Design, Develop, and Grow
A 2013 report by Parallels showed that 22 percent of small to mid-sized businesses use cloud-based services and infrastructure tools to manage their business. As a result, it’s more important than ever that web hosting and web development companies be aware of how to integrate the functionality of the cloud into their designs. As companies rely more on the cloud, the distinction between web hosting and cloud services will become less obvious. [Read more…]
These featured websites want you to drag their interfaces to navigate. Is it a better design decision or not? Let’s find out, shall we?
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Clever combination of animated drawings and photos of cooking utensils to present a recipe-format website. It’s actually built on top of the Google Maps engine hence the dragging mechanism, although it has keyboard navigation as well.
The dark gray homepage features abstract lines and boxes representing paragraphs and images for the stories you’ll read as you click on each name. Most of the text links are arranged vertically, and the overall layout & content are similar to the book.
There’s a nice touch of making the borders slide in when you hover over the clickable media. Also interesting is how the whole wall repeats no matter how far you scroll, making it like an infinite screen although also possibly confusing.
The key to these draggable screens is giving options, like in this page where you can get to the different sections from the navigation. The whimsical quality of these illustrations are excellent.
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Optimization – We spent a week making Trello boards load extremely fast. Here’s how we did it.
“I wanted to improve board rendering performance by 10% every day for a week. It was bold. It was crazy. Somebody might have said it was impossible. But I proved that theoretical person wrong.”
JavaScript – A Dive Into Plain JavaScript
“With jQuery, adding, removing and checking if an element has certain classes is really simple. It’s a bit more complex with plain JavaScript, but not too much so.”
Views about blogging differ depending on who is looking. Many see it as some form of online diary where they are free to write anything, at any time, at any place. While this is essentially true, it is not accurate to say that bloggers are free as well from the technical challenges of maintaining a site. Whether a site is for personal or commercial use, owners will realize soon enough that there is the technical side of blogging to think of.
There are actually many resources for writers easily available online. The subject of blogging is very much tackled by experts and newbies in the field mostly about the hits and misses that could help make professional bloggers out of aspiring writers. A blogger does not only write. He or she is expected to have reasonable basic technical skills and hopefully progress from there through time.
If you are seriously looking into long-term blogging, it would be advantageous to have a working knowledge of the following:
Writing to express thoughts or provide information in a blog requires some technical knowledge of the language being used. Technical knowledge in a human language such as English would pertain to grammar, syntax, structure, and the rules observed for its effective use. There is not much problem with this as the study of a language starts very early at childhood. Challenges may present themselves though if the language being used is not the mother language of the author. The remaining thing to do is to study for specific requirements such as in creative or highly technical writing, when it is necessary.
Computer language is an all-together different thing. Most would need to learn and understand this. Fortunately, most blogging platforms have made it possible for the least techie people to create and manage their own blogs. There are ready made templates to choose from. If a blogger is pretty set on what kind of blog to come up with, then everything can be set in a matter of hours.
Knowledge in web designing is a must for bloggers except if there is someone else paid to do it. The use of CSS and HTML as well as the ability to create graphic images are musts for those seeking to be professional bloggers. Other knowledge areas that should be considered include search engine optimization, social media participation and networking, and attracting traffic. There is so much to be learned about blogging especially because of its continually evolving nature. Experience is still the best teacher. It is impossible to blog without getting a trace of techiness in you.
This week’s designs are taking an icy turn and feature chillier landscapes throughout different subjects.
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Animated falling snow is a staple of winter or holiday-themed designs, and here it’s not covering the whole page but just the header, behind the mascot monster.
Making the tire roll down the snow-covered path by scrolling looks cool, if not a bit flickery at times. Clickable dots in the different diagrams loads extra information in a screen that slides in from the right.
Nice little detail with the loading sprite going through days of the week until Monday, not to mention the favicon that says “I heart” beside every page title—sweet and clever. Another interesting twist is how the submenus appear on top of the primary menus, pushing the header down instead of floating over the text.
Love the 3d unfolding interaction on the overlaying links. Stories are also presented in the context of their location in the Arctic, so you’re flying around over the map a bit as it changes perspective and gets highlighted to fit the information you’re browsing at the moment.
Pagelines lets you build WordPress websites and it’s as easy as drag and drop, go check it out!
Design – Design is the Rendering of Intent
“We’ve found this definition seems to resonate with people more than any other. People can see the relationship between the intended outcome and the process that renders it.”
Typography – The Ten Most Popular Web Fonts of 2013
“These are the ten most popular fonts I’ve noticed from analyzing font usage on Typewolf in 2013.”
Web Design – CSS Level 4 And More: What’s Coming In 2014
“At times it would be nice to stop and catch a breath, but the year ahead will offer no such opportunity: if anything, the pace of innovation will only increase.”
CSS – Animating CSS Shapes with CSS Animations & Transitions
“So the transitions on CSS shapes are really transitions on the individual points making up a shape.”
Many businesses that offer services online struggle with this decision eventually – should your organization offer a proprietary app or build a website optimized for mobile devices. There are many nuances to both options, when it comes to access, connectivity, and sharing capabilities. There’s no fast and easy answer to this question. You’ll need to look over the following considerations and see if your organization will benefit the most from an app or a website optimized for mobile devices. [Read more…]
