Entries Tagged 'Website Design' ↓
November 28th, 2011 — Website Design
iPad- since its emergence has got a great deal of popularity among all sorts of users. It’s extremely powerful and loved because of its portability and usability. The fame of iPad is not just limited to general population but it has got with it so many features that influenced the world of designers as well. For designers it’s a marvelous new tool strengthening their skills from weaving new ideas to making them a reality. Its portability has enabled them to accomplish their work on the spot with all the necessary tools brought together at one place, and that’s among the biggest advantages one can have from this superb device. A huge range of iPad apps enable the web designers extend their imagination and creativity like never before. But in the midst of the constantly growing App store having thousands of applications, it’s hard for a designer to find the best and useful apps.
For all these reasons and particularly making your iPad application hunt easier I have put together a collection of very powerful and well designed apps, so check them out and give your feedback through comments.
The Web Designer’s Idea App- Keeps You Up To Date
This is a wonderful tool that lets the designers know what’s happening in the world of design. It has more than 1350 website designs organized by color, design style, type etc. enabling the designers to get inspiration for their own design stuff.
Sketchypad – Makes Your Website And Interface Sketching Simpler
SketchyPad has numerous stencils and an easy to use interface. Designers can easily create mock-ups and link between them. It has numerous other features like it saves your results to PNG file with an option to send by email, you can directly import photos to your sketch from your album and a wide range of free icons for mock ups and much more.
Sketchbook Pro- Enables Natural Sketching
This is a pen based interaction app with a bunch of quality tools and features comprising of pencils, brushes, colors, guides, layers etc. Create stunning designs with its multi-touch interface. You can even install 90 additional brushes and stamp brushes from the store. This application converts your iPad into an ultimate digital SketchBook where you can experience the joy of sketching naturally.
Adobe Ideas- Capture And Explore Ideas Anywhere You Go
Adobe Ideas is a digital sketchbook and provides support to Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, the renowned professional design applications from Adobe. The application is fun to use with a simple, clean and fluid interface. You can work with different brush sizes and opacity and configure your own palette. Wherever you go it gives you the power to capture and explore ideas.
iMockups- Draft Wire frames Quickly
iMockups has both a beautiful interface and intuitive functionality. With its use designers can easily draft wire frames for their websites and other applications. It has a multitude of colors, text styles, borders and backgrounds. The application has the power to increase your productivity and keeps you organized.
iDraw- Create Awesome Vector Illustrations
iDraw is a vector drawing and illustration tool and is the most feature-packed application on the iPad. In the app you will discover customizable grid and margins, vector brushes and customizable shape drawing tools. This is one of the most powerful vector illustration apps on the App Store and gives you the feeling as you are working on your desktop PC.
iThoughtshd- Now Map Your Thoughts
Now you have the opportunity to organize your thoughts, ideas and information in a visual form with iThoughtsHD. It has the best mind mapping tools available and has a very easy to use interface and a clear design. You can easily move your ideas around the map and link them again; you can capture topics and record ideas and thoughts as topic bubbles.
Omnigraffle- Organize Your Diagrams
OmniGraffle is one of the best tools for diagrammatic representation and helps you create diagrams and charts that convey information in an effective manner. When you are in need to represent how processes are carried out and how to present information in a form that is clearly understand, do not hesitate to go for OmniGraffle. You can also wire frame layouts and develop site maps with this application.
Moodboard- Create Inspiration Boards
Mood boards extend designers potential to play with colors, fonts, images and textures to build an aesthetic for their next piece of art work. You can create mood boards for your website or even work on the outlook of an entire brand. You can organize anything like art projects; create collages, designing websites etc.
The Font Game- Your Typeface Identifier
The Font Game is a good learning tool for recognizing different types of fonts. This is actually a game and not a designing tool, makes you addicted to it as you enjoy playing it while also learning to identify over 1,000 popular fonts.
All these applications make a web designer’s life easier while also strengthening their power of imagination and creativity. Let yourself adapt to the ever evolving technologies and increase your productivity. I hope these applications will surely do a great job for most of you, if not for all.
July 4th, 2011 — Website Design
With CSS animations, one can do marvels. It has been a powerful tool for web designers and developers in the process of web design. With the help of CSS animations, transitions can be animated from one CSS style configuration to another. There are two additions of CSS to make animation better and easier. One is CSS Transitions and the other is CSS Animations.
