Industry News 
On this page, we have collected the latest news from around the web industry. Updated every 1 hour.
- Web Design Checkmate: Using Chess For Success in Web Design3 September 2010, 9:49 am
The business of building websites is one of constant change, adaptation and strategy. The way designers and developers build websites is often informed by the methods of others and their own trial and error. In light of this, we can draw a number of parallels — some philosophical, to a certain extent — between Web professionals and one of the oldest and most popular board games of all time (counting traditional and digital games). This game is chess. In this article, we’ll ex...
- Showcase Of Appetizing Restaurant Websites2 September 2010, 1:54 pm
They say the first bite is taken with the eye. If so, these appetizing restaurant websites succeed in whetting our appetites, inviting us to a savoury next bite. In these designs, color scheme and introductory copy show vastly different aspects of the restaurant experience. Moody warm tones create atmosphere, vibrant greens underscore freshness, and earthy colors communicate a relaxed, friendly attitude. Because customers are increasingly using mobile browsers to make decisions on ... - iCandies Icon Set: 60 Free Icons For Your User Interfaces and Apps1 September 2010, 11:08 pm
Today we are glad to release iCandies Icon Set, a set with 60 high quality icons in 64×64px, 48×48px and 32×32px, available in .EPS, .AI and .PNG. The set is designed by the talented folks from IconEden on a sole purpose of giving your projects a sleek and geeky style or provide crisp, attractive icons for your modern and fashionable-looking interfaces. All the icons in this pack — 60 icons in total — are designed in Round Rectangle shape.You can use the ... - The Case For Open-Source Design: Can Design By Committee Work?1 September 2010, 1:08 pm
In celebrating the merits of free software and the excitement over this radical networked production method, an important truth is left unspoken. Networked collaboration shines in the low levels of network protocols, server software and memory allocation, but user interface has consistently been a point of failure. How come the networked collaboration that transformed code production and encyclopedia-writing fails to translate to graphic and interface design? The following is an in... - Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: September 201031 August 2010, 11:04 am
Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why we have decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers over 12 months. And to make them a little bit more distinctive from the usual crowd, we’ve decided to embed calendars for the upcoming month. So if you need to look up some date, isn’t it better to show off a nice wallpaper wi... - Blogging For Web Designers: Editorial Calendars and Style Guides30 August 2010, 1:38 pm
A few years ago, you might not have pointed out during a meeting with a potential client that you maintained a blog. Over time, though, blogs have evolved from the being a personal hobby to a serious work tool. In fact, today, web designers are supposed to know much more than just how to design and build websites. Customer's expectations have increased, and unless you are in position to choose your favourite clients, meeting them requires hard work. Hence, it's important to keep le... - Academica: Free WordPress 3.0+ Theme For Educational Websites29 August 2010, 6:04 pm
In this post we release a yet another freebie: Academica WordPress Theme, a free WordPress theme designed specifically for educational websites such as universities, schools etc. It's a flexible and versatile free theme that can be easily customized and branded for any university, academy or non-profit organization. The theme is designed by ProudThemes (the server is currently not working) and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. As usual, the theme is free to use in pri... - Free Wireframing Kits, UI Design Kits, PDFs and Resources27 August 2010, 1:07 pm
To mock-up the user interface of a website, software or any other product, you'll need some basic UI elements. And this is where wireframing kits and UI design kits come in handy. When you want to create a low-fidelity prototype for your projects, you can use these kits to give your idea a certain shape, keeping it abstract and not losing yourself in details. In this post, we've prepared an overview of useful web and mobile user interface kits, handy PDFs and resources that you can... - In Defense Of A/B Testing27 August 2010, 6:34 am
Recently, A/B testing has come under (unjust) criticism from different circles on the Internet. Even though this criticism contains some relevant points, the basic argument against A/B testing is flawed. It seems to confuse the A/B testing methodology with a specific implementation of it (e.g. testing red vs. green buttons and other trivial tests). Let’s look at different criticisms that have surfaced on the Web recently and see why they are unfounded. Jason Cohen, in his post ti... - jQuery Plugin Checklist: Should You Use That jQuery Plug-In?26 August 2010, 10:42 am
jQuery plug-ins provide an excellent way to save time and streamline development, allowing programmers to avoid having to build every component from scratch. But plug-ins are also a wild card that introduce an element of uncertainty into any code base. A good plug-in saves countless development hours; a bad plug-in leads to bug fixes that take longer than actually building the component from scratch. Fortunately, one usually has a number of different plug-ins to choose from. But ev...
