Today we have collected 28 landing page designs. If you like this post you might also enjoy our previous post below.

34 Best Landing Page Templates Design Inspiration

kickoffapp

photoshelter

raventools

claudiucioba

localhero

tapmonkeys

tearoundapp

humanwrit

positionly

shoplocket

strawberryj

tapshop

overlapp

postable

s.imon

batch

getharvest

bundlr

votizen

grazsecrets

Landing page

launchfarm

cutestpaw

showcaseapp

shopify

clubdivot

symbolicons

squareup

If you haven’t seen the viral pictures of English artist Julian Beever’s work, then you aren’t on the web enough. Mr. Beever started as a street artist who figured out how to make his pastel chalk drawings on hard sidewalks turn into three-dimensional scenes that amazed and delighted passersby. Beever started out with traditional paintings but soon figured out how to give his work a three-dimensional twist and those pieces became a web sensation.

Turning 2D Into 3D

Beever’s work soon gave way to commercial success as he was commissioned to incorporate famous brands into his street art.

Yet another viral group of art was optical illusions painted in hallways and offices. You’ve probably seen these too, but if you haven’t or it’s been a while since you marveled at these feats of planning and drafting.

Here’s some cool examples without the engineering degree…

The one thing all of these pieces share is that you need to be standing in just the right place to make them work and someone had to figure out the distortions to make them all look real and line up just right.

Printing 3D Pieces

Purely by accident, I once created a 3d piece on a printed piece without even trying using the distort function in Photoshop. I was called into an important smoking break by some coworkers, and I was so excited by the prospect of renewing some much needed nicotine into my blood stream. So instead of hitting save, I hit the keyboard combination for print and ran off to our little smoking spot on the fifth level of the underground garage. Where the smokers and Morlocks were banished.

Upon my return to my cubicle, I found, as often happened, someone at the printer had done me a favor and put my printout on my keyboard. I was struck by the distortion and realized that the piece had a three-dimensional appearance. Not saying I invented this way to make 2D objects into 3D optical illusions as Beever and others had done it many years before.

I showed a couple of coworkers, who pronounced it to be “neat” and “like that guy who does the sidewalk art” and I even left it on the department worktable to see if anyone would see it as 3D. I tried incorporating it into some of our products but it just didn’t fly as we were starting to work with high definition lenticular technology.

I’m sure you’ve stumbled upon it, too. While working on a file, surely something struck a cord in your creativity. That’s often how we discover optical illusions. With a bit of manipulation in Photoshop (edit > transform > distort), a 2D print can create an unbelievable illusion.

Leo Burnett’s advertising agency in São Paulo, Brazil started using the same 2D printing for Samsung to advertise their printers.

A few extra cuts and folds can yield surprising results as in these examples (turn off your computer’s sound or you’ll regret it!)…

How Can You Use This?

For print, the applications are endless. Any image that is used on a flat card can have a 3D appearance. Selling real estate? Have a house standing up on a brochure that sits on a table. Put an image, QR code or AR code on your business card so when it sits on someone’s desk, you’ll “stand out” among the other pieces of paper. Put one on hats, T-shirts, pants (use your imagination but don’t be disgusting) and any other flat surface that is intended to sell.

With a mix of angles on billboards and posters, drivers and passersby will really take notice… and probably crash into something, but what a way to get a message across. Massive pile-ups on the highway may be a tragedy on the evening news but think of the free advertising!

For point of purchase advertising, using the same technique as Beever can have people taking notice in store aisles and parking lots. A cool scene of hell in your driveway will keep away pesky door-to-door salespeople and the neighbors.

Best of all, there are no extraordinary production costs involved aside from some extra Photoshop manipulation and a decent drop shadow.

For the web, it can be a bit more challenging. Still, any 2D surface will work as long as you figure out the angles of viewing. If you can’t figure out the angles, then let web functionality work FOR you. Animated gifs using the same technique as the old stereo viewers with two images, just slightly askew so when viewed through two lenses the images came together into one 3D image. Also caused long-term cross-eyed headaches, which are now suspected to have been the major cause of the First World War.

The Stereoscope glasses. This is why my great grandparents were cross-eyed and thought I was twins. At least I got TWO birthday presents!

Unlike the other examples, that have two layers, this image is ten layers of objects. The effect is hypnotic.

Keep Looking At The Same Things In Different Ways

Every day some creative comes up with a different way of seeing the ordinary. Looking past the limitations of 2D has led to innovative insights. Take the examples here and run with them. See mistakes for what they might present. In the creative process we don’t really make mistakes… we either discover ways something won’t work or a way something will work on a different plane.

Using small white pegs to match the background color, placed in just the right spots, this 2D billboard is actually 3D, and uses the sun’s rays to create shadows to reveal the image for this sunscreen product.

Was it a “royal pain” to figure this one out or did the creator just pull crumpled ten pound notes from his/her pocket and notice how the ripples made the queen smile and frown?

In the End

Always remember this: When they think you’re weird because of your ideas, proudly say, “YES!” When they say you’re different, be glad you are. When they say you don’t look at things the way everyone else does, smile because you are the one who will change things by seeing the solutions… in 3D!

There is no limit for inspiration and when it comes to webdesign this is much more unlimited. As usual we continue to showcase beautiful and interesting webdesigns that we came across during the week.Hope you like this week’s collection too.

 

Layrr

Visit Website

 

TokioLab

Visit Website

 

Jitto

Visit Website

 

Lend Your Leg

Visit Website

 

Q Music Titanic

Visit Website

 

Ccino

Visit Website

 

Comfortflex

Visit Website

 

East Side Little Learners

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Multiview

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GrupoCCR

Visit Website

The number of things you can do with paper never ceases to amaze me. Stitching stationary is a new favorite that people have begun to get awfully creative with.

Today’s article is presented by the printing services company, Next Day Flyers.

Stitching stationary is one thing, but stitching ruffles, garlands and fabric is a whole other. These sweet cards definitely take more time, but I think it definitely makes the cards look so much better.

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Stitched holes like the “hello” card are so fun.

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Weddings are another time I see a lot of stitched paper. From favors to invitations there are tons of different things you can do with thread and paper.

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Source: Bags, CD cases

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Of course stitching is a fabulous way to get festive for a birthday or holiday. Stitched wrapping paper looks amazing. The balloon garden is a great way to make a party more festive (you can use any shapes and have stitched garlands for any occasion.)

Source: Balloons, Wrapping

Here is a tutorial on how to stitch on paper and make it look like the photo below.

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If you are familiar with sewing, you might get the hang of stitching on paper faster, but it definitely isn’t as easy as it looks. Since the paper is stiff, it doesn’t give like fabric gives. With anything, the more you do it the better you will be at it.

What is it that makes us loyal fans of the websites and apps we love? When we sat down to answer this question for ourselves, we found that the websites and apps we truly love have one thing in common: soul. They’re humanized. They have emotional intelligence designed into the user experience. And this emotional intelligence is crafted through thoughtful interaction design and feedback mechanisms built into the website.

These elements give the website or app personality and earn a spot in our hearts. In our opinion, it’s not going too far to say that giving your website or app soul is the key to earning loyal fans. In this article, we’ll look at some of the best examples of these emotionally intelligent interactions and how they infuse personality and soul into the websites and apps where they’re found.

What Are Emotionally Intelligent Interactions?

An emotionally intelligent interaction is any state (or change in state) of a website/app where the messaging or functionality includes attention to details that create a user experience that feels organic and human. These interactions can be a big experience (like when an entire website is down), or a very small experience (such as when an error state on a form element appears). They can be derived from different elements, including messaging and copy, color and design, and responsiveness to user inputs and system outputs.

Combining each of these crafted experiences creates soul and personality for a website. And it’s that emotional connection with users that builds lasting loyalty, and raving fans.

Examples Of Emotionally Intelligent Interactions

Note: Several of the examples and images are from this brilliant website: Little Big Details. It’s one of the many must-reads and I recommend adding it to your favorites if you haven’t done so already.

Bottlenose
A new Web-based Twitter client that gives users a new way to explore and use Twitter. The app does a great job of walking users through the first run with the application, explaining the features in a way that is clear and humorous. The confirmation buttons use phrases like “Makes sense” and “Got it” which create a sense of personality and confidence with the user, a far better choice than the typical “Next.”

Wufoo
Wufoo uses a combination of smart messaging and subtle touches on UI elements to create a more friendly and personable experience when creating Web forms. Here are just a few:

Each page title is accompanied by a line of poetry. While it may seem random, the poetry actually reinforces the elegance of the Wufoo solution. It’s a unique way to bring personality to an otherwise tedious task (creating forms).

The new report button’s punctuation. Think of the word “report”, and you’re next thought is most likely “TPS.” But Wufoo adds an exclamation point to the button. This gives it an element of energy and fun, reinforcing its value as a reporting feature.

The reports screen with no reports. Instead of a blank screen, Wufoo takes the opportunity to deliver some true personality through its messaging, and gets you on your way towards building your first report.

MailChimp
As one of the best examples of emotional intelligence baked into a user experience, MailChimp takes every opportunity to infuse soul into its application, as well as giving you a pitch-perfect way to make it all disappear.

404 Page:
MailChimp’s 404 page is brilliant: excellent copy, empathetic design, and a prominent call to action to get users on their way. It’s clever, functional, and takes the sting out of 404’ing. Current MailChimp 404 Page.

Send Campaign:
MailChimp celebrates and encourages the user just as they send out an email campaign. The copy “This is your moment of glory” is a perfect encapsulation of the fear and anticipation that goes into deploying this.

Twitter Page:
Recently when MailChimp went down, they deployed a special background on their Twitter page that showed a sad chimp working furiously to fix the problem. Because people naturally turn to Twitter to learn about why things are broken, the background extended the personality of that service to their Twitter account, creating an emotionally intelligent experience for the user.

Pinterest
This red-hot social network infuses personality into its website with a thoughtful interaction during account creation. Instead of using the typical password confirmation patterns, the app responds with “Looks good!” as passwords meet their requirements and match. It’s a small touch, but one that humanizes the sign-up experience, and empathizes with the user who is creating their account.

Path
On Path’s original website, the icon for the sign-up button arrow changed to a smiley face when it was clicked on. This small change created a personal and welcoming moment during one of the first interactions a user had with the application. It’s a thoughtful detail added to a step that is often overlooked by designers and users alike, and it set the tone for the rest of the user’s onboarding experience.

Hootsuite
The friendly owl mascot for Hootsuite is more than a cute face—the mascot is the representation of the service itself, much like the chimp from MailChimp. Hootsuite taps the Twitter API to pull data into its app, and because Twitter has API limits, Hootsuite intelligently stops making requests after long periods of user inactivity. When this occurs, the Owl lets you know that he has taken a nap, and will wake up when you need him again. It’s a clever way to turn a potential negative experience (non-continuous updates) into a positive one that brands the company, while providing the app with personality and soul.

Feedburner
For newly created RSS feeds in Feedburner, the stats page takes the lack of stats to create a personal interaction with the user. Many websites miss these opportunities because they feel this state isn’t core to the experience. But Feedburner knows that most new users are interested in seeing their stats right off the bat—stats that don’t exist yet. So when a user visits the page Feedburner has fun letting them know that stats aren’t quite ready yet, while creating an emotional connection with the user in this process. It’s a huge win for the company in light of the alternative: a lifeless, blank page with no data.

VisualHub
VisualHub takes advantage of the Mac installation screen for user interaction, encouraging users to get acquainted with their user manual. Move the app to the Applications folder, and move the manual to your brain. So often this install process is written, a necessary evil to get to the application. But as we’ve seen, smart developers leverage these initial interactions to set the tone with the user experience moving things forward.

OS X
Apple has long been about attention to details, but typically the details are in refinement (not necessarily emotional intelligence). But the Text Edit icon contains a small Easter Egg for Apple fans—the words of the “Think Different” manifesto are inscribed on the notepad. It pays homage to their legendary founder, and reminds people why they love Apple. It’s a small touch that makes Apple what it is.

Highrise iOS
During the install of 37Signals Highrise iOS app, you can play a game of Tic Tac Toe against the computer. Not only is this a thoughtful way to give users something to do while the app undergoes the necessary evil of being installed, but it’s also an homage to the film War Games, a hacker classic. It’s a simple and effective way to display emotional intelligence during a typically “dead” point of an app’s user experience.

Mint.com
Mint’s website maintenance page creates a charming experience for users during what could be a stressful time. Not being able to access your finances can create anxiety, and Mint uses that opportunity to create a fun yet effective notice that lets you know that your money and information is safe, even if the website isn’t accessible.

Image via Sean Percival.

Deviant Art
Deviant Art uses the portrait metaphor as part of the interaction in setting up your Deviant Art profile. Not only does it tie in with the theme of the website (and connect with its artist community), but it also is a compelling metaphor and mechanic that encourages new users to complete their profile.