CSS Transitions
This form of CSS provides a way to animate changes to CSS properties and the changes does not take effect instantly instead they take effect over an interval of time. This interval of time can be specified following an acceleration curve that is customizable. For instance, the color of an element is to be changed from black to white, the change is instant normally. But with CSS transitions enabled, the change takes effect over the interval of time specified.
CSS Animations
Animations are similar to transitions in the sense that they are responsible to change the presentational value of CSS properties over time. The major difference between the two is that when property values are changed the transitions trigger implicitly whereas animations are explicitly executed when the animation properties are applied.
This post focuses on CSS3 animations that have endless transform and transition properties. Some of these can be used as JavaScript alternatives and can prove very useful. The examples below clearly demonstrate how CSS3 can create astounding animations. For better user experience and performance open up the examples in Google Chrome.
1. Photo Gallery
2. Bokeh Effect
3. Solar System
4. Flux Slider
5. Rotating Image Gallery
6. Car Drive
7. Index Cards Stack
8. Lightbox Gallery
9. Text Shadow Box
10. 3D Meninas
11. Image Hover Effects
12. Coke cane.jpg
13. Sliding Cubes
14. Colorful Clock
15. Coverflow Effect
16. Sliding Vinyl
17. Slideout Tips
18. Pushing pixels
19. Falling Leaves
20. Bar Chart
April 17th, 2011 — Website Design
Adobe Photoshop is very famous software among web designers as it offers too many tools. Brush tool is one of them, this tool is very useful as with it one can do work of an hour in just few clicks with accuracy and perfection. The usage of this brush tool is also very easy, one when is on desired image just have to press button “B” or can also select it from toolkit. A brush palette will appear on screen from which designer can select the required brush and can start using it, however if designer is in need of any new brush then the process is also very easy.
Download the desired brush then, always keep it in mind that these files are “.abr” files, so when download is complete then simply select the brush tool in Photoshop again that brush palette will get open here at top right corner there will be an arrow:
By clicking it you will see a drop down menu in it there is an option of “Load Brush”:
Just click on it go to the location where that brush is located:
In few cases when you will select it then you will get three options “Yes/No/Append” with a statement:
Do you want to replace it?
Select Append and new brush will be ready to use now:
Here are few brushes which are very worthy for web designers.
It is a set of 19 Brushes to empower your work with beauty. It includes lens flares, natural lighting, light circles; brushes include sparkles etc. Hence it is a good piece of collection for web designers.
It has 3 sets of brushes made in PS7 and PS7 or high versions can use it.
It is combination of 40 High-quality tree brushes made for PS7 and higher rendered in Vue Professional 4.5, which contains winter pear trees, maple trees, palm and coconut trees, dead trees, bamboo, papyrus and cherry trees.
If you are horrible and murky artists then here is a gift for you. A set of 27 fully 3D blood brushes which were edited digitally. They are special because you can use wild levels of curves in it, as its all background interference has been removed. Thus one can put a realistic feel in work.
A set of 26 brushes made for different sort of bullet holes like bullet holes made in metal, glass and other different materials.
A set consist of 10 awesome brushes created in PS CS3, few made of territory and mountains turned into Terragen and few of them are technical terrains from Vue 6 unlimited.
This is a set of 10 high quality brushes again in PS 7.
The set consist of 12 high quality Aurora Borealis brushes which are also called “Northern Lights”. Once again, it is made in PS 7 and those who have older version can also enjoy it. It’s really matchless for the abstract designs; also these brushes can be used for several magical effects in dreamy paintings.
This set of brushes is compatible with PS 7 and higher. In fact, it is a replacement of an older ocean wave brush.
It is pair of 7 commendable brushes; actually it is collection of several types of fairy wings and contain high resolution. Moreover, do not get worried as it has both left and right wings.
Beautiful set of brushes compatible with PS 7 and higher, these brushes are bit big to make them easily useable in landscapes.
This Pack has 44 leavy borders brushes which are very new; you will find them very useful.
Awesome set of 21 brushes, compatible with PS 7 and higher, GIMP 2.2.6+, PS elements 2 and greater. It has different shapes of Spanish moss; which itself is a matchless moss, designers normally use it for the ornamentation of trees.
A beautiful gift for designers, this set contains 9 lighting brushes, which can glow up the beauty of your work. It has individual brushes of different sizes and styles and web designers can use them freely.
