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High-quality usability has been the center of discussions in the industry in the past ten years, as it becomes more and more important for users. Good usability can also help build brand awareness and can generally improve a user's opinion of a website and even a company. There is so much focus on usability today because big and small companies showed how important a good usability strategy can turn out to be. Good usability has been in the past couple of years at the heart of successful start-ups. Simple ideas are most of the time the most innovative and this is mainly what usability is about: making a feature or a product easy to use, while still keeping the product quality at a high level. Today's article comes a lot down to common sense. It seems that after years and years of discussing this issue, web designers still have a hard time understanding it. Usability is not a joke anymore and the advices below should be printed out and pinned on the wall in front of your desk.

Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn't even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures. It has proven to be a particularly nasty usability problem in our testing of mobile devices

Keeping usability for stumblers, browsers and surfers in mind when creating a website can be an exasperating task. Doing so shouldn't have to be so frustrating... What follows is a list of how to improve your site's usability without going crazy!

1. Form Labels Work Best Above The Field 2. Users Focus On Faces 3. Quality Of Design Is An Indicator Of Credibility 4. Most Users Do Not Scroll 5. Blue Is The Best Color For Links 6. The Ideal Search Box Is 27-Characters Wide 7. White Space Improves Comprehension 8. Effective User Testing Doesn't Have To Be Extensive 9. Informative Product Pages Help You Stand Out 10. Most Users Are Blind To Advertising

A perfect code editor is the only thing a developer needs for joy. When it comes to code editors, developers mainly care about usability and functionality of the tool they're working with, but the era of plain, old, ugly code editors is gone.

A perfect code editor is the only thing a developer needs for joy. When it comes to code editors, developers mainly care about usability and functionality of the tool they're working with, but the era of plain, old, ugly code editors is gone.

These days, a necessary tool of the trade for both professional and amateur visual artists, such as graphic designers, web developers, photographers, digital artists, etc., is an online presence; and that is usually achieved with a personal or professional portfolio site. So today we are bringing you a selection of powerful, usable, free WordPress portfolio themes that are all highly customizable for experienced coders, but also just as usable as they are for non-coders. Portfolium Neat and flexible grid-based theme for WordPress, Portfolium can be used on portfolio websites or blogs. Take full advantage of Portfolium's fresh, minimalistic design that is perfect as is, or as a foundation for your custom design.

A lightweight database/server in 100% managed code. It's cross-platform, and usable in ASP.Net ... royalty-free ($180 currently)

There's a debate over which technique of creating mobile-ready websites is the best. Google advocates creating responsive web designs, while Jakob Nielsen, a renowned usability consultant, endorses the creation of dedicated mobile sites (but he was subsequently slammed by some web designers).

If you have tried Googling web designer resources you will have noticed that there is a gazillion different resources, however sometimes you just want to kick back and read a good old-fashioned magazine. If you are looking for a print publication that covers topics that web designers and developers are interested in then here is a list of 10 publications that you might find interesting. If you feel we have forgotten any then just leave us a comment below! .net Magazine Not only is .net one of the best online resources for web designers and developers, however their magazine is packed with practical advice on everything from design, development, sales, marketing, usability to accessibility, information architecture, security, copywriting, advertising and much much more.

Color Worqx has a great article on Color Theory -- trying to explain how colors work and why some work together and others don't ... to help you get better at color design.