Tumblr
When listening to an audio file on Tumblr, the URL is appended with an appeal to its users not to download the audio file, so that they can continue to offer this type of content on their website. It’s a clever way for communicating to its users without the typical JavaScript pop-up warning.

Adding Soul To Your Website

Giving your website soul comes down to the interactions and the intentional craft you put into the design of those interactions. By being intentional about user experience in those small moments that are typically neglected, you can showcase the personality of your app, as well as building loyalty among users. Taking cues from websites and applications like those mentioned above will help you look for ways to infuse your project with emotional intelligence.

These services and developers have created loyal user bases due to their willingness to sweat out the details, and infuse their projects with emotional intelligence. The small things can really make a difference in the success of your website or application. Taking the time to create these well-crafted experiences is one of the most potent ways we know of to create fans, and bring your website to life with soul.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Image used on frontpage: opensourceway

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© Chuck Longanecker for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

Only once in the history of Photoshop has Adobe released a free public beta, until now. Photoshop CS6 Beta is now available for free download from Adobe, for a limited time (the beta will eventually expire, though at the moment there doesn’t seem to be a set date for that to happen).

This is a beta release, and while Adobe says they’ve done thorough testing, there are bound to still be some bugs. To that end, make sure that if you’re working on a critical project, you’re prepared for that (and that you save often!).

During a couple days of testing, I never ran into issues with CS6, but that’s not to say you won’t. That’s just the nature of a beta product. Below, check out my thoughts on what CS6 has to offer.

Amazing performance gains

One of the first things any regular Photoshop user is going to notice is the performance gains. I tested CS6 on a MacBook Pro that’s a few years old; it has a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 8GB of RAM, and the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M. So while it was a powerful enough computer a few years ago, it’s pretty much a base model by today’s standards.

And yet, running filters, saving files, and performing various other tasks—things that had noticeable lag in CS4 and CS5—are almost instantaneous. If you use filters on a regular basis, and especially if you’re on an older machine, upgrading to CS6 is going to save you tons of time and frustration. It’s rare that a new software product comes out that works better on older computers than the older versions, but this is definitely one of those instances.

A more attractive interface

The new default interface for CS6 is significantly more attractive than older versions. It’s got a dark gray background compared to the light gray of older versions.

The good news is that while the interface looks significantly better, the layout is still mostly the same. All of your menus are basically the same, the workspaces are the same (though you’ll notice the addition of a new 3D workspace), and the basic user experience will feel familiar to anyone who’s used older versions of Photoshop.

If you’re not crazy about the new dark interface, you can change it in the Preferences menu. There are four basic color schemes available, including the light gray that previous versions of Photoshop have sported (plus medium gray and black).

Content awareness

The new Content-Aware Move Tool is going to be a lifesaver for a ton of people. While it’s not perfect for every situation, it does make life a lot easier if you need to reposition things within a photo. It seems to work best on images with a fairly random background pattern (I tried it on a photo of a porch floor with regular boards and it was definitely noticeable where the element had been moved from), but even on more uniform or regularly-patterned backgrounds it can do a passable job.

All you have to do to use the Content-Aware Move Tool is trace around what you want to move, and then drag it to its new position. CS6 does the rest, processing and then filling in the background behind the moved element.

Camera Raw for everyone

If you do a lot of photo editing, then the ability to use the Camera Raw interface whether or not an image was shot in Raw format is going to be useful. The controls are easier to use than previous versions, and the new Highlights and Shadows controls (borrowed from Lightroom 4) make it easier to get more detail out of your shots. It’s definitely a huge upgrade for photographers.

Video editing

If you wanted to use Adobe products for video editing, your previous options were limited to Premiere Elements or Premiere Pro. Not anymore. Now you can perform basic video edits right in Photoshop.

While the video editing options are limited, and probably aren’t going to be user-friendly to those used to professional non-linear editing programs (like Premiere or Final Cut Pro), it’s a great option to have for anyone who just wants to cut a basic video. The biggest downside is that while you can apply filters or other effects to your footage, it only does it on a frame-by-frame basis.

Searchable layers

This is possibly one of the most useful features for many designers. How many times have you been working on a design with hundreds of layers? It’s not uncommon. And the biggest issue when working with files that complex is trying to find the layer you need to edit. CS6 brings searchability to your layers, streamlining the process and your workflow.

Typographic enhancements

Setting type in Photoshop is frustrating at times. This is partly due to a lack of typographic controls included in programs like InDesign. CS6 adds Paragraph and Character Styles, which should go a long way toward creating consistent typography in your designs.

A built-in dummy text generator makes things easier for designers, too. Forget about having to turn to the internet for your filler text needs. Just create a text box and then go to the Type menu to find “Paste Lorem Ipsum”. The box will be filled automatically with dummy text. It doesn’t get any easier!

Finally: Auto-Save!

I think every designer out there who’s used Photoshop for any length of time has experienced those horrible crashes and lost minutes (or hours) of work. Finally, in CS6, Photoshop will include an Auto-Save feature.

It also brings Background Save, which means you can keep working in other windows/tabs while your machine saves a file. While save time isn’t really an issue with small files, when working with large photos or other large files, saving files can take a minute or more (which seems like an hour when you’re eager to keep working).

Worth the download

Considering Photoshop CS6 is available as a free limited-time beta, it’s definitely worth the download. In testing, I didn’t run into any bugs, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. To that end, make sure that you save often, and be wary of the newest version if you’re under tight deadlines or otherwise things need to run smoothly.

CS6 is definitely an improvement over CS5, especially for designers. The addition of tools like a Lorem Ipsum generator, basic video editing, and even more awesome photo editing tools, CS6 has really taken Photoshop to an even higher level.

Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.

Have you tried the new Photoshop CS6 Beta? What did you think?

12 Business and Portfolio WordPress Themes – only $17!

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There’s no doubt that CSS has evolved extensively over the last few years. There are some great examples of beautifully designed websites all over the web, most which make ingenious use of CSS code to get the desired effect and result.

While there are thousands of CSS tutorials that you’ll come across, this one by Sergio Camalich specifically caught my eye since it talks about creating & styling CSS buttons with Pseudo elements. The HTML code only uses a single anchor tag for each button, rest all is done via CSS. It’s pretty cool too see what a few lines of code can do to the result.

Head over to Codrops to read the tutorial. And if you’ve created something similar, let us know @beautifulpixels on Twitter.

Process Charting (also known as Process Mapping) is one of the oldest, simplest and most valuable techniques for streamlining work. It is used in nearly every level of production.

At the base of each product lays a properly designed production process that includes plenty of stages which help to channel efforts in the right direction and don`t get side-tracked from the main goal. So no matter what kind of service or product you provide, you more than likely will have some kind of process diagram you are working off of.

Breakdown of the Breakdown

Since every process consists of actual tasks that must be completed the diagram usually gets divided into the main steps. For example, basic steps for companies and freelancers that create websites are:

Concept/Idea; Design; Develop; Test; Launch.

Of course, there are a lot of intermediate stages such as researches, conclusion of a contract, creation of the main structure, discussions etc.

Nowadays, a great deal of websites dedicated to the business of the web have a special section with a graphical representation that visually depicts the sequence of steps in their process. Sometimes it’s only a simple chart or text which explains the stages of their work; other times it’s really a piece of art; where the user not only can get acquainted with the process, but can also be delighted and inspired by the beauty of the process diagrams.

Whatever form the process diagrams may take, they are definitely a must have. They’re required not only to improve productivity, but also to make your work more transparent and your company more trustful. It’s a kind of guarantee of control for the customer and, of course, an essential part of website design.

In this collection you will find some of the most inspiring and outstanding examples of process diagrams.

Sites That Get It Right

1. Deda – Web and Graphic Designer

2. Web Agency Pisa 

3. 3 Sided Coin

4. Mark Jenner – Front-End Designer

5. Mihael Miklosic – Web Designer

6. Alan Horne  – Web/UI Designer and Front-End Developer

7. Paper Street Interactive

8. Jean-Philippe Gams – French Designer and Developer

9. Ketch Studio

10. Camstech – Digital Agency Dubai

11. Webzeit 

12. Danny Giebe – Designer and Front-End Developer

13. Jordesign – Designer

14. World of eStore

15. Growcase

16. Submit Quickly

17. Nadine Roba – Designer

18. U Feed Me Back

19. Sebastianjt – Web Developer and UI Designer

20. Tarful

21. Tugrul Altun – Designer and Developer

22. Raffaele Leone  - Italian Web Designer

23. Eric Barse – Web Consultant

24. Sandra Wilcox  - Graphic Designer

25. KenGraphX 

26. John Jacob – Designer and Developer

27. Rodolphe Celestin – French Web Designer

28. Reverend Danger

29. Jan Ploch – Web and Graphic Designer

30. Janko at Warp Speed

31. Ryan Coughlin – Web Designer and Developer

32. Sendoushi

33. FortySeven  Media

34. Work by Simon

35. Rise Strategy

36. Pointless Corp

37. Tympanus

Here’s a beautiful icon set by designer Kenny Williams. Available in three scaleable sets, Uicons is a fantastic collection of 348 different icons that you can use virtually anywhere. While two of the sets, ‘Original’ and ‘Scribble’ are readily available for download, the third — @Fontface is currently under development being designed.

Available for $20 and payable via Paypal, Ken promises that all future updates will be free. Head over to the site and check them out.

Choosing fonts for design projects can be a daunting task because there’s thousands of fonts out there all over the web that you could use.

Whether you’re looking to create a big, bold logo for your business or work on a poster for an event here’s a collection of inspiring fonts that are perfect for use whatever your project may be.

The collection covers a variety of themes from vintage to clean and simple.

Remember to check the license before using any of these fonts commercially and any restrictions on use.

Neo Deco

Neo Deco is a beautiful, professional font that works well for logos. It’s clean, simple typography in action with a real sense of style.

PLSTK

PLSTK is a completely unique font. Its mechanical approach to each letter makes it stand out from the crowd. The effort that has gone into each of the glyphs is evident to see making this one of my favourite fonts for when you need to create something different.

ACCENT

Accent is another unique font, it’s thin, sharp and looks great on posters (like above). What I particularly like is the use of space within each glyph that makes Accent so good for poster work where you want an image behind the typography to be present.

Kabel

Kabel is a well designed, interesting font. It looks best when used in conjunction with lighting effects and colour overlays, as can be seen in the example above.

Kilogram

Kilogram is a solid, bold and headline font. It’s perfect for use for big headlines that need to make an impact.

CODE

Code is a very nice, simple and clean font. It’s light glyphs make it an attractive font useful when you require a clean, professional look.

TELEFONO

Another unique font, Telefono, has loads of added detail to each glyph. Works really well for poster work and logos too with the extra detail making it stand out from the crowd.

Novecento

Novocento is another clean font featuring a variety of sets from ultralight to ultrabold making it versatile for use for headlines, logos and more general text, perhaps on posters for print.

Hagin

Looking for a headline font that stands out? Hagin could be the right choice. Its got serifs, it’s bold and it’s very attractive.

MOLESK

Molesk is a big 3D font. It’s got serifs and lots of character to it. Not as clean as some of the other fonts which makes it great for making a distinctive impact on your designs.

Paranoid

Definitely one of my favourite fonts; Paranoid is a totally unique, beautifully designed font perfect for making designs that stand out from the rest. It’s not the easiest font to read so it’s more suited to titles than information text.

VAL

VAL is a fun font that looks great. There’s a few things to remember when using it; use all capitals or all lowercase to get the leaning glyphs to look right and it doesn’t work well at small sizes. Perfect for logos typographic art, just like the picture above.

Absinthe

Feeling the need for a vintage font? Absinthe may just be exactly what you’re after. It’s a great vintage font that has a very unique set of glyphs that really add to the vintage effect.

TETRA

I can see Tetra working on posters for festivals and events. It’s fun with the added bonus of a 3D component making it useful for all kinds of situations.

INTRO

Intro is a great, clean font. Perfect for sharp, attractive logos. Well crafted and looks great!

LAVANDERIA

Lavanderia is a beautiful handwritten font that is lavish and sophisticated; perfect for use when a handwritten approach is needed.

RBNo2

RBN02 is a clean font that takes a more square approach that’s more Courier New than Helvetica. It works really well on the above mock poster.

Nomed

Looking for something completely different? Nomed has to be your chosen font. For creating unique logos and titles that are like nothing else, Nomed is the best font to use.

HOMESTEAD

Homestead is a well crafted, textured font that can be used to create all kinds of great designs. The textured element really adds to the feel of the font and, as seen below, can be used to your advantage.

Satellite

Satellite is a smart, simple, clean font that looks really fresh.

Ananda Namaste

Ananda Namaste is font I really like. The smooth strokes and curves of the font make it stand out. Definitely one of my favourites.

Mosaic Leaf

Mosaic Leaf is an amazing font that looks really good. It’s a unique way of creating glyphs but one that works really well. Fits perfectly with the design above.

