Design, Develop, and Grow
Every December, you can expect to see a list of web design trends that gives designers an idea of what to expect in the coming year. But what if you want to plan further ahead than that?
Lucky for you, we’ve compiled a list of predictions that will help you prepare for the longer term. [Read more…]
This week on Friday Focus: designs that tilt to one side and keep the perpendicular lines away.
Love the warm hues, transparency, and even the tiny polka dots. Everything blends in nicely.
I like how the logo is used as a prominent design element, not just as a header. One thing you will notice with these slanting designs is how they usually mean they’re left-aligned too. More often than not that leaves a lot of whitespace on the right side, which may be a good or bad thing.
Really simple design, but looks fresh with the bold colors changing in each page and the boxy look.
The nice thing about a vertical user-generated gallery is you only have to browse from top to bottom and not from left to right. I really like how the fixed footer has the logo slashed out!
Forget rounded corners, slanting edges is the next big thing! Love the subtle, translucent shapes in the background and behind the content area.
An extremely fun-looking design with not one traditional design pattern in sight! Love how the plus icons turn into arrows.
Instead of the usual horizontal lines to separate sections of a one-page site, this design slopes them upward.
There’s something about slashes and slanted shapes that just fit with designy sites including fashion. Love the hover effect in the inner pages reinforcing this.
That other trend that’s also getting popular, circles, is in here too, but there’s an animated twist. The rainbow-colored header breaks the gray-filled design.
The hand-drawn effect is always a good way to add to slanting lines.
And finally: the easiest, most modern way to implement the slanting look in your design? Use CSS3 transforms!
Design – Holistic Web Browsing: Trends Of The Future
“The future of the Web is everywhere. The future of the Web is not at your desk. It’s not necessarily in your pocket, either. It’s everywhere.”
Design – Designing with Lenses
“A design lens allows you to view the user experience through the eyes of a single design principle. Lenses were originally created for game design but are just as powerful for user experience design.”
HTML – Introduction to HTML 5
“Are you interested in HTML 5 and what’s coming down the pipeline but haven’t had time to read any articles yet?”
JavaScript – RequireJS
“RequireJS can help you manage the script modules, load them in the right order, and make it easy to combine the scripts later via the RequireJS optimization tool without needing to change your markup.”
It’s all retro this week on Friday Focus—robots and rainbows on the design horizon. You’re sure to have a blast with the designs below. Enjoy!
Excellent color combination, although the smaller text could have used a darker shade of blue. This site is enjoyable simply because there’s a giant purple robot on it. Without it, this would be just another nicely-designed website without any personality to it. And what could be quirkier than robots?
I like that the lines are skewing in all directions, but not in a chaotic way. Cheerful colors and illustrations plus some snappy JavaScript effects. Everything says “bake a cake, bake a cake, bake me a cake as fast as you can!”
This site is so interesting not only because of the design, but because of the premise: it’s an online shop for all things robots. I would have loved a bit more kitschy-ness to the ecommerce design elements, not just the surrounding layout, but this is a fun look nonetheless.
You’ll have a good time navigating this site. The grunge effects are subtle (they look like real dirt!), and everything’s just arranged nicely.
Design – 2008 Design Trends
Web Designer Wall has come out with its annual list of design trends. Click to find out.
Programming – Using CSS to Fix Anything: 20+ Common Bugs and Fixes
Writing CSS is never painless. This list is a must-read.
Oh, and speaking of robots, download Firefox 3 already and type about:robots into the address bar.
And you thought we’d just rest after the holidays! Nope, Friday Focus is still here, with the very last one for 2006. This was an extremely busy week for DL, as we went through server moves, some adjustments, and published two new interviews. Besides are busy world, the rest of the design and development world also kept moving, and we’ve got plenty to talk about.
First this week comes Pipeline Deals, a new web application to track deals and offers. Yes, it is another tracker, but I did think the site design was pretty cool, and reminded me of Mint because of the “page on top of page” type look.
Next up in Uberlook, an upcoming resource for the submission of any time of resource; be it site, application, file, video, or anything else you find useful. The service is expected to open in January, and hopefully we’ll be able to provide you with a first hand look before it goes live. The site is simply, but its purpose of getting information about the project out without revealing to much is done right.
Finally this week is a photography portfolio which makes the list more because of the stellar pictures and compositions than a standout design. The site itself couldn’t get any simpler, but I think the photographs let you forget how basic the site is.
Design: How to Create Fake Mini Environments
Ever wonder how to make regular size images seem like they’re made for little plastic toys? This technique is actually very easy and simple, and really only requires the use of filters.
Programming: How to easily Ajaxify Your Site
A short guide to quickly adding some ajax effects to your site using the script.aculo.us framework. Give it a try.
We asked the opposite last week in a sidenote, so this time around we’d like to know your favorite website of 2006. Leave the responses in the replies, and by the way, it’d be nice to see Devlounge as a nominee, we won’t think you’re sucking up 😉
