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Best of August 2007

Every month we take a look around and select some of the most interesting web-development-related web-sites. We read articles, check out tools, analyze the advantages of new resources. Below you’ll find useful references, tutorials, services, tools, techniques and articles we’ve found over the last 30 days - an overview of web-sites you shouldn’t have missed in August 2007.

All images can be clicked and lead to the sites from which the screenshots have been taken. We’ve missed something? Let us know in the comments!

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Winners Of Anniversary Contests

Last week we’ve celebrated our first anniversary and announced two anniversary giveaways for our readers — the book giveaway and the developer’s tools giveaway. Almost 4,000 visitors have participated; and now, as the deadline passed, we’ve drawn the winners randomly.

All winners will be contacted within the next 24 hours. Congratulations to the winners and thanks to all participants for taking part in our events!

Since we’ve received a lot of feedback and many designers and developers have participated, we’ve contacted our sponsors asking them to give some more licenses, credits and accounts for free. Therefore in the end we have more presents than we’ve promised.

Let’s get right to the point: here are the winners of Smashing Magazine anniversary contests. The number in the brackets in the last column stands for the comment number of the participant.

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Free Fonts of the Month: Revalo, Nadia Serif, Qlassik

Sometimes web design is just about beautiful typography. Used with a profound understanding of white space, basic typographic principles and usability heuristics, it can sufficiently highlight the main sections of the site and its key-elements. Font size of headers, body copy and navigation is important. Leading is important. Line length is important. And the visibility of links is important. Basically, that’s it - really, you don’t need more.

There are literally thousands of professional typefaces you can use, you might use dozens of them; however there is also a plenty of high-quality freefonts which can serve as reasonable and feasible alternatives and fulfill your requirements just as well. We collect all of them regularly, so you don’t have to.

Over the last month we’ve found six high-quality free fonts you can use for both private and commercial projects. Please check out the license agreements before using these typefaces - disclaimers can change from time to time.

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Reinvigorate’s Snoop: Real-Time Web Analytics

by Michael Dobler

How many visitors came to my website last month and how long did they stay? Which were the top referrers and the most popular keywords? If a site owner wants to have answers to these questions a web analytics tool flashes into action. Google Analytics — the dominating flagship on the web analytics landscape — is often the first choice when it comes to measuring users’ activities; however there are solutions which can do more and can offer more flexibility which isn’t available in Google Analytics.

One of them is Reinvigorate Snoop, an add-on which comes alongside the web analytics tool reinvigorate, enables real-time web analytics and as such might beat the web analytics freak heart faster.

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Creative Favicons: Tiny Artwork

Since visual elements are easier to remember, they can be used to draw visitors’ attention to the brand identity of the site. As visual indicators, favicons can establish the communication with visitors and make a web-site easier to remember and get back to once you need it - for instance, once the visitors look for the site in their bookmarks. Still most sites don’t make use of them - just like 404-error-pages, favicons are often forgotten or simply ignored. It’s time to change that, folks.

Every once and again we present some of the most creative and beautiful favicons — to prompt you to design them for your sites. In fact, we are willing to do that until the trend is finally established.

The design of favicons might look like a simple task; however to

• make the design recognizable,
• keep it simple and
• combine visual identity with
• visual clarity
• within a 16×16 rectangle

is a creative challenge you shouldn’t underestimate. The details build the foundation of a successful logo, and to take care of the smallest details is extremely important for a usable and visually appealing favicon.

The images below can be clicked - apparently, they lead to the sites from which the favicons have been taken. The examples show not only how a well-designed favicon might look like, but also which creative approaches can be used to give a favicon the freshness and clarity it deserves. The examples also demonstrate how favicons can support the overall design of the site it is being used on.

You can find further favicon-showcases and some more information in the posts we’ve published before:

• Part 1: Inspire Yourself: 50 Remarkable Favicons
• Part 2: Inspire Yourself: More Creative Favicons
• Part 3: Creative Favicons: When Small Is Beautiful

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20 (Alternate) Ways to Focus on Users

Many web professionals know about certain ways to focus on users. The most popular methods surely include usability tests, card sorting, personas, surveys, and watching current research, and they mean valid approaches to enable products and services that actually work. The following list aims to show some alternative methods towards more useful products.

Note: This article is based on own usability work and experience, but several methods have also been inspired by IDEO’s commendable Method Cards (order at William Stout).

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