Ribbon

A font similar to Tetra that has a unique feel, Ribbon looks great in print work like the book above and has a unique character.

Nevis

Finally, Nevis, a perfect headline font. Bold and proud, Nevis is a great font.

David Pickett is a musician and web designer from the UK. Follow him on twitter.

Got any favorite fonts to share? Which font here is your favourite?

Build Your Website the Right Way Using HTML & CSS – only $14!

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Facebook updated the design of the permanent link page for individual posts to reflect the look and feel of Timeline this week. It also added a prominent Like button for pages and a subscribe button for users who allow subscribers.

Every post on Facebook has a unique URL that displays the content by itself. This page, called a permalink, can be accessed by clicking the timestamp of a post. Previously Facebook showed this content on a white background, but with the change to Timeline, the design became outdated. Now content displays on a light blue background. Interestingly, this also changes the background of Facebook ads and other modules. It’s unclear whether this will affect clickthrough rate in any way.

Also significant is the addition of Like and subscribe buttons for posts from pages and people that users are not connected to. This was not previously a feature of permalink pages, but the change could lead pages to gain more Likes and people to gain new subscribers. For now, this only applies to link and text-only posts, not photos or posts using Facebook Questions.

Yuko Rabbit is a Painter, Comic Artist and Illustrator from Tokyo, Japan. Yuko Rabbit got inspiration not only from painting, but music, typography, traveling, design, books, movies, conversations, stage art, underground culture, performances and my emotions. Yuko Rabbit  like abstract subject, philosophical matter, androgyne, sexual minorities, children, and other things on blurred borderlines. He prefer leaving things as are than making all things straight. Here is an awesome showcase of beautiful artworks by Yuko Rabbi. ENJOY!

Courtesy: Yuko Rabbi

There is no limit for inspiration and when it comes to webdesign this is much more unlimited. As usual we continue to showcase beautiful and interesting webdesigns that we came across during the week.Hope you like this week’s collection too.
 

Bagigia

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Quantium

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Upstrakt

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Infographics Agency

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Cheese Please

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Sysdeco

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Fugu

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Dejan Beljic

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2Fly

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La Dolce Vita

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A few months ago I went to collect a friend from hospital. Arriving early, I entered the waiting room and noticed in-house magazines stacked by the door. I picked one up, grabbed a coffee and took a seat.

The magazine read like a very long press release, blabbering on about patient-centric care and employee awards. I was quickly bored, so I read from my phone instead. The magazine failed in its purpose.

Effective content marketing holds people’s attention. It gives you a distinctive brand, loyal fans and increased sales. You don’t need a big budget to succeed, which is why good content marketing is the single best way to beat bigger competitors online.

Content marketing used to be about customer magazines and mailed newsletters. Now it covers blogs, email newsletters, eBooks, white papers, articles, videos and more. In this article, you will learn about content marketing techniques that you can apply to your business.

Prepare

Before creating content, you need to prepare. Think about your tone and style, where to find the best writers and how to organize your workflow.

Tone and Style

Too many companies start writing content before their brand has a defined voice. This leads to inconsistency. It’s like using one logo in your brochure, another on your website and another on your blog.

When speaking with people, you see their expressions and you adjust your tone accordingly. In a meeting, when you see that someone is confused, you clarify meaning, simplify sentences and speak reassuringly. The Web offers no feedback until your content is published, and then it’s too late.

To get the right tone, think of the person who best represents your brand. The person could be fictional or real, and they may or may not work for you. Now think of adjectives that describe them. Once you know what you want, provide clear details and practical examples.

Let’s say you run a travel agency that markets to young independent travelers. You want your representative to sound experienced, helpful and friendly. Try using a table like the one below to delineate what your adjectives do and don’t mean:

Experienced Helpful Friendly Does mean… Knowledgeable
Write with authority, as though the knowledge was gained first hand. Efficient
Explain things clearly and positively. Make sure all relevant information is obvious and accessible. Personal
Use informal language, and write as though you are talking to one person, rather than a broad customer base. Does not mean… Condescending
You know a lot but don’t talk down to your customers. They probably know a lot too. Pushy
Promote your company, but not at the expense of good service. Always have your reader’s wants in mind. Unprofessional
Make sure there are no grammar or spelling mistakes. Proofread carefully.

You’ll also need a style guide, so that your authors write consistently. Should you use title case in headings? Are contractions appropriate? Check out The Yahoo! Style Guide for ideas.

Picking Content Creators

Don’t pick the wrong people to create your content. It’s hard for a non-technical person to pick the best Web developer, and it’s the same with content marketing. You need to know about content creation in order to judge other people’s abilities. Some people suggest making everyone in your company a content creator, but this is a bad idea. Not everyone can be a good accountant, secretary or rocket scientist, and the same applies here. To succeed, you should pick the best.

Ask everyone who wants to be a content creator to write a sample blog post. Then you can find the best few people. Some might not be able to write but have interesting ideas. In this case, you’ll need someone to edit their copy. Perhaps you want to raise the profile of a particular staff member. If they can’t write, have someone ghostwrite for them.

Workflow

Some companies have a simple workflow: one person does everything. The person researches, writes and publishes without any input from others. This model can work, but you’ll see more success with a workflow that enables other people to take part. Have different people write, edit and proofread. It’s a good way to catch mistakes and to bring more ideas into the process. Think about the best process for each type of content. One person might be enough for a tweet, whereas four to six people might be ideal for an eBook.

Imagine you’ve got a well-staffed company that is putting together a B2B white paper. You could organize your workflow like this:

An example of how to organize your workflow in a well-staffed company.

Persuade

Your content should be persuasive. Pay close attention to how you speak and what you say.

Use Simple Language

Take the question below on Yahoo! Answers. To “sound intelligent,” this person would like to know “big words that replace everyday small words.”

Many people make this mistake. They use language that is unnecessarily complicated, usually to show off or to sound corporate and professional.

“Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all,” said Winston Churchill. So, don’t talk about “taking a holistic view of a company’s marketing strategy to deliver strategic insights, precise analysis and out-of-the-box thinking.”

Prefer “make” to “manufacture,” and “use” to “utilize.” While “quantitative easing” offers precision to economists, your personal finance audience would prefer “print money.”

Lauren Keating has studied the effect of scientific language on the persuasiveness of copy. She found that most people respond best to advertisements that contain no scientific language. People found them more readable and persuasive, and they felt more willing to buy the product. Lauren’s conclusion was clear: copy needs to be plain and simple.

Have Opinions

Interesting people have opinions, and interesting brands are the same. Look at the amazing work of new search engine DuckDuckGo. It has positioned itself as the antithesis of Google, launching websites that criticize how the search giant tracks you and puts you in a bubble. The strategy is paying off: DuckDuckGo is seeing explosive growth.

DuckDuckGo is an alternative search engine that breaks you out of your Filter Bubble.

While this strategy is perfect for defeating a big incumbent, you don’t have to be openly hostile to your competitors. You can say what you think without mentioning their names.

Bear in mind that people are ideologically motivated. Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler’s study, “When Corrections Fail”, describes the “backfire effect” of trying to correct people’s deeply held beliefs. The authors found that contradicting people’s misconceptions actually strengthened those opinions. If people see you as an ideological ally (like a political party), they are more likely to agree with you on other issues — even ideologically inconsistent or non-ideological ones. You can use your opinions to attract people to your company: converting the agnostic or validating the views of allies.

As a small-scale brewer, for example, you might have a strong opinion on ale, believing in craft over mass production. You might think the market is dominated by big businesses that sacrifice quality for quantity. In this situation, you could use content marketing to talk about the best way to make beer. By stressing how seriously you take the development of your product, you communicate your opinion to those who share it without directly criticizing your competitors.

Think politically: consider the popularity of your views and whether they will attract media coverage. Ideally, your opinions should be bold and popular.

Sell the Benefits

In the same way that you sell your products and services, tell your audience the benefits of your content. This technique is essential if your audience doesn’t know what it wants.

PaperlessPipeline is a transaction management and document storage app for real estate brokers. Its founder, Dane Maxwell, had a creative idea to sell his product. The biggest problem for real estate brokers is recruiting. So, Dane invited them to a webinar titled “Recruiting Secrets of the 200-Plus Agent Office in Tennessee.” Brokers didn’t even know they needed to manage transactions, so he didn’t mention it in the invitation.

Paperless Pipeline takes your real estate transactions and related documents online—without changing how you work.

In the webinar, he introduced PaperlessPipeline and explained how it enables brokers to recruit more agents. The webinar attracted 120 guests, and “16 ended up buying at the end,” said Dane in an interview with Mixergy.

Imagine you run a company that develops technology for mobile phones, and you want to promote a new femtocell that boosts mobile reception in public spaces and rural areas. This technology could be valuable to people who want to improve mobile reception, but those people might not have heard of it.

So, instead of promoting the technology directly, offer content that focuses on the benefits. By using benefit-focused copy, you immediately tell the reader what’s in it for them.

Teach

Think about what your audience wants. People want to hear answers and to learn something new, so give them what they want.

Give Answers

Content marketing needs to offer practical advice that people can use. Readers have been trained to expect answers on the Web, and yet so much content fails to deliver.

Consider FeeFighters, a comparison website for credit card processing. One of its blog posts, Do You Know What Makes Up Your Credit Score?, talks about the factors that affect your credit score. Instead of offering abstract advice and concepts, the post provides practical tips for improving your credit score:

Area #2: Your Credit Utilization Ratio

The second largest determining factor in what makes up your score is the amount of credit that you have available to you in relationship to how much of that credit you’ve used. This accounts for 30 percent of your credit score. The optimal rate is 30 percent, which means that if you have $10,000 in credit available to you, you should only be using about $3,000 of it. One trap that some people fall into is believing that if they max out their credit cards every month and then pay them off at the end of the month, they’ll build their credit. But since that gives them a 100 percent credit utilization ratio, and that ratio accounts for 30 percent of their overall credit score, they’re really doing more harm than good.

Say or Do Something New

Most content is boring and unoriginal, which is good for you. It makes it easier to beat your competitors.

You can make your content interesting by doing something new, without necessarily saying something new. For instance, you could write a comprehensive article on a topic that has only piecemeal information scattered across the Web. Or you could use a different format for a topic that gets the same treatment; rather than writing the fiftieth blog post on a topic, shoot the first video.

You can also make your content interesting by saying something new. An infographic by Rate Rush compares the popularity of Digg to Reddit, creatively combining a bar graph and clock to present the data. Although Rate Rush is a personal finance website, with little connection to social news, its staff researched a topic they were interested in and drew attention by putting it to imaginative use.

Our agency also researches things that we find interesting, and this has been a great source of content. In 2010, we polled around 1000 iPad owners to find out how consumers use the device. It led to a slew of media attention.

You can do the same. Come up with an original idea to research, and then undertake a study. Also look into studies that your business has done in the past, because interesting stuff might be lying around. One of our clients looked through her company’s research archive and found amazing material. She didn’t spend any money on research but got a lot of great content, links and media coverage.

Captivate

Give your content more personality. Captivate your audience with stories and characters that will draw them in and keep them coming back.

Tell a Story

Telling a story is a great way to connect with readers. According to a number of studies summed up by Rob Gill of Swinburne University of Technology, telling stories can be useful in corporate communication. Storytelling is fundamental to human interaction, and it can make your content more compelling and your brand more engaging.

Citing Annette Simmons’ The Story Factor, Rob says this: “It is believed people receiving the narration often come to the same conclusion as the narrator, but through using their own decision-making processes.” Told through a story, a message becomes more personal and relevant. The reader is also more likely to remember what was said.

Rand Fishkin is the co-founder and CEO of SEOmoz. Instead of sharing only positive accounts of his business, he also writes about difficulties such as his failed attempt to raise capital:

Michelle was the first to note that something was “odd.” In a phone call with Neil, she heard him comment that they “needed to do more digging into the market.” In her opinion, this was very peculiar.… Tuesday morning we got the call; no deal.

An email shared by Rand Fishkin in his post about SEOmoz’s attempt to raise funding.

Brands need stories, and stories need people, suspense, conflicts and crises. By reading SEOmoz’s content, and seeing both the positive and negative, you become immersed in its story.

Ikea is another example of a brand that tells stories that generate opinions about its company. For instance, it plays up its Swedish roots and paints a romantic image of a wholesome and natural society. Its website is full of stories that contribute to this effect.

A survey conducted by the B2B Technology Marketing Community showed that around 82% of LinkedIn users found that telling a story through case studies was the most effective form of content marketing.

Sometimes you’ll want to use anecdotes to make a point, and sometimes you’ll write a post or tweet to build a narrative. When you’re cultivating a story, keep the information simple, and don’t be afraid to repeat points here and there; some readers might have missed what you said before.

Always mix interesting stories with useful information; fail to do this and your audience will feel you’re wasting their time.

