$vgrid:      20px;
$col:        60px;
$gutter:     20px;

The grid basically calculates the width of a span of columns based on the number of columns in that span, making it flexible to any configuration of layout or grid. We’ve open-sourced this code on GitHub (we make no apologies for the duck puns), so please fork and adapt this flexible grid system to your own project’s requirements — and let us know how it goes!

Conditionally Loading JavaScript

To further improve the speed of our new website, we wanted to load JavaScript only when it’s needed or supported. We achieved this by using RequireJS to ensure that JavaScript is loaded only after checking that JavaScript is available in the requesting browser and that the browser only loads scripts it can support. RequireJS also works as a module loader, ensuring that any JavaScript is called only if it’s needed on that page.

RequireJS also contains a handy optimization tool that combines related scripts and minifies them via UglifyJS to reduce the file size of the JavaScript.

The optimization reduced the JavaScript’s size from 411 KB to 106 KB.

Optimizing Image Assets

In addition to JavaScript, images are among the heaviest assets to download for most websites. We particularly wanted to improve on this area because our website is fairly image-heavy, showing examples that showcase our work.

We manually optimized images throughout the website by selectively compressing areas of images using Adobe Fireworks’ selective quality options. We also reduced image file sizes through further granular control of compression, blur and desaturation.

By desaturating and blurring parts of images that are not essential, we significantly reduced image sizes.

We also used ImageOptim and TinyPNG to compress our images and sprites. These tools remove all unnecessary data without compromising the quality of an image. This reduced the weight of the main image sprite, for instance, from 111 KB to 40 KB.

For the slideshow banner on the home page, we optimized for different screen sizes by using media queries to ensure that only appropriate-sized images are loaded.

As you can see in the image above, on mobile, the slideshow items are far lighter.

The CSS:

@media only screen and (min-width: 120px) and (min-device-width: 120px) {
   .item-1 {
      background: $white url('carousel/dmd/background-optima-m.jpg') 50% 0 no-repeat;
      .computer, .tablet, .phone, .eiffel, .bigben, .train {
         display: none;
      }
   }
   /* Total loaded: 27 KB */
}

More assets are loaded on the desktop.

Meanwhile, on the desktop, we load more assets to make the most of the larger screen size available to us.

The CSS:

@media only screen and (min-width: 1024px) and (min-device-width: 1024px) {
   .item-1 {
      background: $white url('carousel/dmd/background.jpg') center -30px no-repeat;
      .computer {
         background: url('carousel/dmd/computer.png') center top no-repeat;
         div {
            background: url('carousel/dmd/sc-computer.jpg') center top no-repeat;
         }
      }
      .tablet {
         background: url('carousel/dmd/tablet.png') center top no-repeat;
         div   {
            background:  url('carousel/dmd/sc-tablet.jpg') center top no-repeat;
         }
      }
      .phone {
         background: url('carousel/dmd/phone.png') center top no-repeat;
         div {
            background: url('carousel/dmd/sc-mobile.jpg') center top no-repeat;
         }
      }
      .eiffel {
         background: url('#{$img}carousel/dmd/eiffel.png') center top no-repeat;
      }
      .bigben {
         background: url('#{$img}carousel/dmd/bigben.png') center top no-repeat;
      }
      .train {
         background: url('#{$img}carousel/dmd/train.png') center top no-repeat;
      }
   }
   /* Total loaded: 266 KB */
}

Delivering Content Faster

Yahoo’s golden rule of performance states that “80-90% of the end-user response time is spent downloading all the components in the page: images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc.” In short, each request takes time to process; therefore, each request (such as to serve a file from the server) will inevitably increase the loading time.

By using CloudFlare’s content delivery network (CDN), we have separated the file-serving task of the Web server from the processing of the website. This means that our Web server concentrates on the application, rather than on serving static files. We moved all static assets to a separate subdomain (in our case, static.cyber-duck.co.uk) to reduce the cookies being sent with each request for an asset to a minimum, which in turn reduces the bandwidth required for each asset.

The CDN also caches and ensures that files are delivered from the server nearest to the user’s location, minimizing network latency (because the data is transmitted over a shorter distance), further reducing loading times.

In addition to the CDN, we used the Gzip rules and expires headers in the .htaccess file of HTML5 Boilerplate. This uses Apache’s mod_deflate module to compress the output of files to the browser and also sets an expiration on headers far into the future, to ensure better caching of the website for returning visitors.

Creating A Truly Responsive Design

As set out in our initial goals, we wanted our new website to have content parity and to provide accessibility to all users, regardless of how they access it.

In order to deliver a truly responsive design, we delegated all styling and display tasks to the CSS alone, using JavaScript to simply alter the “status” of elements by adding and removing CSS classes, as opposed to hiding and showing the elements with JavaScript directly.

The Right Code for the Task

Using this method, we could make mobile-specific optimizations, such as transforming the top menu on mobile to have telephone and map buttons so that mobile visitors can call or find our office quickly.

We used this approach throughout the website to activate and deactivate dynamic elements, always ensuring that these elements are still present on the page when JavaScript is unavailable. This way, we can offer content parity to our users while avoiding duplicate markup for specific contextual enhancements, such as those for mobile. With this approach, we ensure that JavaScript is an enhancement to the user experience, rather than a necessity to view the website.

On the right side of the top GUI, you can see the map and phone buttons, accompanied by the standard control to access the rest of the pages.