- One man's desperate attempt to stop illegal rhino poaching; does anyone think this is ethical?2 September 2010, 12:39 am
submitted by Ryguythescienceguy to science [link] [105 comments]... - HOW TO: Get Started with HTML5 Boilerplate1 September 2010, 11:39 pm
This series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspaces hosting solutions here.This is not your fathers world wide web. Thanks to soaring smartphone sales, new tablet devices like the iPad, and the burgeoning trend of connected devices, individuals are accessing and experiencing the web in a very different way than they were even five years ago.The desktop browsing experience is also undergoing radical change, thanks to the evolution of JavaScript framewo... - Apple Announces Music Social Media Service: Ping | Driven Far Off1 September 2010, 11:03 pm
Apple today, at their annual music event, announced new iPods and an updated version of iTunes that includes a new social media service called Ping. iTunes 10, which is available now, features Ping which add social media capabilities to iTunes where you can can join friends in discovering new music and even follow your favorite artist and see what ...... - Russia's seed bank under threat - One of the biggest and most important seed banks in the world is at risk of being replaced by a private housing development. The facility near St Petersburg houses thousands of varieties of plants, not found anywhere else in the world.1 September 2010, 10:56 pm
submitted by pyth to science [link] [7 comments]... - 35 Logos with hidden messages in 20101 September 2010, 10:24 pm
Here are 35 exceptionally creative logos that have a hidden message within them. FedEx logo design is an old example now, check new brilliant hidden logos here. Few logo designers are capable of creating negative space logo design.... - Brett Dickins Wall Sculptures1 September 2010, 9:53 pm
... - MySpace Now Offers Sync with Facebook Profiles, Pages1 September 2010, 9:39 pm
When you can’t defeat the enemy, befriend him. This is the new strategy apparently adopted by the much struggling social networking site, MySpace.... - Reddit ‘excited’ about chance to eat Digg’s lunch1 September 2010, 8:58 pm
For a long time now, Digg has been the king of technology news aggregation. Tech fans liked the way they could rate their favorite tech stories highly, and see links to those rise to the top of the site’s home page.... - Confirmed: T-Mobile G2 will have Android 2.2, Flash and 800MHz CPU1 September 2010, 8:48 pm
T-Mobile is calling it "the fastest smartphone experience in America," but as it turns out, its Qualcomm Scorpion CPU is actually relatively slow -- the cellular carrier's insider newsletter T-Mobile Scoop says the phone's MSM7x30 chip will be clocked at 800MHz, rather than the 1GHz we'd hoped for. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that T-Mobile lying about speed, as anyone who's upgraded from Droid to Droid 2 very well knows -- bloatware can easily clog the pipes even on phones running F... - Plan for nationwide free wireless broadband finally shot down1 September 2010, 6:57 pm
For four years the Federal Communications Commission tossed the idea around like a beach ball: a coast-to-coast free wireless service across the low end of the 2GHz "AWS-3" band. The service would pay for itself via advertisements and by selling commercial access to various portions of the license area. The company that proposed the plan, M2Z Networks, would commit to building out the project in a decade, and pay five percent of its annual revenue to the United States Treasury. But on Wednesday...
