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Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

Category: How-To

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HTML5 and The Future of the Web

Some have embraced it, some have discarded it as too far in the future, and some have abandoned a misused friend in favor of an old flame in preparation. Whatever side of the debate you're on, you've most likely heard all the blogging chatter surrounding the "new hotness" that is ...

Clever PNG Optimization Techniques

As a web designer you might be already familiar with the PNG image format which offers a full-featured transparency. It's a lossless, robust, very good replacement of the elder GIF image format. As a Photoshop (or any other image editor) user you might think that there is not that many ...

Quality-Price-Ratio in Web Design (Pricing Design Work)

I’m about to make a bold statement. The quality of a design and the monetary cost of producing or procuring that design have absolutely no relationship whatsoever. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, I know. Many of you are crying foul at this very moment, but hear me out. I’ll ...

Crank Up Your Design Radar

No one understands the statement, “design is everywhere” better than us designers. But comprehension and integration are two totally separate acts. From food packaging, to billboards, to book covers, catalogs, websites, and everything in between, we spend the majority of our waking hours on our computers designing and/or looking at ...

The Roadmap To Becoming A Professional Freelance Web Designer

Becoming a freelance web designer is a common dream among many designers, although it takes quite a bit of talent, business savvy, committment, and time. With all there is to consider when becoming self-employed, one can become overwhelmed — enough to deter themselves from trying at all.Realizing many Smashing readers ...

Web Form Validation: Best Practices and Tutorials

Ideally, users will fill the web form with necessary information and finish their job successfully. However, people often make mistakes. This is where web form validation comes into play. The goal of web form validation is to ensure that the user provided necessary and properly formatted ...

Clever JPEG Optimization Techniques

When people talk about image optimization, they consider only the limited parameters offered by popular image editors, like the "Quality" slider, the number of colors in the palette, dithering and so on. Also, a few utilities, such as OptiPNG and jpegtran, manage to squeeze extra bytes out of image files. ...

10 Common Mistakes In Logo Design

With the power of the Web, and more eyes watching than ever, it's important for a business to communicate its unique message clearly. The easiest way to recognize a company and distinguish it from others is by its logo. Below, we go through 10 common logo design mistakes that you ...

10 UI Design Patterns You Should Be Paying Attention To

Design patterns were first described in the 1960s by Christopher Alexander, an architect who noticed that many things in our lives happen according to patterns. He adapted his observations to his work and published many findings on the topic. Since then, design patterns have found their place in many areas ...

10 Ways To Make Your XHTML Site Accessible Using Web Standards

Without argument, one of the most important things to consider when creating a website is that it be accessible to everyone who wants to view it. Does your website play nice with screen readers? Can a user override your style sheet with a more accessible one and still see everything ...

Effective Strategy To Estimate Time For Your Design Projects

How many times have you been completely confused at how that 'small' project turned into such a big one costing double and taking three times the length you estimated? Many of you will say estimating time for web projects accurately is an oxymoron, but by applying a few effective techniques ...

40+ Books For Professional Design & Development

Professionalism is built upon knowledge and experience. To become or remain professional, you permanently need to improve your design and programming skills, be aware of new approaches and now how other designers and developers achieve both beautiful and effective designs. And to improve your design and programming skills all ...

Five Reasons Why Designers Developers are Switching to Mac

Designers and developers have many choices to make when it comes to getting work done, from what frameworks, languages, and image editing software to use, to what platform to run. The latter is an oft debated and controversial topic and the mere mention of it risks setting off flame ...

Breaking: Internet Explorer 8.1 Eagle Eyes Leaked

Smashing Magazine tries to be at the forefront of new and exciting developments in the wide world of the web. You might have heard that we met with the IE 8 Chief Strategist in the past, so it should come as no surprise that we like ...

10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of

Sometimes you just want to get the information you’re after, save it and move along. And you can’t. Usability nightmares — which are rather the daily routine than an exception — appear every now and again; usually almost every time you type your search keywords in Google. In his article ...

