This Week’s in Web Development (Week #7)
With our current project load it is insanely hard to keep up with the Simplified Source Blog. As of right now I will be trying to post either resources/code snippets that are helpful or a weekly summary of articles and resources in regards to Web Development and Design. I hope that these articles are helpful. Each week I can say that I have a different interest than the week before. Therefor this article takes a turn each week from SEO to Wordpress to CodeIgniter to Social Marketing to Android and so on. Enjoy.
Google Releases “Dartium” Browser for Developers
Google is trying to get developers interested in Dart with a technology preview of the Dart VM in Chromium, better known as Dartium. The plan is ultimately to include the Dart VM in Chrome itself, but no timeline has been given yet for that.
Google has been pushing pretty hard to move Dart forward. The company released a Rosetta Stone for JavaScript programmers called Dart Synonym at the beginning of February. However, developers have had to compile Dartium from source or find unofficial builds to test the code.
Now it’s much easier to get ahold of a browser with the Dart VM. If you’re using Linux or Mac OS X, you can download Dartium today. Windows builds are not available yet, but should be available “soon.” [Continued]
(Author: Joe Brockmeier)
21 Examples of Excellent Navigation Menus in Web Design
Navigation is certainly a very important element in web design, especially if we keep in mind that the navigation of a page is there to orient and guide the user. I believe we know that it’s extremely important that users understand navigation options to better explore a website and that is why today we are showcasing examples of navigation menus, to show how websites are presenting menus to their users. From the traditional header menu to side bar menus, footer menus and much more, you will see that there are a variety of ways to present your navigation options. So check it out and let us know which one you like most. [Continued]
(Author: Gisele Muller)
The Impending CSS Vendor Prefix Catastrophe
Developers have a love-hate relationship with CSS vendor prefixes. They allow us to use bleeding-edge technologies at the expense of long-winded declarations:
background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(#fff, #000); background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(#fff, #000); background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(#fff, #000); background-image: -o-linear-gradient(#fff, #000); background-image: linear-gradient(#fff, #000);
It works well in theory but consider what happens in the wild:
- Experimental properties are often implemented in the webkit engine first and there’s no guarantee they’ll be replicated in other browsers.
- It’s often difficult to determine whether a vendor-prefixed property is part of the CSS specification. Some vendors don’t submit properties for standardization.
- Even if the standard property changes, the incorrect vendor-prefixed version continues to be supported. Your old code still works; you won’t revisit it to correct the implementation.
You’ll often find sites using the -webkit prefixes alone — even if other browsers support the property or it has widespread availability without a prefix (such as border-radius). Chrome and Safari therefore look better than competing browsers — and the other vendors aren’t happy. [Continued]
(Author: Craig Buckler)
Flexible Notifications With jQuery – noty
noty is a jQuery plugin for creating user-friendly, “JavaScript-alert alternative”notifications very easily It has built-in support for alert, success, error and confirmation messages and they can either be displayed as HTML elements that fade in/out or as modal boxes. [Continued]
(Author: WebResourcesDepot)
12 Things I Have Learned After 7 Years of Freelancing
At the age of 15 I started with this web design stuff. Here I am, almost 7 years later and I wish I knew a lot more about this field rather than learning just by my own mistakes. But you don’t have to pass through all of this, dear Padawan.
There are a few particularities in our field that unless you have a geek dad you would never think about… So if you are aware about what you need to do you can have a much simpler, more productive, and happier freelance life.
The crazy thing is that success is not (just) about coding skills alone. You have to build a whole environment to compensate the instability that you probably won’t face in a regular job.
Finally, here we’ll see a few tips for novice and experienced freelancers, ranging from controlling your finances to networking. And I really want to hear your advice and tips after reading this, because we always have something to share, right? So, let’s rock! [Continued]
(Author: Rochester Oliveira)
18 Android Apps for Designers & Web Developers
Although Apple devices have been getting a lot of attention there is plenty of great stuff to focus on with Google’s Android project. Their open source mobile operating system features a similar app store where developers can publish their ideas quickly and effortlessly. There are sincerely dozens upon dozens of fantastic apps to guide web developers & designers in completing project work.
This small gallery below contains 18 such examples of my favorite apps. Android users will love to try these out and see what kind of functionality can benefit designers, developers, and freelancers of all types. If you have similar apps of your own be sure to let us know in the post comments area. [Continued]
(Author: Jake Rocheleau)
Showcase of Annual Report Design
Annual reports are important for presenting information to a company’s investors, so having an annual report that looks professional and presents a good image can certainly help the cause. The design of the report is, of course, secondary to the content, but still important.
In this post we’ll showcase some examples of annual report design for your own inspiration. These samples come from the Behance Network, and in most cases you can see more images from each annual report by clicking on the image and following the link to Behance. [Continued]
(Author: Vandelay Design)
Seo Tools And Why They Play A Big Part In The Seo Industry
It’s no secret that there are thousands of tools available for search engine optimisation beginners and experts alike. They were all built with two things in mind; Making life easier and automation. Without them the work of an SEO would be slow and incomplete. It’s too easy to miss out steps in a procedure that has been put together, but tools that have been built to this prevent that happening.