- PHP Quick Profiler
Introduction In our company, code reviews play an integral part in the development process for making quality software. We opt for a mentor style approach with Wufoo, where a developer works on a segment for a period of time and then passes it up to a more experienced developer for review. ...... - How Not to Pitch to a Startup
Several months ago, Infinity Box, our company, and thus Wufoo were listed in a publication targeted at investors, angels and venture capital firms as a promising young startup. We have, unfortunately, not been able to track down the source of this recommendation (investors seem odd about keeping their sources mysterious), ...... - The Importance of Writing Well
Three years ago, when we were just starting Wufoo, if you had asked me what skill I would've liked to have had instantly downloaded into my brain Matrix-style to help us succeed, I probably would have chosen something industry specific like advanced PHP, CSS, or database knowledge. Most of our ...... - How We Prepare a Demo
Introduction While I've highlighted best practices and resources on how to pitch your ideas in the past, I thought I'd take some time to share exactly how we prepare for our demos when we've been invited to showcase Wufoo at conferences, events and VC boardrooms. We've spent a lot of time ...... - Beautiful Code Roundup
Over the last few months, the Wufoo Team has been steadily refactoring their code base to work with a new more flexible and more powerful API we've developed on the backend. In that process, I've had the opportunity to rewrite some of Wufoo's oldest code from the founder's earlier, more ...... - Be Kind to the Color Blind
Introduction Hi, my name is Chris Campbell and I have a color vision deficiency. Like roughly 7-10% of all males, my deuteranomaly makes it difficult to differentiate between some colors, like red and green. Color deficiency, or color blindness as it's commonly referred to, doesn't mean that I or people with ...... - Rich Application Architecture Roundup
When Chris, Kevin and Ryan approached Alex and I to develop Wufoo Unplugged, a desktop application to view Wufoo form data offline, we ended up choosing .NET because in addition to it offering the features we needed like multi-threading, file system access and pre-built Lucene libraries, it was also the ...... - Calculating Color Contrast for Legible Text
In the past on Particletree, we've shared some of our favorite resources and guides for helping the color challenged and uninspired get their chromatic deliciousness on. As a designer, getting to choose the colors is often the part of the job I like the best. However, there are times when ...... - Reasons to Use Inspiring Tools and Brands
Earlier this week, David Heinemeier Hansson wrote a bit about why he thinks indulging in aesthetically pleasing tools should be a guilt-free experience. It was a response to a post by Matt Maroon on News.YC and if you're interested, you should also check out Matt's counter-response. Hoping to add to ...... - Object Oriented PHP Memory Concerns
It's hard to imagine pushing the limits of object oriented PHP so far that your web servers choke, but the truth is those limits are reached faster than you think. We've run some tests over at Wufoo and it turns out that any sort of mass object creation is pretty ......
- Changing Display Resets Scroll Offset10 June 2010, 9:49 pm
In Chrome 5, Safari 4, Opera 10.53 and sometimes Firefox (although I was unable to reproduce it in this test case), changing the visibility of the element by toggling display:none will cause the scroll offset to reset to zero. Toggling visibility:hidden does not seem to trigger the same problem. Scroll the container and then toggle the classes applied. Class applied: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et... - Handling Active State for jQuery Animated Backgrounds27 May 2010, 7:24 am
Awhile back, I wrote an article on how to animate background images with jQuery to create some nifty effects. One of the most common questions I receive on that article is, "How do I handle active states?" It is time to answer that question. There are two ways in which you can handle the active state: Create a different animation for active elements; or Change the background image to be animated. The HTML The HTML for this is exactly the same as before except an active class wo... - Filling in the Gaps17 May 2010, 7:38 am
HTML started as a very simple language. By many accounts, it's still very simple. You create some text and you wrap some tags around it. The tags provide a small measure of meaning and allow user agents—aka browsers—to present the content in a meaningful way. In the early days of the web, browser developers quickly added features that helped web developers build more exciting sites and applications. Tables, font tags, and images gave us a decent amount of flexibility to create the ... - Vendors using Competing Prefixes11 May 2010, 2:39 pm
IE Mobile for Windows Phone 7 has decided to implement support for -webkit-text-size-adjust. They'll also be adding their own duplicate vendor-specific prefix, -ms-text-size-adjust. That's right, Microsoft will be adding support for another vendor's non-standard implementation. Is this good or bad? The general consensus on Twitter would indicate that this is a bad thing but while there is a scenario where this could go terribly wrong, I haven't found a real world example to back it up. So why is...