Use Real People

Think of your favorite writers. You’ve probably seen their photos and heard them speak. Likewise, people need to see and hear your employees, so use pictures, audio and video. This will bring your audience closer to your brand.

Jakob Nielsen has studied people’s reactions to images online. He used eye-tracking software to discover that people ignore images that seem decorative, random or generic. They even ignore generic images of people. But when they come across a photo of a “real” person, they engage with it for a longer time.

People prefer to get involved with a company with which they feel a personal connection. But introduce your employees gradually; as with any story, introduce too many characters too early and you’ll confuse your audience.

Summary

Develop a compelling tone of voice. Don’t assume that anyone can write amazing copy, because they can’t. If you want the best content, then you need the best writers and thinkers.

Produce something informative that people will want to read. Give your brand a personality and your business will benefit across the board, from recruitment to sales. Warren Buffett looks for businesses protected by “unbreachable moats,” and no moat is more unbreachable than a brand with a story, ideas and opinions.

(al) (il)

© Craig Anderson for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

We all know it and we all love it, and of course by now you probably already know I am talking about CSS and CSS3.

Actually, we should probably take a moment to thank CSS3 before going any further for speeding up the load times for all of your favorite sites.  They, if they know what they are doing, are more than likely using CSS3 in place of a ton of images to enhance user load times, which is pretty awesome.

It is a pretty accepted fact by now that we simply do not need images to do all the things we used to need them for.  With CSS3 gradients, transitions, and all the effects, it has really seemed to have taken a lot of the weight off the shoulders of our websites, because let’s be honest—images were surely weighing them down.

Don’t be mistaken though, CSS3 and CSS can’t do everything but, ironically enough, I doubt most of us are aware of its limitations or what pushes the very edges of its possibilities.

Well, today we are here to find that out.  So let’s dive right in to what certainly will be an interesting and fascinating journey of discovery for all of us that are fans of CSS3 and CSS.

Note: I am doing all of these with the presumption of a user being on Google chrome, so please for the love of all that is holy before actually implementing these in your site use the appropriate prefixes for other browsers.  Do not copy and paste from here and think everything will work perfectly, because it may—but it may not.

Text-based effects

Anaglyphs

They say Anaglyphs, even when done in CSS3, can be displayed in 3D if you have some snazzy goggles at your house.  That though, I am not sure of, but what I do know is that it can look pretty awesome for certain themes for various projects (such as a video game retro theme, and similar).

This effect is created by offsetting two of the red green and blue colors (rgb).  To start things off for this effect we need two of the same words, and we need them both to be able to be targeted in CSS, so that we can work our repetition and color magic on them.  In this case though, instead of adding unnecessary HTML into our tag that we are using for these words, we can just use the “:after” pseudo class to add the second word.  So to do that we will use this example:  imagine we are using an H1 to display our first word, such as:

Anaglyph

We will then do:

h1:after { content: “Anaglyph”; }

This will give us that nice repetition, and will display: “Anaglyph Anaglyph” on the page.  So, now let’s begin to style this up so that we can toss on some of that fancy 3D beauty.

h1 { display: inline; position: relative; letter-spacing: -5px; /* This will push it together giving us a nice 3D vibe */ color: rgba(0,0,255,0.5); /* This will give us a blue at 50% opacity */ } h1:after { content: “Anaglyph”; position: absolute; left: 8px; top: 6px; /* These are aligning it to be where we’d like relative to the last word */ color: rgba (255,0,0,0.5); /* This gives us a red at 50% opacity */ }

Using RGBA here is very important because it allows an alpha transparency to be set so that the overlaid text will not completely block the text under it, and gives us a nice transparency.  The text in the after pseudo element is then absolutely positioned to be slightly offset from the underlying text as you could see, and that is very important as well.

Be sure to play around with these positions a bit as you’d like and test various colors, because there is much fun to be had here.  But to finish this effect up we toss on the red overlay, and voila we have our anaglyphic effect.

Text gradients

CSS3 gradients seem to be all the rage these days, and rightly so.  As we discussed earlier, they were something that was previously only available through something like Photoshop and the embedding of images on your site.  Now though, you can do it all through a bit of CSS3 wizardry.

And notedly, with spells that aren’t too complicated at that.  So let’s see what we have to offer here in the font gradient category, and how to conjur up some magic therein.

Linear, top to bottom:

-webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 100%, from(#00000), to(#FFFFFF));

Linear, left to right:

-webkit-linear-gradient(left, #000000, #FFFFFF);

Linear Gradient (with even color stops):

-webkit-gradient(linear, left top, right top, from(#000000), color-stop(0.25, #FFFFFF), color-stop(0.5, #000000), color-stop(0.75, #1a82f7), to(#FFFFFF));

Radial Gradient:

-webkit-radial-gradient(circle, #000000, #FFFFFF);

Radial Gradient (positioned):

-webkit-radial-gradient(80% 20%, closest-corner, #000000, #FFFFFF);

So let’s set up an example here, and let’s begin with an h1.

CSS3 Gradient

Then let’s start to style it up using a bit of CSS3 magic:

h1 { font-size: 100px; font-family: somethingfancy_or_not, arial; /* These two can be anything you like */ /* Here’s where the fun starts */ -webkit-mask-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(rgba(0,0,0,1)), color-stop(50%, rgba(0,0,0,.5)), to (rgba(0,0,0,1))); } h1:after { content: “CSS3 Gradient”; color: #d6d6d6; text-shadow: 1px 2px 5px #000;

Now, don’t be confused by the amount of parenthesis used in the RGBA settings, as they can often confuse even the most adept developers, and we all will forget and misplace them at times, so just keep in mind that we are all humans.

But let me break down what is happening here.  Here we are using a mask image as a a way to clip the visible portion of the element according to the mask image’s transparency.  Then we are using the after pseudo-element to render a nice text-shadow onto our element.

This is all of course not required for a gradient, but it is a nice way to spruce up is what’s going on and certainly allows you to see how far we can stretch a simple gradient.  Now, go bandy about and play with all the styles of gradients and make sure you come up with something snazzy for your next project.

Dripping text

One of the few things we very rarely need but may actually think is interesting is to drip text to make it seem as though it is falling apart with the letters intact. Sometimes this can be because we are obsessed with vampires and want the text to bleed the red blood of revenge, OR it could just be simply because we want it to be dripping a water-esque blue color as we read down. Sometimes I have even seen people use this with div elements as the page scrolls down from a surface to underwater styling, where the underwater areas are much more heavy on their blur and therefore seem to be dripping a bit(or seem to be underwater).

The syntax for this is pretty simple, so I will leave it the complex explanation out—but I will give you an intro on how to do it in one sentence.  It is all based on repetition. So let’s say you want to drip down quite far, well we’d use roughly 15 or so text shadows at various y off-sets to get that effect. If we want only a few, then we would use only a few with smaller offsets. An example using a red vampiric effect would be:

.drip { color: #EEE; text-shadow: 4px 4px 1px #300000; 4px 6px 1px #400000; 4px 8px 1px #500000; /*......and so on, until*/ 4px 60px 5px #FF0000; }

Basically you can keep this up until you reach your desired limit (y axis off-set) or work backwards if you’d like the opposite, and a smaller offset.  Though, be sure to not overuse this – because as I said this is  a very unusual effect and one that I am sure there are not a ton of use cases for.  But give it a try for sure, as repeated text-shadows are really interesting to play with.

Stylish features

The stitched look

If you don’t want to use Photoshop or jQuery to get some insane stitched effects going on, then CSS3 is probably your next best bet. Now, of course anyone can toss a dashed border on a piece of content or a div and say it’s stitched, but the real key is to use it in tangent with a few other CSS3 features that really make it stand out as a stylish add-on.

What you really want to do is toss on a nice drop shadow with a large spread radius. The reason is that you want to get the background color to bleed over the border, and to do that you set the spread radius (the fourth element) really high. For example I would do something like:

.stitched_element { border: 2px dashed #ffffff; box-shadow: 0 0 0 8px #ff0030; }

That will give you a nice effect that other people seem to spend lines and lines of unnecessary CSS to create.  In fact, this is an effect where you may want to play with creating it in Photoshop first for a while, just so that you understand the theory behind what you are doing here.

I have probably spent 6 hours in Photoshop in the past month playing with stitched effects, because honestly they are really fun—and help you understand what exactly you are trying to get the CSS to do.

That fancy ampersand

You may ask yourself, “Where in the world do people get those amazing ampersands that I see around all the time.” You may have even searched high and low for one in all of the standard fonts you run across, and well—you, like myself, probably haven’t found it until you saw someone writing about it. The reason is that it is a font that you have to license in order to use, and by way of that a lot of us prefer the web font or standard alternatives.

One of the great alternatives on a Mac OSX operating system (comes default) is the italic ‘Cochin’. If you alternatively prefer a Google Web Font, check out Josefin Sans.

I know this isn’t quite CSS3, but it is a nice little @font-face action and in this case I am going to set you up with a link for downloading the font and everything. Now, this is a Google Web Font so they show you how to do this on their page, but it is nice to keep in mind that you can combine the two attributes for working with fonts. And to ease that time I have included it in the code here, and this is directly to the font that gives us a fancy ampersand. But be sure to play with the italic usage of these fonts, as that is where you typically will get the really interesting ampersand usages.

@font-face { font-family: ‘Josefin Sans’; src: url(http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Josefin+Sans); }

And there you go.  A few notes on usage though.  As you can tell from the image above, this is a very ‘fancy’ ampersand and it is best used when contrasting two font faces, or in wedding invitations or other ‘fancy’ events.  I have used it in very modern design pieces as well though, so don’t feel you can’t use it because you are doing something modern. I am just saying it may not quite be the perfect ‘grunge’ solution if  that is what you are going for.  I have to say though, between a bold and a thin typeface, this ampersand looks beautiful.

One-sided box-shadow

We all know and love box shadows, but sometimes the typical shadow may not be exactly what we want. For example, sometimes we may be doing a realistic shading of a certain element on our site and want the shadow to appear only one specific side. Or we may be interested in doing a hover element, or a bouncing element and let’s face it—nothing amplifies the beauty in that like a one-sided box shadow.

What we do here is pretty simple actually, we will use negative spread radius to squeeze the box shadow off of one edge. So for instance let’s imagine we have a gray box element and it is set up with a width and height of 40px by 40px. Our CSS would look like:

.one-sided-shadow {-webkit-box-shadow: 0 8px 6px -6px black}

That will give us exactly what we need, and in one simplified line of code at that.  Like I said, if you are using a lighting element (or theme) to shade your site in one specific direction as though it were a painting, this is the perfect solution for you.

Similarly, bouncing or hover:bounce elements are just  perfect for this.  In the latter case, activate the shadow after the bounce has started, and deactivate once it has landed, and then wow seems you are turning into a designer already.

Rolling over into a CSS Sprite

CSS Sprites are a fun technique, and most of us are more than likely familiar with them. But just in case you’re not, let me summarize what they are. A CSS Sprite is one big image that contains at least two viewing areas, one that is within the view and one that comes into view upon some sort of user interaction (typically a mouse hover-over).

Now that you know what they are we will actually set up our first, and probably most basic of a CSS sprite image. In this case we will be using a link hover, and the two images can be anything you like, but we will call it “sprite.png”. We will also be using an element to house our link and our image, that is why we will be using the background CSS syntax. So our code will look like:

a { display: block; background: url(sprite.png) no-repeat; height: 50px /*Example that is needed for the hover explanation*/ width: /*the appropriate width here*/ } a:hover { background-position: 0 -50px; }

As you can see, the real secret here is what happens once the user hover overs the image element, and the image transitions on the Y axis at a length of 50 pixels. The reason for that is it is the exact height of the image, so there will be no layover or overlap during the transition hover, and it will look as clean and smooth as can be.

This is the real secret of sprite images, and hover over actions.  Regardless of the fact that you may have a very strange or oblong image, you need to have the y (or x) offset, depending on what you are going for, at exactly the width (x) or height (y) of your element.  Clean, and simple—and pretty fun at that   Now go about and make your own sprites!

Layering

You may be interested in layering things on your site. Be it paper, leaves, trees or the more ridiculous thing, like people’s faces, you can use the same syntax to get away with what you want. It is basically a selection of box shadow’s off of your first element to give the ‘effect’ that you are looking for.

In this case we will use a simple div with a gray background so that you can gather what we are referring to. We will, as usual, dive right in and then explain afterwards.

Hi, my name is a layered Div. .layering { background: #EEE; box-shadow: 0 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.15), 0 10px 0 -4px #EEE, 0 10px 2px -5px rgba(0,0,0,0.15), 0 20px 0 -11px #EEE, 0 20px 1px -8px rgba(0,0,0,0.15); }

What we are looking at may seem a bit complex, but it is actually rather simple. What is happening is shadow, layer, shadow, layer and shadow. So the top layer in this case is a div with a background color of #EEE. Then we have our first box shadow acting as a shadow on that top layer, then the second layer is displayed (note the #EEE), and then we have the second layer’s shadow, and then the third layer (note again the #EEE) and then its shadow.