Some tools are very simple and serve only a single purpose, such as extracting meta tags, checking for H1 and H2 tags or simply checking the page for its analytics code. But imagine extracting all of this information manually. The time it would take for each site is significantly longer than just entering a URL into a box and hitting go. However there are some tools which have been built to provide a multitude of information in one shot. These are the real time savers.
One good public example of this is the David Naylor Playground. This is a JavaScript pop-out which works with any website. It provides a range of information from hosting location to the number of links and keywords on the page. Another great site is Open Site Explorerprovided by SEOmoz. This tool provides you lots of off-page information that you can use as part of your off-page campaign, from links on the page to links pointed at the domain. Some information requires a subscription but the free version still provides plenty of useful data. [Continued]
(Author: Andrew via SEO Consult)
Musings on Preprocessing
I’ve been using SASS for pretty much everything I do recently. Here’s some musings on the journey. From hold-ups, to trip-ups, to turn-offs. From apps and teams to workflows and syntax. [Continued]
(Author: Chris Coyier)
The Ultimate Ugly Showcase of Current Government Websites
Boy, this just makes me smile. I have been dealing with a lot of these ugly Government websites. They are terrible. Awful to navigate. And if they have a function (web-application-style) it get’s even worse. Great list from Noupe.
Something a little different today: a showcase of government websites. The biggest difference between this showcase and others you see here at Noupe is obvious; the majority of the web ‘designs’ (if you can call them that) in this showcase are tremendously awful and poorly coded. And, well, let’s be honest here: butt ugly!
So, what is it all of these governments don’t quite understand? Someone is going to have to help me out here! Some of them say they are ‘Optimized for Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 1.0′. Firefox 1.0?! How many years ago was that?
Having very out-dated websites representing an entire country can’t be a good thing – at all. They are difficult to use, the text is usually difficult to read, they have ridiculously slow loading speeds (depending on the country, of course), some of them are so bad they hurt your eyes.
To top the above points off, if you happen to be looking for one small piece of information (which you most probably are), it could take you hours on end of waiting, clicking, more waiting, napping, more clicking… until you’re finally presented with a ‘Server not found’ error message! If I was looking at moving to a country and I got a server not found message, I think I would be put right off on the spot!
Bangladesh, Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea are just a few of the culprits of the dreaded non-loading pages, Russia is one of the many (far too many!) design offenders that use horrific drop-shadows. Also, the body copy font size is usually way too small for comfortable reading (Belarus).
However there are a couple that stand out from the rest – how many of you can tell me which ones they are?
(Posted by Callum Chapman via Noupe)
Design Meltdown. Two books already written (to my knowledge). This is all about design concepts, what’s out there, what styles and trends are being used. I have found this to be a great web (graphic) development resource. Design inspiration leads to a promising website or web application.
2nd Generation Design Meltdown
With the launch of the second, and totally fresh, version of Design Meltdown I have charted a new path for this site. For about 5 years I have methodically cataloged sites and built a rather large base of articles and screen shots. The problem is that much of the content is dated with broken links and the structure doesn’t allow for me to easily flag old vs new links. So instead of fixing it I am just starting from scratch (though I am leaving the old version accessible).
The problem of dated and messy content is compounded by a total lack of time. I faced a cross roads; Design Meltdown either went on permanent freeze, or I change what it does. So, this new approach is two fold. One it allows me to redefine the site annually (or just keep doing the same thing). Two it lets me catalog in the same way but with out nearly as much work. The format for 2010 will be 90% linked articles and perhaps 10% original content. So you will still find a directory of styles, but the actually articles are those written by other bloggers and designers.
In the end there are just a ton of people doing the same thing and this is a great way to mix in others ideas and expand the scope of Design Meltdown.
From now on with each new year will come a new Design Meltdown. It will follow the same formula of cataloging and showcasing beautiful design, but will be structured more like a design annual. This way each year I can recalibrate and point it in any direction I need to. This also means I will have a series of sites that will serve as an archive for each year as they pass. This will free me to leave old styles with out the need to update them and will allow for the emergence of new ones as they become popular. I hope you enjoy the slightly new direction, I am excited about a fresh start.
Who is behind it all
Design Meltdown is maintained by Patrick McNeil. A graphic designer, web programmer, and all around good guy. I love art and technology and the perfect combination they are on the web. I currently freelance and am working on my second book on web design.
How it all began
A class in design school had a project which followed the Genius Moves book by Steven Heller. We had to collect samples of work fitting the categories of the book. The categories were odd and far from your typical classifications.
I couldn’t help but consider similarly odd classifications of web sites. I slowly began collecting screenshots of sites I found particularly interesting. Shortly there after I developed numerous categories to group sites into. Design Meltdown is what evolved out of this practice.
So the goal of Design Meltdown has become to collect and categorize sites into classifications that you simply can’t search for. In addition I aim to provide additional links and resources to follow through and implement the given subject. My hope is to inspire and challenge, both myself and my readers.
(Posted via Design Meltdown)