- OAuth for PHP Twitter Apps, Part I3 September 2010, 7:35 am
Twitter recently turned off basic HTTP authentication for its API. This means that Twitter app developers now need to use OAuth to access Twitter. In this first tutorial of a two-part series, Raj shows you how to authorize your PHP app to post automated tweets to a specified account. ... - Creating Custom Options Pages in WordPress27 August 2010, 6:40 am
In this tutorial, Jeffrey Way, co-author of SitePoint’s Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes, has a look at WordPress’ Settings API. Using it, you can add your own custom settings pages to your themes or plugins. ... - Introduction to Adobe Business Catalyst—Part 219 August 2010, 7:31 am
In the second part of his series on Adobe Business Catalyst, Rob builds on part one and shows us how to add back-end ecommerce functionality, custom reporting, and additional users and roles to a Business Catalyst site. ... - Beginner’s Guide to the Thematic Framework for WordPress17 August 2010, 2:08 am
Raena, co-author of SitePoint’s Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes, shows how to boost your theme development efforts using the Thematic theme framework. It will save you heaps of tedious setup time, leaving you free to dive into the fun part of making your theme look great. ... - 5 WordPress Frameworks to Jump-start Your Theme Designs11 August 2010, 2:05 am
In recent years, WordPress theme frameworks have arrived on the scene in a big way. From commercial frameworks like Thesis and Genesis to free alternatives such as Thematic and Hybrid, frameworks aim to make your life as a theme designer easier and more satisfying. Raena, co-author of SitePoint’s Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes, breaks down some of the most popular frameworks, weighing up their pros and cons. ... - Scaling Big Time with Hadoop29 July 2010, 4:00 am
How will your web application scale? When you reach millions of users, it’s likely you’ll need to rethink parts of your application’s architecture. In this article, Jack gives us a quick tour and demo of Apache’s Hadoop project, an open source framework for scalable distributed computing. ... - Host PHP in the Cloud with Windows Azure23 July 2010, 5:05 am
Windows Azure is Microsoft’s entry into the cloud computing space. In this quick overview, Maarten shows how to leverage this platform in PHP applications. ... - Scheduling Tasks in WordPress: a Plugin Developer’s Guide21 July 2010, 7:11 am
Raj takes a look at a lesser-known WordPress feature that’s of great potential use to plugin developers: the ability to schedule tasks for periodic execution without relying on operating system cron jobs. ... - Cross-browser Development with SuperPreview15 July 2010, 4:51 am
In the final article in our Expression Web series, Alex shows us the ins and outs of the SuperPreview feature, which lets you preview your site across many browser rendering engines right in the editor. ... - WordPress in the Cloud with Amazon EC2 and the Microsoft Web
Platform14 July 2010, 7:08 am
Thanks to some machine images provided by Microsoft and preloaded with the Web Platform Installer, firing up an EC2 instance running WordPress on a Windows server has never been easier. Bill walks us through it, step by step. ...
- The 7-Point Email Marketing Checklist4 September 2010, 12:09 am
Getting ready to kick-off an email marketing campaign? Alyssa shares the top 7 items on her email marketing checklist. Related Posts5 Crucial Email Marketing Tips Get It Read: 7 Tips for Writing Better Email Subject Lines How to Build an Email Marketing List Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. ... - Avoid Email Overload With GMail’s Priority Inbox3 September 2010, 7:22 pm
Google is rolling out "Priority Inbox" to all GMail users. Craig explains how it works and how it could save you from email overload. Related PostsHow I Fought Back Against Email Overload Have You Reached Email Account Overload? New GMail System Helps Prevent Email Embarrassment Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. ... - SitePoint Podcast #77: Paper or Blu-ray?3 September 2010, 8:46 am
Tons to talk about in this week’s SitePoint Podcast: September 15th appears to be a nexus for the Web development world; Microsoft Russia lets slip an early peek at Internet Explorer 9’s user interface; Facebook puts another nail in the IE6 coffin; Google dramatically bows out of JavaOne over Oracle’s Android lawsuit; and H.264 threatens to turn the Web from paper into Blu-ray. Listen in for all this—and our host spotlights! Related PostsSitePoint Podcast #55: State-sponsored Brown Pap... - Dollar ReDe$ign Project3 September 2010, 8:19 am
Jennifer takes a look at a few of the many submissions to the Dollar Redesign project. Related PostsShould You Work on a Project You Don’t Believe In? The Good-Quick-Cheap Project Rule 10 Reasons Why Software Project Estimates Fail Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. ... - Five Signs that You’re Ready to Freelance Full-time2 September 2010, 10:37 am
Are you ready to start freelancing full-time? There's no magic formula for freelancing readiness, but as Georgina explains, there are some clear signs that suggest you're ready to go it alone. Related PostsThree Strategies for Managing Social Networks and a Full-Time Job How to Manage Postpurchase Dissonance in Your Freelance Clients 99designs Launches Ready-made Logo Store Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. ... - iPhone Basics: Memory Management2 September 2010, 4:57 am
Do you want to get started on iPhone development? One of the first things you will stumble upon is memory management. But don't worry, Andrew explains why it is necessary and how to allocate and release objects correctly. Related PostsA List of Realistic Email Management Strategies That Just May Work Announcing a New Series on Business Start-up Basics How to Identify an Apple iPhone, iPod or iPad Visitor to Your Website Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. ... - Are You Strategic?1 September 2010, 3:30 pm