Here is the JavaScript:

$('#menu').addClass('closed');
$('.btn-menu').click(function(e){
   e.preventDefault();
   $('#menu').toggleClass('closed');
});

The CSS for desktops:

.nav {
   display: block;
   float: right;
}
.btn-menu, .btn-call, .btn-map {
   display: none;
}

The CSS for mobile:

.menu {
   display: block;
   height: auto;
   overflow: hidden;
}
.menu.closed {
   height: 0;
}
.btn-menu, .btn-call, .btn-map {
   display: block;
}

Animations as an Enhancement

For the animated slideshow of our projects on the home page, we used SequenceJS, a plugin that gave us the freedom to create the slideshow using only HTML and CSS for the content. This way, whenever JavaScript is unavailable or the screen size is too small, we don’t have to download all assets for the animation, only those necessary for a smaller, lighter version.

Elsewhere, we decided to use CSS3 for animations. These enhance the user experience for browsers that support CSS3 animations, while older browsers still get the functionality, if not the eye candy. For example, when a user is on a latest-generation smartphone and expands the menu or a portfolio item, it animates with CSS3 rather than with JavaScript.

This improves the performance of these animations by using hardware acceleration, offloading tasks of the central processing unit (CPU) to the graphics processing unit (GPU). For smartphone and tablet users, this can make a massive difference to performance by reducing consumption of their already limited CPU resources.

Delegating animation to the CSS enables us to make the most of hardware acceleration.

.menu {
   height: auto;
   transition: height 200ms linear;
}
.menu.closed {
   height: 0;
   transition: height 200ms linear;
}

Breakpoints Based on Content and Design, Not Device

For the breakpoints, we used multiple CSS media queries to responsively deliver the optimal presentation of content to screens both large and small.

This device-agnostic approach ensures that we do not need to optimize the code later when other devices come to market. We included (though did not limit) breakpoints at 120, 240, 600, 760, 980 and 1360 pixels, as well as targeted media queries for specific content on pages and also high-pixel-density screens.

The website responds fluidly between each breakpoint.

While we did not design breakpoints based on particular devices, in order to ensure further future-friendliness, we did test our website across as many devices and browsers as we could get our hands on, from the common (desktop browsers and a variety of phones and tablets) to the uncommon (Lynx, Playstation 3, Kindle Paperwhite, PSP Vita and others). We even tested the website on old Nokia devices, where the website still performed well.

Our designers and front-end team tested the new website on a wide variety of devices, including old models such as this Nokia X2.

Being More Accessible

Our responsibility as Web designers and developers is not only to make our websites more accessible, but also to educate our clients and colleagues about why they should care.

Below are a couple of quick wins for accessibility that we applied to our website.

Text

• Text is legible against backgrounds, with a contrast ratio of 3:1 for headings and 4.5:1 for body text.
• The text is structured with appropriate headings and in a meaningful order, and it describes the topic or purpose of the content.
• Text can be resized without losing content or functionality.

Links

• The purpose of all links is made clear with descriptive text and, when that isn’t practical, with alternative text.
• The first link on every page bypasses the navigation to move straight to the content. This is hidden by default in a standard browser but is accessible in appropriate scenarios.
• Page addresses (i.e. URLs) are human-readable and are permanent wherever possible.
• We implemented access keys for quick navigation to important pages and features.

Here is the HTML for the “skip” navigation link:

<a href="#content" title="Skip to content" accesskey="s" class="btn-skip">Skip navigation</a>

And the CSS:

.btn-skip {
   position: absolute;
   left: -9999px;
}

Images

• All content images have alternative text (with the alt attribute), which is shown where images are disabled or not supported.
• Content is accessible and understandable when images are disabled or not supported.

Video

• All videos hosted on YouTube have captions (subtitles) if they include spoken words.

Forms

• All form controls and fields are properly and clearly labelled.
• Form inputs have been assigned types and attributes so that the correct keyboard is loaded on touchscreen devices.
• All crucial form fields are checked for errors when the form is submitted.
• Any error found is described to the user in text, along with suggestions on how to correct the error.
• All forms have an appropriate focus order so that they can be navigated with the Tab key on the keyboard.
• All forms can be submitted using the “Return” or “Enter” key.

Using the proper input types and attributes, such as required and placeholder, is easy and makes the form more accessible.

<input type="email" id="email" name="email" value="" required="" placeholder="Pop your email address in here">

Just Getting Started

Since we launched our new website a couple of weeks ago, the results have been impressive. Mobile traffic has increased by over 200% (with an 82% increase on average for all traffic); the average duration of a visit is up by 18%; and the exit rate on the home page for mobile users has decreased by over 4,000%. While statistics can tell us only so much, these indicate that the responsive website is performing better on mobile than our previous separate mobile website.

According to Google Analytics, server-response times have decreased from an average of 1.21 seconds to 170 milliseconds. Similarly, page-loading times have decreased from an average of 9.19 seconds to 1.82 seconds.

The important thing to remember here is that this is just the beginning. We know we can improve in some areas: pushing performance optimization much further, reducing file sizes, being more future-friendly with touch gestures across all breakpoints, using server-side solutions such as adaptive images for further contextual enhancement, conforming more closely to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines’ “AA” standards.

Going responsive is just the first step for our website.

At 2012’s inaugural Smashing Conference, Brad Frost quoted Benjamin Franklin, who said, “When you are finished changing, you’re finished.” For anyone working in the Web industry, this statement will particularly ring true. We work in a medium that is both rapidly and constantly evolving. Keeping up to date with this ever-changing landscape is a challenge, but it’s what makes working with the Web so fantastic and exciting.

