Splashnology

Nike Ads: Super Creative Designs

AndrewG — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:44:05 +0000

Advertising has always been an art of attracting people with the help of visual and sound representation, and make them want to buy different products. In the world of sport brands there are only few names, which present not only products of a high quality, but also know how to sell them to a great amount of people. Nike is a company that has its style, own way of representation and thinking. In this post we have gathered the most creative ads that were created by this company to promote their sportswear and equipment.

Nike Air Max & Air Force 1

Several designs for Nike and Air Max

Design for Foot Locker’s Nike collection Spring 2012

Glow in the dark T-shirts

Nike Air Jordan. Year of the Dragon – Limited Edition

Nike T-shirt Artworks / Foot Locker Special Edition

Nike Apparel Design II

Nike Sportswear T-shirts Fall 2011

The Wolf by Nike

Sneaker Tectonics

Nike Tees!

Nike Rubik’s

Nike T-Shirt Designs

Nike Apparel Design

Nike Misc 2010

Nike – Air Lab

Nike XX2 2006

Nike FC Barcelona FW11

Several designs for Nike Basketball 2010-2011

Nike – Just do It – Part II

Nike – Just Do It – Experimental Project

Nike Laces

Air Max Lunar

Nike T-shirt Design

38 New and Free PSD Website Templates

AndrewG — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:28:50 +0000

Creating a website requires a lot of efforts, time and of course a good idea and professional skills. But when you are short of time, it’s always useful to take some resources from the Internet and adjust it to your project. With all the amount of available PSD templates, making a web site design became much easier over the past few years. To ease your work, we have compiled a collection of 38 New and Free PSD Website Templates, you would like to download.

20 Fresh and Creative Personal Portfolio Websites

AndrewG — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:59:47 +0000

A good portfolio site is a great way to show to the world your best sides, your skills and talents. Sometimes designers create really amazing portfolios, with a design that reflects their tastes, views and what they actually do in life, but sometimes they make a very minimalistic design, in order not to distract the viewers by the design of a web site, but make them want to look at the portfolio pieces, as it’s the main purpose of such web sites. We would like to present to your attention 20 Fresh Creative Personal Portfolio Websites, you will certainly enjoy!

Fitz Fitzpatrick

Beyonce

Anna Safroncik

Oliver Russell

Natasha Stefanenko

Marco Rosella

Bryan Connor

Dan Viveiros

Denise Chandler

Patrick Kunka

Portfolio De Hugo Socie

Etienne Ledemay

Tim Roussilhe Portfolio

Philippe HONG

Rory McIlroy

W. Brett Wilson

Andres Alfonso

Tep Chann Nimmith

Roland Groza

David Wadash

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Beautiful Caribbean Photography

AndrewG — Sun, 13 May 2012 20:23:09 +0000

In today’s post we decided to share with you the most amazing photos of the Caribbean, as the summer is coming soon! We have collected these amazing pictures, with sunsets and sunrises, wonderful beaches and turquoise water around to inspire you to take a vacation and escape the everyday routine in a place that not only looks, but also feels like paradise! If you haven’t planed your vacation yet, after looking through our collection you might want to start packing your bags! Enjoy the best handpicked photos and share your opinion in comments!

Handy CSS3 Tuts For Web Developers

AndrewG — Fri, 11 May 2012 21:24:09 +0000

It’s been a long time since we have come up with a collection of useful CSS3 tutorials. Though there are some limitations on the side of some browsers, CSS is widely used in creating various things in web design. The main advantage here is that there is no need to use images in design, now you can achieve your wants using CSS, and significantly reduce the loading of your web pages.

Today our showcase consists of the freshest and very useful tutorials that we have collected here in order to save your precious time and make your workflow more fun and easy! So meet the collection of Handy CSS3 Tuts For Web Developers and enjoy it!

Sliding Image Panels with CSS3

In this tutorial you will learn how to create some neat sliding image panels with CSS only. The idea is to use background images for the panels and animate them when clicking on a label. We’ll use radio buttons with labels and target the respective panels with the general sibling selector.

Demo

Page Transitions with CSS3

In the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of single page websites lying around the internet, most of them using JavaScript for some transitions effect. Well, now I’m gonna teach you how you can have your own, but instead I’ll be using CSS Transitions and the :target property to do all the magic.

Demo

Splash and Coming Soon Page Effects with CSS3

Demo

Slopy Elements with CSS3

It’s always a delight to see some non-straight elements in web design. Angled shapes and diagonal lines can create an interesting visual flow and add some unexpected excitement. Inspired by many superb designs that use non-straight elements, I want to show you some simple examples and ways how to create slopy, skewed elements with CSS only.

Demo

CSS3 Lightbox

In this tutorial we want to show you how to create a neat lightbox effect using only CSS. The idea is to have some thumbnails that are clickable, and once clicked, the respective large image is shown. Using CSS transitions and animations, we can make the large image appear in a fancy way.

Demo

Filter Functionality with CSS3

Using the general sibling combinator and the :checked pseudo-class, we can toggle states of other elements by checking a checkbox or a radio button. In this tutorial we will be exploring those CSS3 properties by creating a experimental portfolio filter that will toggle the states of items of a specific type.

Demo

A Presentation about CSS3, Created with CSS3

Demo

Enhancing your Image Thumb Galleries using CSS3 Transitions and Transforms (Responsive)

Demo

A Pure CSS3 Cycling Slideshow

In this article we’ll discuss how to create an infinitely looping slider of images using only CSS3 animation.

Demo

Mac OS X Lion with CSS3

In this tutorial we create with only use of CSS3 the boot, the login page and finally the desktop of the Mac OS X Lion.

Demo

Fancy FAQ page using CSS3 only

In this article I’ll show you how to create a fancy FAQ page using CSS3 only, no JavaScript.

Demo

CSS3 ordered list styles

In this article you’ll learn how to add some CSS3 fine tuning to your ordered lists, using a semantic approach.

Demo

CSS3 breadcrumbs

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create your own cool CSS3 breadcrumbs.

Demo

CSS3 pricing table

Demo

Stylish CSS3 progress bars

In this article you’ll learn how to create stylish and animated progress bars using CSS3.

Demo

CSS3 signup form

In this article you’ll find out how to design a clean and attractive CSS3 signup form.

Demo

CSS3 Form Design – Vintage

You can see here styles of most necessary html form elements: text field, selector, checkbox, radio, button, file, textarea and submit button.

Demo

How to Create CSS3 Buttons

In this tutorial we will be making some cool CSS3 buttons. They are based on the Futurico User Interface by Vladimir Kudinov and we will try to make a precise copy of them.

Demo

How to Create a CSS3 Dropdown Menu

In this tutorial we will code in pure CSS3 the Navigation Menu that you can find in Impressionist UI by Vladimir Kudinov.

Demo

How to Create Accordion Menu in Pure CSS3

In this tutorial we will learn how to create an accordion menu in pure CSS3. This menu was inspired in Futurico UI Pro by Vladimir Kudinov. As we will create it with CSS this will only work on browsers and devices that support the :target pseudo-class selector.

Demo

Create a Slick CSS3 Button with box-shadow and rgba

Demo

CSS Buttons with Pseudo-Elements

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create buttons with a twist, using just one anchor tag per button and the great power of CSS.

Demo

Orman Clark’s Chunky 3D Web Buttons: The CSS3 Version

This buttons based on the popular PSD freebie Orman Clark made for his website Premium Pixels. We’ll try to make a CSS copy of them, as precisely and with as little HTML markup as possible.

Demo

Tagtastic Tag Cloud with CSS Transformations

As an experiment in alternative approaches, we’ll create the tags using gradients, shadows and (most importantly) CSS transforms, which will form the point of each tag. After completion we’ll even take a step further and cater for IE.

Demo

Quickly Build a Swish Teaser Page With CSS3

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to build a teaser page using just CSS, no images or even a Photoshop design. Many websites and upcoming apps gain great publicity from teaser pages, so this is a useful concept to add to your toolkit. Use it for any app or website that’s getting ready to launch.

Demo

Orman Clark’s Vertical Navigation Menu: The CSS3 Version

Next in the Orman Clark’s coded PSD series is his awesome looking Vertical Navigation Menu. We’ll recreate it with CSS3 and jQuery while using the minimal amount of images possible.

Demo

CSS3 Transitions And Transforms From Scratch

In this tutorial will take you back to the very basics. We’re going to create some fundamental CSS3 transitional movements, step by step.

Demo

Fluid CSS3 Slideshow with Parallax Effect

In this tutorial we will create a slideshow with a parallax effect using several CSS3 properties. The idea is to move the background positions of two backgrounds while sliding the container of the slides.

Demo

Animated Content Tabs with CSS3

In this tutorial we are going to implement some simple CSS3 content tabs using radio buttons together with the :checked pseudo-class and sibling combinators

Demo

Accordion with CSS3

Using hidden inputs and labels, we will create a CSS-only accordion that will animate the content areas on opening and closing.