Thinking strategically can make you more confident, improve your leadership skills, help you problem-solve, and give you the tools you need to make better decisions. Alyssa guides you through analyzing your strategic thinking ability. Related PostsHow to Harness Your Creativity for More Effective Problem Solving How to Use a SWOT Analysis to Blast Your Business Out of Complacency Check the Rear-View Mirror Before Proceeding into 2010 Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts... - H.264 Is Royalty-Free: Will it Become the HTML5 Video Standard?1 September 2010, 3:18 pm
MPEG LA has announced that web streaming of H.264 video files will remain free forever. Could it become the single most reliable format for HTML5? Related PostsGoogle Announces New WebM Video Standard, Open-Sources VP8 The Dark Side of HTML 5 Video Web Directions Reflections, part 3: HTML5 with Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. ... - 7 Ways to Keep It Together With Work When You’re Sick31 August 2010, 6:41 pm
What happens when you're sick and you can't take a sick day because you work for yourself? Alyssa has a few suggestions for limping through successfully until you resurface healthy again. Related PostsBoundaries vs. Barriers: 3 Ways to Set Limits without Losing Work Get Back to Work: It’s Time to Shake Off the Holidays 5 Ways to Maintain Client Relationships Long After the Work is Complete Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. ... - Save The United Airlines Iconic Tulip31 August 2010, 1:00 pm
A group of people who love the United Airlines tulip logo have created a Facebook page to voice their concerns over the change to Continental Airline's globe logo. Related PostsA Flag For The United States Of Europe Happy 50th Birthday Psycho Sign-Up to Save MySQL? Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. ...
- Four Creative Link Building Tactics - Whiteboard Friday2 September 2010, 9:10 pm
Posted by Aaron Wheeler In this week's Whiteboard Friday Rand Fishkin clues you in on four link building tactics that you likely haven't heard about. Given the importance of link building to SEO, this video should prove to be worth its (virtual) weight in gold. (I mean that in the best possible way ;-p) View statistics for this video Embed video <object width="640" height="360" id="wistia_174843" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf... - A New Day, A New SEOmoz1 September 2010, 11:48 pm
Posted by randfishIt's been a wild few weeks at the mozplex. Today wrapped up the amazing mozinar with our half-day tools training just in time to launch the new version of SEOmoz. Should we slow down this crazy pace? Nah. If you're feeling a sense of deja vu, don't worry; it's perfectly normal. We're the same old moz, but with a new look, faster loading pages and a surprising amount of new functionality. Let's walk through it together, shall we? Big Improvements to PRO Membership It's a good da... - Day 1 at the SEOmoz Training Raceway1 September 2010, 12:45 pm
Posted by Dana LookadooThis post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.I’m going to speed through the 2nd half of the 1st day at the SEOmoz Pro Training Race Track. Recall that 9 speakers raced through topics covering clicks to conversions.The following are highlights of the end of the race for Day 1. Present... - From Clicks to Conversions at the SEOmoz Training Raceway31 August 2010, 11:06 am
Posted by Dana LookadooThis post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.Day 1 of SEOmoz Pro Training was like being at a race track. The course careened from clicks to conversions and from search results to landing pages. The audience watched 9 speakers drive their search marketing race cars at speeds faster than fingers c... - Mobile SERPS & Usability30 August 2010, 11:35 pm
Posted by SuzzicksSo here is the deal: Traditional websites frequently rank in mobile search results – especially if you are searching from a SmartPhone. What you may not realize is that the converse is also true – mobile pages can rank well in traditional search. This is quite an interesting phenomenon, and something that we need to address strategically. All One Index Soon? Why does this happen?Well, Google has said that they really don’t want to index two versions of the we... - 7 Different Visualisations of Link Profiles29 August 2010, 10:12 pm
Posted by Tom_CWe all love backlinks. We all love visualisation. Boom! Let's mash those two things together. In this post I've collected a bunch of different techniques for visualising your link data. Some of these are useful for analysis, some are useful for management and some are useful for keeping Dr. Pete entertained...... :-) Which Are My Top Folders The top pages function of OSE is one of the most useful features ever. Ever since I saw the first incarnation in labs I've been a heavy user ... - Linkscape's August Update: New Domain Authority Numbers, Partners and More27 August 2010, 12:35 am
Posted by randfishToday I'm happy to announce that we've just updated Linkscape's web index (which also powers Open Site Explorer and the metrics via the mozBar) with fresh link data. You should see some bright shiny links we've found from late July to early August in this index (e.g. our own Beginner's Guide now has lots of interesting link information). We also have some cool updates to the API, new partnerships and more, all covered below. 50% Correlation Boost to Domain Authority (with some ... - E-Commerce SEO: Making Product Pages into Great Content - Whiteboard Friday26 August 2010, 8:52 pm
Posted by Danny Dover In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin explains how to turn boring product pages into conversion-worthy product selling machines. These tips are topical (with the holiday season coming up), useful and in most cases, reletively easy to implement. View statistics for this video Embed video <object width="640" height="360" id="wistia_165206" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"><param na... - Dear Google: Big Brands Aren't Enough25 August 2010, 6:12 pm
Posted by Dr. PeteGoogle's recent brand update has gotten a lot of buzz this past week. Previously, the best a single domain could hope for was one listing in the SERPs with possibly 1-2 indented listings. Now, a large brand can completely dominate the top 10 with a single website. Let's look at the case many people have been citing – a search for "apple". Here's a summary of what that results page looks like today:Apple.com dominates the 1st page, holding slots 1-7, with a few o...
