If you’ve been assigned to design or provide the architecture for a large e-commerce project or other information-heavy website whose success depends on content findability, it is vital that the design and layout of the search functionality for that website is considered carefully.
The search results page is the prime focus of the search experience, and can make or break a site’s conversion rates. Therefore, bridging the gap between a user and the content or products they seek is a crucial factor in the success of any large website. The responsibility to design an effective search results page is best considered after a thorough examination of some of the features and functions found on search results pages from a number of popular niches.
In this article, we’ll look at a number of trends and practices incorporated on a variety of websites. From this examination, we’ll conclude with a summary of the best practices learned from the examples those sites have set. [Detail]
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
jQuery Tools: The missing UI library for the Web
jQuery Tools is a collection of the most important user interface components for the web. These are tabs, accordions, tooltips, overlays and scrollables. They can dramatically improve the usability and responsiveness of your site. They mainly focus on presenting information and visual appeal. After all, this is exactly what most websites desperately want: to present their content to the reader in an easy and visually pleasing manner. [Detail]
Inspirational Showcase of Business Card Websites
The term ‘business card website’ has become widely associated with the popular style of website that has cropped up on the personal domains of designers and developers. The site is essentially a simple, single page design that displays personal information, contact details and links through to other social profiles, much like a traditional tactile business card is used to display basic information.
Business card websites come in all shapes and sizes, but popular charactersitics include a compact, lightweight design, often small in size. Business card sites also tend to make use of Javascript to enhance the user experience and are commonly designed with a fresh take on the interface, taking inspiration from the clean style of Apple’s OSX.
Let’s take a look at an inspiring collection of examples, each with an individual twist on the original business card idea. [Detail]
Business card websites come in all shapes and sizes, but popular charactersitics include a compact, lightweight design, often small in size. Business card sites also tend to make use of Javascript to enhance the user experience and are commonly designed with a fresh take on the interface, taking inspiration from the clean style of Apple’s OSX.
Let’s take a look at an inspiring collection of examples, each with an individual twist on the original business card idea. [Detail]
Sunday, September 27, 2009
How To Find Time For… Everything!
Time management is one of the most important skills a freelance worker can learn. With a good time management system you can easily find the time to do the things that are important to you, whether in your professional or personal life.
Successful time management can be challenging, especially to those who are new to freelancing or being self-employed. When you have a boss telling you what to do and when to do it by, it’s much easier to prioritize and figure out what needs to be done and when. But when you’re not only dealing with client deadlines but also all of the day-to-day parts of running a business, on top of trying to maintain some sort of life outside of work, time management gets a whole lot trickier. [Detail]
Successful time management can be challenging, especially to those who are new to freelancing or being self-employed. When you have a boss telling you what to do and when to do it by, it’s much easier to prioritize and figure out what needs to be done and when. But when you’re not only dealing with client deadlines but also all of the day-to-day parts of running a business, on top of trying to maintain some sort of life outside of work, time management gets a whole lot trickier. [Detail]
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Beautiful Examples of Kinetic Photography
When you hear the word ‘kinetic‘ for the first time, probably the first thing that comes to your mind is motion. Kinetic Photography, also known as ‘camera tossing‘, is a technique of shooting photos with the actual physical movement of the camera. However, it does not necessarily involve tossing of the camera — you can also shake, bounce, swing or spin it; the goal of the technique is to obtain unpredictable results which are sometimes fascinating, always abstract and rarely boring. [Detail]
Line25 Sites of the Week for September 25th 2009
Line25 Sites of the Week is a weekly roundup of the most outstanding website designs. In this week’s collection, we have designs from Rick Nunn, Ride Oregon, Toggle, May and Subernova. [Detail]
Friday, September 25, 2009
10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
Everyone would agree that usability is an important aspect of Web design. Whether you’re working on a portfolio website, online store or Web app, making your pages easy and enjoyable for your visitors to use is key. Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work. Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines that may help you improve the user experience on your websites. [Detail]
Back-to-School With 40 Excellent Adobe Illustrator Tutorials
Learning is a process which continues throughout the life of an artist, graphic designer, and illustrator. Along the way, designers find the task of mastering Adobe Illustrator a large obstacle which requires practice and experience in using the vector-based application. Practice comes in the form of tutorials, which offer tips, tricks, and artistic styles from other designers who have mastered certain techniques based on their experience.
From these tutorials, a designer can polish their skillsets on a variety of topics which will strengthen their own artwork. Sometimes a simple tutorial has tips which may have been overlooked based on the subject of the tutorial. By looking past the subjects of the tutorials, an endless array of learning opportunities exist. Essentially, the tutorials become not only a teacher but a “class” which a designer can repeat as often as necessary to refine their skills. [Detail]
From these tutorials, a designer can polish their skillsets on a variety of topics which will strengthen their own artwork. Sometimes a simple tutorial has tips which may have been overlooked based on the subject of the tutorial. By looking past the subjects of the tutorials, an endless array of learning opportunities exist. Essentially, the tutorials become not only a teacher but a “class” which a designer can repeat as often as necessary to refine their skills. [Detail]
35+ Create Amazing Image Effects and Sliders with These Awesome jQuery Plugins
JavaScript frameworks like jQuery, prototype (and script.aculo.us), Dojo and mootools have become very popular because they are making the creation of dynamic effects much easier without using fx. flash. jQuery has become one of the most used JavaScript libraries today and can be found in the core of popular products like Wordpress and Drupal. The community is providing a huge amount of free plugins making it possible to find good solutions to nearny any need you may have. This article will introduce you to more than 35 jQuery plugins providing enhancements to how you can display images on your web pages. This is essential for creating dynamic state of the art web solutions. Lets get started! [Detail]
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Intel's Multi-tasking Concept Laptop Brings You Three More Screens
Sitting in the coffee shop with forty Firefox tabs open on your laptop, wishing you had one more monitor? Or three? Today at IDF, Intel introduced a multi-tasking concept PC that allows users to work on their main screen while providing three small auxiliary screens above the keyboard for organizing and accessing smaller, snackable chunks of info from their PCs.
The concept PC was developed with an eye toward future-gen laptops--on which you can organize more information while still reducing the size of your notebook. Without affecting the information or activity on the main screen, you can access information--say, a phone number in your address book or a reminder you’ve placed in your sticky notes--while keeping the desktop as clutter-free as possible. [Detail]
The concept PC was developed with an eye toward future-gen laptops--on which you can organize more information while still reducing the size of your notebook. Without affecting the information or activity on the main screen, you can access information--say, a phone number in your address book or a reminder you’ve placed in your sticky notes--while keeping the desktop as clutter-free as possible. [Detail]
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