Pretty simple, and with the choices we’ve made it gives a nice stacked or layered effect. Again, this can be used with anything really, you just have to tinker with the alignment to get it right. Remember though, that when doing layering you will be best to work from the top left down to the bottom right with your images or divs, as it flows more naturally.

Functionality

Responsive design: iPad style

Let’s face it, responsive design is incredibly important.  And I don’t care if you hate media queries and fluid grids, you will be using them in a few years regardless of whether you like them. Expect it to be a standard in web design, especially given how many various screen sizes and device resolutions that are hitting the market and are being adopted at an alarmingly high rate—all the way from 27’’ iMacs to iPod Touches and everything in between, and they all browse the web.

They all need a nice experience and, honestly, nobody wants to make a different version of their site for every device, as that is just too much work. We are busy people so we need a solution for busy people. That is where media queries come into the mix. What I will be focusing on here is iPad specific queries, but from this you can gather what you need to push out your queries to other screen sizes. After that only comes the altering of your site’s layout to reflect these changed screen sizes. So let’s drop down some code and talk about it afterwards.

@media only screen and (device-width: 768px) { /*General layouts*/ } @media only screen and (min-device-width: 481px) and (max-device-width: 1024px) and (orientation:portrait) {/*Portrait*/ } @media only screen and (min-device-width: 481px) and (max-device-width: 1024px) and (orientation:landscape) { /*Landscape*/ }

This shouldn’t be too awfully difficult to see what is happening here, but what we are doing is using the media queries’ specific syntax to break down and enable the viewing of our website to reflect best for specific screen sizes. So let’s say we have an H1 with some text that is sized at 60px…well, that is probably fine for iMacs and other big desktops, but that more than likely won’t fit with the rest of your site on a more conservative iPad view. So what we will do is inside of our code write:

@media only screen and (device-width: 768px) { h1: font-size 60px  }

And that will size it down for the iPad screens appropriately. Of course, those sizes were just examples you would be best to test your site for specific sizes and such before moving on to finalizing your queries, but this is a method that will save you a ton of work in the long run (and user outrage).

NOTE: If you are familiar with object oriented programming then this is something that will come second nature, what we are looking at is basically an ‘if then’ statement of sorts for our browser’s rendering of our site’s display. In my opinion this is one of the best things to come out of CSS, well…ever.

Helpful navigation (expanding)

Navigation isn’t always perfect on our sites, and because of that sometimes we need to go back to the drawing board in order to rethink how we are doing it and if we can use CSS3 to help us out.

Let’s imagine that we have a navigation bar on the top of our website, but we would like to add more of a pop when users mouse over it, letting them know that they can use it and that it is actually an attractive thing for them to click on. Well, the best way to do that would be to toss on a simple webkit transition using the ease method. So what we will do is give an example, regarding a ‘nav’ element.

Of course in this example you will have to do all the setting up yourself, we are just looking at the exact transitory element that would help you out in this case.

nav a { -webkit-transition: width 0.15s ease; }

or

nav a { -webkit-transition: all .2 ease-in-out; } /* based on your preference for anims obviously */ nav a:hover { -webkit-transform: scale(1.1); }

A few notes about webkit transition properties so you can use it properly on your site. It is a magic wand basically, and takes in three values. The property that is being animated, the duration of the animation, and a ‘timing function’ (this effects the animations acceleration for a smoother effect).

There are a lot of ways to go about working with these, and a lot of resources out there like here and here and here.  But I hoped that give you an intro into what is possible with them, and really ripens your thirst for understanding so that you go out and experiment quite a bit.  A lot of fun to be had here.

And so we come to the end of our journey.  Just to note, this wasn’t an exhaustive or complete list by any means , but I hope it sparked your interest in some of the more interesting things you can do with CSS and CSS3. It is a crazy and entertaining world at times, and at times a frustrating one.

After all, we all know how it is when a designer can’t get a div to display a child element properly, or when a text element isn’t quite doing what you want it to.

So keep in touch with your favorite designers, and grow a circle of friends in this space that you can communicate with and share these tricks with back and forth, because I know that is how I learned most of what I have shared today and I have to say I think it is the best thing you can do as a web designer. Twitter is a great resource for that, and search[dot]twitter an even better one. In the meantime, I will leave you to experiment but not before one final sentence.

Go forth young Padawan and play with the fun that awaits you as a web designer in the wild world of style and design within CSS(3).

Dain Miller is a freelance web designer and developer based out of Madison Wisconsin.  He is mainly focused on building products in the online education space, and he has a passion for responsive design.  You can follow him on twitter at @_dain.

What are your favorite new CSS3 techniques? Or little-used/little-known CSS techniques? Let us know in the comments!

Digital packaging in under a minute! – 51% off!

Source

To support the launch of new features for pages with Timeline, Facebook now offers APIs to manage a page’s messages, milestones, About section, apps and posts.

These additions allow page management applications to control important areas of organizations’ Timelines so that page owners don’t have to switch between platforms. Developers anticipated these APIs after Facebook introduced the new pages on Feb. 29.

An important new API gives the ability to manage a page’s messages. This lets page representatives see and respond to private messages users send through the new optional feature for pages. Some organizations might prefer to have these messages incorporated into page management or customer service applications rather than having representatives access them directly from the Facebook page. Software solutions keep things more organized and have other collaboration features that Facebook does not, for example being able to assign tickets to different users.

Another API now available allows apps to manage a page’s milestones. With milestones, page owners can add important events to any date on a page’s Timeline. These stories show up larger than other posts on the page.

Apps will also be able to edit a page’s About section, upload a cover photo, change tab app icons and hide or unhide page posts via the API. Documentation details are available here.

Since Elliot Jay Stocks so poignantly told us to destroy the Web 2.0 look, we’ve witnessed a de-shinification of the Web, with fewer glass buttons, beveled edges, reflections, special-offer badges, vulgar gradients with vibrant colors and diagonal background patterns. The transformation has been welcomed with relief by all but the most hardened gloss-enthusiasts. However, design and aesthetics work in mysterious ways, and no sooner does one Web design trend leave us before another appears.

The Symptoms

So, exactly what is this new epidemic? Well, let’s start by looking at some of the most common symptoms, many of which you have probably noticed. They are easy to spot, and as with many other conditions, they often appear in conjunction with each other. (This is why the contagion spreads so effectively — seemingly independent symptoms grow more infectious when combined with others.)

Please note: The following list appears in no particular order and does not indicate the level of infectiousness or severity, which seem to be stable across the board. Note also that the instances given often exhibit more than one symptom, making classification more difficult.

Stitching

Stitching appears gradually, often as a result of the designer playing too long with borders and lines, particularly of the dotted variety. A full-blown stitch is evidenced by the subtle shift from dots to dashes, augmented by drop shadows and other effects to give the impression of 3-D. The purpose of the stitch is somewhat elusive, but it seems to thrive in environments where certain textures are applied, most notably fabric and leather, but also generic graininess.

While determining the exact cause of stitching is difficult, scientists are certain that it belongs to a larger strain of the infection known as “Skeuomorphism.”

Clockwise from top: The Journal of Min Tran; Dribbble shot by Mason Yarnell; Dribbble shot by Liam McCabe.

Zigzag Borders

Borders are common elements of Web design, and as such, they are difficult to avoid; luckily, they are usually harmless and often have a positive effect on the layout. However, for some reason, a particular type of border — the zigzag — has grown exponentially in the last few years and is now threatening the natural habitat of more benign border specimens. Exactly why this is happening is unknown, although some researchers claim that the pattern created by the repeating opposing diagonals has such an alluring effect on designers and clients alike that straight borders have somewhat lost their appeal.

Clockwise from top: You Know Who; Dribbble shot by Christopher Paul; Dribbble shot by Meagan Fisher.

Forked Ribbons

Like borders, ribbons have long existed in various forms. What we’re seeing now, though, is the near dominance of a particular style of ribbon, easily identified by a fork at one or both ends. Some ribbons are also folded over twice, creating a faux effect of depth and reinforcing the diagonal lines in the fork. Whether the fork is related to the zigzag effect is unknown, but it seems that diagonal lines are the key to the ribbon’s survival, along with its ability to evoke memories of times past.

The danger of the ribbon lies mainly in its ability to exist independent of other symptoms (although it thrives in the company of vintage typography), meaning that it could date your design long after the epidemic ends, even if the symptom itself appears dormant. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the “special offers” badge of the Web 2.0 look.

Clockwise from top: Ryan O’Rourke; Cabedge; Jake Przespo

Textures

In the age of all things digital, it’s a conundrum that textures should dominate our illustrations and backgrounds, and yet they are indeed one of the most common symptoms on our list. Manifested by subtle grain, dirt and scratches, paper-esque surfaces and fold marks, they seem to embrace the spirit of the handmade. But ironically, they’re often the complete opposite: computer-generated effects or Photoshop brushes.

Possible explanations for the widespread use of textures include a yearning for tactile media (especially considering the emergence of touchscreens) or envy towards print designers, who have a much richer palette of materials and surfaces to play with.

Clockwise from top: Gerren Lamson; Zero; Amazee Labs.

Letterpress

A Smashing Magazine article from 2009 outlined letterpress as one of the emerging trends of the year and, boy, were they right. The simple effect has gone from strength to strength and is now a household technique for sprucing up typography online. A relatively harmless symptom, letterpress might also have infected designers through other digital interfaces, such as operating systems and games, as early as the turn of the millennium, indicating a very long incubation period.

Scientists disagree over whether the incubation period is due to the infection needing a critical mass before emerging from dormancy or whether the infection simply needed the right conditions — CSS3 text shadows, to be specific — for symptoms to appear.

Clockwise from top: Billy Tamplin; Dribbble shot by Phillip Marriot; Remix.

19th-Century Illustration

After being released from copyright quarantine, this symptom, favoured by fashionable ladies and gentlemen, was nearly eliminated during the last epidemic due to its inability to cope well with gloss and shine. But in this new vintage-friendly environment, it has found its way back into our visual repertoire. For better or worse, the 19th-century illustration will most likely hang around for a while, emerging stronger from time to time like a flu virus.

Clockwise from top: Killian Muster; Dribbble shot by Trent Walton; Simon Collison.

Muted Tones

After a long period of vibrancy, the average online color scheme seems to have been somewhat desaturated across the board. We’re seeing widespread use of browns, earthy greens and mustards and a general leaning towards “impure” colors, although this is generally thought to be a minor symptom of the epidemic. Some scientists will even argue that muted tones are, in fact, not a symptom themselves but rather a side effect of other symptoms, in the way that sweating is a natural response to a fever.

Clockwise from top: Dribble shot by Dave Ruiz; Cognition; Web Standards Sherpa.

Justified or Centered Typography (JCT)

This symptom is nothing new; in fact, it was pretty much the standard for the first 500 years of typography, until Tschichold and the New Typography showed up and quarantined it on the grounds that it was old fashioned, difficult to read and inefficient. Although we’re not sure at this point, this link with history might be what has made JCT reappear so vigorously under the umbrella of vintage symptoms. We do know that overall reading habits among humans have not changed in recent years (most Westerners still read left to right), and there is no plausible argument that JCT improves legibility; so, whatever the cause of the outbreak, we know it’s rooted in subjective emotion rather than rational thought.

Clockwise from top: Grip Limited; Tommy; Visual Republic.

Circular Script Logotypes (SCL)

A circle is a basic shape and, in isolation, is no more a symptom of an epidemic than a triangle. However, if you repeat enough triangles in a line, you get a zigzag. Similarly, if you include a circle in your logotype, you end up with a circular logotype. And if that logotype happens to be set in a script font, you’ll get — that’s right! — a Circular Script Logotype (SCL). Not that SCL is lethal or anything, but it is relatively contagious and can be highly detrimental when enough hosts have been infected.

Clockwise from top: Trent Walton; Mercy; Dribbble shot by James Seymor-Lock.

Skeuomorphic Features

Skeuomorphic features — i.e. ornamentation or design features on an object that are copied from the object’s form in another medium — are rife, particularly in mobile applications, and this symptom is one of the defining indicators of the epidemic. Possibly a mutant cancerous strain of mildly skeuomorphic features such as stitches and letterpress, it can sometimes grow to overtake an entire interface, bloating it with redundant visual references to physical objects and materials. However, due to the labor involved in preparing the graphics and the heavy reliance on image resources, some researchers argue that we’re unlikely to see full-blown skeuomorphism dominate our desktop browsers any time soon.

In fact, most scientists regard the phenomenon as a curiosity and predict that some virtual metaphors for physical attributes will prove useful (as tabs have) and some won’t. Interestingly, while Apple has embraced and continues to pioneer the technique, Google seems to some degree to resist the urge to mimic physical reality in its interfaces. Perhaps it has developed a vaccine?