- Apps vs. the Web17 August 2010, 10:00 am
There's an app for that, and you're the folks who are creating it. But should you design a web-based application, or an iPhone app? Each approach has pluses and minuses—not to mention legions of religiously rabid supporters. Apple promotes both approaches (they even gave the web a year-long head start before beginning to sell apps in the store), and the iPhone's Safari browser supports HTML5 and CSS3 and brags a fast JavaScript engine. Yet many companies and individuals with deep web expertise... - Good Help is Hard to Find17 August 2010, 10:00 am
Help content gets no respect. For one thing, it is content, and our horse-before-cart industry is only now beginning to seriously tackle content strategy. For another, we assume that our site is so usable, nobody will ever need the help content anyway. Typically, no one is in charge of the help content and no strategy exists to keep it up to date. On most sites, help content is hard to find, poorly written, blames the user, and turns a mildly frustrating experience into a lousy one. It's time to... - Kick Ass Kickoff Meetings3 August 2010, 9:00 am
Too many kickoff meetings squander the busiest, most expensive people's time reiterating what everyone already knows. If every meeting is an opportunity, why waste your first one? By asking stakeholders tough questions before the kick-off, and using the meeting itself to explore ideas and build relationships, you can turn a room of mutually suspicious turf battlers into an energetic team with shared ownership of the end-product and the kind of bond that can sustain the group through the challeng... - No One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas3 August 2010, 9:00 am
You can't create what clients need when you're too busy saying yes to everything they want. As a user experience designer, it's your job to say no to bad ideas and pointless practices. But getting to no is never easy. Proven techniques that can turn vocal negatives into positive experiences for you, the client, and most importantly, the end-user include citing best practices and simple but powerful business cases; proving your point with numbers; shifting focus from what to who; using the "posit... - JavaScript Minification Part II20 July 2010, 10:00 am
Variable naming can be a source of coding angst for humans trying to understand code. Once you’re sure that a human doesn’t need to interpret your JavaScript code, variables simply become generic placeholders for values. Nicholas C. Zakas shows us how to further minify JavaScript by replacing local variable names with the YUI Compressor.... - SVG with a little help from Raphaël20 July 2010, 10:00 am
Want to make fancy, interactive, scalable vector graphics (SVGs) that look beautiful at any resolution and degrade with grace? Brian Suda urges you to consider Raphaël for your SVG heavy lifting.... - Prefix or Posthack6 July 2010, 9:00 am
Vendor prefixes: Threat or menace? As browser support (including in IE9) encourages more of us to dive into CSS3, vendor prefixes such as -moz-border-radius and -webkit-animation may challenge our consciences, along with our patience. But while nobody particularly enjoys writing the same thing four or five times in a row, prefixes may actually accelerate the advancement and refinement of CSS. King of CSS Eric Meyer explains why.... - Supersize that Background, Please!6 July 2010, 9:00 am
Background images that fill the screen thrill marketers but waste bandwidth in devices with small viewports, and suffer from cropping and alignment problems in high-res and widescreen monitors. Instead of using a single fixed background size, a better solution would be to scale the image to make it fit different window sizes. And with CSS3 backgrounds and CSS3 media queries, we can do just that. Bobby van der Sluis shows how.... - Stop Forking with CSS322 June 2010, 9:00 am
You may remember when JavaScript was a dark art. It earned that reputation because, in order to do anything with even the teensiest bit of cross-browser consistency, you had to fork your code for various versions of Netscape and IE. Today, thanks to web standards advocacy and diligent JavaScript library authors, our code is relatively fork-free. Alas, in our rush to use some of the features available in CSS3, we’ve fallen off the wagon. Enter Aaron Gustafson’s eCSStender, a JavaScript librar... - Taking Advantage of HTML5 and CSS3 with Modernizr22 June 2010, 9:00 am
Years ago, CSS browser support was patchy and buggy, and only daring web designers used CSS for layouts. Today, CSS layouts are commonplace and every browser supports them. But the same can't be said for CSS3 and HTML5. That's where Faruk Ateş’s Modernizr comes in. This open-source JavaScript library makes it easy to support different levels of experiences, based on the capabilities of each visitor’s browser. Learn how to take advantage of everything in HTML5 and CSS3 that is implemented in...
