The shortcode ability of WordPress is extremely underrated. It enables the end user to create intricate elements with a few keystrokes while also modularizing editing tasks. In a new theme we're developing, I decided to look into adding widgets anywhere with shortcodes and it turns out that it isn't that difficult.
This tutorial is for experienced WordPress users; we will be looking at the widgets object and shortcodes without delving into too much detail about how and why they work. If you are looking for more information, I suggest reading Mastering WordPress Shortcodes and the Widgets API article in the Codex.
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Do you own a website? Do you want to be number one on Google? Whatever you do, don’t spend money on aggressive search engine optimization (SEO). I know that sounds like an extreme position to take. However, a lot of website owners see search engine optimization as the answer to their search ranking woes, when things are considerably more complex.
The inconvenient truth is that the best person to improve your ranking is you. Unfortunately, that is going to take time and commitment on your part. The answer doesn’t lie in hiring a SEO company to boost your website ranking for Google.
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In computer science, the term “adaptive system” refers to a process in which an interactive system adapts its behavior to individual users based on information acquired about its user(s), the context of use and its environment.
Although adaptive systems have been long-discussed in academia and have been an aspiration for computer scientists and researchers, there has never been a better time than today to realize the potential of what future interaction with computer systems will be like.
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Yesterday we published the article "Why Won't Helvetica Go Away" in which Alastair Johnston discussed the evolution of Helvetica, the reasons for its popularity as well as his thoughts on why designers should start questioning the usefulness of Helvetica in their projects. Hours later Indra Kupferschmid published an article in which she corrected some of the facts presented in the original article. We republish Indra's article to correct the factual errors, with her permission of course.—Ed.
This isn’t a “blue pencil” (I could never challenge master Shaw); just a lazy, quick rant. Alastair Johnston wrote an article on Helvetica posted on Smashing Magazine yesterday. I don’t want to comment on his strong opinion and cut out most of his subjective ranting. But some facts seem to have gotten a bit wonky.
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In September 2012 we ran the very first Smashing Conference — friendly, valuable and inspiring community event — in a beautiful medieval building in our home town Freiburg, Germany. The conference was a huge success, and we haven't anticipated the fantastic feedback we've received during and after the event.
All conference tickets and workshop tickets were sold out within weeks, and to bring the event closer to everybody we blogged live from the venue, and captured all talks on video. We had the pleasure of welcoming and interviewing many top-class speakers and well-respected experts from the Web design industry.
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The other day someone sent me a link to a website with the preposterous title of “The 100 Best Typefaces of All Time”. Topping the chart was Helvetica, and that stirred my ire. I dismissed the list because it was based on marketing figures from one source, FontShop, coupled with the opinions of half a dozen Berlin-based typographers, but I was still incensed.
When it comes to, say, boxers, you can handicap the various athletes in the ring and predict that Muhammad Ali would beat Jack Johnson or Jim Corbett and that, therefore, he is number one, but a lot of other factors come to bear on your decision: sentimentality, the fact that Ali is acknowledged (by people like me, with no real knowledge of the sport) to be “The Greatest”; he has name recognition, and so on. But how do you evaluate a typeface? Is it just based on its widespread use? Or its suitability to the subject at hand? Ease of reading? Familiarity?
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“First, let’s set a few things straight: becoming a top WordPress [developer professional] is hard work — very hard work. It’s going to take a lot of time, energy and determination. If you’re looking for an easy checklist or some “fast pass” to the top, you’re going to waste your time. Being one of the best is hard, and statistically speaking, the odds are stacked against you.”
If you're a regular reader of Smashing Magazine, that will no doubt sound familiar to you. A few weeks back Jonathan Wold wrote a post on how to be a top WordPress developer. But development isn't the only way to get ahead in WordPress, because one of the great things about it is that you don't need to be a developer to be an expert; you just need a passion for WordPress, for open source software, and for being part of a community.
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Using templates in the browser is becoming more and more widespread. Moving application logic from the server to the client, and the increasing usage of MVC-like patterns (model–view–controller) inspired templates to embrace the browser.
This used to be a server-side only affair, but templates are actually very powerful and expressive in client-side development as well. In general, leveraging templates is a great way to separate markup and logic in views, and to maximize code reusability and maintainability. With a syntax close to the desired output (i.e. HTML), you have a clear and fast way to get things done.
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The key statement of Fitts’s Law is that the time required to move a pointing device to a target is a function of the distance to the target and its size. In layman’s terms: the closer and larger a target, the faster it is to click on that target. This is easy to understand, not too difficult to implement and it doesn’t seem to make much sense to contradict such a simple and obvious statement.
However, before you start applying Fitts’s Law on every single pixel you can find, consider a few problems that might arise for you as an interaction designer.
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