Demo

Responsive Content Navigator with CSS3

Today we want to show you how to create a responsive, css-only content navigator.

Demo

Login and Registration Form with HTML5 and CSS3

A tutorial on how to create a switching login and registration form with HTML5 and CSS3.

Demo

Animated Web Banners With CSS3

Today we’re going to take a look at spicing up our web banners, ads or any content for that matter, with CSS3 animations.

Demo

Fullscreen Background Image Slideshow with CSS3

In this tutorial we will create a CSS-only fullscreen background image slideshow. We’ll create different image transitions and also make a title appear using CSS animations.

Demo

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Colorful Vector Posters by Tom Whalen

AndrewG — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:06:57 +0000

Recently, we came across an amazing designer and illustrator from Pennsylvania, USA – Tom Whalen. He turned his love to comic books into the matter of his life and he worked with Star Wars, Star Trek, Disney and Pixar imagery. In his work he mixes the elements of vintage posters, which greatly remind us of those that were created in 20’s and 30’s, with different modern techniques and that makes his posters look very special! You can make sure yourself that his works are truly amazing by looking through the collection of Whalen’s colorful vector posters that we have compiled for your inspiration!

Web Design Inspirational Cocktail #33

AndrewG — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:45:03 +0000

Nowadays, the development of new site designs is not standing on the same place. Web designers use various tools, their skills and when they get inspired they create a new masterpiece. If you do not have new ideas or just want to look at the work of other authors, then you should certainly see our weekly selection of the best web site designs for inspiration. Here you’ll find some amazing, funny, creative and sometimes unusual designs.

Design by dtailed

Natasha Stefanenko

Negocio De Mulher

CSSPiffe Pitch Deck

OrangeSprocket

Range Rover Evoque Special Edition

Yello Rainbo Records 2012

Tim Roussilhe Portfolio

Lime Magazine

Barcito Chicago

Media Square

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Web Design Inspiration Cocktails’ Section

45+ Free Texture Packs

AndrewG — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:31:01 +0000

Every designer knows that textures are something that can make any design look more special, vivid and beautiful! But there is a very thin line one shouldn’t cross, as a wrong implementation of different textures can spoil a whole project one was working on. But a professional designer with a good taste and quick eye will be able to pick for himself the right texture among all the large number of those, which are presented on the web. So we decided to make this task easier and collected in this post 45+ Free Texture Packs, for you to choose from!

Bokeh Texture Pack by forsaken-resources

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Bokeh Texture Pack by forsaken-resources 2

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Bokeh Texture Pack by forsaken-resources 3

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Seamless Hi-Res Texture Pack – Argyle Knitwear by croicroga

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Circle Texture Pack by forsaken-resources

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Hi-Res Grungy Stone Texture Pack by cosbo123

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Vintage Texture Pack by lilydust

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Texture Pack by SimplySilent

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Texture pack 5 by mariaromerobarbero

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Paper Like Textures Pack 1 by Aimee-Valentine

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Colourful Textures by lilydust

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Marigold – Free Patchwork Textures

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Victorian Grunge Textures by lilydust

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Seamless Hi-Res Texture Pack – Brushed Steel by croicroga

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6 Paper Textures – Pack 1 by BloodMoonEquinox

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Textures pack by mariaromerobarbero

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Pack Textures – Planet by ROSASINMAS

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Texture Pack 04 by artori-stock

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Texture Pack 03 by artori-stock

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OcalyptusS Texture Pack 4 by OcalyptuS-s

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Grass Texture Pack by sdwhaven

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Texture pack 3 by mariaromerobarbero

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Wood / Laminate Textures Pack 02 by Sammali

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Writing texture pack by mariaromerobarbero

Paper Pack 9 by dierat

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Textures Pack 03 by demeters

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Mixed Backgrounds by BirdseyeStock

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Watercolor pack by yulia7

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Pack Textures – Psique by ROSASINMAS

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Canvas Texture Pack 2 by Inadesign-Stock

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Yellow grunge paint textures by TextureKrop

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Grunge Gift Stock Vol.One

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Grunge Plywood Textures

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Totally Rusty Metal Textures

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Old White Cracked Textures

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Rust, Moss, and Metal Textures

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Narina Textures

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Colorful Cloth Fabric Textures

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DelUngy Texture Pack by jinterwas

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High resolution texture pack

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Grunge Concrete Textures

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Texture Pack 16 by AnOrderOfFishsticks

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10 Free Hi-Res Light Grunge Textures

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Grunge Textures pack for Photoshop

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Rough Concrete Tiles: Texture Pack

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75 Textures – Pack 20 by hyperboreans

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Old paper textures pack by yulia7

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18 paint textures by mrs-padfoot

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Beautiful Landscapes Photography for May 2012

Stryker — Sun, 06 May 2012 17:22:15 +0000

Photography is certainly an art. Above all, it is the art of noticing the inconspicuous details and seeing the beauty and unusualness even in the monotony of everyday life. As an artist, any photographer has its own source of inspiration, some of them might like to take the pictures of people, the other prefer animals or seaside, and some are really crazy about the excitement of the big city lights. But there is no doubt that the limitless source of inspiration for both professional photographers and amateurs are the natural landscapes, because nature is the most perfect thing on our planet.

This post covers 25+ Beautiful Landscapes Photography for May 2012. Some of them might look surreal, too colorful, even magic or fake, but they are not — keep in mind that they’ve all been developed out of usual photos.

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Package Design Inspiration for Spring 2012

AndrewG — Sat, 05 May 2012 17:58:29 +0000

Today the mastery of advertising industry is undoubtedly standing on several steps from that it was a couple of years ago. All the stuff people did to make their product look more attractive for customers! Currently, designers create such amazing designs that one can hardly avoid noticing them! They use different color mixes, patterns and lots of creative ideas to make an unusual package design of a product that one would like to buy regardless of the product in it. In today’s post we have assembled a collection of Package Designs for Spring 2012 for your inspiration!

Steve Simpson

Mic’s Chilli sauces

Bold

Middagsfrid food packaging series

Korefe

The Real Cookbook. The first and only Cookbook you can actually read, cook and eat. Made out of 100% fresh pasta it can be opened, filled with ingredients and finally be cooked. Packaged as classic lasagna. The Cookbook was designed as a special project for a large publishing house.

Bedow

This Pale Spring Ale is the first in a series of four seasonal beers released during 2012. The label is printed with a heat sensitive color—when the label gets warm the snowflake turns into a sun. Limited to 3,500 bottles.

Yohanes Raymond

Die Liter Wine Concept

Olive Oil Tree

Menosunocerouno

Just In Case is an end-of-the-world survival kit and self promotional gift created by Mexico based advertising and brand design studio Menosunocerouno

Pere Pagà

Amaltea wine

Frances MacLeod

Sprecher Soda Packaging

Guilherme Karklin

Gourmet Cafeteria

Jean Paul Gaultier

Diet Coke

Ginger Monkey

Year of the Dragon / Nike Air Jordan

Present & Correct

Rediplete – pediatric syrup

Edel Quinn

Jackeen Beer

Fuzzco

Westbrook

Orla Kiely

Wild & Wolf housewares

Colle+McVoy

Caribou Coffee

Pereira & O’Dell

Rolling Words, Snoop Dogg’s smokable songbook

Createam

löffle much!

Alessandro Garlandini and Sebastiano Ercoli

Lunch Book

Preston Grubbs

Juicy Juice

Eric Kass of Funnel

Vigilant Eats : Superfood

Joan Josep Bertran

La vinya del vuit Wine

Preston Grubbs

S’Monsters

Taylor Hood

Monks Coffee

Biles Inc.

The Cloud Factory

Guillo Milia

Tucumen Wines

Sandi Grigoryan

Rigamajig Wine

Force & Form

Modern Hen

Caytlyn Chilelli

San Francisco Coffee Co.

Helms Workshop

Alamo Wine’s The Bottle of Wits

Jason Seder and Alison Moritsugu

Caposaldo by Kobrand Wine and Spirits

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Diablo Universe: 50 Epic Artworks

AndrewG — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:46:52 +0000

As many of you already know, Diablo is a horror-themed action role-playing game developed by Blizzard Northand released by Blizzard Entertainment on December 31, 1996. The sequel of this game – Diablo II was released in 2000. And finally in the year 2008 on June 28, at Blizzard’s World Wide Invitational in Paris was announced the third part, Diablo III and it is expected to come to the world on May 15, 2012. It is a really great date for the fans of this game, and in line with this event we decided to share with you amazing examples of fan artworks. So if you have ever played Diablo, you are a great fan of this game, or just like good and qualitative artworks, you should certainly look through this collection of 50 Epic Artworks!

