Photoshop can be used for so much more than just retouching images or manipulating photos. You can create your own textures . In this article, Stephen Petrany will present a foundation of techniques to help you build custom textures. He’ll go over three Photoshop features that he relies on to do most of his texturing — filters, layer styles and brushes. You’ll see that creating high-quality textures for art or design doesn’t require the talent of an artisan painter. All it takes is a little understanding of Photoshop and knowledge of the tools and how to manipulate them to get the effect you desire.
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Stricter functional programming languages are typically used when a system’s performance and integrity are both critical — i.e. your program needs to do exactly what you expect every time and needs to operate in an environment where its tasks can be shared across hundreds or thousands of networked computers. These languages have a steep learning curve for most front-end web developers; however, many more approachable languages incorporate features of functional programming.
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Responsive Web Design and tools like Modernizr have become very popular. Recently, combination techniques, where optimization is done both server-side and client-side, has become a trend. The recently launched WURFL.js tool, fits into this category. In this article, Jon Arne Sæterås and Luca Passani will look at some basic use cases of how to use WURFL.js to optimize the user experience both in HTML and CSS, and an example of how to choose the right ads to display on different devices.
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Having to make choices with limited information is not unusual — especially in complex projects or with brand new products. But, at some point, though, these choices start to feel like pure guesses and the ground under your feet feels shaky. What can you do about it? Approaching potential users for research, such as interviews and usability tests will help your whole team build a solid foundation for product strategy and design. You’ll find that the skills you develop will give you confidence to pursue the answers you need, leading you to better experiences for yourself and others.
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Communicating effectively can be quite difficult, especially when a project involves many people with different responsibilities and levels of authority. The problem compounds when the people involved belong to different organizations with different working guidelines. Effective communication happens when a message is delivered whose content has the same meaning for the recipient as it does for the sender. In this article, Krzysztof Rakowski will show us the rules he follows for a better communication. He hopes you find these insights useful to your work.
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The reason why app store reviews aren’t as effective as they could be is that they’re a one-way conversation, asking the user to say something positive to everyone else. There should be something better, something more conversational. In this article, Joshua Mauldin will investigate the various tactics of prompting for app reviews and ratings and how to make them better. He’ll also talk about how to ask users for feedback in a way that benefits everyone. Getting feedback on your app is important. How else can people tell you that your app is doing well or poorly?
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According to a 2009 study, 47% of visitors expect a page to load in under 2 seconds, and 57% of visitors will abandon a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Mobile Internet usage is expected to overtake desktop usage. This shift towards Internet-enabled mobile devices means that having a fast website has never been as important as it is today. Users now expect websites to be lightening fast, and developers who don’t comply will ultimately lose out to developers who invest in delivering a great experience.
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Interface designers use affordances all the time. They have to. Unlike physical objects, web and mobile interfaces must gain all of their affordance through design. For most designers, this is intuitive and instinctive, based on the thousands of design patterns we see every day. But have you ever thought about the qualities that make an object afford clicking, sliding, pulling or pushing? By deeply understanding how affordance works, you’ll better master interface or product design. Better affordance can have a dramatic impact on conversion rates, registration rates and the user actions that matter most to the website, app or product you’re designing for. This is why “affordance” is the most underrated word in web design.
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In this article, Maksim Chemerisuk describes his approach with better-dom to solve the internationalization problem. Since the last article about this, “Writing a Better JavaScript Library for the DOM,” he has revisited the concept to solve the issues raised through feedback. The solution was originally intended to be a set of internationalization APIs for plugins, extensions, etc. It doesn’t rely heavily on the better-dom library, so it could be adapted to any existing JavaScript library.
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As digital professionals, we like to complain that the organizations with which we work are a hindrance. But are they? Exactly how digitally-friendly are the companies we work for? Before Paul Boag helps a client go through the process of digital transformation, he needs to understand where the problems lie. He does this using a digital health check. Below is an outline of the areas that he investigates, the questions he asks and what those questions reveal. Paul’s hope is that this health check will help you better understand the organizations with which you work.
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