We see the launch of our new website as the first improvement of many in our quest for a truly responsive design — and we can’t wait to see where it takes us.

(al) (ea)

---

© Matt Gibson for Smashing Magazine, 2013.

Be a mean monkey. If you could guess what I mean here, ah… this whole idea fascinates me. Now I am having devil horns… HAHA!

Snatching clients is not a fun game. You cannot just go around and ask someone, “Can you buy things from me instead of him?” You would end up getting a slap or talking in the real world, your reputation would worsen.

Snatching things in reality is bad but when it comes to business, it is one of the basic strategies to acquire new clients. What I mean is that everyone gets a fair chance of using their skills and abilities to survive in the market and many a times, you just have to be cheeky in order to do so.

Being a graphic designer, it would be your task to have many customers come to you. Whether you are able to tackle them or not, that is another story. But your clients are your way to success, so you need to be clever and keep eyes open to compete with others. So what are some really good ways to have clients be in your pockets instead of your competitor’s? Ah, I can see you grinning.

• Know Every Designer

Knowing your competitors is very important. If you do not know where the clients are going instead of coming to you, your plan will not work. Designers could be of different types like the freelancers, design firms etc. Know for sure all the competitors that exist in the design market and then proceed with your strategies.

• Reasons – Why Are They Successful?

It is very important to know the reason why competitors are being successful instead of you. Maybe they are implementing ideas perfectly that the clients tell them. Maybe your work is not as expected by the clients. May be your clients need some leniency in the payment options or desire a discount; things which are not offered by you. All these things are worth millions in the long run. They are in fact a very important reason why some businesses fail.

• Eavesdrop Secretly

Have you attended parties where every graphic designer is invited? No? Why not? I am telling you, it is very important to go attend these parties, know why? It is because everyone would be talking who does what and how one does it. You can eavesdrop and listen to what others are saying about other designers. Hear gossips from everyone. When you have an idea of your competitors’ strength and weakness, you can possibly beat him/her quickly.

• Their Weaknesses, Your Strength!

To elaborate “identifying weaknesses” point is very important. Suppose your competitor is only working on static websites and at some point in time, he has suffered because of it. Note this weakness and think. How much will your client be willing to buy your design if you build a CMS website? The idea is to take out weaknesses from the other side and convert them to your strengths.

• Are You Different From Them?

Be the only guy in town to know something. Think of a scenario when a problem relating theft occurs and there is only one BIG BOSS. Who would everyone turn to in this situation? Of course, that person who is expert with catching thieves. The same condition applies here. You have to make yourself different in some way or the other. Make yourself feel important.

• Specialize in a Niche

You can be an expert of designing a particular niche. This is the same thing as specializing in something. For instance, you could turn into an expert of designing business cards. Next time, when a person comes in search of a person who could design amazing business cards, it will be you on the list. Everyone would be like, “I know a person from town who designs business cards”. This will be enough to keep you ahead of your competitors.

• Play Fair and Care For Your Clients

Tackle clients with a nice behavior. Let them know that they are important and you feel their pain. These little things count. When a client comes to you next time, make sure to note the slightest thing he or she does and treat accordingly. Respond to their requests, always pick the phone and talk, complete the project on time and give them importance. All these things will turn your clients into regular customers!

How would you like to rank this post? Do you think it is helpful? Do give your opinion. By the way, snatch with a style.

There are various JavaScript-powered solutions for creating dynamic-column grid layouts (like Pinterest).

Although most of them are great, sometimes, the grids contain gaps or ragged edges.

Mason.js is a jQuery plugin that aims to perfect such grids by filling those gaps smartly.

One the grid is created, the plugin calculates where those gaps exist and fills them with either predefined elements or by duplicating the content in the grid.

It is possible to define the sizes to be used for elements, the size of columns/rows, breakpoints and if the layout will be fluid or fixed.Advertisements: ioDeck, a self-hosted and awesome PHP form generator. Professional XHTML Admin Template ($15 Discount With The Code: WRD.) SSLmatic – Cheap SSL Certificates (from $19.99/year)

Google's Penguin called it quits for some SEOs. Over-optimized websites with unnatural link structures and keyword stuffing got punished. New strategies had to be developed. Content marketing became the next big thing - a strategy I would have thought that was patently obvious. High-grade content, be it articles, videos, podcasts or infographics, proves to be the solution. Content like this needs no unnatural link support, instead builds backlinks automatically - because of the quality of it.

Smashing Magazine has released a lovely freebie today that is normally hard to find on the web.

It is called 200 Foodie Pack which is a set of free food icons.

The set has 200 items from fruits to drinks or restaurant/kitchen equipment.

It is available in .PNG (32*32px, 64*64px + 128*128px), .AI and .EPS.

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You’ve just created the best user experience ever. You had the idea. You sketched it out. You started to build it. Except you’re already in trouble, because you’ve forgotten something: the copy. Specifically, the microcopy.

Microcopy is the text we don’t talk about very often. It’s the label on a form field, a tiny piece of instructional text, or the words on a button. It’s the little text that can make or break your user experience.

If you think you’ve built the best user experience but didn’t make sure the microcopy was spot on, then you haven’t built the best user experience.

With the adoption of agile development and lean UX, we’re often concerned about racing through iterations and getting our products in front of customers. But we can’t forget that design is still about words.