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Unbelievable Futuristic City Illustrations

AndrewG — Wed, 02 May 2012 21:59:37 +0000

Have you ever thought of how would your city look like in the future? To believe the science fiction, it’s going to be something incredible and mind blowing! No one actually knows how our cities will look like in the coming future, but artists and designers create some stunning and wonderful art to show us their lively imagination, great skills and ability to implement their fantasy in very stunning pieces of artwork. For the great fans of SciFi TV shows, movies, and digital art we have compiled a collection of Unbelievable Futuristic City Illustrations. Have a look and enjoy it!

Worth enough? by radoxist

The City of Future by e-designer

Future Road by DaniNaimare

Future city by nancynismo

Flying City by CaroRichard

Future City Concept by malta

Tommorrow City by ~tjkdys

Futuristic City by emi-s

Welcome to the future v2 by VINARTWORKS

Enzo’s Wok by Brosa

Future City Too by RobertDBrown

A near future by merl1ncz

City Chase by tiger1313

Upper City by James Paick

Neoclassical City by loppi

Future City Speedpaint WIP by atomhawk

The City of Lights by tigaer

Concept: Irontown by I-NetGraFX

Different world-different time by Caucasian-eagle

Welcome in the new age by Magic-Fox

The City Moliya In Green Valle by weiweihua

Futuristic city by kuroe702

Megastructure by Hideyoshi

Floating City by ShingYuan

City of Future by camilkuo

A near future 2 by merl1ncz

Dome City by PixelObsession

Raevona – Docking Towers by Antifan-Real

Future cityscape by !davpea1

Future City by RQuack

SciFi City by GutsBerserk

Sci-Fi City by TomEdwardsConcepts

Transia by JamesHillGallery

Ship Highway by PixelObsession

Strangled City by peacockpete

DaShop by BetelGeist

Future City by olivera-h

Untitled City Paint 1 by wildtimez

Megalopolis by MaxD-Art

In between steel giants by unfor54k3n

18 New and Free Fonts For Web Designers

AndrewG — Tue, 01 May 2012 21:23:24 +0000

It is obvious that Web designers do their best to make their sites better and more attractive to the visitors. When creating a site they must take into account every detail even the smallest and choosing a font you are going to use sometimes can bring you to a deadlock. We have previously showcased some great collections of free fonts and we are not going to stop there! We would like to present to you a really amazing collection of free download fonts collected from all over the web.
You can use some of these fonts for specific purposes and others can be used for general use. Feel free to visit our site to get more updates for our next font collections.
Warning: A font, like any other software, has a license attached to it, so you’d better check up the license before using them in your commercial works or other projects.

Villa Didot font by Stereotypes.de

The Idea behind the Villa Didot Typeface was to create a group of typefaces, that where used on the posters of the club villaWuller.

Download

Nougatine font by Fabien Laborie

Nougatine is a titling font inspired by the smell of freshly baked cookies. Delivered with 380 glyphs, many ligatures and a panel of alternative letters, it brings to you the power of making better combinations.

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Asche Desktop & Web Font by Tony Thomas

This unique desktop and web font is inspired by vintage industrial logo-types, and makes for a powerful headline font. It includes all common glyphs including lower and uppercase characters, numbers and symbols.

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Foundation Icon Fonts by ZURB

Custom icon sets that are stored in a handy web font. A couple lines of CSS and the right markup will get you going in no time.

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El Yazi font by Filiz Sahin

El Yazi Font is a handmade eps font. This type is free for personal and commercial use.

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Flexo Contour font by Ben Blom

Flexo Contour is a geometric display font, with humanistic warmth. It is a synthesis of the geometric and the humanistic. It has both mathematical straightforwardness, and humanistic refinement. Flexo Contour is part of the extended Flexo font family.

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Modesta font by Manuel Ramos

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Infinita font by Manuel Ramos

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Tellural font by Nymphont

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BallroomWaltz font by suttonfonts

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Mosaique font by CloutierFontes

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Muddy Tyres font by Saji Johny Kundukulam

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Home Square font by BC

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MuOnline font by Georgi

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Hype font by Nils Merkel

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Eyelevation Pro font by Aleksander Shevchuk

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Roboto font by Google Android Design

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Dirt2 Copperbolt font by Dirt2.com – SickCapital

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Web Design Inspirational Cocktail #32

AndrewG — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:26:50 +0000

Love & Luxe

Shake ‘n’ Bake

Playtend

Adline

Marco Rosella

IMPERO

Etienne Ledemay

Har Du Det I Deg?

Beyonce

Patrick Kunka

ACHE

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Stars of Front-end Development. JS Lovers.

Alexander Smolyaninov — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:29:43 +0000

This article is a continuation of the previous part about the most well-known and significant personalities in the world of front-end. This time I considered several names, which are known among the JS lovers.

John Resig

(Image credits: Rannie Turingan)

Personal web site: ejohn.org

At the age of 27 John already had time to leave one’s mark in the history of web. First of all he is known, as a creator of jQuery – the most popular js- library in the world (last rating according to W3Tech). His love to JS can be seen in all his biography. Within four years he worked in Mozilla Corporation, first in position of JavaScript evangelist, and after – as JavaScript Tool Developer. Exactly a year ago he leaved Mozilla, to join Khan Academy, where he became a leader of their Open Source activity and JS developments.

Except his basic work, Resig took part in development of various useful things, among which are FUEL (project for Firefox Plugin development), Processing.js (language for creation of visual effects), Sizzle (engine for CSS selectors), and also EnvJS and TestSwarm. Moreover, he wrote two books on JS – “Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja“(2011) and “Pro JavaScript Techniques“(2006). And also, John likes playing Starcraft 2(id: frowny.396, Silver Protoss)

Nicholas C. Zakas

(Image credits: Scott Schiller)

Personal web site: www.nczonline.net

Nicholas began his career as web master in a little software company, then he started working on UI design and prototyping, until 2006, when he moved to the Silicon Valley and joined Yahoo! In Yahoo! he has been working for five years and became a front-end tech leader of the main page yahoo.com. Directly participated in the development of Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) library, and also created Cookie Utility, Profiler and YUI Test. Now he is the proprietor of “Nicholas C. Zakas Consulting” – conducts lectures, trainings, speaks with reports etc.

As well as other web developers of such level, Zakas tries to carry his knowledge to the world with all accessible methods. In particular, he is an author of such books as Professional JavaScript for Web Developers and High Performance JavaScript, a co-author of Professional Ajax, in addition he writes articles on different resources – beginning from Sitepoint and ending with A List Apart. His most interesting articles are neatly kept in the special section of his web site. As for the live performances, he is often being invited as a speaker in the most different companies – from LinkedIn, Google and Netflix to NASA.

Nate Koechley

(Image credits: Drew McLellan)

Personal web site: nate.koechley.com

Nate is one of the first web developers in Yahoo!, working there from a 2001. If to take a look at his LinkedIn profile, it is possible to see his growth as a high quality professional in this area. It is also interesting to follow how were changing his positions in Yahoo! – Web Developer, Manager Web Development, Design Group, Senior Web Developer, Platform Design Team, User Experience and Design Group at Yahoo!, Senior Frontend Engineer, YUI Team, and, finally, his current position – Director, Design Architecture & Prototyping at Yahoo! As for his current activity, it concerns the development of open – source Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library. And when Nate does not work on YUI, he writes on YUIBlog and on his personal blog, propagandizes web-standards and makes reports all over the world – from lectures in National Taiwan University to trainings on Microsoft (MIX) and Adobe (MAX).

At the same time he remains an independent consultant. In particular, he was invited as a consultant to New York Times Digital, Netflix, PayPal, eBay, TiVo, Walmart, Oracle, Adobe and Microsoft. And of course his books – Nate took part in writing of “High Performance Web Sites“(O’Reilly, 2008), “Modular Web Design“(2009) and “Developing Large Web Applications“(O’Reilly, 2010). And the last interesting fact – in 2009 he got the first patent that is related to the new method of scaling web pages’ text.

Remy Sharp

(Image credits: Stefan Nitzsche)

Personal web site: remysharp.com

I learned about Remy Sharp, when I opened for myself a jQuery for Designers web site. In the About section I read his phrase: “I’ve worked with a few designers, and my reason for using jQuery is because I’m lazy. It’s easy to write and easy to read. It kills a lot of the tedious aspects of coding and makes things funs”. It was approximately the same, what I felt at that moment, therefore I took to him at once.

In 2009 he became a coordinator of Full Frontal – a conference on JavaScript, which was held in UK and became annual. A book “Introducing HTML5” was released in 2010, in which he was presented as the co-author of Bruce Lawson. Besides, he is one of the authors and editors of HTML5Doctor resource, a developer of JS Bin, HTML5 Demos and Snap Bird (JS- utility for searching on Twitter), is the member of jQuery team. And of course, he is a web-evangelist, loving JavaScript :)
To speak about his work place, it is possible to mention that he was not noticed as an employee of some large company, and rather vice versa – from a 2006 he manages his own company Left Logic, that works on web-development and trainings.