Clockwise from top: iBooks; Dribbble shot by skorky; Dribbble shot by Igor Shkarin.

How Did It Start?

Pinpointing the epicentre of a design epidemic (read: trend) is always hard, especially given the myriad of symptoms and the contagious nature of the Internet. Identifying Patient Zero is virtually impossible, and, to be pragmatic, doing so would serve no purpose. What we can say is that we’re most likely experiencing a reaction to the Web 2.0 aesthetic — a craving for textured surfaces and retro imagery, something tactile and natural-looking, as an antidote to the shiny impersonality of the past — and that this is both healthy and necessary for pushing the design industry forward. Whatever the sources of trends, they often start with applying smart design to solve a particular problem or, indeed, to counter another trend.

Let’s say that everyone used sans-serif fonts, strong contrasting colors and crisp white backgrounds as a rule. Imagine, in this environment, if a designer went against the grain by using Clarendon or some other warm serif to infuse some personality into their website (which happens to be selling “Grandma’s homemade jam”), and then complemented the personality of their font selection with earthy colors and some brown paper textures. The result would inevitably stand out from the crowd: beautiful, emotional, different.

Incidentally, this aesthetic inspires another designer who happens to be working on a website with a global audience, exposing the new approach to a whole generation of designers who, in turn, apply it at will (often without considering the context). A trend is born. And yet, paradoxically, the potency of the epidemic is under constant threat. The more people get infected, the less differentiated the symptoms appear; and once the infection reaches a critical mass, the symptoms begin to work against themselves. Infusing personality into your visuals is meaningless if everything looks the same.

Is It Dangerous?

In today’s open collaborative world, avoiding an epidemic of this scale is difficult; so, in a sense, everyone is affected to some degree. The symptoms listed above are not restricted to small-scale up-and-coming designers, but affect even the elite of the design community. This means that even though some symptoms are harmless — like a light fever or a runny nose from a flu infection — the viral onslaught of trendy features puts constant pressure on our immune system to protect our creativity, and staying vigilant is important to maintaining a healthy dose of original thought.

If you’re displaying a handful of symptoms, it’s really nothing to worry about — catching a cold that’s going around is not hard, but recovering from it is also easy. If, on the other hand, you display most or all of these symptoms, then there’s reason to be extra cautious in your next project. Using all of a trend’s identifiers as cornerstones of your work might make your portfolio look oh so contemporary, but in a way this practice is no different than passing off the work of your favorite designer, artist or musician as your own. Granted, symptoms with no identifiable origin are not protected by copyright, but that’s beside the point — you should be worried not about legal implications, but rather about the creative integrity of your output. The danger is not only that your work will be seen as a passing fad, a popular aesthetic that will look dated in a couple of years’ time, but that you will lose the respect of your peers when they catch on to you.

While nothing is original, we all need to respect the difference between inspiration and imitation. As Jean Luc Goddard said, “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.” And if you don’t take them anywhere, what’s the point?

Worse perhaps than the loss of respect and integrity is the effect that epidemics have on clients and, in turn, the design community as a whole. The more designers are infected and the more symptoms they show of the same disease, the less your clients will believe that you’re capable of solving real business problems. Eventually they’ll exclude you from the early stages (where all the real design thinking takes place) and employ your services merely to skin their wireframes, in the process reducing the whole profession to an army of decorators.

What Can You Do About It?

Now that we’ve seen how detrimental trends can be, how does one avoid them? Is this even possible? Trends, by definition, are popular, and arguably nothing is wrong with tapping into that popularity to increase the exposure of your product. Convincing a client to accept a design that is off-trend can be difficult, and you run the risk of alienating the audience by going completely against the trend just for the sake of it. On the other hand, blindly following others is never a good idea, and you could severely stifle your creativity, integrity and client base by accepting what’s “in” as a given and copying it without purpose.

So, what’s the right thing to do? Trends are intrinsic to our society, whether in politics, culture, design or even religion, and as the consensus sways in one direction or another, so will your opinion (or “taste”) — to some degree, at least. Alas, avoiding trends altogether seems an impossible and pointless undertaking, but that doesn’t leave you powerless. In fact, you can do a host of things to combat the lemming syndrome.

Ask Why

Always question your design decisions (and make sure they are your own), and keep asking the magic question, Why am I doing this? Am I doing this simply because it looks cool or because it suits the message I’m trying to communicate? Why am I using this ribbon? Does the zigzag border add to or detract from the personality of the website? What does this leather texture have to do with the finance app I’m designing? The moment you stop asking questions, you fall prey to the epidemic.

Put Some Effort In

In his article “The Dying Art of Design” Francisco Inchauste asserts, among other things, that inspiration requires perspiration, and I couldn’t agree more. I was lucky enough to attend a college where no computers were allowed in the first year, which meant we had to use physical tools to express ourselves — tracing letters by hand, drawing our photography, stocking up on Pantone pens (remember those?), abusing the copier. Not only did our creativity grow, but we learned an important lesson: good design is not effortless, and the best results come from your own experimentation.

Try Something Different

Remember that being distinctive is, for the most part, a good thing. Most great artists in history, regardless of their field, stood out enough for the world to take notice. Who painted melting clocks before Dali? Who would have thought to build a huge wall on stage before Pink Floyd? While mimicking what’s popular might be comfortable and might secure short-term victories, long-term success requires a unique, memorable approach.

Diversify Your Inspiration

In order to remain creative, staying curious and looking for inspiration all around you is crucial, not just in the latest showcase of fashionable WordPress themes. Read a book, perform a scientific experiment, listen to music you haven’t heard before, walk through a new neighborhood, or experience a foreign culture. Widening your horizons beyond your favorite websites and finding more than one source of inspiration is critical to making original, lasting designs.

Focus on the Basics

Finally and most importantly, study the underlying principles of design in order to understand what is and isn’t defined by style. Grid systems, contrast, legibility, juxtaposing imagery, well-written copy — these are the key components of successful design, yet they are entirely independent of fads and styles.

At the end of the day, design is not so much about style as it is about communication, and all style, imagery and typography should be inspired by the content, functionality and personality of the product, not by what simply looks cool at the moment.

No matter how cool something looks, it too shall pass.

(al) (fi)

© Espen Brunborg for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

With Spring on its way to so many, the landscapes will soon be blossoming with bright, vibrant colors. For those who are not wanting to wait for that seasonal colorful explosion, we have prepared a splash of brighter tones to help. With so many talented vector artists sharing their fine works across the web, we have turned out spotlight their way for an inspirational showcase that is sure to please.

So take a look through this bright and colorful collection of vector illustrations to get an inspirational recharge. With a range of subject matter and moods, these pieces’ expressive use of colors are sure to put a smile on your face and even potentially an idea or two in your mind.

Explosions of Color

Encomium: Lana Turner by jengartist

wooof – lonely wolf by maxtodie

Monster Avenue Doodle by reyexzyl

We Are Not Alone by GoshaDole

Foodie Babe J by CQcat

Tuti Suka Es Nong-Nong by fajardesign

Leisure Precipice by digitalsleaze

Blossom by iamkzee

Render Cecilia by sakucitah

Gal de los Muertos by SashaZombie

Distorted Reality by x-posion

Ponyville Flower Shop by RainbowRage12

Wild Pinetree and Friends by Mag1cWind0w

Ling-Liang by andyshade

Indonesia by morlock22

Principito by ALPHA11-11

Nature areaClosed

Caligrafia by lauliver

Summer Time by Cuccko

Park by jarist84

TERESHA X SALLY by silocult

Sound in my ear by Tomekkaz

Matilda by stigmatan

22 by TimurKhabirov

The spirit maya by AR-MANDO

Fruity-fruit by chibiorangebing2

Black Friday Collaborations Project by chicken1985

Ace in the Hole by Maglii

Rainbow pipe cloud by Giesji

Zosterops japonicus by 398hajime

Japan by morlock22

Memory by pikachu0221

punKgirl by Psycool

Chun lee street fighter Vector by brainwavedesigns

GoGo Girl by MidniteHearts

Passado-Presente-Futuro by ine5ita

Me… Oh Wait…! by iveinbox

~ combi ~ by bagusetiawan

Dave Koz by prie610

Little Vampire by Camilo-Otalora

Facebook updated its event creation flow so that fewer fields are required to make a new event. Posts on an event page Wall are now sorted by activity, as they are in groups, so posts get pushed to the top of the page when they receive comments.

These changes and others introduced today are meant to make Facebook’s event product more useful for planning casual get-togethers in addition to more formal events. For example, users no longer have to indicate a time and location for an event, allowing plans to be more fluid.

As the social network plateaus in new user growth, it must focus on maximizing engagement. The latest updates to events are smart improvements, but in order to really be useful in helping users meet up, Facebook will need to add to its mobile apps. Users cannot currently create events from the native iOS or Android apps, and the mobile touch site has not been updated to reflect today’s changes.

Events now support different timezones and include a new privacy option. Previously, events were either public (as in open to everyone on Facebook including non-friends) or invite-only. Now events can choose the “Friends” setting so any friend can see the event and join without requiring a user to manually invite each friend. When users invite friends, they’ll get a notification if the friend decides to join the event.

“I think this will feel more similar to inviting someone via SMS/email and getting back their response,” Facebook engineer Bob Baldwin said in a post about the changes.

When users decline an invitation, only the user who invited them will get a notification. Additionally, posts from people who decline will be filtered out of the Wall and accessed from a “View Declines” link instead. This keeps the focus on the people who will attend. Previously it was common for some event pages to be filled with comments from people who couldn’t make it.

The event page now also includes the option to ask a question. This could be helpful for users trying to decide on event details. Event pages also suggest additional people to invite, as we first spotted last month.

A few months ago we saw Facebook testing a “Make plans” option in the homepage publisher — the area from which users create status updates and post photos. So far this hasn’t rolled out to all users, but after today’s improvements, this could be coming soon.

Byword is an exceptional writing app for Mac that has just been released for iOS as well. It is one of the few “distraction-free apps” that is simple, elegant and yet features an unmatched level of polish.

At its core, Byword is a simple text editor. It provides a beautiful and elegant on-screen environment to write in and is a fabulous tool for long-form writing. The app was first launched for OS X a few months ago and was a great alternative to iA Writer. The Mac app offers both a Windowed mode and Lion’s native fullscreen mode. You also have nifty word and character counts at the bottom of every document. Byword offers minimal preferences, letting you choose between a Light or Dark mode and a set of 5 default fonts.

The OS X app and the iOS app, that was recently release on the App Store, now support iCloud and Dropbox syncing, giving you the ability to store/sync your documents in the Cloud. The latter improves on the “beautiful design” and features a stunning font that looks great on the Retina Display my iPhone 4. It already has my mouth watering thinking how it’s gonna look on my new iPad, which is where I’ll be doing most of my writing from now on. The iOS app offers an additional layer above the keyboard where it displays the character and word counts and if you swipe to the right, gives you a handy set of shortcuts to manipulate your text.

Other nifty features include Markdown support, support for folders if you’re using Dropbox and the option to export/email your Markdown files. Byword for Mac sells for $9.99 on the Mac App Store and the new iOS app is on sale for just $2.99 on the App Store.

Here at WDL we love to staying on the lookout for new freebies so we can show you the best out there. So today we gathered 10 new free fonts to keep your resources updated and filled with options. Having good fonts available is always a good idea, it’s a good way to keep your designs fresh and unique. Click the images to be redirected to the download site.

Metropolis

Ledger Regular

Geared

Abraham Lincoln

Intro

Forum

Prosto

Cassannet

Jura

Bree

The February edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, frameworks, jQuery plugins, icons, productivity tools, responsive design resources, and some really great new fonts.

Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there.

As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments.

And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration.

Osmosis

Osmosis is a simple app for managing your client questionnaires in a way that makes it easier to interact with your clients and gather the information you need from them. It’s made to fit into your workflow while still being easy to use for your clients.

MockVault

MockVault is a web app for getting approval from clients for your designs. It guides them through the design you’ve created, making it easier for them to review and approve.

Trajectory

Trajectory is a new app for managing software projects. It makes it easy to write user stories, track bugs and to-dos, while also facilitating discussion.

The Responsinator

The Responsinator lets you test any live website for responsiveness on a variety of mobile devices, including tablets and e-readers. All you have to do is enter a URL.

Font Awesome

Font Awesome is an icon font designed specifically for use with Twitter Bootstrap. It includes over 150 icons, is free for commercial use, offers infinite scalability, and is screen reader compatible.

TOC

Need a table of contents for your website? TOC is a jQuery plugin that does just that. It’s completely customizable, automatically highlights the current section, and is extremely lightweight.

Simple Green

SimpleGreen is an icon pack for sustainable businesses. The free version includes 48 environment and social icons, while the paid version includes 200 icons.

Codiqa

Codiqa is a tool for rapidly creating mobile app prototypes. It’s drag-and-drop jQuery interface makes it quick and easy to build what you need, and it also includes tools for sharing those prototypes.