Everyone frets about marketing copy — and they should — but communication doesn’t stop once you’ve sold the user. In some ways, you could argue that words become more important once the marketing experience is done. With most products, users have to be sold to only once — or once in a while — and then they’ll use the core product all the time.

If your microcopy isn’t getting the job done, you’ll lose users — and all the marketing in the world might not get you a second chance.

With that in mind, here are five ways to make sure your website’s microcopy doesn’t end up sinking your UX.

1. Get Out Of Your Own Head And Get To Know The User.

I’m willing to bet that your experience is plastered with internal terminology, especially your labels and navigation. Every company has its own language, which often sneaks onto the website when we’re not careful.

Don’t let it happen. Never assume that what works for you will work for the user.

Here’s a simple way to check whether your microcopy is too internal — or confusing, for that matter.

Let’s assume that you’re running some form of usability testing. (If you’re not, there’s only about a thousand articles out there that will convince you you’re making a mistake, so you don’t need me for that.)

When you’re testing, you probably get caught up in watching how the user interacts with your website and their facial expressions. But instead of simply watching, make a point to really listen to — and take notes on — the actual words the user says during testing. Listen closely to the phrases they utter when describing their actions. After all, you’ve told them to think out loud.

Listen to the inflection in their voice as they read microcopy: Did they say that label or term with a question in their voice? Don’t hesitate to have your moderator follow up on copy. Have them go back and ask the user whether they’ve understood that label.

Take it a step further: Listen to what users say from the moment they walk in the building. Listen to their banter with the moderator, the jokes they make and the words they use to express their frustration or enjoyment.

You’d be surprised by what you can learn about a user and their language set from a comment they make about a cup of coffee. Everything someone says tells you something about them and can inform your copywriting process.

2. The User Is A Person. Talk To Them Like One.

Because brevity is essential on the Web, most of us tend to truncate everything — particularly labels. Labels are great for design. They organize and keep tidy essential parts of a UI, such as navigation and forms.

Unfortunately, labels have an inherent problem: They’re easily subject to a user’s personal context because they don’t provide explanation. They’re on an island in the user’s mind.

Not too long ago, we encountered this problem with a label at TheLadders.

TheLadders is a job-matching service. Like any matching service, we required information to match a user with the right job.

We thought this form was very clear. “Job Goals” is the label we’ve used for our matching criteria for almost 10 years. It’s brief, which helped to keep the navigation neat. But in a recent redesign, we noticed that users kept stumbling when first arriving on the page.

Turns out that people who don’t work in the job-search industry think of job goals as accomplishments they hope to achieve at their job, not as the details of their next job.

(We also fell into the trap covered in the first point: internal terminology = bad.)

So, we made it more conversational: “What job do you want?” Instantly, we could see that users no longer hesitated. Why? Because taking this new line of copy out of context was impossible.

Instead of forcing a label on a form or field for the sake of the UI, use natural language. The experience should be a conversation with the user, not a filing cabinet for them to drudge through.

Most of all, the labels in the navigation shouldn’t be more important than the user’s interaction with the pages that the labels represent.

3. Use Copy As A Guide, Not A Crutch.

“We can fix that with copy.”

I’ve heard this too many times when the UX falls short, and I hate it. If there’s a problem with the design, then fix the design. The best experiences have minimal copy because they’re intuitive. When designing the UX and you find yourself writing a sentence or two to help the user take an action, step back.

Tests have been conducted on readability and on the optimum length of content for understandability since the 1880s. With the rise of the Internet, this story became about line length. Most sources net out between 45 to 75 characters as the ideal line length.

To me, line length is moot, especially with responsive and mobile design. Besides, character counts seem tedious and not very lean.

Instead, I subscribe to the original readability tables of Rudolf Flesch (pictured below), in which sentences with eight words or fewer are regarded as “very easy” to read.

The readability tables of Rudolf Flesch.

It may be an old standard, but it still may be the best measuring stick we have, and it’s the easiest for lean teams to follow. On the Web, we’re shooting for “very easy to read” every time, and we want to be able to communicate with as many people (93%) as possible.

If you can’t explain what a user needs to do in eight words or fewer, then reconsider the design.

Once the user has gotten past the marketing portion of the experience, use copy as a guide to usher them through the product. The best copy on basic UI features, such as a form, will get read but not really noticed. The user absorbs the words and takes the desired action without a hiccup.

4. Treat Every Moment Like A Branding Moment, Even When It’s Not.

There are multiple definitions of a “branding moment.” When we talk about copy in a UX, I define it as a moment when you purposefully inject your brand’s tone and voice into what would normally be a straightforward user interaction.

For example, Foursquare has a lot of great branding moments within its badging system. I unlocked the one below not too long ago. It’s fun and a bit edgy, on point with Foursquare’s brand.

A good job of a branding moment with Foursquare’s brand.

But getting carried away is easy. Think hard before using fun or quirky — or whatever your brand’s voice is — copy in a situation that the user wants and expects to be straightforward.

Your brand’s tone and voice are essential to consider when writing all of your copy, but it should not get in the way of a user who is trying to take action.

Avoid over-branding copy on:

• navigation,
• forms and field labels,
• instructional text,
• selection text (drop-downs, radio buttons),
• buttons.

Consider incorporating your brand’s voice in:

• confirmation messaging,
• rewards (badges, points),
• 404 pages,
• server errors,
• error messaging.