Jeremy Keith

(Image credits: David Thompson)

Personal web site: adactio.com

The name of this Irishman is probably known to you due to his books. At this moment Jeremy has got three books: HTML5 for Web Designers, DOM Scripting and Bulletproof Ajax. Now he works in Clearleft, and also is an administrator on microformats.org. Besides, for last three years Jeffrey is developing his brainchild – a huffduffer.com project (a service that facilitates the work with podcasts).

Alex Russell

(Image credits: Dustin Diaz)

Personal web site: infrequently.org

If you dealt with the Dojo library, then probably you are acquainted with Alex Russell, he was one of its creators in 2004. Now he works in Google. Being a software engineer he is working on Chrome Frame and open-source web platform. Also, he helped Google to standardize ECMAScript. Before Google he held a position of R&D Director in the SitePen startup, and also did the saturated user interfaces for JotSpot and Informatica, where he began to help developing Dojo. Moreover, Alex is an excellent speaker and you can see it for yourself by watching the videos with Google I/O : HTML5 & What’s Next, Learning to Love JavaScript and HTML5 Today with Google Chrome Frame.

The next representative from the world of front-end will be standing out a bit from those, whom I specified before. I simply forgot to add him to the previous list. Therefore I hope that no one will be against, if I will tell a bit about him in this part.

Douglas Crockford

(Image credits: Allen Rabinovich)

Personal web site: crockford.com

It is quite difficult to give complete information about this “Chuck Norris” in the world of JS in a few sentences. Douglas works in Yahoo!, where he is a main architect on JavaScript and heads the developments related to JS, in particular – YUI. In addition, he is a creator and popularize of JSON format, and also such useful things, as JSlint and JSmin. Whole pack of articles, reports, videos and other content related to JS is possible to find in the corresponding section of his web site.

Plus, he is the author of popular book JavaScript: The Good Parts. But it is the information that probably, many of you already know. However, not all know that for some time Crockford worked on computerization of Atari, Lucasfilm, and Paramount. When Lucasfilm Games worked on Maniac Mansion, the first game for NES, Douglas volunteered to work on it. This history has a whole section on Wikipedia. Crockford has his own story dedicated to this episode of his biography.

25 Creative Coming Soon Pages

AndrewG — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:55:43 +0000

If you considered to create any kind of application or a web site, or you simply decided to change the design of your current site, you should really think about having a nice and attractive coming soon page, as it might have a great impact on your future visitors and the traffic of your web site in general. The most common things you should include in your coming soon page are a short overview of what’s coming, a cool countdown timer (in case you have got a deadline for your project to be finished), newsletter/mailing list sign-up form or RSS feed. And in case you really want people to be amazed by your coming soon page, then you should certainly invent something creative and unusual for everyone to remember. In this roundup we present to you a comprehensive collection of 25 Creative Coming Soon Pages.

Freelancing Map

Casengo

Clarify

Vark.it

LearnStreet

Gusteu

Spotever

pleek.fm

sqwear

Ink Cartridge Recycling

Squire

PureAromaTea.com

ChoicePunch

wehavecooki.es

Type/Code

Human Writ.es

FireFly

Koma Studio

MySeeenApp

April/Zero

ThemeCobra

Kwanini?

Bournemouth Food and Drink Festival

JDStamps

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Web Design Inspiration Cocktails’ Section

Fresh PSD Web UI Elements for Designers

AndrewG — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:13:06 +0000

We always try to provide our readers with the useful and fresh resources! And as it is very important for each web designer to fill his own collection of different handy tools and other design connected elements, we do the great work for you, as we search the web and find the best means to make your workflow a bit easier. In this roundup we’ve gathered Fresh PSD Web UI Elements for Designers that you might not want to miss!

Pinterest Button & Icon Set

Download

Leather Mac App UI Kit

Minimalistic Resume PSD Set

Download

Account Setup Form

Download

Safari Browser Chrome

Download

Button UI Kit

Download

Crito UI

Download

Fresh UI Kit

Download

Twitter App Concept

Download

Black UI kit

Download

Music iPad app

Download

CSS3 UI Kit

Download

Twitter For Mac GUI

Download

iPad GUI PSD (Retina Display)

Download

Stylish User Interface Kit

Download

iPhone 4 UI Kit

Download

Silver UI Kit

Download

Aresio Web UI Kit

Download

Facebook Page Fan Timeline : GUI PSD

Download

Music Player

Download

Heads Up Display UI Kit

Download

Apple 27in LED Cinema Display

Download

iOS UI Elements

Download

Shiny UI Kit PSD

Download

Bundle of Navigation & Web Elements

Download

Wooden UI Kit

Download

Dark UI Element Set

Download

Myriad UI Kit

Download

Fully Layered Macbook Air

Download

Clean Gray UI Kit

Download

Hand Drawn UI Kit

Download

You might also be interested in..

60 Free UI Design Kits, Templates and Resources
40+ New PSD UI Kits

Minimalist Movie Posters. Part 3

AndrewG — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:45:44 +0000

Artists and designers usually try to create very attractive and colorful movie posters, so that the audience wouldn’t be able to look away for several seconds or sometimes even minutes. But quite often very loaded posters are not always making that impressive effect and here minimalistic posters’ design comes to the challenge! Minimalism is an art of showing much with little and this approach sometimes gives a lot more impressions. All you need is to use as few shapes as possible and make sure you apply some symbolic details, because the last one can make a really strong effect. To give you some ideas, we’ve gathered a nice collection of Minimalist Movie Posters.

Horror Minimalist Movie Posters by Belle Lurette

Minimalist posters by Swoboda

Minimalist Posters by Shoot The Glass

Minimalist Movie Posters by Dylan Dylanco

Minimalist Posters Ibraheem Youssef

You might also be interested in..

Minimalist Movie Posters. Part 1
Minimalist Movie Posters. Part 2
Funny Neon and Pictogram Movie Posters
Impressive Vector Movie Posters

Web Design Inspirational Cocktail #31

AndrewG — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:36:33 +0000

Biamar

Saucony K3

Lois Jeans 50th Anniversary

Super C

Bobadilium

12th of Never

Oliver Russell

Denise Chandler

Champell Harrison

Glamour.biz

Imp3rium

Charlie Brown Jr

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Collection of Fascinating Barcelona Photographs

AndrewG — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 23:21:42 +0000

In our previous roundup Breathtaking Photos of Paris we have travelled to this wonderful city only using our imagination, and today we will take you to another great and fantastic place – Barcelona! This metropolis is considered as the second largest city in Spain, after Madrid. Barcelona is a perfect place for those people who want to combine beach vacation (as Barcelona beach was listed as number one in a list of the top ten beach cities in the world according to National Geographic and Discovery Channel) with seeing different architectural masterpieces and spending time in the most beautiful parks. So, if you are inspired by Spanish culture and just like to travel and see different places, you are welcome to check out our collection of Fascinating Barcelona Photographs!

You might also be interested in..

Breathtaking Photos of Paris

Announcement: Winners of 1000 Business Cards

Stryker — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:28:05 +0000

On the 2nd of April we had a giveaway with 1800Postcards and according to it we announced that 1000 Business Cards would be given away to three randomly chosen participants who followed all instructions and took all the steps as it was written in the rules.

The lucky winners will receive 1000 Business Cards from a high-end commercial printing firm with a roster of Fortune 100 clients that includes Dior, Tiffany, Disney, American Express, Broadway Shows and most of the world’s leading brands. These companies demand nothing but the best in quality. To be specific, a quality standard called “G7”, which is only granted to printing firms that meet a very strict set of best practices and production quality.

On behalf of the Splashnology community, I’d like to congratulate the winners of this giveaway! The winners will receive emails from 1800Postcards containing information about their prize.

The Winners

Here are the three winners of 1000 Business Cards from 1800Postcards:

GradezIn
Andrew Grinchenko
Samir

To receive an email you should send us your valid email address to hi@splashnology.com.

Cool Textured Websites

AndrewG — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 15:23:37 +0000

A great variety of textures and patterns give designers a chance to implement all their ideas and decisions into life, to create some really classy design, in which all the elements supplement each other and make a result look complete and harmonious. But one should be very careful when combining several textures or patterns, as it is quite easy to spoil the whole design by placing non matching elements together. In this post we have assembled for your attention a collection of really Cool Textured Websites.