10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites

We all make mistakes running our websites. However, the nature of those mistakes varies depending on the size of your company. As your organization grows, the mistakes change. This post addresses common mistakes among large organizations. Most of the clients I work with are large organizations: universities, large charities, public sector ...

Flash vs. Silverlight: What Suits Your Needs Best?

With the release of Silverlight 1.0 and its subsequent versions, a debate started among designers and developers regarding choosing between Flash and Silverlight. Silverlight faces difficulties in capturing the market because of the maturity of Flash. However, Silverlight has managed to keep up by including certain features that designers and ...

10 Easy Steps To Advanced Photography Skills

By Trey Ratcliff (aka Stuck in Customs), one of the most famous and renowned HDR photographers on Flickr. In his article Trey describes some professional insights and useful photography tips that he collected over the years of his career. A camera does not work like an eye; film does not work ...

10 Principles Of Effective Web Design

Usability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a web-site. Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has become a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. After all, if ...

jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best Practices

When used correctly, jQuery can help you make your website more interactive, interesting and exciting. This article will share some best practices and examples for using the popular Javascript framework to create unobtrusive, accessible DOM scripting effects. The article will explore what constitutes best practices with regard to Javascript ...

10 Common Mistakes In Logo Design

With the power of the Web, and more eyes watching than ever, it’s important for a business to communicate its unique message clearly. The easiest way to recognize a company and distinguish it from others is by its logo. Below, we go through 10 common logo design mistakes that you ...

Google PageRank: What Do We Know About It?

Everybody is using it, but (almost) nobody really knows how it works. Google PageRank is probably one of the most important algorithms ever developed for the Web. With billions of existing pages and millions of pages generated every day, the search issue in the Web is more complex than you ...

10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs

Web design consists, for the most part, of interface design. There are many techniques involved in crafting beautiful and functional interfaces. Here’s my collection of 10 that I think you’ll find useful in your work. They’re not related to any particular theme, but are rather a collection of techniques I ...

Redesigning Craigslist With Focus On Usability

Craigslist is obviously one of the most popular websites in the world, and each month it serves millions of users who post and view classified ads on the website. At the time this article was written, Craigslist was ranked as the 28th most-visited English-language website in the world by Alexa. ...

Should Links Open In New Windows?

No, they shouldn’t. At first glance the decision to open links in new windows or not depends on the given site and the preferences of its visitors. Visitors of the sites with heavy linking are more willing to have links opened in new windows than open dozens of links in ...

10 Things To Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS

Choosing a content management system can be tricky. Without a clearly deﬁned set of requirements, you will be seduced by fancy functionality that you will never use. What then should you look for in a CMS? I have written about content management systems before. I have highlighted the their hidden costs, ...

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Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

Category: How-To

HTML5 and The Future of the Web

Clever PNG Optimization Techniques

Quality-Price-Ratio in Web Design (Pricing Design Work)

Crank Up Your Design Radar

The Roadmap To Becoming A Professional Freelance Web Designer

Web Form Validation: Best Practices and Tutorials

Clever JPEG Optimization Techniques

10 Common Mistakes In Logo Design

10 UI Design Patterns You Should Be Paying Attention To

10 Ways To Make Your XHTML Site Accessible Using Web Standards

Effective Strategy To Estimate Time For Your Design Projects

40+ Books For Professional Design & Development

Five Reasons Why Designers Developers are Switching to Mac

Breaking: Internet Explorer 8.1 Eagle Eyes Leaked

10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of

10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites

Flash vs. Silverlight: What Suits Your Needs Best?

10 Easy Steps To Advanced Photography Skills

10 Principles Of Effective Web Design

jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best Practices

10 Common Mistakes In Logo Design

Google PageRank: What Do We Know About It?

10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs

Redesigning Craigslist With Focus On Usability

Should Links Open In New Windows?

10 Things To Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS

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