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3 Books That Makes A Web Designer’s Life Easier

Millen — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 10:58:45 +0000

CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions

CSS mastery is an amazing book, from the first page to the last. Written by Andy Budd, Cameron Moll and Simon Collison. This book covers all the basics of the creation of proper, clean and valid xHTML to really advanced CSS. The two last chapters of the book covers their case study. In these two chapters you will find many good tips, tricks and techniques which will make your website stand out from the crowd.

The Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide To Themes, Trends & Styles In Website Design

This book is a thoughtfully organized catalog of web design resources and inspiration. Obviously, reading this book will not teach you to be a great website designer. What it will do is expand your design vocabulary train you to break down your favorite sources of design inspiration into bite-sized chunks that you can use in your own work. This book is a must have when you are in a creative rut.

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is an extremely useful book about basic design principles. To some, design is something that is tough to grasp and is a mystery to understand. To others it simply comes naturally. If you find yourself struggling with design and need some direction, then this book is for you. Throughout each of the chapters Jason breaks down the specifics of layout and composition, color, texture, typography, and imagery. Are you struggling with your web design for the moment? Get back to basics with The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird.

Safari 4 benchmarked: 42x faster than IE 7, 3.5x faster than Firefox 3

Millen — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:32:30 +0000

Proving itself a staggering 42 times faster at rendering JavaScript than IE 7, our benchmarks confirm Apple’s Safari 4 browser, released in beta today, is the fastest browser on the planet. In fact, it beat Google’s Chrome, Firefox 3, Opera 9.6 and even Mozilla’s developmental Minefield browser.

1) Safari 4 (Total time: 910ms)
2) Mozilla Minefield 3.2a1 (1,136ms)
3) Google Chrome (1,177ms)
4) Firefox 3 (3,250ms)
5) Opera 9.6 (4,076ms)
6) Internet Explorer 8 (5,839ms)
7) Internet Explorer 7 (39,026ms)

Source: cnet UK

Learn How To Create Data Charts With Pure CSS

Millen — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:23:25 +0000

Data charts are usually achieved with the help of Flash, Silverlight or Javascript.
In this clever tutorial from CSS globe you will not use any form of javascript or backend application. All you will rely on is well formed CSS and markup.

So, the goal is to present data chart. We could say that a chart is a two dimensional object. So, the best structural and semantical choice is definition list. Why? Well, for starter, it is a list of items. Although the list is linear, we could interpret definition titles (dt elements) as items on x axis and definition descriptions (dd elements) as values on y axis.

Check out he whole article!

Website: http://cssglobe.com/post/4175/pure-css-line-graph
Demo: http://cssglobe.com/lab/csslinegraph/

15 Amazing Sources of Inspiration For Your Logo Design

Millen — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 04:36:08 +0000

A logotype is usually the first impression a person get of your business and product. If you are making your own logo you probably know how hard it is to find your creativity. That’s why the Resource Ninja has been digging around the archives of the world wide web, and guess what? He found 15 amazing sources of inspiration for your next project. From showcase sites to tutorial and inspirational sites.

Check them out!

Logopond
One of the most popular logo showcasing sites around. Hosting over 600 inspiring logo designs.

Faveup
Envato’s answer to inspiration gallery. Faveup also showcase business cards, CSS and flash design.

Identityarchives
Identityarchives is a huge logo database, just type in a word in the search bar and you will see.

Deviantart
For the last years deviant art has been gathering artists from all over the world. You will find extremely talented artists in all of these categories: Traditional art, digital art, photography, Artisan crafts, literature, cartoons and comics, fan art, flash, designs & interfaces and of course the art of logo design.

Logodesignlove
Logo design love is a site devoted to logo design. Here you will be able to find all sorts of good information about the subject. David Airey the author will personally take you through the latest news and trends in logo design.

Carbonmade
Carbonmade is a bit different to the other sites, it host web and logo designers portfolios.

Logospire
Logospire is a logo gallery where people can upload their logos straight away, with no moderation queues.
It also has they normal 5 star/point rating system where logos get placed after rating. This site has nice clean design and is Powered by Ruby on Rails.