HostingPear

Bobadilium

Danger Brain

Launch Factory

Lebowski Film

Flint Boutique

BarCamp Bordeaux

Besser Leben mit Lehm

Havana Bar

Q&A Creative Agency

Miguel El Pellettero

Content Choreography

English Workshop

Сelebration Invitations

G’nosh

Loysel’s Toy

Amazee Labs

The Thomas Oliver Band

Ryans Cherf

Guga

Pulpfingers

Glorm

Putzengel

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Web Design Inspiration Cocktails’ Section

Stars of Front-end Development

Alexander Smolyaninov — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:48:08 +0000

In any profession there is a thin stratum of people who are really high quality specialists. And the area of front-end development is not an exception – it also has its personalities. People listen to their opinion, follow them in blogs and social networks and read their books. In the work process they generate different original decisions or techniques that instantly spread in the world of web development and remain actual for a long time. They create comfortable online services for a markup, write useful js-libraries, improve browsers, propagandize web-standards and render direct influence on their development. They can name themselves front-end engineer, front-end developer, web developer, web designer, UI Designer, browser compatibility expert or simply css lover, but for majority of us they are stars of front-end that make the internet look in a way we see it today. A lot of interesting reviews with decisions, techniques and news from the world of web-development often appear on the internet, signed by different authors, however far not all of us know anything about them except their names. I wanted to share with our readers some information about them.

Eric A. Meyer

(Image credits: Joshua Kulpa)

Personal website: meyerweb.com

American web designer who dedicates himself to the web for many years already. In due time he worked in Netscape. He is known for the propaganda of web-standards, had influence on Microsoft, when they implemented the modes of reverse compatibility in IE8. He wrote a number of popular in the world of web-development books, such as “Cascading Style Sheets : The Definitive Guide”, “Eric Meyer on CSS”. He is a co-founder of An Event Apart and Global Multimedia Protocols Group, and also an active participant of microformats.org and css-discuss.org. Likes to travel around the world. Eric not only speaks on different conferences but also arranges them. He is an author of famous reset.css from Eric Meyer.

Paul Irish

(Image credits: Andreas Øverland)

Personal website: paulirish.com

A young front-end developer from sunny San Francisco. His motto is “I make the www fun“. One of most productive web-developers at this moment, which was confirmed by reward “Developer of the Year 2011” on a version of .net awards. See for yourself: presently Paul occupies the post of developer in Google Chrome, he is also a participant of jQuery, Modernizr, CSS3 Please and HTML5 Boilerplate teams. He is a curator of HTML5 Rocks and creator of mothereffingtextshadow, mothereffinghsl, HTML5 Please, Move the Web Forward, Mothereffing Animated GIF and W3Fools. In addition, he likes to do useful video presentations and reports, and also he is a co-presenter of yayQuery Podcast.

Chris Coyier

(Image credits: chriscoyier)

Personal website: chriscoyier.net

Californian web-developer, owner and author of popular website http://css-tricks.com, each year he speaks with a good number of reports on different conferences, and gives not less interviews. Chris is a participant and developer in Digging into WordPress, wufoo.com, creator of such useful services as html-ipsum.com, HSLaExplorer, CSS3 ButtonMaker and ThePrintliminator, popular js-plugins – Anythingslider jQuery plugin and Perfect Fullpage Background Image.

Lea Verou

(Image credits: Krzychu Danek)

Personal website: lea.verou.me

The first woman is in this list. Greek woman Michaelia Komvouti – Verou known under more short name Lea Verou, she is new, however already sensational person in the world of front-end. In 2011 she became a finalist in the category of “Brilliant newcomer” on a version .net Awards 2011, and in the same year her report CSS3 Secrets was marked, as .net magazine’s 15 best talks of 2011. Lea comes with her reports on different conferences, writes popular articles on A List Apart, Smashing Magazine, 24 Ways and .net magazine. Her love to the web-standards, open source and CSS3 generated several cool online instruments among which you can find such as CSS3 test, -prefix-free and cubic-bezier.com

Jeffrey Zeldman

(Image credits: Jeffrey)

Personal website: zeldman.com

Jeffrey is one of the well-known web-designers in the world. It is difficult to name areas in web he did not attach his hand to. In 1998 he founded A List Apart, internet-magazine “for people that create web-sites”, which is enormously popular in the world of web-design and front-end development. The same year he, together with his friends, created “The Web Standards Project” a union of web-developers who fought for the acceptance of web-standards. They were able to influence on Microsoft and Netscape to support technologies and standards of W3C, finishing “War of Browsers”. His book Designing with Web Standards became the best seller and was translated into 13 languages. In 2001 from his website A List Apart he called the front-end developers from all around the world to give up the old techniques of markup and switch to creation of semantic code and active use of CSS. Now Jeffrey is often invited as a judge, to the conferences and institutes for giving lectures to the students.

Dan Cederholm

(Image credits: carsonworkshops)

Personal website: simplebits.com

The personality of Dan influenced me greatly – his book “Bulletproof Web Design” was the first book on a web-design I’ve read, and due to it I became interested in front-end and everything related it. But for Cederholm, maybe, now I would be a mediocre php-coder. Besides writing books, he is a founder of web-studio Simplebits and author of the same name blog. As the acknowledged expert on the fields of web-design, he worked with YouTube, Microsoft, Google, MTV, ESPN, Electronic Arts, Blogger, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine and many other companies. In a 2012 he already had time to get the TechFellow award in the nomination of Product Design & Marketing.

Peter-Paul Koch aka PPK

(Image credits: patrick h. lauke)

Personal website: quirksmode.org

When Peter (also known as ppk) was a student, there were no pre-conditions that he will become an important personality in the world of front-end – he studied Ancient History in University of Amsterdam and understood history of Roman Empire more, than HTML. Nevertheless, he started his professional activity in web in 1998. Having worked for a few months, he came to the conclusion that on a moment there was no website, which would give the exact and correct information about browsers compatibility. Therefore, the same year he decided to create it independently and begin testing the browsers. This project outgrew in QuirksMode.org, which was started in 2003. After that he began to work actively in the field of client development, and in 2007 he created an organization called “Fronteers” (frontend engineers), where initially the Dutch web-developers entered and which now numbers more than four hundred participants. The members of this organization conduct different meeting, including of the same name conference that is conducted annually from 2009. For those, who want to look through the themes of reports and level of participants, it is always possible to find videos on the internet, for example on Vimeo. In 2009 PPK stopped working on development under the standard desktop browsers and switched to the world of mobile web. As for his public activity, it is not limited with his website and Fronteers. In his LinkedIn profile it is indicated that he is a freelance front-end consultant. Probably, he is really good at it, because such companies as Vodafone, Microsoft, Opera, Google and Yahoo! used his consultations. He also writes articles for popular resources, for example, A List Apart and Digital Web Magazine, rides with reports all over the world and all in such spirit. And how not to mention his book? Peter has a writing experience it is his book ppk on JavaScript.

Afterword

It is far not all people who deserve to be named stars. In this article I tried to tell you about those, who influenced me greatly. For someone yet it can be quite another people, and you are welcome to share your ideas in the comments.

Collection of Amazing High-Detailed Pixelart

AndrewG — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:40:51 +0000

Some time ago we have posted a roundup 70+ Amazing High-Detailed Pixelart From Rod Hunt and eBoy Arts Inc. and in this post we want to share with you some new inspiring examples of Amazing High-Detailed Pixelart. In this collection we present to your attention the most colorful and interesting examples of this kind of digital art. To view the pictures in full size, simply click on them. Enjoy it and share your opinion in comments!

Megapont

Laurent Dochy & Ken Wuytack

Sergey Kostik

Totto Renna

Bugpixel.com

Army of Trolls

Dimitri Nikolaienko

Foolstown

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70+ Amazing High-Detailed Pixelart From Rod Hunt and eBoy Arts Inc.

Minimalist Movie Posters. Part 2

AndrewG — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:41:57 +0000

Minimal Posters by Sam Markiewicz

Minimalist Movie Posters by Adam Thompson

Movie Posters by Brett Thurman

Minimal Posters by Moxy Creative

Minimal Movie Posters by Grégoire GUILLEMIN

Minimal Movie Posters by Rishi Freeflow Bhardwaj

Minimal Posters by Edson Muzada

You might also be interested in..

Minimalist Movie Posters. Part 1
Funny Neon and Pictogram Movie Posters
Impressive Vector Movie Posters

Web Design Inspirational Cocktail #30

AndrewG — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 10:37:09 +0000

Guided

Liechenecker

WWF

ShopLocket

Ghost Horses

ABS-HD

Lend Your Leg

Pragmatic Mates

FancyRhino

Rory_McIlroy

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How to Implement in Code 5 Really Useful Responsive Design Patterns

Softlink — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 10:12:18 +0000

The time when we will pay far more attention to the responsive markup than we do it now is already not too far off. So I consider that it is necessary to be well prepared in this question when the time comes, or even to have clear idea of what is it and what it is used for.