Iubenda

Iubenda lets you quickly and easily generate a privacy policy for your website. Just add services, insert the owner, embed the policy, and show the result.

Curtain.js

Curtain.js is a plugin for creating a web page with multiple fixed panels that unroll with a curtain-rising effect. Navigation is done via keyboard, scrollbar, or your mousewheel.

Wonderflux

Wonderflux is a new free WordPress theme framework that lets you rapidly create WP themes. It’s licensed under the GPLv2, so you can use it on unlimited client, personal, and commercial sites.

Centratissimo

Centratissimo is an all-centered, auto-resizable layout. It includes smooth scrolling between pages and dynamic resizing, along with some other neat features, all done with jQuery.

Turn.js

Turn.js is a jQuery plugin for creating page-turning transitions with HTML5. It uses hardware acceleration, works on tablets and smartphones, is lightweight (only 6K), and is easy to manipulate.

jQuery Org Chart

jQuery Org Chart is a plugin that lets you render tree-like structures with nested elements. Data is entered in a nested unordered list, making it incredibly easy to use.

bgStretcher II

bgStretcher is a jQuery plugin for adding a full-page background image that proportionally resizes to fill the entire window area. It’s unobtrusive and simple to setup, and works with all modern browsers.

Hogan.js

Hogan.js is a JavaScript templating engine developed by Twitter. It’s only 2.5K, and was developed against the mustache test suite (so all the specs for that hold true for Hogan.js).

Entypo

Entypo is a set of more than a hundred pictograms, available as an OpenType font, a web font, and vector EPS. It’s Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike licensed, so you can use it on personal and commercial projects.

Prefix Free

Prefix Free processes your code to add the current browser’s prefix to any CSS code, so you can use only un-prefixed CSS properties in your code. It works in IE9+, Opera 10+, Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+, and Chrome.

Zoomooz

Zoomooz is a jQuery plugin for making any element on your website zoomable. It’s supported by all modern browsers and has detailed settings options.

Underscore.js

Underscore.js is a utility-belt library for JavaScript that gives you a lot of the functional support you’d expect from Ruby or Prototype.js without extending any of the built-in JavaScript objects. It provides over sixty functions that support the usual functional suspects, including map, select, invoke, as well as more specialized ones.

Socialico

Socialico is a set of 74 social media icons, combined with a single weight font. Lowercase letters show the icons in a circle, while the capital letters of the same alphabet show the icons without the circle.

Warm Framework

The Warp Framework provides a set of tools for developing cross-platform themes. It currently supports Joomla and WordPress, and can be extended to work with other systems. It makes it possible to create themes that are easily portable between supported systems while retaining all features.

Glisse.js

Glisse.js is a responsive and customizable jQuery photo viewer. Transitions between images are entirely assumed by CSS3.

Collusion

Collusion is a Firefox add-on that lets you see all the third parties that are tracking your movements online. In real time, it shows how that data creates a spiderweb of interaction.

Cyfe

Cyfe is an all-in-one business dashboard that lets you see an overview of your entire business in real time. View data from Google Analytics, Salesforce, AdSense, MailChimp, Amazon, Facebook, WordPress, Zendesk, Twitter, and more from a single location!

jQuery HTML5 Placeholder Plugin

This jQuery HTML5 Placeholder Plugin adds cross-browser support for the HTML5 placeholder attribute functionality via jQuery. It has a couple of customization options and usage is very straightforward.

FanMix

FanMix is a “social inbox” that lets you manage all of your conversations online from a single inbox, just like email. Probably the most useful feature is the ability to search across your entire social history.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4

Lightroom 4 was just released and includes some great new features. It includes new adjustment controls to maximize dynamic range from cameras, as well as new and improved auto adjustments. The upgrade is $79, while the full version is $149.

Geared (name your price)

Geared is a distressed slab serif typeface with a style reminiscent of athletic t-shirts. It comes with four unique weights: thin, regular, bold, and extrabold.

Abraham Lincoln (name your price)

Abraham Lincoln has perhaps the best tagline of any typeface: “Tall. Skinny. Honest.” It was inspired by the proportions of its namesake and the advertisements and playbills of the 1800s.

Sedgwick Co (free)

Sedgwick Co is an uppercase slab serif typeface inspired by the city of Wichita, KS. It’s both classic and modern, and reminscent of western-style fonts.

Web Serveroff (free)

Web Serveroff is a modern, condensed sans serif typeface. It comes in both regular and italic styles.

Kommisar ($16.25)

Kommisar is loosely based on the Trajan capital in Rome and influenced by Father Edward Catich, an American sign painter and lettering artist. It’s contemporary, but with a decidedly antiquarian look.

Yeti ($5)

Yeti is a display typeface, hand-drawn with a hint of calligraphy. It supports multiple languages and even comes with some graphics and web icons.

Intro (free)

Intro is a free geometric font from FontFabric. The letterforms are mostly created based on simple geometric shapes — triangles, circles, and squares.

Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.

Know of a new app or resource that should have been included but wasn’t? Let us know in the comments!

How to learn iOS Programming – 55% Off!

Source

Given the popularity of vintage and retro styles among the web design community, we thought we would take an opportunity and shine a spotlight on some of those styles applied to websites. With so many flawless examples of vintage and retro web design floating around the internet it was a bit difficult to narrow down the search, but we think we found some inspired designs that have not already hit everyone’s radar, and maybe one or two that have.

So take a look below at the showcase we have prepared for you and see how some talented designers have brought the past to life on the web today.

Web Throwback

Forefathers Group has an open, classically vintage style that could be pulled straight from a 20′s broadsheet. Beautiful execution.

Pointless Corp uses a blend of retro elements, most notably the typography and vintage ad style characters to create a feeling of yesteryear throughout the design.

Amazee Labs colorfully recreates a sense of the old days, with a vintage infographic style web design. Big, bold, and feeling old.

Tvornica Bannera pulls off something of an interesting feat. It is not often that a design featuring a robot can have a retro appeal, but this site manages the feat well.

Cup Cup Cupcakes uses soft coloring with a header that mimics the awnings of delis and malt shoppes of the old days to pull together a delicious design.

R U Hot Enuf? calls on the comic books hero styles of old to create a powerful vintage style that really packs a punch.

Jan Ploch has a very simple, minimal design with a monochromatic color palette which all gets it’s retro feel from the site header.

Atticus Pet Design Studio uses various vintage design elements, together with a whimsical mascot image that lands in the old school camp.

Paper Damsels wonderfully combines pinks and greys to craft a very elegant, almost Victorian era feeling design for their site.

Smultron has a deep orange background with a black and white, 20′s style character giving the entire site the feel of an old advertisement.

The Journal of Min Tran uses a retro color scheme and classic feeling header to bring together a very simple, yet attractive design.

Five Thirty Brew combines an advanced, fluid design with retro styled colors and elements for a playfully, informative website.

Bright Bulb Design Studio is a site that you have probably seen before, but it’s awesome vintage design was one that we just couldn’t ignore.

Silky Szeto has an interesting, very old school design, full of various bold fonts tightly packed together like some of the vintage advertisements of yesteryear.

Bitfoundry has a simple, retro design which gets its throwback feel from the bold, clean typography and softly colored elements.

Tommy has such a harmonious blending of vintage elements that it was another that the showcase would not feel complete without.

Hipstery does a good job of employing a range of various elements with an old school 70′s and earlier era feel, however the overly busy background can be a bit hard on the eyes at times.

Simple as Milk is another minimal, yet retro styled design, which relies heavily on the typography to impart this feel. The thick scripted site header shines in this respect.

Reklama-Audio draws on 1940′s era Americana styling for their website design, and it pulls all the elements together with class.

Mom & Popcorn is another flawless blending of so many vintage styled design elements, layered to perfection in such a way that it embodies the very essence of this showcase.

Using big photographs in a web design, either as the background or part of the content, is a great way to easily set the overall mood of a site. However, when doing this, you run the risk of creating a site that it visually too busy. That’s why most site’s that you see making use of big images have an overall minimal style when it comes to the other design elements. For today’s inspiration, we’ve gathered a collection of sites that are excellent examples of how to use big photography in a web design.

Nemeth Interactive

Beg Bicycles

Confirmed Stock

encandle

Manual

Zola’s

Blind Barber

Salt Surf

Guns N’ Roses

Bomb Girls

Anna Safroncik

Y.CO

Bleu de Chauffe

inze.it

7 Days in Havana

Edoardo Leo

digitz

Archikon

Two Arms Inc

Planet Propaganda

Modern Ink Mag

CSS Design Awards
The Best Designs
Awwwards

A flyer is a single page leaflet advertising event, service, or other activity. Flyers are typically used by individuals or businesses to promote their products or services. They are a form of mass marketing or small scale, community communication. As a designer, I know how important it is for you to keep yourself inspired with good designs. To give you more ideas in creating event flyers for your next client, I’ve compiled 20 Colorful Funky flyer printing to inspire your creativity. So, grab a beer, listen to your favorite club music, and enjoy!

FUNKY LOVE

LOVE IS THE MESSAGE

Funky Night

love is the message 2

Funky Bunny Flyer back

FUNKY RIDDIM flyer front+back

Dirty South

Famous Melbourne Easter weeken

baby gee 05

Famous Old stuff 01

Dirty Laundry 01

me at bedroom queensland

Tydi

041010-a4-dev

Funk and Soul Party Flyer

electric dreams part 3

Famous Sydney DL

michael jackson 2

Wonky Flyers

Wei SHen

There is no limit for inspiration and when it comes to webdesign this is much more unlimited. As usual we continue to showcase beautiful and interesting webdesigns that we came across during the week.Hope you like this week’s collection too.
 

Subsens

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StudioV4

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Mevem

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Molarity

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Allan Dickens

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Gughi Fassino

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Coo-Coo Core

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Ilussori

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Fingerboard

Visit Website

Every week we showcase inspirational websites and this week’s showcase is the collection of websites using big images in their backgrounds.In the last few years it’s been popular in web design industry and we still see some great examples.With the increasing resolutions of monitors and of course internet speed,the loading time of these websites decreased so this is one of the reasons of this popularity.
There are a few important things to consider when designing a website with a large image backgrounds.The most important thing is that when using a background image,you must be sure that there must be a perfect contrast between the text and the image.Otherwise,it really affects the readability of the web page.Secondly,the image you will use must be in high resolution to attract your website’s visitors.
Anyway,in todays post we’ve gathered websites with big background images for inspiration.Enjoy.!
 

Poco People

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Brooks Running

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Y.Co Yacht

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German Craft

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Manufacture d’Essai

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Toomas Tartes

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Estudio Agraph

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Timberland

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Attackemart

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Pixel Pimps

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GCB Confessions

Visit Website

 

Weingut Knewitz

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Think Moto

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Matthew Hilton

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Mighty Movies

Visit Website

 

Lula Designs

Visit Website

 

Paperlux

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Arbol

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Jooji

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Free Stitch

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Thomas Brun

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Mellow Mushroom

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Three60

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Pizzaza

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Desigual

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Ornellaia

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Klon2

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Socio Design

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Up Struct

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Ophelia Wynne

Visit Website

 

Grind Spaces

Visit Website

 

Blitz

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Arcadia

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Asaa

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Mouse Bookings

Visit Website

 

Au Petit Panisse

Visit Website

 

Lash U Lashes

Visit Website

 

Sakura Buffalo

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Martin Costa

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Lavazza

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Fabio Neural

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Roxbury

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Kolyba

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KX Proof

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Aredda

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Freestyle Night

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Restaurant Porte Sainte

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AC Sparta Praha

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Avenue Cafe

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Spielzeugmuseum

Visit Website

With an increase in the number, diversity and complexity of smartphones, more and more companies want to have their own mobile app, but creating a native app can be pretty expensive. It requires special skills, as well as special coding tools, and then there is also the need to build an app per platform (Android, iOs, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, etc).

All of this figures in to a higher price tag for the app development. Another solution for developers is then to create something called web-apps: HTML CSS apps, which users can access from their browsers. They are cross-platform, and cross device.

The jQuery framework has been around the web for a while now, but the jQuery base technology was basically designed for browser apps. jQuery Mobile is a framework based on jQuery that enables web designers to create web-apps that are optimized for use on a mobile device (Smartphone and tablets). The framework is touch optimized, uses responsive layout so that elements will automatically adapt on different device sizes, and supports a range of different platforms and devices.

In this jQuery Mobile tutorial, we will create a nice demo app from scratch, to show some of the things that can be easily done using this powerful tool.

Before we start, you might want to download the files, or see a demo, or flash the qrcode for a direct demo on your mobile :

The Concept of the Mini App: Restaurant Picker

We will create an application that will enable the user to choose a restaurant based on what they want to eat tonight, the town where they want to eat and other user’s ratings of the restaurants. The jQuery Mobile mini app we’re creating will be called “Restaurant Picker”.

