WordPress is built by volunteers. People from all over the world collaborate to create the core software, to write the documentation, to provide support, to translate WordPress, to organise events, and to generally keep the project running. Individuals work on WordPress in their free time and companies ask their employees to get involved.
A bunch of WordPress contributors.
Part of WordPress's success is that it is not simply a development community. There are designers, user experience experts, support volunteers, writers, users, accessibility experts, and enthusiasts. This diverse input strengthens the project. It also means that there is space for you to get involved. Whatever your skill set, there is room for you in the WordPress community.
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Android is huge: 480 million people currently use Android devices, and 1 million new devices are activated daily. This means that every three weeks, the number of people who activate new Android devices is equal to the entire population of Australia. (Recent studies by Nielsen show that more Android devices are on the market than iOS devices.)
Popular apps that become available on Android experience huge growth. For example, Instagram grew by 10 million users with the launch of its Android app — in just 10 days.
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Editorial work at Smashing Magazine is a difficult, challenging process. It requires patience, focus and thoroughness. Our readers have high expectations, and our authors expect sophisticated editorial guidance. That’s what we are known for, and that’s where we could use your help. We’re looking for a hard-working editor with technical experience to support and complement our team.
Such an editor can’t be found on any of the innumerable job boards out there. Because the position is one of the most important to our publication, we are looking for the best editor from our community — someone who truly understands Smashing Magazine and what it stands for. We would never otherwise publish a job opening on our front page — in this case, we made an exception.
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Nearly half a year ago, we introduced our eBook subscription model, also known as the Smashing Library. We knew we were onto something good, realizing that the Smashing Library was the next step in offering quality content — at a price you’ll still be able to afford all of the coffee you need to stay up long enough to read the entire library and, of course, the free eBooks.
To give you a taste of what to expect from the eBooks in the Smashing Library, we are happy to present you with The Smashing Editor’s Choice: A Smashing Library Treat — a free eBook that contains a wide range of topics, including new coding techniques, user experience strategies and more.
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This article is about design consultancy. It’s about wrangling that client who uses empty sentences like, “We want a snappy, simple experience,” or, “It should be on brand and should really pop.”
It’s about commanding the room and setting a vision before moving on to wireframes and pixels. While I’ll talk in terms of consultation, these ideas can be applied to the design phase of any new project.
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Responsive design is about more than just layout; it’s about designing for the Web, which means, mostly, for people with browsers. And that’s just about everything we know about the people who visit our websites: they are probably using a browser. All the rest we just don’t know.
Up until not so long ago, we used to base our designs on some rather general assumptions about screen size and input type. With the rise of devices with various screen sizes and alternative ways to interact, these assumptions have turned out to be unreliable. We need to upgrade the defaults that we use when we start designing our websites.
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Welcome to another interview in the series called “How I Work.” These interviews revolve around how leading thinkers and creators in the Web world design, code and create.
The goal is not to get into the specific nuances of their craft (as that information already exists online), but rather step back and learn a bit about their habits, philosophies and workflow for producing great work.
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Infinite scroll promised to provide users with a better experience. However, the good is often accompanied by the bad and the ugly. Once we understand the strengths and weaknesses of infinite scrolling, we can begin to use it to empower our interfaces.
Human nature's framed perception demands an hierarchic interface; an interface that would make it easy for users to find their way around. Infinite scroll, sometimes leaves users feeling disoriented as they travel down the page that never ends.
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I’ll come right out and say it. I think the grid is the unsung hero of a good design. It gives structure and lets the design fall perfectly into place on the canvas. With a grid, adapting and building something new into your design is easy. Think of it like a house’s foundation.
With a solid foundation, the house is stable, and building on it is easy. With a solid grid, your design can easily be adapted to accommodate whatever changes come along. Today, we’ll share iOS Grid System, which I’ve been using when designing apps in Adobe Fireworks.
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