Logosauce
Yet another Logo showcase site.

Lo8os
Lo8os is a logo showcase community powered by xoops.

Brand new
At brand new you can find opinions on corporate and brand identity work.

Logo of the day
Jeff Fisher and Jacob Cass decides wich logo is gonna win the logo of the day.

Logolounge
To use Logo Lounge you need to become a member, but if you are serious about logo design than it’s well worth the hassle.

Logo Blink
A blog 100% devoted to logo, brand and company design.

Logofaves
Another logo gallery/showcase site with clean design which make the logos them self stand out.

Brands of the world
Brands of the world has a huge database of logos, fonts, photos and other resources.

That was our roundup of 15 high quality resources for your next logo design project.
Hope you enjoy it!

PSDtuts, VECTORtuts and NETtuts Becomes tuts+

Millen — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:52:01 +0000

One site to rule them all is what envato is saying when they merge there powerhouse PSD tuts with vector tuts and NET tuts this week. These site are now know by the name tuts+. There plan is to sell membership subscriptions to source files and other goodies related to the tutorials provided on the site. For only 9$ a month you get connected to all these sites and can enjoy your tutorials even more.

This is what tuts+ them self says is behind it all.

Because lots of our readers are into web development, you may be interested to know how we built the new Plus and Tuts+ sites. Thanks to the hard work of our obscenely talented web dev Derek Herman, the Tuts+ site is in fact three sites meshed together to look like it’s just one.
When you first arrive you’re looking at a WordPress installation, hooked up with a customized jQuery dashboard homepage based on the Net.tuts+ tutorial Mimic iGoogle. Then when you sign in, you’re using a hacked up version of aMember, a PHP membership script you can pick up for $180. AMember provides all the membership, account, and affiliate functionality. Finally once you go to see the Plus content, you’re into a third WordPress installation, customized to allow sorting and searching of items (which are actually Posts).

Amazing to see what a tiny budget and some hard work can do!
Envato has done it again.

Free Ultimate Icon Set - First Release

Millen — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 01:48:42 +0000

Over at WooThemes they are releasing there first free icon pack.
The free download contains a total of 79 clean icons, sized at 256×256 pixels and are available in both .PNG and .GIF formats.

Download: Ultimate icon set
Source: WooThemes

Wordpress Is Installed, So What Happens Next?

Millen — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:43:09 +0000

The installation of wordpress does not take long at all and your blog should be working perfect right from the start. But if you are looking for better performance, higher traffic and more stability I recommend you to follow 5 of my simple tips. It doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to come up with these tips. But its always good to have a little reminder of what to do when wordpress is installed.

1. Permalinks

Go to settings -> Permalinks and simply choose the permalink structure you would like. Personally I prefer a custom structure with category/postname. Presss “Save changes” and you should be done. If your .htaccess file is not writable you will have to do this step manually. Simply by adding the mod_rewrite rules to your .htaccess file from the field below.

2. Activate Akismet antispam

Akismet is anti spam plugin which comes with the installation pack of wordpress.
This plugin will get rid of all comments and trackback spams and save you a lot of valuable time. To activate Akismet you need to grab a API key from wordpress.com. Go to your mail and copy the API key you’ve just requested. Open settings -> Akismet configuration and simply paste your API key. Booom! your blog is now protected from unwanted spam and you will be a much happier man/women, trust me.

3. SEO all in one pack
SEO all in one pack is a phenomenal plugin which you can get from the wordpress.org plugin directory.
Got to settings -> SEO all in one pack and simply add Home Title, Home Description and Home Keywords and you should good to go.

4. google analytics for wordpress

Google Analytics will help you improve your online results. Keep track on how much traffic you get and where it’s coming from.
You can download Google Analytics for Wordpress at wordpress.org directory plugin.

Download: Google Analytics for Wordpress

5. feedburner

We have all seen the importance of RSS feeds these days. It’s a perfect way for people to stay connected to their favorite sites.
FeedBurner is the leading provider of media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds. Their Web-based tools will help you promote, deliver and profit from your own blog content. FeedBurner also comes with some widgets which will help promote and display number of your subscriptions.