Please note that this is only the front development, you will of course need a server and a database if you want to create a real app. Also note that jQuery Mobile uses Ajax navigation, so you’ll need to put the files either on a local server (xampp, mamp, etc) or on a real server to make the demo work properly.

Wireframing Our Application.

In order to see where we are going, we will first draw some wireframes to see what each screen of the app will look like.

Home Screen : Choose a Plate

On the first screen we will put the logo of our application. We will then give the user a choice between different plates. Each choice comes with an image illustrating the plate, and each is a link that will lead to the second page where the user can choose the town.

Choose a Town

On the second screen, the user can choose the town where they want to eat. The towns are displayed in a list of clickable items. Beside each town there is a bubble that gives the user the number of restaurants available for the chosen plate in this town.

Since the list of towns can be pretty long, we will provide a filter so that the user can quickly search for a town at the end of the list. The title bar will use the branding of the application, and a “back” button that user can click to go back to the previous step.

When the user clicks on a town, they are lead to the page where they can choose a restaurant.

Choose a Restaurant

The user can now choose in which restaurant he wants to eat. The application displays a list of restaurant with a little image, the name, and the number of rating stars the previous users gave to this restaurant.

The title bar will use the branding of the application, and a “back” button that user can click to go back to previous step. The user can then click on a specific restaurant, to see the details.

Restaurant Details

The restaurant’s details view is composed of three parts: restaurant details, contact details, and the establishment’s user rating.

The restaurant details will display a short description of the restaurant, some plates, a picture and a link to their website if they have one.

The contact details will display the address of the restaurant, and an image of a Google map that will locate the restaurant in the town. A link enables the user to open Google maps (either using the browser or the Google map app if available depending on the device) to locate the restaurant on the map. Another link will dial the restaurant phone number directly on the mobile device so that user can place a reservation.

The last part of this view is a select box, where the user can rate the restaurant.

Building the web-application base

Now that we’ve see the direction that we are heading, we can begin digging a little bit into the code.

Some jQuery Mobile Basics

First let’s take a look at what the header of our first HTML page will look like :

<!DOCTYPE HTML> <HTML> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <title>Restaurant Picker</title> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="jquery.mobile.structure-1.0.1.CSS" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="jquery.mobile-1.0.1.CSS" /> <script src="js/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script> <script src="js/jquery.mobile-1.0.1.min.js"></script> </head>

The first thing to notice is the “new” HTML5 doctype. jQuery Mobile makes a heavy use of the data- HTML5 attribute to add some elements in the DOM to style the page, so we will need an HTML5 doctype to make it all work nicely.

The second thing to notice is the meta name=viewport tag. We will use this meta tag to gain better control of our viewport. Without this tag, the browser will squeeze our layout in the whole page, and it will look ugly and very tiny. With width=device-width we will use our device width, making the app fit the whole size of the device without being squeezed. The initial-scale property controls the zoom level when the page is first loaded and we will set it to 1, meaning no zoom in or out when page is loaded.

Then we will call our CSS files. In older jQuery Mobile versions the CSS was in one file, but in the newer version they made a distinction between the structure and the actual design (colors, gradients etc) which makes it easier to create custom styles.

We then need to load our jQuery, and jQuery Mobile JavaScript code at the end, since it needs the jQuery library to work.

What You’d Like to Eat: First Page

Now let’s take a look at the HTML code of our first page, in this exercise we will call this page index.HTML

<body> <div data-role="page" id="home" data-theme="c"> <div data-role="content"> <div id="branding"> <h1>Restaurant Picker </h1> </div> <div class="choice_list"> <h1> What would you'd like to eat? </h1> <ul data-role="listview" data-inset="true" > <li><a href="choose_town.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> <img src="sushis.jpg"/> <h3> Some Sushis</h3></a></li> <li><a href="choose_town.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> <img src="pizza.jpg"/> <h3> A Pizza </h3></a></li> <li><a href="choose_town.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> <img src="kebap.jpg"/> <h3> A Kebap</h3></a></li> <li><a href="choose_town.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> <img src="burger.jpg"/> <h3> A Burger</h3></a></li> <li><a href="choose_town.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> <img src="nems.jpg"/> <h3> Some Nems </h3></a></li> <li><a href="choose_town.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> <img src="tradi.jpg"/> <h3> Something more traditional</h3></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div><!-- /page --> </body> </HTML>

jQuery Mobile makes the distinction between HTML documents and pages. A jQuery Mobile app can be composed of one HTML document with multiple pages in it, using the data-role=“page” attribute each page is linked using anchors; or of many documents, each one having its own data-role=”page” linked using “normal” links. In our case, we will go for creating one HTML document per page.

So first we will open our body, and create our page using <div data-role=”page” id=”home” data-theme=”c”>

We will then open a content division, in which we put the branding of the app, and our first title followed by the list of different plates.

To create a jQuery Mobile list, we will put the data-role=”listview” attribute on our <ul> element. data-inset=”true” is here to style the list as an inset list (with rounded corners and padding around it).

Each list element <li> that contains an <a href> link will be automatically converted in a link list item by jQuery Mobile. To add the image, we simply add an image inside our < a href> link, and jQuery Mobile will do the work for us: it will display it on the left part of the list. Pretty easy.

The data-transition=”slidedown” creates the transition between two pages. You can find more transitions in the official documentation.

Here is what our first page looks like:

In Which Town Do You Want To Eat: Second Page

We will name the second page choose_town.HTML . Here is the HTML code, explanation of the tricky parts follows. Note that the header won’t change.

<body> <div id="choisir_ville" data-role="page" data-add-back-btn="true"> <div data-role="header"> <h1> Restaurant Picker</h1> </div> <div data-role="content"> <div class="choice_list"> <h1> In which town do you want to eat? </h1> <ul data-role="listview" data-inset="true" data-filter="true" > <li><a href="choose_restaurant.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> Amiens <span > 3 </span></a> </li> <li><a href="choose_restaurant.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> Bastia <span > 2 </span></a> </li> <li><a href="choose_restaurant.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> Belfort <span class="ui-li-count" > 5 </span></a> </li> <li><a href="choose_restaurant.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> Bordeaux <span class="ui-li-count" > 1</span></a> </li> … </ul> </div> </div> </div><!-- /page --> </body>

We changed the id, so that jQuery Mobile can understand that this is another page. Notice that we used the data-add-back-btn=”true” on the page div, this will enable the Ajax back navigation and automatically add a back button to our title bar.

To create our title bar, we will create a div element, with the data-role=”header”.

To add a filter to our list, we will simply put data-filter=”true” on the ul element defining the list. Note that this is a filter that will filter the items of the list, and is not a search bar.

The last trick will be creating the little bubbles on the right of list elements, and we will do that by creating a span with the class and the numbers in it. And here is how the second page will look:

Choose a Restaurant: Third Page

We will name this page choose_restaurant.HTML and below is what the HTML code will look like.

<body> <div id="choisir_restau" data-role="page" data-add-back-btn="true"> <div data-role="header"> <h1> Restaurant Picker</h1> </div> <div data-role="content"> <div class="choice_list"> <h1> Please choose a restaurant.</h1> <ul data-role="listview" data-inset="true" > <li><a href="restaurant.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> <img src="restau01_mini.jpg"/> <h2> Le Mouffetard</h2> <p> 4 stars </p></a></li> <li><a href="restaurant.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> <img src="restau02_mini.jpg "/> <h2> Chocolate bar </h2> <p> 4 stars </p> </a></li> <li><a href="restaurant.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> <img src="restau03_mini.jpg "/> <h2> Restaurant Diona</h2> <p> 1 star </p> </a></li> <li><a href="restaurant.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> <img src="restau04_mini.jpg "/> <h2> Tai Shan</h2> <p> 3 stars </p> </a></li> <li><a href="restaurant.HTML" data-transition="slidedown"> <img src=" restau05_mini.jpg"/> <h2> Arcade</h2> <p> 2 stars </p> </a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div><!-- /page --> </body>

This page is pretty similar to the first one, except for the title bar and the notation of the customer. We already saw how to create a title bar in previous section. For the customer rating, we add a p element with two classes: .classement is mutual to all the elements and will enable us to style this element with little stars, and then we use the class .one, .two, .three and .four to make the distinction between how many stars the customers gave to the restaurant. We will later in the article see how to style this in a nice way, but for the moment, we’ll leave it plain text.

Here is our third page:

Restaurant Details: Fourth Page

This page called restaurant.HTML is the trickiest of all, mainly because it has lots of elements on it. We will split the code in three parts: the restaurant description, the contact details, and the user rating. Here is our full HTML code.

<body> <div id="restau" data-role="page" data-add-back-btn="true"> <div data-role="header"> <h1> Restaurant Picker</h1> </div> <div data-role="content"> <div class="ui-grid-a" id="restau_infos"> <div class="ui-block-a"> <h1> Le Mouffetard</h1> <p><strong> Restaurant bar in the center of Strasbourg</strong></p> <p> On the menu: </p> <ul> <li> Milkshake with chocolat</li> <li> Planchettes </li> <li> Leek pie </li> </ul> </div> <div class="ui-block-b"> <p><img src="restau01.jpg" alt="jeannette photo"/></p> <p><a href="http://www.google.fr" rel="external" data-role="button"> See our website</a></p> </div> </div><!-- /grid-a --> <hr/> <div class="ui-grid-a" id="contact_infos"> <div class="ui-block-a"> <h2> Contact us</h2> <p>30 Rue des Tonneliers</p> <p> 67000 Strasbourg </p> </div> <div class="ui-block-b"> <img src="01_maps.jpg" alt="plan jeanette"/> </div> </div><!-- /grid-a --> <div id="contact_buttons"> <a href="http://maps.google.fr/maps?q=jeannette+et+les+cycleux&hl=fr&sll=46.75984,1.738281&sspn=10.221882,18.764648&hq=jeannette+et+les+cycleux&t=m&z=13&iwloc=A" data-role="button" data-icon="maps"> Find us on Google Maps </a> <a href="tel:0388161072" data-role="button" data-icon="tel"> Call us </a> </div> <hr/> <div id="notation"> <form> <label for="select-choice-0" class="select"><h2> User rating </h2></label> <select name="note_utilisateur" id="note_utilisateur" data-native-menu="false" data-theme="c" > <option value="one" class="one"> Not good at all </option> <option value="two" class="two">Average </option> <option value="three" class="three">Pretty good </option> <option value="four" class="four"> Excellent </option> </select> </form> </div> </div> </div><!-- /page --> </body>

For the restaurant details, we used the build in two column elements of jQuery Mobile. To create a two column block, we create a block with two child blocks. To create a nice button for the website, we added the data-role=”button” to the a href element, and a rel=”external” so that jQuery Mobile knows that Ajax should not used to open this link, but that this is an external link.

For the contact details, we once again used the two column trick. What’s to emphasize here are the buttons. The data-icon=”maps” and data-icon=”tel” will enable us to add custom icons to those buttons.

The interesting part about adding a GoogleMap link, is that some mobiles will be able to detect it, and will ask the user if they want to open them using the browser; if the Google maps app is installed on the device. The other interesting part is the href=tel:0388161072 protocol. This won’t work on a classic browser, but Smartphones will be able to open this link in the phone dial box, to directly call the number.

The last part is the user rating. For this we will use a simple select menu. The data-native-menu=”false” enables us to style the select using jQuery Mobile, so that we will be able to add some nice stars here too. Here again you will notice that we added the one, two, three, four class for further styling.

And here we have a fully functional jQuery Mobile webapp. But this app looks very “JqueryMobile-like”, so we now have to give it a little more styling to make it look nicer.

Next up on Page Two: Adding Some Style

The tutorial is not quite finished yet! There is more to learn over on page two.

Facebook had 432 million mobile monthly active users as of December 31, 2011, according to an updated filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also revealed that just over 13 percent of these users accessed the social network exclusively through mobile devices.

When the company filed for an initial public offering in February, it said it had more than 425 million mobile MAU in December 2011. Now that Facebook has updated stats through the end of 2011, it notes year-over-year mobile MAUs growth of 76 percent, from 245 million as of Dec. 31, 2010 to 432 million as of Dec. 31, 2011.

The company estimates that 58 million users accessed the social network solely through mobile apps or the mobile website during December 2011. It did not note what percent of these users are on feature phones versus smartphones, nor did it provide any demographic information about these users. In India, for example, many people access Facebook from phones when they don’t have personal computers. The remaining 374 million mobile MAUs accessed Facebook from both PCs and mobile devices during that month. The social network says it has 845 million total MAU.

In its SEC filing, the company wrote:

We believe that our mobile MAU growth was also driven by product enhancements across several mobile platforms. For example, we improved our product offerings on feature phones following our acquisition of Snaptu in April 2011 and we launched the Facebook app for the iPad in October 2011. Improving our mobile products and increasing mobile usage of Facebook are key company priorities that we believe are critical to help us maintain and grow our user base and engagement over the long term.