I would like to say at once that the markup of the responsive patterns requires some different approach, than the markup of statics. We will code a “fixed” pattern and it will work everywhere and under any conditions. However, when implementing it into the responsive pattern we can run into some difficulties such as: block sizes and indentions, fonts and, eventually, the created markup does not allow us to manipulate the blocks in a way it is required by the design pattern. It is necessary to think over all these questions before the creation of responsive markup.

Let’s move from words to deeds

I will not describe every pattern, as the realization of basic elements is very similar, and I will take only one, most interesting pattern №4 from this article

We do have:

1) Logo;
2) Menus in a right overhead corner;
3) A block, consisting of text and picture;
4) Three columns, with a particular content in each of them.

For basis I took the general model everywhere, with 80% width, but not more than 960px. I divided everything on 3 large blocks: top, main and content.

There is no problems with the logo, it was placed above and let it hang there all the time.
And through float: right we send the menu to the right, setting a size in 60% from a general width.

.item {
    float: right;
    width: 60%;
}

We will line up the menu items in a row through float: left, not forgetting to set them a size and indentions:

.list {
    float: left;
    width: 24%;
    height: 50px;
    margin: 0 0 0 1%;
}

*As I did not add any content, then I specify the height almost everywhere. In the real project it is possible to rely upon the amount of content.

We set a 50% width for a text block:

.m-text {
    float: left;
    width: 50%;
    font-size: 20px;
    font-style: italic;
    line-height: 1.5em;
}

And I’ve sent the” picture” to the right through float: right, making a 40% width, in this way doing a supply in 10% between the blocks.

.m-image {
    float: right;
    width: 40%;
    min-height: 360px;
}

*I did not want to calculate the sizes for border – radius, therefore a circle will be square ;)

Now we do three columns through the float:

.c-block, .c-article, .c-comment {
    float: left;
    width: 30%;
}

Below I will explain why I use float all the time.

In columns we place the content by ordinary blocks. I think, everything is quite simple here. Our pattern is ready and we begin the transformations.

Almost in all templates I used two types of screen sizes: 600 and 800 pixels, but it is not restricted to hang the necessary behavior on every pixel we like.

So, at a width of 800px we will have on the right places a logo, menu, text block and picture. We do not touch them. They have a rubber sizes, and at such resolution all will remain fully visible and readable. And the block with “banners” on the left, accepted a horizontal position and placed all its inner blocks in one line.

For this purpose at sizes @media screen and (min – width: 600px) and (max – width: 800px). We abolish it float and we stretch it on all width:

.c-block {
            float: none;
            width: 100%;
            margin: 0 0 30px 0;
            overflow:  hidden;
        }

For the inner blocks, vice versa, we apply float and set the necessary sizes:

.b-list {
            float: left;
            width: 32%;
            margin: 0 0 0 2%;
        }

.b-list:first-child {
            margin: 0;
        }

We leave the remaining two columns in vertical position, only stretching on the half of general width:

.c-article {
            width: 48%;
            margin: 0;
        }

.c-comment {
            width: 48%;
            margin: 0 0 0 4%;
        }

We get the result!

The next width is 600 pixels: @media screen and (max – width: 600px) A lot more transformations appear here.

At first we displace a menu beneath the logo, taking away at both float and letting it stretch in all width (in fact it is already not very large for 4th points).

.logo {
            float: none;
        }
.item {
            float: none;
            width: 100%;
            margin: 30px 0 0;
        }

We also stretch the block with text on all width and as usual take away the float:

.m-text {
            float: none;
            width: 100%;
            margin: 0 0 40px 0;
        }

And we put the block with the picture “beneath it”, removing float:

.m-image {
            float: none;
            width: 80%;
            margin: 0 auto;
        }

Picture’s width, as we remember, was set initially, but here we will change it a bit, for it to look better.

Banners. A block with banners again took the vertical position, and pictures stretched on all width. Thus we do not need to write code for this purpose, as they initially stand in a necessary variant.

And blocks with «the articles” and ” comments” now become the competent owners of all width of the layout:

.c-article {
            float: none;
            width: 100%;
            margin: 0 0 30px 0;
        }

.c-comment {
            float: none;
            width: 100%;
            margin: 0;
        }

Thus, we got the fully vertical structure of the page, and our layout became responsive.

Notes

The reasons I used float.

I myself love inline blocks more than anything. But as we know, inline blocks have a feature to take into account blanks in a width between the blocks . We even know how to work with them. But we need to remove only blanks, but not indentions between blocks, that is why the vast majority of methods are useless here.
Remained in a line-up font – size: 0; and comments between blocks.

font-size: 0;

All would be good in statics. And for Safari yet was hanged the display: table. But we have a «living” layout and very often scalable units (em) are used in such markup.

Because of the zero value of the parent’s font – size, we cannot apply scalable length units to the descendants, as they push off from the heritable font size and accordingly, in our case it is zero.

Though I didn’t use pixels for the sizes, I swept away this method and decided to do the example more versatile.

Comments between the blocks\physical deleting of blanks between the blocks.

I almost never use such methods, because it is hard to read the code. And in general, it is not always stable, if you forgot something everything will mix up.

In general, it is possible to use inline blocks, but in some cases it’s better to find a compromise

Styles are single and they are inherited!

As one could notice, in some cases we did not specify the properties for layout transformations and everything took the positions we wanted it to take. Initial styles of blocks were used.

It is needed to understand that by means of media queries we do not create the fundamentally updated version of the website with CSS, but we only change or redefine the styles written above. We operate only with the classes set initially. That’s the point. As I wrote in the introduction, an adaptive markup requires another approach. It is necessary to think over in advance about how our website will look, what and where will be displaced and transformed, what marking to write and what styles to use. Afterwards, all these points will help to shorten the amount of code at the change of structure.

Resolutions and their amount.

By means of media queries we can create a lot of transformations. But, as a rule, typical values are mainly used.

Mobiles:

240*320
320*480\240
480*800

Tablets:

800*600\480
1024*768\600

PC’s and notebooks:

From 1024 pixels (we won’t take into account the old ones).

So for each of these resolutions we can create ” the behavior” of marking. Thus, here it is necessary to remember about the inheritance of properties.

For example, here: @media screen and (min – width: 600px) and (max – width: 800px) we specified two values at once. Thus, we can do transformations, which to the best advantage will fit in the sizes of the screen from 600 to 800 pixels.

If in this case you will not specify the minimal size, then at writing of styles, for example, for 320 pixels, the styles written for max – width: 800px will be taken into account, in fact 320 obviously fitted in 800. Here are two ways to solve it:

1) To redefine properties for less resolutions (and why do we need a bunch of superfluous code?).
2) To use double values in media queries. Thus, we can conduct point transformations of our layout for determined screen sizes.

However, specifying of only one parameter can be justified. For example, when we need the same position of block\its sizes for all resolutions. We set these parameters one time and forget about it.
One can notice that at the change of browser window almost all transformations take place fluently. It can be done by adding of the following transition:

*{
    -webkit-transition: all 0.3s ease;
    -moz-transition: all 0.3s ease;
    -o-transition: all 0.3s ease;
    -ms-transition: all 0.3s ease;
    transition: all 0.3s ease;
}

I did this only for the reasons of beauty. I don’t recommend doing that in the real projects.

Conclusion

Services I use for viewing in different resolutions (well for the sake of good order, it might be useful to someone).

http://quirktools.com/
http://viewlike.us/

Pattern examples

First, second, third, fourth, fifth.
Everything was checked in the following browsers: Chrome 17.0.963.83 m, Firefox 11.0, Opera 11.62, Safari 5.1.4, IE 9. All under Windows 7. And on several mobile devices.

Meet the Designer: Interview with Jorge Rigabert del Río

AndrewG — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:33:08 +0000

Recently, we had a great communication with a really creative and interesting person and web designer Jorge Rigabert del Rio. In interview with us he shared a lot of interesting ideas and we think it might be a good new experience to our readers to learn more about this successful young web designer.

Please, tell us few words about yourself.

This is always the most difficult question, but here we go:

My name is Jorge Rigabert, I was born 28 years ago in Zaragoza, city of wind. Actually I work as UX Manager & Art Director at www.izenius.com and I also do some freelance projects as www.jorgerigabert.com. May sound as a topic, but, yeah, I love design, but not less than literature, damned rock’n’roll and gin&tonics)

How you got started in web design? Why did you choose this area?

When I was a child, I always amused to do covers for the tapes I recorded from the radio, I used to use a thousand effects and typographies. It was really awful, but it made me fun, and aroused curiosity.

Since then, I never stopped doing a thousand tests, my first posters and, what was a hobby, I thought it could became a job. I was wrong, I wouldn´t make a living as a poster designer. And then, I noticed on web, 7 years ago, I realized than for one elegant website you saw, you found a million of them that were really horrible, impossible to use. That’s where I saw I could find a gap for myself there, then I went through a small course where I learnt the HTML basics and, since then, I haven’t stopped studying and learning. Us, who have been years working as web designers, I think we all agree that we all started because of a bunch of coincidences. In lots of countries there aren’t even today educated or regulated studies for this. I think, most of us are, to a great extent, self-taught designers.

