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Line25 Sites of the Week for May 24th 2013

Chris Spooner — Fri, 24 May 2013 07:00:16 +0000

Line25 Sites of the Week is a weekly roundup of the most outstanding website designs that I stumble across during my every day browsing. In this week’s collection, we have designs from Justin Aguilar, Ghost, Dunked, Sipp and Paid.

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Showcase of Websites Featuring Full Screen Videos

Chris Spooner — Mon, 20 May 2013 07:00:31 +0000

We’ve all seen videos on websites restricted to a specific frame size, but why not make use of the user’s whole monitor? Once upon a time only Flash was capable of such wizardry, but these days Javascript and HTML5 make it perfectly feasible to stretch your video footage to fill the browser window. This post showcases 15 website that all make use of full screen video techniques.

Line25 Sites of the Week for May 17th 2013

Chris Spooner — Fri, 17 May 2013 07:00:45 +0000

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15 Awesome Websites That Tell a Story As You Scroll

Chris Spooner — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:03 +0000

As new CSS properties are becoming more widely supported designers are combining tools to create amazing websites that were once only feasible in Flash. This post showcases 15 websites that take parallax scrolling to the next level by combining CSS animations and Javascript to manipulate page elements upon scroll to immerse the user into a developing story.

Line25 Sites of the Week for May 10th 2013

Chris Spooner — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:00:16 +0000

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How To Create an iOS App Icon for Your Website

Chris Spooner — Mon, 06 May 2013 07:00:30 +0000

Did you know you can give your website its very own app icon for iPhones and iPads? It only takes a few seconds and it makes your site look really smart when it’s saved on a user’s home screen, or when viewed in popular apps such as Reeder.

Specifying an app icon is one of those little finishing touches that isn’t really noticeable but makes all the difference if you take it away. Without an app icon if you bookmark a site on your iPhone or iPad you’re left with an ugly screenshot of the page crammed into the little rounded square, but with one line of code you can choose your own icon design, such as a logo. It’s much like a favicon, but on a larger scale.

Having someone bookmark your site onto their device home screen is probably a rare occurrence, but as I discovered today there’s another major benefit of creating an app icon. Roberto Alanís tweeted me recently asking how I achieved such a nice icon in Reeder app. My first response was “I don’t know!”, but then I realised it was my apple touch icon that was being used.

The specified dimensions of a touch icon directly from Apple is 114x114px, this will compensate for Retina displays and produce a nice crisp home screen icon. However, as you can see from the Reeder screenshot, other sites using 114px touch icons don’t fill all the available space. Reeder is one of the most popular RSS apps, plus the touch icon may be used elsewhere too, so it’s worth creating your icon at much larger dimensions.

I chose the dimensions of 512x512px, which is probably a little overkill, but apparently 241x241px would suffice.

Next you need to decide whether you want Apple to add their glossy highlight effects to your icon. If you do, name it apple-touch-icon.png, if you don’t, name it apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png.

You don’t actually need to write any code to get your touch icon working, just pop it in the root directory of your website and it will automatically be used by Apple devices. It might be worth linking it in your though just as a reminder that it’s there. If you ever redesign you might end up forgetting to update it. Once again, make your choice of glossy or precomposed.

Line25 Sites of the Week for May 3rd 2013

Chris Spooner — Fri, 03 May 2013 07:00:45 +0000

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30 Web Designs Featuring Beautiful Scenes of Nature

Chris Spooner — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 07:00:04 +0000

To really promote your product, service or cause you’ve got to design for emotion and make a connection with your viewers. There’s no better way to tap into the dreams of visitors than presenting them with awe-inspiring scenes of the great outdoors. This post showcases 30 sites that use beautiful scenes of nature to construct a serene atmosphere and whisk their viewers away on an adventure in their imagination.

Line25 Sites of the Week for April 19th 2013

Chris Spooner — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 07:00:47 +0000

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Showcase of Beautiful iPhone App UI Concept Designs

Chris Spooner — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 07:00:55 +0000

To find some truly inspiring iPhone app interfaces you have to move away from all the commercially popular titles in the app store and instead take a look at some of the UI concepts designers are creating either for small projects or just for fun. This post showcases 40 beautiful iPhone app interface concepts, all of which are cleanly designed and offer some great creative inspiration for your own projects.

Line25

Line25 Sites of the Week for May 24th 2013

Showcase of Websites Featuring Full Screen Videos

Line25 Sites of the Week for May 17th 2013

15 Awesome Websites That Tell a Story As You Scroll

Line25 Sites of the Week for May 10th 2013

How To Create an iOS App Icon for Your Website

Why create an app icon?

How to create an Apple touch icon

Line25 Sites of the Week for May 3rd 2013

30 Web Designs Featuring Beautiful Scenes of Nature

Line25 Sites of the Week for April 19th 2013

Showcase of Beautiful iPhone App UI Concept Designs