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28 March 2012 0 Comments

Redesigning With Personality

   We are very happy to present a sample chapter from the upcoming printed Smashing Book #3, written by Aarron Walter. In this chapter, Aarron explains how sharing our personalities can help us create lasting relationships with users, and how it can improve the bottom line of our business. The sample is also available for [...]

27 March 2012 0 Comments

Can User Experience Be Beautiful? An Analysis Of Navigation In Portfolio Websites

   When users land on your website, they typically read the content available. Then, the next thing that they will do is to try and familiarize themselves with your website. Most of the time this involves looking for navigation. In this article, I’ll be analyzing the navigation elements of a particular category of websites, i.e. [...]

24 March 2012 0 Comments

Useful WordPress Tools, Themes And Plugins

   If you’re looking for some great ways to improve your WordPress workflow, read on for a massive collection of free themes, plugins, tools and tutorials. These resources were all linked via the Smashing Magazine Twitter stream, Facebook stream, and other social-media streams around the Web. These awesome resources have now been organized and consolidated [...]

23 March 2012 0 Comments

Device-Agnostic Approach To Responsive Web Design

   This is a different take on Responsive Web design. This article discusses how we can better embrace what the Web is about by ignoring the big elephant in the room; that is, how we can rely on media queries and breakpoints without any concern for devices. The Challenge Let’s start our journey by looking [...]

22 March 2012 0 Comments

The Elements Of Navigation

   When users look for information, they have a goal and are on a mission. Even before you started to read this article, chances are you did because you either had the implicit goal of checking what’s new on Smashing Magazine, or had the explicit goal of finding information about “Navigation Design”. After a couple [...]

22 March 2012 0 Comments

Weird And Wonderful, Yet Still Illegible

   First a question (or perhaps a Freudian jab at your subconscious): What does this shape represent? Could it be a trowel, a duck, an ornamental motif, or a seed-pod? I know, Aladdin’s Lamp! What if I told you it was an alphabetic character? What alphabet would you assign to it? Cham? Telugu? Perhaps it [...]

20 March 2012 0 Comments

Gridpak: The Responsive Grid Generator

   This article is the fifth in our new series that introduces the latest, useful and freely available tools and techniques, developed and released by active members of the Web design community. The first article covered PrefixFree; the second introduced Foundation, a responsive framework; the third presented Sisyphus.js, a library for Gmail-like client-side drafts and [...]

20 March 2012 0 Comments

Gridpak: The Responsive Grid Generator

   This article is the fifth in our new series that introduces the latest, useful and freely available tools and techniques, developed and released by active members of the Web design community. The first article covered PrefixFree; the second introduced Foundation, a responsive framework; the third presented Sisyphus.js, a library for Gmail-like client-side drafts and [...]

17 March 2012 0 Comments

The Art Of Content Marketing

   A few months ago I went to collect a friend from hospital. Arriving early, I entered the waiting room and noticed in-house magazines stacked by the door. I picked one up, grabbed a coffee and took a seat. The magazine read like a very long press release, blabbering on about patient-centric care and employee [...]

16 March 2012 0 Comments

Symptoms Of An Epidemic: Web Design Trends

   Since Elliot Jay Stocks so poignantly told us to destroy the Web 2.0 look, we’ve witnessed a de-shinification of the Web, with fewer glass buttons, beveled edges, reflections, special-offer badges, vulgar gradients with vibrant colors and diagonal background patterns. The transformation has been welcomed with relief by all but the most hardened gloss-enthusiasts. However, [...]

16 March 2012 0 Comments

Symptoms Of An Epidemic: Web Design Trends

   Since Elliot Jay Stocks so poignantly told us to destroy the Web 2.0 look, we’ve witnessed a de-shinification of the Web, with fewer glass buttons, beveled edges, reflections, special-offer badges, vulgar gradients with vibrant colors and diagonal background patterns. The transformation has been welcomed with relief by all but the most hardened gloss-enthusiasts. However, [...]

16 March 2012 0 Comments

Symptoms Of An Epidemic: Web Design Trends

   Since Elliot Jay Stocks so poignantly told us to destroy the Web 2.0 look, we’ve witnessed a de-shinification of the Web, with fewer glass buttons, beveled edges, reflections, special-offer badges, vulgar gradients with vibrant colors and diagonal background patterns. The transformation has been welcomed with relief by all but the most hardened gloss-enthusiasts. However, [...]