The difference between these lists is simple. In the first list, the user is attempting to take action; the second list is the results of actions.

In the first list, you don’t want to risk confusing users as they try to accomplish something and cause them to abandon. Clarity is essential.

In the second list, you have an opportunity to embrace the user’s success (Foursquare’s “You’re on fire!”) or mitigate a failure (TheLadders 404 page, below) by injecting your brand. You don’t need anything from the user at these points.

TheLadders 404 page.

This isn’t to say that you can’t brand that first list. But if you’re going to do it, test it first. With branding moments, execution is paramount. If you’re unsure, don’t risk it.

By choosing not to brand parts of the experience to keep it simple and easy for the user, you’ll provide an enjoyable experience, which will make your brand stronger. So, every moment is a branding moment. Even when it’s not.

5. If Content Is King, Then Treat Context Like A Queen.

The hot saying right now is “Content is king.” Native advertising, or the integration of relevant content into a natural experience for the purpose of acquisition, is becoming a core offering of many agencies and has spawned a few popular startups.

But without context, content is useless. (And if you’re big on Game of Thrones, then you’ll know that queens have all the real power!)

Whether you’re labeling a form or writing a blog post, you have to either understand the user’s existing context or provide context for them.

A user’s context will define how they interpret the copy on the page. That context could come from anywhere: an email they’ve just read, or something that happened to them when they were eight.

When a user doesn’t have proper context, they get confused. When a user gets confused, they abandon.

If you’re agile and iterative, accounting for a holistic experience adds an additional layer of complexity, in the form of consistency. A simple change to copy on one page could affect 10 other pages. One minute you’re calling something “Job Goals,” and the next you’re changing it to “What job do you want?” Well, where else have you used “Job Goals”?

To better understand the user’s context — and to check for consistency — sit down at least once per iteration and experience your “contextual flow” as the user sees it.

For example, if you have a subscription service, the flow might be something like this:

That’s at least 10 distinct steps in which a user’s context could be created, confirmed or altered.

Sit down, take a breath and wipe your mind of what you know is there. Then start with Google or your home page or wherever the first touch usually happens.

Does your onboarding experience deliver the same promise as your Google ad? Have you described a feature using the same language throughout? Are your labels so subjective that the context gets lost? These are questions to answer as you go through the flow.

Whatever Happens, Don’t Ignore Your Microcopy.

Microcopy often falls victim to personal bias, internal terminology, poor branding, broken contextual flows, time crunches and other factors. Any of these can undermine even the most well-designed UX and the copy within.

Here’s the thing about mistakes with microcopy: They’re so easy to make yet so hard to identify after you’ve made them.

You have a much better chance of stopping the mistakes in advance than of identifying them after the fact. When you’re testing, how often do you think, “Hey, maybe we should change the label on the third field of this form?” You’re wrapped up in other UX mistakes that you know you’ve made. Unfortunately, a repeated pattern of noticeable failure is usually needed in order for microcopy to get updated or even tested.

So, the next time you’re creating or improving an experience, I hope you employ some of the tactics provided here so that you avoid these “easy” mistakes and do right by your microcopy — and by your user.

(al)

---

© Bill Beard for Smashing Magazine, 2013.

Once you get the hang of it, the Table of Contents generator in Adobe InDesign is a breeze to use, and if you’re using an InDesign template, most of the work is already done for you, making your job flow that much easier and faster.

Here’s why:

InDesign’s Table of Contents generator works with Character Styles and Paragraph Styles to generate a Table of Contents. The generator searches your document for Styles of various titles, subtitles, headings, and subheadings, as specified by you, the user, and generates a Table of Contents based on these Styles, along with certain formatting options that you choose from the generator dialogue.

Your InDesign template most likely comes with a handful of Styles predefined, and you can make new ones easily by formatting your text with the Character and Paragraph palettes, highlighting your text, and choosing New Paragraph Style from the dropdown menu in the upper right hand corner of the Paragraph Styles palette. Be sure to name your new Style by double clicking it in the palette’s list and entering a name that you can remember.

Now go to Layout>Table of Contents. If for some reason you don’t see Table of Contents under the Layout menu, choose Layout>Show All Menu Items, and the menu choice will appear.

Clicking on Table of Contents brings up the Table of Contents dialogue box. Here, you will be generating a list of text titles (and subtitles, if you like) based on the text that you have already formatted into Styles within your document. You can go ahead and name your Table of Contents something like “Contents” or something else, if you like. Also, you can go ahead and choose a display format for your Contents list based on a Paragraph Style that you have already defined.

Note: For the TOC Style entry, you must already have a saved Table of Contents style previously formatted. If you don’t have one yet, you can save a new one by clicking Save Style on the right of the dialogue.

You base your TOC Style on the Other Styles listed in the dialogue and choosing Add or Remove. Add two or more Paragraph Styles if you want to include Headings, Subheadings, and Figures in your TOC. You must have previously defined Styles for each of these configurations, though, so if you don’t already have them, go back and define those now.

Each Style that you Add to the “Include Paragraph Styles” box can be modified individually to fit into the TOC configuration neatly. Click on one of the Included Styles, and you can adjust its TOC display just below, under the “Style:” section, the one with the colon.

