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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.

We are constantly being reminded how important typography is in every aspect of design - that fact is well documented and well showcased. Typography also lends itself to art, and it is one area where art often meets design to produce a beautiful result. In this showcase we are bringing you a double dose of inspiration - be inspired by the quotes themselves and also by the presentation in amazing typographic form. In these examples the artists have produced designs to be proud of.

Just in time for Google's annual I/O developers conference, the web giant launched a pretty dramatic redesign to its Google+ social networking arm and Google Maps. And Google is on-trend. The design scheme, while not completely flat, is almost flat and could evoke a whole new design trend of its own.

There are hundreds of brand new mobile responsive website layouts published every month. The trend has swept through the design world and taken web development to a new level. In the past we have written on some other amazing responsive websites and I want to use this gallery as another comparison.

With the massive growth in technology and increase in the number of platforms, there is a huge increase in the number of people starting technology and internet based businesses . One thing that has been common to all businesses is the need for a creative and responsive web developer - someone who understands exactly what they need and how they need it. And someone who delivers on time............

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).

Semi Permanent was started in Sydney in 2003 by Australians Andrew Johnstone and Murray Bell and has since become an international annual conference, spanning across 5 counties and 9 cities including London, Los Angeles and Stockholm. Semi Permanent is now synonymous with assembling industry leaders from all creative fields to present their work, inspirations, processes, insights and to simply share their creative journey with fellow peers over two jam-packed days. As always, there was an impressive showcase of amazing work that spanned across Graphic Design, Film, Animation, Motion Graphics, Architecture and Visual Effects. Illustration, Photography and Graffiti. Photographer Max Doyle showcased his diverse talent by entertaining us with a live jam of one of his songs. And of course it wouldn't be a design conference without the guys from Stab Magazine firing t-shirts into the crowd from a canon.

Here is a tool that is all about making it easier for developers and website owners to have email integrated into their websites. PostMark is a web app which removes the headaches of delivering and parsing transactional email for web apps, all with minimal setup time and zero maintenance. It is designed for web developers to integrate quality email functionality into their web apps easily without having to setup an SMTP server from nearly scratch. Let's take a look at the features of PostMark, how to use it, the advantages and disadvantages of PostMark.

Here is a tool that is all about making it easier for developers and website owners to have email integrated into their websites. PostMark is a web app which removes the headaches of delivering and parsing transactional email for web apps, all with minimal setup time and zero maintenance. It is designed for web developers to integrate quality email functionality into their web apps easily without having to setup an SMTP server from nearly scratch. Let's take a look at the features of PostMark, how to use it, the advantages and disadvantages of PostMark.

The days when blogging was just a hobby of teenagers are gone; now, even entrepreneurs want to have their own blogs, but do you know how to talk to clients? What does this mean to freelance web designers? It means that there are a lot of people out there who are willing to spend money on a custom design for their blogs. How can you impress these potential clients and get lucrative jobs? Talk to your potential clients about what is important to THEM!

Over the last three years, responsive web design has been gaining popularity and is now considered to be one of the best ways to design websites that look great on any device: from smartphones to smart TVs. In this hand-picked collection, you'll find dozens of beautiful responsive sites in every category, and I hope you'll find them as inspiring as our team does. The screenshots on the left were taken on a tablet and the ones on the right were taken on a smartphone.

There are 20 important parts one needs to take into account when designing a custom WordPress theme. This guide will introduce you to different areas of theme development. Let's get started.

One page layout designs have been a popular trend lately especially with freelancers. Many freelancers have decided to opt for single page website design because it is straightforward and easy to maintain. Freelancers can showcase their works in an instant without unnecessary confusion with key information displayed. Today, freelancers get to choose from 20 beautifully designed HTML5 responsive one page website templates built with a parallax effect over at Mighty Deals to effectively showcase their portfolio.

For most web developers, delivering the images to the low-bandwidth mobile devices could not be less than any brain teaser, where they feel like they have been stuck in a complex task, just like searching a needle in the dry haystack! Well, it could screw-up the brain! Even the developers, who are well-acquainted with responsive web design techniques, know that by setting the max-width of the images up to 100%, can't resolve this issue as the server will still render big size image to the user's phone. The mobile optimized web applications are designed to run smoothly for the low bandwidth connection with formatting according to the screen of the device.

Responsive web design gets plenty of attention, and rightfully so, but in some situations you may prefer to use a separate theme specifically for mobile visitors rather than going with a responsive design. WordPress users have a number of themes available that have been specifically created with mobile visitors in mind. These themes will not replace your desktop theme, instead the mobile theme will only be seen by visitors on mobile devices. This setup typically includes a plugin to determine what device the visitor is using, and then it will display the appropriate theme. In this post we'll showcase 27 different options for mobile sites on WordPress. Most are themes, but some are plugins.

The pseudo-classes are used to target elements without having to add extra classes, attributes or ID; that is why it is called in that way, pseudo-class. Throughout our previous posts, we have covered a few new CSS3 pseudo-classes, including :not, :before and :after, :first-of-type and we also use pseudo-classes in ...

Today I will teach you how to create a simple contact form in HTML5 and CSS3 that you can download for free. Many WordPress plugins come with fully functional contact forms that can be installed and used right away, but we believe in beautiful design and in your right to style it however you choose.

Whether you offer free or premium themes, testing should be a major part of your development process. By planning in advance, you can foster a development environment that deters some bugs by design and that helps you prevent others.

WordPress is a good CMS option for anyone who wants to maintain a personal website or blog. It's free, easy to setup with most hosting accounts, offers all the functionality needed for a personal website, and there are plenty of quality themes available.

Tutorial Details Estimated Completion Time: 9 Minutes Difficulty: Beginner Apps Used: Adobe Photoshop CS6 Final Product What You'll Be Creating This entry is part 28 of 35 in the Shortcuts on Psdtuts Session " Previous Next " If you have been working with Photoshop for a while, chances are you've developed some custom settings that you prefer to work with.