How do you organize your working process thus, to use time maximally effectively and at the same time to keep the interest for your work?

Though I follow some process depending on the development stage, my organization has always been kind of chaotic. I don’t conceive design as something lineal, but as a whole set of details. I can be illustrating the funniest icons for a website home, but, if for instance, an idea comes out for improving some boring form, I would immediately work on it. If you really like your job, it follows you everywhere, you would always put a thousand eyes on everything you see, it even bothers you if your street’s bakery is bad signed.

It might be very interesting for the beginning web designers, to know where you get the inspiration for your projects. How the ideas come into your mind? How does the process look from an initial idea to the complete large project?

This is another topic, which, in my case, it’s also confirmed, because it is true that inspiration appears in each corner you run into. I do visit design galleries to see how do other partners, who are really good and very inspiring, work. But that’s only a small part. Navigating through the web, walking by the streets or even in the supermarket queue, there’s always things that capture your attention, which you see you can improve them, which give you an idea.

After all, web isn’t unconnected to day-to-day life, the great majority of the things you daily see can be applied to web experience and enrich it.

What would you recommend to the young designers? Where to start? How to develop and enhance one’s skills? What literature, video tutorials or web resources could you advise to beginners?

My only advice is to follow one’s instincts. If they know how to identify what they really excite, then won’t stop growing. Must not stop practicing ever, never stop looking for, it doesn’t matter rather if it’s in books, video tutorials or blogs, what really matters is to feed yourself from anything that can contribute, fulfill or improve you.

What is your favorite book?

I can’t choose a favorite book, there have been loads of them which deeply marked my life, and couldn’t really choose one of them. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy ,Toole or The Flying Inn by G.K. Chesterton made me laugh as few have done. The Society of the Spectacle from Guy Debord really impressed me and racked my brain. Luces de Bohemia from Valle-Inclán is a theatre masterpiece and, to mention something more actual Dublinesca from Vila-Matas appears me to be an essential from the last years. There are lots, to many to review, I can’t, definitively, quote just one book.

What’s your favorite part of the creative process?

The early steps of a project are which I enjoy the most. They might be the hardest of all, but they’re also the most gratifying.

At that moment, when somebody get’s in touch with you with an idea and you start from blank paper, you’ve got everything to do and don’t really know which way to go. Until you start reaching the right answers and get on with it. Yeah, that’s a great moment.

Do you have any efficient methods of finding/attracting web design clients?

I haven’t got a secret recipe but I think that it’s really important to get your work known everywhere, make it speak about you and that it speaks well. Being reviewed on specialized media, galleries and so on, obviously gives you that visibility plus and makes easier for people to contact you. But, in the end, the most important thing is that your costumers are satisfied, that will always open you new doors and opportunities.

Mac or PC, why?

Mac, of course. Some years ago I got an iPod for present and, from the moment I tried it I got astonished seeing how easy it was to use in comparison to any other mp3 player. You didn’t have to read the instructions or try the trial and error system, simply, since the beginning you knew what it did and how it was done. That made me question if the same thing would happen with computers, so, I bought my first iMac to check it myself. That was years ago, and for the moment, if nobody proofs me I’m wrong, I haven’t changed platform. And it isn’t in my mind doing that.

What skills should possess a modern and successful web designer?

I think you should ask one of those, but, if you want my opinion, you’ve got to be always updated. The world moves at vertiginous speed and there are always coming up new concepts or technologies. If you aren’t constantly learning, it’s a way to lose your train easily.

I think it’s always important to know what your skills are, and to exploit them. And there where you can’t reach, get yourself surrounded by cleverer people than you and people who do things that you can’t do. There’s no better way to grow.

What changes would you like to see in the design community in the next 5 years?

In my opinion, design community is very vivid now. There’s loads of professionals doing awesome projects and doing them really well. Although, it’s true I would like, on the next years, for design to be better valued. It’s true that, as time goes by, the design winning its reputation step-by-step, but there are still too many people who try to hire design in bulk, unknowing what it really means. Of course, open contests to design a logo for 15 bucks, don’t really help at all, I think design is something more serious.

Photoshop or Fireworks for Web Design?

I know that Fireworks, lately, is winning loads of popularity, but, for me, Photoshop, and always Photoshop. There’s no other program in which I can work as fast and in which I can feel as comfortable.

How do you think, what trends in web design will be popular in 2012?

I am, indeed, a true disaster on doing predictions, but I’ll try.

It is not that web is on its way on being at everyday life fields, otherwise that’s yet a reality. It is not about designing a web for screens, there’s a continue info transfer onto mobile devices, being those smartphones or tablets. Although it isn’t realized in my own web projects (I always run out of time) Responsive design is yet a reality and I think that at UI level is going to be all more unified, inheriting loads of concepts and the aesthetic part from mobile applications). It is not ruled out that in some time we’ll be optimizing web for new smartTV’s that are to come soon. Anyway, I think we’ll go a little bit crazier.

In our humble opinion, your web site is one of the best personal portfolio sites of 2011! It has colorful style, bold typography, HTML5, page scrolling, fixed navigation, circular elements, illustrations and photos and that is a striking example of all in one 2011 trends in one site. Everything looks very organic! We are very interested in learning more about the creation of www.jorgerigabert.com design.

Firstly, thank you very much for appreciating my work in that way, it’s really gratifying.

www.jorgerigabert.com development was a very funny and enriching process, but also long and sometimes even hard, it’s true that there’s no worse client than oneself.

I hadn’t as much time as I would have liked because I had to combine it with my job, so I had really few hours a day.

The first month, basically consisted on surfing as crazy and make note on a TextEdit of about 200 websites which had details I liked. When I made it clear, I took paper and pencil and later did it with Photoshop. When I had it almost done, I came out with another idea which would take me to another new and better idea, and I had to start all over again. And so on. Each part I designed, gave me new ideas to other area I had already done, so I was constantly doing and redoing. To get the idea, the last files I saved I think they were home.22.psd and works.13.psd. It was a little bit crazy, but it was the only project I had no deadline…

As for the code level, this project helped me to experiment and learn a lot about HTML5 and CSS3, I couldn’t have found better school. About JavaScript I couldn’t have done nothing even near without great @jdeiviz gorgeous help.

And so we are with the thanks and credits I would also like to thank to @rtayar and @GuillermoValls for their great job done with SEO.

And of course thank you all for this interview.

Thank you Jorge for such an informative and entertaining interview! I should say it’s the most interesting and fun interview we had! I hope our readers will appreciate it too. We wish you to learn even more new approaches and ideas in web design field, to enhance your well-developed skills and a lot of exciting and cool projects!

To learn more about Jorge Rigabert del Río you can visit this links:

Official site: http://www.jorgerigabert.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/jrigabert
Dribbble: http://dribbble.com/jrigabert
Behance: http://www.behance.net/jorgerigabert

See other interviews

7 Steps to Get Prepared for IE10 and Windows 8

Constantin Kichinsky — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:06:47 +0000

As you, certainly, already know, Windows 8 Consumer Preview was released on February, 29, and together with it the 5th platform preview version of Internet Explorer 10. In this article I am going to talk about how to prepare for the updated version of IE. Although, the narration will be mainly about IE10, many of these advices are applicable to other browsers, including the other platforms.

1. Use

First and the most important thing to start with is to make sure that all pages you give are with correct doctype. In the world of html5 it is one small and very simple line:

This must be a first-ever line you write. If the template of your page is generated automatically by the development tools and there is no such line, correct the template. If your CMS gives pages without doctype, you should renew the templates you use.

I will repeat myself, it is a very simple step and however, it is extraordinarily important. Correct doctype tells a browser, how it must process the content of a page. In case when IE9 and IE10 don’t have a doctype they switch to quirks mode.

Many new possibilities do not work in the compatibility mode of IE9, including canvas, audio, video and CSS3 possibilities. In the compatibility mode of IE10 the mechanism described in the specification of HTML5 is used: it is the same standard mode, but with the imposed corrections of compatibility, described in a specification, that also corresponds to the behavior of other browsers.

(I will remind that the specification of HTML5, in addition to all other, contains the rules of how web pages are rendered in browsers, including, the mode of compatibility. Examples: case-sensitivity, forms, images of content representation.)

In what mode does my page work?

