designm.ag - Archives (mars 2014)
Back just a few years ago it was required for web developers use JavaScript/jQuery to perform animated effects in-browser. CSS3 has dramatic
If you still have any doubts about how important it is for you to adopt a responsive layout, it is time for you to stop wondering. It doesn’t matter what you are working on, your website need to work smoothly in all browsers. From desktops to smartphones and the huge range of mobile devices, you […]
Anybody who follows web design trends will know about expanding search fields. These are typically small input boxes or magnifying glass icons which grow in size whenever given focus. As the user de-focuses off the element it'll usually retract back to the compressed form.
I love this idea because it saves a lot of room on the page, and it works the same for most any website. Most people browsing the web have developed a sense of understanding for how these expandable search fields behave. In this article I want to cover some more unique design styles for building dynamic search forms. As trends evolve I expect to see more of these search boxes in the coming months and years.
Point of sale (POS) software is making the world of sales significantly easier. With a quality POS system you can significantly increase revenue, reduce overhead, and grow your business by putting funds more toward where they are needed to make your business run more smoothly. By quickly giving you solutions to problems with inventory management, loss prevention, planning for the future, reducing labor, improving vendor relations, and directed marketing you and your employees will have more time and money to spend focusing on what your business was created to do. Inventory Management Keeping track of your inventory at all times is one of the most important things that a business can do. In fact, retailers lose $224 billion due to excess inventory and $43 billion from not having inventory in stock. Many POS systems take much of the guesswork out of your inventory by continually tracking what you have and what you’ve sold. Obviously, there will still be times where you and your employees will have to manually count inventory but the need won’t be nearly as frequent.
Working in Adobe software has become the norm for most creative professionals. Photoshop is a huge program and compliments nicely with the entire Creative Suite. But Photoshop is primarily used for bitmap graphics, while Adobe Illustrator handles vector design in a similar fashion. It seems complicated but if you have the time to learn Illustrator it is well worth the effort.
Thus I've put together a handful of tutorials focused around vector artwork. These online guides and tutorials will help any designer understand how to structure vectors using Illustrator. There are a number of tools and techniques that can only be learned through practice and repetition. Take a peek over the list and see if anything catches your attention.
"Almost Flat" Modern Icons
HTML5 and CSS3 web development has pushed the boundaries of what is possible online. Modern browsers have also jumped aboard the bandwagon to support a multitude of these newer effects. As a designer I have been amazed to find crazy CSS-based projects online. Open source is driving the future of websites and how we design layouts.
In this gallery you'll find 28 brilliant samples of CSS-only codes. Each of these snippets are free to download or copy into your own project. As the name suggests you won't need to rely on JavaScript at all - even for complex stuff like animations! Take a peek at these examples and see if you can utilize any of the code in future work.
CSS3 Checkbox Styles
App store optimization is the process of improving the visibility of your app in the app store. App store optimization is deeply related to search engine optimization, specially when you work on improving the ranking of your app in the app store search results. Every person that ever launched an application in the iTunes store is always looking for ways to have more people downloading their apps. One of the main things you need to do to get more people to download your app is to get higher in iTunes' rankings, and today we will give you some tips about that.
Ultimately, freelance web design is all about choices. The choices you make as a freelancer will determine your business success or failure.
The best course for a freelance web designer is to proactively plan how you will approach each choice. You can always change your approach later if you feel that something is not working for your business.
The alternative of not planning means that your business will sort of drift along. You'll deal with each new situation as you face it, but you don't really have a plan. You'll probably base your decision about each situation on how you feel or the latest article you read. Your business direction will seem faltering and inconsistent.
If you're extremely lucky (and very talented) your web design business may be okay drifting. You just might make it. You'll probably be pretty frustrated, though.
Most freelance web designers, however, need to be intentional in order to succeed. In this post, I list six crucial interrelated choices that every designer needs to make in order to run and maintain a successful freelance web design business. (The advice can apply to other types of freelancers as well.)
Modern development APIs work like agents for sharing information to other 3rd party websites. I've written many past tutorials about API development to help anyone new to this process. There are so many web-based services that it's tough picking something to grab people's attention.
In this tutorial I want to demonstrate how we can access the Forrst API using jQuery. Some API wrappers actually require server-side code like PHP or Ruby. But it's often easier to work with JSON objects instead. Then we can parse all the return data using client-side JavaScript. Take a look at my sample demo to see the final product.
Loading speeds can certainly make or break a website. In times where users are overload with options, they don't want to wait too much for a page to load. And by too much I'm referring to about 2 to 3 seconds. Websites should be fast and optimized to better load so that the user don't have time to think about leaving the page until it loads. If you page takes more than 6 to 7 seconds to load, chances are you are already loosing users. Fast pages lead to lower bounce rates, better retention, higher engagement and better conversions. So before risking loosing users because your page is not up to expectations, check out some things you can do to improve page load times.