Select one of your included Styles, and make sure you click on More Options on the right hand side of the dialogue. This will display all of your options for formatting each heading and subheading individually. The Style you chose to “Include” earlier just means that each instance of that Style from your document will receive a place in your TOC list. You can format these entries differently if you want by choosing a Style for your list from the Entry Style menu. Choose where to place the page number, and choose a Style for your Page Numbers. For entries into the Between Entry and Number input, you can use the flyout menu (the little triangle on the side of the box) to choose spacing based on definitions like “em space,” “white space, “ etc., or you if you know the codes, you can simply input these manually. You can choose whether or not to sort your entries in alphabetical order (if you don’t, they will be sorted based on page number), and you can assign a level to your new Style. Level defines which Style will be placed at highest priority and closest to the left margin. Play around with this menu choice to see what I mean.

Now, in the Include Paragraph Styles box, choose another Style from your document that you want to include in your new TOC. Selecting it resets the Style: options for the newly selected Style, and you can get to work defining the look and placement of your second style.

The Options choices allow you to add certain preferences. PDF bookmarks, for instance, will create clickable bookmarks when you export to PDF. These are great for reading on the web or tablets.

Click Save, and your cursor automatically converts to a Text Insertion format. Click and drag or just click to insert your new Table of Contents with the formatting you chose. You can always re-size your text box and edit specific text attributes once it’s placed.

Play around with the Table of Contents dialogue based on your InDesign Template’s Paragraph Styles, and you’ll be up and running in no time creating complex and detailed Table of Contents.

About the Author:

Sam Singer is Graphic Designer and Copywriter who specializes in illustration, infographics, print design, and web graphics. Sam writes for www.bestindesigntemplates.com, a web site where will find plenty of templates for magazines, annual reports, catalogs, and other documents that work with and without Table of Contents.

Today we are pleased to feature a set of 200 useful and beautiful foodie icons. This freebie was created by the team behind Freepik, and at the time of writing it’s the largest set of food icons available on the web in one pack.

The 200 Foodie Pack includes 200 customized icons available in PNGs (32×32px, 64×64px, 128×128px), as well as in AI, EPS and vector format. Perfect for any projects around gourmet, food, restaurant, gastronomy and the like. Enjoy!

Large preview

Download The Freebie!

You may freely use it for both your private and commercial projects without any restrictions, including software, online services, templates and themes.

• Download the foodie pack (zip, 3.94 Mb)

Behind The Design

Here are some insights from the design team:

“At Freepik we love to make freebies and to develop free icons sets for designers that make work easier. The pack was created to neutralize the growing demand for food icons.”

Many thanks to the creative minds behind Freepik! We really appreciate your efforts!

(ea)

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© The Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2013.

» Ughck. Images. In a follow-up to his ALA article Mo’ Pixels, Mo’ Problems, Dave Rupert talks about all the progress we've made toward responsive image solutions — by which he means no progress has been made.

The following is a guest post by Ben Terrill. Ben is co-author of the e-book Tablet Web Design Best Practices and is the VP of Customer Success at Mobify, where he works on big client sites like British Telecom, Starbucks and Expedia.

The tablet revolution is upon us. New data from Adobe shows that global websites now get more traffic from tablets than smartphones. And yet, a standard desktop site doesn’t work very well on a tablet. The typical desktop 12-pixel font is too small, as are buttons. Images aren’t sharp and, worst of all, some features simply don’t work.

The good news is you don’t have to completely revamp your website. A working desktop site is a great place to start building an effective tablet site. In this article, I’ll share six techniques from Mobify’s latest ebook Tablet Web Design Best Practices for significantly improving desktop websites on tablets.

Go 100% Touch Friendly

One of the best ways to make your desktop website sing on a tablet is to make it touch friendly. If website elements look as though they can be swiped, tapped or pinched, then you’ll need to build in that functionality to make your website tablet ready.

Consider adding elements like carousels and accordions, drawers and panels. Mobify has a variety of open source JavaScript modules you can use for this purpose.

Editor's note: We recently covered the JavaScript for touch-friendly sliders. I also think Royal Slider is a nice slider that is touch-friendly and also responsive.

Bump Up Default Font Size and Line Height

Don’t make users double tap or pinch your content. Instead, increase the font size to at least 16px. You can also use a line height of 1.5 to allow for breathing room between text on content-rich pages, as Mashable does in the example below. Remember, text must always be legible, no matter how a user holds their tablet.

Be Finger Friendly

Our fingers are much clumsier than a cursor, so bumping up the spacing between different touch targets will improve user accuracy. And, make those touch targets big! Our fingertips typically require upwards of 44px to comfortably fit within a touch target so design for that.

Make each touch target at least 44px by 44px and use padding rather than margin. Padding increases the actual tappable area, whereas margin simply increases the whitespace around the element.

Enable Contextual Keyboards

The great thing about software keyboards is that they’re dynamic. That is, you can change their layout to suit context. For instance, if your input field requires an email address, the keyboard should feature the ‘@’ symbol, underscores and hyphens. If the user is asked to input a phone number, provide a numeric keypad. Try using the following input types on form fields:

• Standard keyboard | <input type="text" />
• URL parameters | <input type="url" />
• Email-specific keyboard | <input type="email" />
• Numeric keyboard | <input type="text" pattern="[0-9]*" />

Example of a better numeric keyboard (iOS on left, Android on right) (via)

Editor's note: I also detailed data about HTML5 input attributes/types/elements. It's getting a smidge old, but still useful.

Font-Based Icons for the Win

Resolutions and pixel densities on tablet screens are far greater than on desktop and laptop screens. As a result, graphics can look pixelated if they’re not designed with high resolution screens in mind. For this reason, font-based icons are a good choice because they scale well on super high­ resolution displays; they’re easy to colour and shade using CSS; and they only require one HTTP request to download. Plus, you don’t have to deal with a sprite sheet.

