April 16, 2012 — This article is the sixth in our new series that introduces the latest, useful and freely available tools and techniques, developed and released by active members of the Web design community. The first article covered PrefixFree; the second introduced Foundation, a responsive framework; the third presented Sisyphus.js, a library for Gmail-like client-side drafts, the fourth covered a free plugin called GuideGuide and the fifth presented Erskine Design’s responsive grid generator Gridpak. Today, we are happy to feature a toolkit devised by Yandex: BEM. Read more…

April 13, 2012 — In this article, we will look at the powerful effect that typography has in taking control of meaning. We will discuss a range of examples, from verbal language that inspires and shapes visual treatment to visual language that dominates verbal meaning. Read more…

April 12, 2012 — In a post on her blog last year, WordPress designer, business woman and author, Lisa Sabin Wilson, talked about how thankful she is to be part of the WordPress economy. It’s an economy that thousands of people, the world over, are benefiting from (including me!). It is an economy built on free, open source software. Read more…

April 12, 2012 — In a post on her blog last year, WordPress designer, business woman and author Lisa Sabin Wilson talked about how thankful she is to be part of the WordPress economy. Read more…

April 12, 2012 — Emotional design has become a powerful tool in creating exceptional user experiences for websites. However, emotions did not use to play such an important role on the Web. Actually, they did not use to play any role at all; rather, they were drowned by a flood of rational functionality and efficiency. Read more…

April 11, 2012 — I’m pretty confident that I won’t surprise anyone here by saying that CSS sprites have been around for quite a while now, rearing their somewhat controversial heads in the Web development sphere as early as 2003. Read more…

April 10, 2012 — After taking a look at Craigslist mobile, it became obvious we could all benefit from some best practices around mobile search, sort and filter UI design. In this article Theresa Neil and Rich Malley explore a dozen different ways to surface and refine the data your customers want. Read more…

April 5, 2012 — If you’ve ever tried working with, coding for or just thinking about anything to do with events, you know they are a total nightmare in every possible way. Read more…

April 5, 2012 — You’ve made your first app! Now what? Anyone in the app business knows that marketing an app is tough. And according to a recent article on TechCrunch, “Getting a mobile app noticed in the increasingly crowded mobile app market is more difficult than ever.” Some titles and concepts are truly unique. Angry Birds? Its title and screenshot alone were enough to catapult it to number one in Finland. Read more…

April 4, 2012 — The practice of using a large letter to mark the start of a text has been around for almost two thousand years. Illustrated caps increased usability by marking important passages and guiding readers through the text. Unlike their historic counterparts, drop caps on the Web don’t add value in terms of usability or readability—and they are hard for Web developers to control, often rendering differently across browsers. Read more…