- Maximize WordPress SEO with ScribeSEO8 August 2010, 7:24 pm
For years now SEO has been one of those buzzwords which incites discussion and debate, whether you live by it or cringe upon seeing it. Whether webmasters want to admit it or not, however, search engine optimization works if done correctly. As a webmaster it falls upon you to maximize search engine optimization (SEO) on [...]... - All Killer WordPress Websites are Built Around These Concepts20 July 2010, 8:42 pm
I've been coding with Wordpress for a long time now. All the way back to when there was a my-hacks.php file. Shortly thereafter wordpress introduced plugins and widgets. Over those years I go back to a few concepts that make blogs really functional.... - WellBlog: A Premium Blogging Theme19 July 2010, 11:33 pm
Last month we wrote a review of the TypeMagz theme from the ColorLabs Project team, an up and coming premium theme website which offers a variety of premium theme designs at below market value prices. This week I received word that their new premium theme design, which was built specifically for those looking for a [...]... - Is your WordPress Blog Wasting Google’s Time?25 June 2010, 7:59 pm
This guest post was written by Matt of MattDunlap.org, where he writes about how to increase your conversion rates with a smarter blog. If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for WordPress Hacks, please contact us. Over the last couple weeks I’ve been focusing on traffic building, link building and SEO [...]... - How To: Add Google Rich Snippets to WordPress (Without Editing Your Theme)24 June 2010, 8:33 pm
This guest post was written by John of WordPress Expert, where he provides WordPress tips, tutorials, news, plugins, and more. If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for WordPress Hacks, please contact us. When searching the web with Google, have you ever noticed that certain webpages with product reviews have [...]... - WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” Now Available19 June 2010, 6:28 pm
In what has been a long time coming it looks like WordPress 3.0 is now available for WordPress users to download. Everyone should see a “WordPress 3.0 is available! Please update now” banner in their dashboard which you can click to quickly upgrade, or for those of us that didn’t get the dashboard banner announcing [...]... - Theme Junkie: Affordable Premium WordPress Themes13 June 2010, 9:52 pm
For those that follow some of the more prominent members of the WordPress community, you have probably noticed that those at the top have become a very close group. I’ve always felt that this is a wonderful thing, but it has the side effect of making it difficult for a newcomer to break into those [...]... - TypeMagz: A Premium News WordPress Theme29 May 2010, 10:08 pm
Over the years it has been interesting to watch the WordPress themes market both grow and evolve. If you had asked me back in 2007 where I thought WordPress theme were going, I would have guessed that we were headed towards a strong focus on designs. Instead over the last year especially designs have moved [...]... - How To: Add a Twitter Link to Your WordPress Blog5 May 2010, 1:16 am
Twitter is all the rage these days and it doesn’t seem like it will be going anywhere any time soon. With that said, it often surprises me that many WordPress blog owners don’t offer a convenient way for their readers to retweet their content. Anyone can grab a Twitter WordPress plugin to tweet their new content as [...]... - 3 Free Memberships Available to Elegant Themes Club20 December 2009, 2:33 am
Over the past two years the premium themes market has continued to innovate and prices have steadily declined to the point where you can find a nice premium theme for a very affordable price. With that said, there still is not a better premium themes deal available than the Elegant Themes club, which gives you [...]...
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