If you want to sparkle your art work then here is a beautiful set of 10 brushes which can enhance your creative abilities in compatibility with ps, psp, gimp, etc…
March 7th, 2011 — Website Design
The iPad has recently gained tremendous fame worldwide. A huge mass of people are getting attracted to this newly emerging device. We can already see people using an iPad whether they are in a bus or a coffee shop.Why it has become so popular in such a short time? The answer is, it’s such a computer that you can simply hold in your hand and read like a book. It’s a more intimate way to interact as now you can lounge with the computer rather than having the difficulty to sit on it. This technology change has turned the world of website designers upside down. It has led the web designers to rethink about the design tactics. The designers have started designing specifically for the iPad because it seems undeniable that the device will hold strong position in the future. To give a more positive user experience web designs and layouts must be more compatible to the iPad.
iPad features: what web designers should consider?
Let’s consider what actually iPad comprises that’s forcing the designers to change the way they design.
iPad modes:
The iPad has two kinds of modes
By mode it means the way you can view your website using the iPad. So either you can view it in landscape or portrait mode.
Primary iPad navigation tool:
The device is perfectly simple. It has no keyboard, no mouse. So how are the users going to interact? Yes, the primary tool here to interact with is your fingers. The users will use their fingers to navigate on the iPad.
The question here is: Why are these features bothering the designers so much?
With iPad users do not need to follow the standardized and defined ways of viewing and interacting with websites. They can zoom in and out the website pages as it suits them and can view the websites in any of the above mentioned two modes. Here comes the fact, why the designers need to bother? In order to make your website accessible as well as usable on the iPad (having two different viewing modes) a designer needs to create two different layouts for the website. This requires a website to be developed in smart fluid width design.
iPad has killed flash:
The iPad does not support flash. If you want your website to contain animations and videos it has to be designed in HTML5 because websites designed in this language are easily viewed in iPad. HTML5 has all the elements that were previously found only in Adobe Flash.
iPad has killed hover effects:
As users will use their fingers to navigate the website so the hover effects that are only suited to pointer based devices are useless for iPads. For a smooth user experience with iPads the hover effects must be removed. The links in a website can also no longer be concealed in text and need to be re sized.
Colour contrast:
The iPad can be used in different locations. You can use it anywhere indoors or outdoors according to your choice. This brings some disadvantages like the ipad’s screen is glossy and it reflects light. This hinders user’s interaction with the content that is displayed on the website.
Some examples where web iPadfication is already going On
Twitter redesign
The new design of twitter is very close to iPad application. Additional in-line links and media support is possible with the iPad version. Twitter for iPad is shown below
The image shows new twitter.com home page
With the iPad twitter more columns can be displayed and their sizes adjusted.
Apple’s Me.com webmail interface
Apple’s MobileMe Mail is almost identical to the Mail application built into the iPad. The Mail application for the iPad is shown below
Now compare the new Me.com webmail interface of Apple
Apple’s MobileMe calendar
This is a pixel by pixel recreation of calendar for iPad. The calendar application for iPad looked like
Now compare Apple’s MobileMe calendar
Editorial page of New York Times
The image shows the iPad friendly version of the New York Times editorial page
The image below is an updated iterated version of New York Times opinion page which is also developed keeping in mind the iPad friendliness. The columns can be easily selected using finger and stories are organized in grids to make it easier for the users to access the page.
Recommendations: what steps the designers should take to keep up with iPad?
The future of web browsing lies in these computerized tablets called iPads. It has been discussed in detail how the device affects the way websites are designed and built. In such a scenario following things are advised to the designers.
Use of JavaScript and CSS
Smart designers will efficiently use JavaScript and CSS in combination which will provide the users a rich experience using the iPad. There are some situations where the web developer cannot accommodate the needs of the user using the fluid width design. In such cases the designer should use multiple CSS for different devices and device configurations.
Interactive web designs rather than complex designs
The designers should avoid using complex designs rather than create interactive and intuitive designs as the future of website design is shaped by iPads.
Adaptable websites
The designers should design the website in such a way that it is accessible on desktop PCs, tablets and other mobile devices. It means that the website should be adaptable to multiple platforms and should not look the same.
You should keep in mind that with this website design for iPad you are not reinventing the wheel rather you are enhancing the usability of your site for the iPad device. Therefore, don’t forget to have quality content, maintain keyword placement and keep fighting for your website rankings.
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