Through DevTools(F12) you can look up in what mode your website is displayed:

The Standards and Quirks modes conform to the specification of HTML5.
IE10 also supports quirks mode of IE5 for websites without the doctype, which work in the mode of compatibility (compatibility view), and websites, obviously specifying the necessity of such mode through meta tags with X – UA – Compatible:

2. Work out the compatibility problems

Besides the wrong doctype, there can be other reasons, why a concrete website by default is displayed in a non-standard mode:

• A web-site is indicated in the compatibility list, used by IE. As a rule, it is popular websites for which developers set the mode of compatibility, or users often do it manually to improve the displaying. Procedure of removing holder’s site from the Compatibility View List is described on MSDN.
• The wrong doctype is used.
• One or another mode is specified on a page via X-UA – Compatible meta tag.

And even if everything is all right with doctype and compatibility mode, it does not mean that a website will completely work correctly in IE10. For example, a website can use a so-called browser sniffing, determining a browser via the user agent line or other signs and giving a different code to different browsers.

Or, let us say, a website can use an out-of-date library, which used bug or special hack in the old versions of IE, but stopped working correctly in an updated version with fixed bugs.

There can be a great number of such reasons, and, to make the process of defining the possible sources of errors simpler, we have a special instrument – inspector of compatibility (compat inspector).

Compat inspector

An inspector is a library on JavaScript that can be easily added on the page:

After that the loaded script analyzes page for the possible problems and gives a summary view in the upper right corner of the page:

Click on this view to expand it and obtain detailed information about each detected issue with links to relevant documentation:

How “to add” inspector of compatibility on somebody else’s website?

If you want to try inspector of compatibility on somebody else’s website, or on your own, but not making any alteration in the code of a website, it is also possible.

For this purpose you need to set Fiddler and add to it a snippet (to make the changes in the rules of rendering through Rules -> Customize Rules…). After that Fiddler will be able to paste the code of inspector into the body of pages locally on your computer.

Useful links: inspector of compatibility and instruction.

3. Detect features, but not a browser

This theme often comes into question, but nevertheless it will not be superfluous to remind about it once again. The more browsers’ behavior becomes standard, the more new features appear and the quicker the browsers are being updated, the more important becomes that web developers were guided by the browsers’ features and their presence when creating websites and web applications, but not by the concrete browsers and their versions.

Yes:

Detection of features. Check, whether a browser supports the necessary methods and properties before the usage.

Detection of behavior. Test it, to find out whether there are any known problems, before applying roundabout decisions.

No:

Detection of concrete browsers. Do not use the identifiers of browser (for example, user agent line) to adjust the behavior.

Disconfirmed suppositions. If you checked only one feature, it does not mean yet that the other will work.

Adjusting to a concrete browser can seem a reasonable decision only in a short-term prospect, however, in the real decisions for end user it greatly limits the adaptive possibilities of pages, since that website can stop working with the appearance of an updated browser’s version (new possibilities, corrections of errors, changes in standards etc.), and in the end the roundabout paths used here may seem superfluous and ineffective.

The use of modernizr is a good starting point.

Conditional Comments

Many of you, certainly, are acquainted with the conditional comments for IE allowing inserting one or another code for the different versions of IE. I suppose that many people ran into situations, when conditional comments were inserted incorrectly, as a result, for example, a website knew only about IE7 and 8, giving to the all other versions of IE (including new) the marking for IE6.

Seems familiar? I have news for you:

Everything is correct: IE10 ignores conditional comments. You can continue to use them for previous versions of IE, however, for more modern browsers it is necessary to use detection of browser’s possibilities (feature detection).

4. Provide mode without plugins

If you hear about this for the first time, then welcome to the severe reality. It is important that your website or your web application remained functional and decided the assigned tasks even at disabled plugins. It concerns Flash, Silverlight and any other extensions (for example, those which are based on ActiveX).

If previously you developed websites for iOS- devices, you might be acquainted with such situation. In Windows 8 IE10 is presented in two modes: for a desktop with all extensions set by a user and in the metro- mode with disabled extensions.

User can easily switch from the metro- mode to the desktop mode, however, it is senseless to show him notifications like «install Flash Player plugin” – it will not help him.

It is recommended to do the following:

• To provide for an alternative decision for realization of functional that at this moment requires plugins. For example, for playing Audio/Video and graphics it is possible to use HTML5 possibilities; for advertisement banners it is to give an alternative as an image.
• To reconsider the work of website, if it is to a considerable degree depends on the use of plugins: to move toward modern web-standards, or switch to the creation of alternative application as Metro for Windows Store.
• To give out a correct notification if there is a necessity to use any extensions, offering user to switch to the desktop mode.

5. Add prefixes, where it is necessary and watch the standards attentively

I am not going to talk about whether it is good or bad to use prefixes, however, at this moment we should take it for granted. Browser prefixes allow different developers realize the support of developing and not very stable possibilities until the final acceptance of one or another specification (even if achieving the status of Candidate Recommendation) and get reviews on realization from a community.

If you want to use new possibilities in IE10, do not forget to renew the code, adding properties and methods with necessary prefixes for all basic engines (for example, – ms – for css- properties in IE) and for the future a variant without prefixes for more or less stable possibilities.

I will remind that a lot of new possibilities were added to IE9, and yet even more to IE10:

And to find out more about how to develop with the use of prefixes you can see, for example, the article of A Best Practice for Programming with Vendor Prefixes and library –of-prefix-free from Lea Verou.

6. Design for different screen resolutions

In the article “On the sails of HTML5. How new technologies change a modern web” I’ve already mentioned that the dream of many web developers that screen sizes and resolutions will only grow, was thoroughly scattered, running into mobile and tablet scenarios, popularity of which already compelled to revise many approaches in development of websites and web applications.

Responsive design is a combination of two cherished words, on which you need to search, to know, how to obtain flexibility in relation to different resolutions and screen sizes.

Concerning Windows 8, you should be ready for two basic moments:

1. To the large variety of devices of quite different form factors: from relatively small tablets to the large screens of monitors and panels.
2. Snapped-mode of applications operation similar to metro, including IE10.

Variety of screens

The recommended minimal screen size for Windows 8 is 1366×768, in this case Snap function, which is described below, will work. For applications similar to Metro the minimal requirement is 1024×768. A website in IE10, working in Metro- mode, occupies the screen wholly.

However, taking into account that a desktop browser can work on lower resolutions (for example, 800×600 or 1024×600), the necessity to consider smaller resolutions still remains.

If the screen resolution is more than you expected and your website does not take it into account, for example, it leaves a large empty space on the right with left alignment, it will not be pleasant if the user sees the empty half of a screen. If you set a strict size of the text and don’t take into account the sizes of device, it might happen so that on the large screen the text will be too small.

The same thing is with the size of graphics and necessity of its scaling on the large screens (using the different sets of bit-mapped graphics, or using SVG).

Responsive design. CSS3 Media Queries. Bing.

Snapping

In some technical aspects this story is similar to the task of development of general decision for desktop and mobile scenarios. The function of Snap in Windows 8 allows fixing on the one side (on the right or on the left) an application like Metro, for it to be permanently on the screen:

In such state there is a space width taken under a website, which equals 320px , that looks like mobile scenarios and also accessible for display adjustment by means of CSS3 Media Queries.

7. Develop your website for multi-touch, mouse and keyboard inputs

Finally, do not forget about how a user will interact with your website (regardless, whether he uses desktop or metro- mode of Internet Explorer). He can use a mouse and keyboard, or he can use his fingers.

The last thing means that it’s time to think, whether it is comfortable to work with your website or web application, using the usual way of input.
On the whole, for the websites it is possible to apply the recommendations that used for the ordinary applications, which are oriented to support the multi-touch input (including mobile applications for different platforms): importance of quick visual reaction, minimal sizes of targets and spaces between them, overlap areas etc.

From the technical point of view, I recommend to pay attention to these two articles: Touch Input for IE10 and Metro style Apps and Handling Multi-touch and Mouse Input in All Browsers.

Summary

I will repeat the most important points once again, to be well-prepared in case you will need it:

• Use the correct doctype
• Check the rendering mode and possible problems by means of compatibility inspector
• Switch to the approach of “feature detection”
• Think what will user see with the absence of plugins
• Add ms- prefixes for experimental possibilities and alternatives without prefixes for the future
• Prepare for the different screen sizes and display modes
• Allow the user to work comfortably with your website or web application, using the multi-touch input

To read original article in Russian click here.

Giveaway: Win 1000 Business Cards for Free!

AndrewG — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 07:25:10 +0000

1800Postcards.com is offering you the opportunity to win 1000 custom business cards!

So why trust 1800Postcards.com with your design work?
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1800Postcards produces your print work in the same facilities, with the same press-men and production staff, and adheres to the same quality standards as high-end commercial jobs. The only difference is that your job is “gang printed” or run together with other 1800Postcard clients, which is the secret of every online printing company and why they can be so cheap in pricing. However, 1800Postcards.com just brought it up to an almost unreasonable level of quality :) But what if you don’t need business cards? Well they’re capable of more than just business card printing. They offer brochures, postcards, flyers, posters, banners, stickers and pretty much any custom work your creative mind can imagine.

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