Create your own icon font sets, or use existing sets like Font Awesome, glyphish, iconsweets, symbolset, or icnfnt.

Editor's note: I once did a massive roundup of icon fonts (which I still have to add to). I'm a fan of using these HTML techniques for adding them to the page, which keep them accessible. I'm also a fan of IcoMoon for the creating trimmed down, customized icon font sets.

Performance is Design

Modern web design techniques, like responsive design, can cripple website performance. Since 57% of users are likely to leave your website if it takes 3 seconds to load, performance considerations are critical. Some tips for improving mobile website performance include compressing images and concatenating CSS and JavaScript to reduce the number of HTTP requests and overall page size. With these fixes, you’ll notice significantly speedier page load time and happier, higher converting users. Use tools like Uglify, Sass, Compass and Mobify.js to automate performance improvements.

Editor's note: I cover some of these performance techniques and some others in #114: Let’s Do Simple Stuff to Make Our Websites Faster

Go Forth!

With these tablet transformation techniques in your toolbox, there’s no reason to get stressed out about not having a totally tablet-optimized website. For more ways to make your desktop site tablet friendly, read Mobify’s free ebook, Tablet Web Design Best Practices.

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A Couple of Best Practices for Tablet-Friendly Design is a post from CSS-Tricks

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As someone who creates web apps (both for myself and for clients), I’ve learned a few things throughout my journey that have helped me get the best results for the time and resources I have.

These tips are from a person who started out as someone who wasn’t familiar with Web programming. When I first started developing my first web app, I wasn’t a web developer. I was a business guy.

(If you want to read my story on how I built my first web app in only a few months using Ruby on Rails, check out my article: Why Making Web Apps with Rails Is Awesome.)

An assumption I’m going to make about you, the person reading this article, is that you’re already a web developer, or that you’ll be hiring one for your first web app. I’ll be discussing practical, general tips that are applicable to all web apps regardless of what Web technologies you’re using. So please don’t expect some deep-level web programming techniques in this article, because you’ll find none.

Another assumption I’m making is that you’re going to build your first web app without investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into version 1.0. I’ll assume that your budget is in the $5,000 range largely because that’s where my experience lies.

With my preface all said and done, let me share my seven tips based off my own web app development experience.

1. Think in Terms of Data Relationships

Regardless of complexity, size or feature set, you can break down any web application into this simple operational mechanics:

1. The web app takes in data from users
2. The web app processes and decides what to do with that data
3. The web app produces some output for the users

All web apps work like that, so at the start, it’s best to break down your web app’s core features into data relationships to see:

• How your web app should be built
• How your web app might deal with user data and presentation
• What features you need to prioritize
• What web services and web technologies you’ll need to enlist and get familiar with

And so on.

For example, let’s take the primary feature of Instagram — posting a photo up on the photo-sharing service — and break it down into the fundamental operational mechanics above:

1. The web app takes in a photo from users
2. The web app processes the photo to scale it up or down to the layout of Instagram and also what photo effect the user wants to apply to the photo
3. The web app produces a modified image and displays it for the users

So if you were hiring me to create an Instagram clone for you, I would probably create a breakdown of the data relationships like this:

Users
Has 2 permission roles (User and Admin)
A User can upload Photos
A User can manipulate Photos
A User can like or dislike Photos of other Users
A User can comment on Photos

Photos
Photos are uploaded by a User
A Photo can get a Filter applied to it by the User who owns the Photo
A Photo can get liked/disliked
A Photo can get a Comment
A Photo can be deleted/edited/updated
A Photo can be private or public

Filter
A Filter can be applied to Photos
A Filter can be created by an Admin

Comment
A Comment belongs to a Photo
A Comment can be created, edited and deleted by the User who own the Comment
A Comment can be deleted by the User who owns the Photo where the Comment is on

I know you may not be able to think naturally like that at first whenever you look at web apps, but the more you use other web apps, and the more you think about them in all of these little pieces of data relationships, the easier it is for you to conceptualize and build your web app.

2. Keep Track of UIs and Websites That Inspire You

Do you have examples of web applications and websites that you like?

From as little as small, interactive components (like the way a button feels when it’s pressed or how a web app deals with an image uploading feature) to as big as the color scheme for the entire site and general design theme and sensibility, you should have some way of recording these inspirational examples.

Anything you have come across on the Web that you like, make a note of it.

UI inspiration board on Pinterest by Stefan Marshall

You can use a multimedia note-taking tool like Evernote or an image bookmarking service like Pinterest for this.

Having this collection of web user interfaces and website designs that inspire you will help you as you begin developing your web app’s interface — you can look to your collection for ideas.

Also, familiarize yourself with common user interface design patterns to make sure that your UI components are the best solutions for a given task.

3. Keep the First Version as Simple as Possible

Building a minimum viable product (MVP) is a popular concept for online startups. A minimum viable product is something that has the most basic core features of a web app and nothing more.

Producing an MVP has many benefits, but the primary reason is to validate your web app idea as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

If you keep the web app to a very strict and defined set of core features, you can test out whether or not those core features are what your users need.

Do you remember the first version of Google?

Google’s core feature is search. And all you need for that core feature is a text input field for the user’s search term, and a button to execute the search. It doesn’t have to be pretty. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. It just has to do what it promises very well.

