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Screen Resolutions and Better User Experience

By Smashing Editorial, November 23rd, 2007 in How-To | 63 Comments

In order to work well, designs have to be optimized for simplicity, transparency and, consequently, optimal user experience. The user experience itself is, however, in many cases just an elegant term employed with false intentions and wrong approaches.

Optimal user experience is rarely achieved by visual design elements, although some stakeholders are strongly convinced that it actually is the case. What actually matters is the fact that the content is accessible and legible — and although visual design can support the content and help to communicate with your target audience in a more effective way, it is not a solid foundation to build a successful web-site upon. (In fact, to compromise stakeholders' understanding of design solutions is your primary task if you strive to be a professional web-developer.)

Whatever stages you are going through in your design process, to perform well you need to make sure that your design works for most visitors, whatever screen resolution they use. It's not about the graphics visitors see; as stated above, it's about the content they are looking for.

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Attractive Online Diagrams, Charts And Maps

By Smashing Editorial, September 20th, 2007 in Developer's Toolbox | 43 Comments

Data charts and diagrams are used when statistical data has to be presented in the most convenient and usable way. Visual charts are clear, visually appealing and easier to perceive than some simple enumerations or tables - mainly because users don't have to analyze the meaning of presented facts, but can perceive main tendencies through the visual weight of the facts — directly. You can create charts in graphic editors or use special applications (software or web-apps) which can help you to create your charts in few minutes. However, once you'd like to update an old chart, or create a new one, you have to run the application and create new images over and over again. That's not flexible. Or maybe you just want to offer your visitors not a simple image, but a powerful dynamic chart. To gain a greater level of flexibility you need to take a closer look at further approaches.
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Data Visualization: Modern Approaches

By Smashing Editorial, August 2nd, 2007 in Graphics | 548 Comments

Data presentation can be beautiful, elegant and descriptive. There is a variety of conventional ways to visualize data - tables, histograms, pie charts and bar graphs are being used every day, in every project and on every possible occasion. However, to convey a message to your readers effectively, sometimes you need more than just a simple pie chart of your results. In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data. Many of them might become ubiquitous in the next few years. So what can we expect? Which innovative ideas are already being used? And what are the most creative approaches to present data in ways we've never thought before?

Let's take a look at the most interesting modern approaches to data visualization as well as related articles, resources and tools.
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Data Grids with AJAX, DHTML and JavaScript

By Smashing Editorial, May 30th, 2007 in Developer's Toolbox | 111 Comments

In order to be presented effectively, information needs structure. The more intuitive data structure is designed, the better users can understand the content. Consequently, the data can be scanned and extracted in a more meaningful and systematic way. Table is a perfect example of a well-structured data presentation, which is easy to analyze and easy to handle. Used for its original purpose - to present data, not to style it -, it can convey ideas effectively. And this is what most of us are actually trying to achieve in the Web. Furthermore, the user experience can be greatly enhanced with further optional functionalities - such as sorting, filtering and fast editing. What solutions can you use to provide them in your tables? Few months ago we've covered the basics of semantically correct CSS-based tables - among other things, we've presented solutions for Zebra tables and few tables with sorting and filtering functionalities; but we've missed some important ones. Now it's time to get this right and list the rest - 17 free solutions for data grids, developed with AJAX, DHTML and/or JavaScript. In a brief and descriptive overview.
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CSS-Based Tables: Modern Solutions

By Smashing Editorial, December 29th, 2006 in CSS | 86 Comments

We coninue to present some of the best CSS-techniques which web-developers can always use working on their current web-project. Recently we’ve taken a look at the best css-based forms, today we present some useful techniques for displaying information in a tabular mode. In fact, tables can present data quite efficiently, particularly if you can use [...]
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