The MVP allowed Google to launch the product to the public so that the company can validate their idea before developing it further.

The MVP also allowed them to start gathering user search behaviors and to tease out new features and opportunities for improvements in future versions of the product.

Fast forward to today and Google is now more than just a search company. Their core feature is also a lot more sophisticated compared to the first version.

But it was that first version that led them on the path they are now.

I have never seen a web app fail because it did too little or because it didn’t have enough features.

To me, web apps fail because there is no demand for the problem they’re aiming to solve, or because the web app doesn’t execute the solution to the problem effectively.

4. Focus on Behavior and Less on Look-and-Feel

Quite often, frustrations that people have with a web app come from the way it behaves, not the way it looks.

I’m not saying you should ignore how your web app looks altogether, but I think that this is something you can refine, polish, and invest in more once you confirm your solution is something users actually want.

What I’m suggesting is that you direct your time and resources into your web app’s value proposition — which for a web app is usually the fundamental problem it’s aiming to solve for its users.

To that end, I encourage you to use a reliable HTML/CSS framework or boilerplate such as Twitter Bootstrap, Skeleton and Foundation when it comes to developing the front-end interface of your MVP.

CSS/HTML frameworks and boilerplates speed up front-end design and development so that you can have more time to concentrate on how your web app behaves.

This way, you can put most of your time and resources on actually developing new and novel stuff, rather than on things that have already been solved. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.

Kippt — a web app trying to enhance the way people find, read, store, search, and share Web content — uses Twitter Bootstrap:

Kippt’s aiming to solve a complex and ambitious problem — what, with the billions of web pages out there — and they realize that how their website looks isn’t the primary reason they’re going to get more web app sign-ups.

So for the front-end design, they lean on a reliable and beautiful front-end framework to help them with things like responsive web design, content layout, CSS resets, cross-browser compatibility, and the myriad other things that are critical in any Web project, but have already been solved by others before them.

After you validate your web app, and are convinced that it’s worth pursuing, then you can invest your retirement fund designing that perfect web app favicon if you so desire.

5. Use Free or Affordable Web Services as Much as Possible

Even if you just won the lottery and have money to burn, don’t be frivolous with your funds.

There are many powerful web services built for modern web applications that have free (or very affordable) pricing plans.

From Heroku (my favorite Rails host) to Amazon S3 (for storing images and other content) to SendGrid (for handling your transactional emails) to Stripe (that handles your payments and only charges you a transaction fee) to Google Analytics (for relatively robust web analytics) — with a bit of online research and self-education, you can end up saving yourself a lot of money.

Once your app takes off like the next Facebook, you can invest in more robust web services replacements if you need to, or scale up your existing solutions. The web services I’ve mentioned above don’t need any replacements; they will scale with you as you grow.

Another point I want to make is there’s no need to think about scalability right now. If you pick the right solutions, they will scale up with you when you need them to.

So if you’re thinking about buying dedicated server racks hosted in your own datacenters even before you’ve launched an MVP, you’re putting your worries and time in the wrong places.

6. Use Third-Party APIs with Caution

An API is a way for a developer to get access to the data of an external web service. For example, Twitter’s API allows any developer to build an app that accesses public tweets and the account information of Twitter users.

Not all APIs are created equally. The best APIs are those that are RESTful (i.e. they conform to best practices and industry standards about the way data should be interacted with) and they provide wrappers for multiple popular languages (PHP, Ruby, Python, Java, etc.). They should also provide good documentation.

The reason you want to be extremely choosy with which APIs you use is that your web app’s performance can be affected significantly by these third-party web services.

And even if you choose a good high-performance API, you will not escape the vagaries of the API owner’s company direction. For example, Twitter’s API has been subject to criticisms because of the company’s choices to limit access to their API and enforce new terms of use, significantly crippling some web apps with those changes.

Be especially mindful of web app ideas that have core features relying heavily or solely on third-party APIs. External APIs can change at any time, and these changes can drastically affect the direction and success of your web app.

7. Focus on the Excellent Execution of Your Idea

I can’t think of one web app that was successful based solely on being "the first."

Rather than spending time and money on lawyers drafting your non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and rather than being fearful of someone "stealing" your idea, you’re much better off thinking about how you’ll execute your idea effectively.

In the words of a very successful and well-regarded entrepreneur, Derek Sivers: Ideas "are worth nothing unless executed."

Ideas to Sivers are just multipliers of actual success. An idea alone won’t generate anything fruitful:

In other words: Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does.

What makes a great product great is not about your one big idea — it’s the thousands of smaller ideas that are executed very well.

It’s the small idea of using a "pull to refresh" interface to save the user from having to reload the page. It’s conceptualizing the idea for making image uploads simpler and easier. It’s the multitude of little ideas that you effectively execute that make the difference.

Conclusion

In my experience, the most successful projects I have built and the best clients I have worked with tended to have these things covered.

I hope I was able to inspire you in some way towards thinking about how to approach the development of your very first web app.

What are your own tips for building web apps? Do you disagree with anything I’ve said? Please share your thoughts in the comments and let’s start a discussion.

Related Content

• Agile Web Development That Works
• 10 Important UI Design Considerations for Web Apps
• The Secret to Building Large Websites: Website Architecture
• Related categories: Web Development and Web Design

About the Author

Marc Gayle is a Rails developer and the founder of 5KMVP where he builds minimum viable products for just $5000. Follow him on Twitter.

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