Development | Webdesigner Depot

26 Jan
7 mistakes developers make
Design, Development, Web Developers
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Great websites always seem to combine great design with great code. Since building a website is a pretty simple task you find many people learn HTML and CSS and figure that if they can learn that then they can design any website they want. While technically they can you will often find that there are some key mistakes they make because they don’t wish to take the time to actually learn about design.
Programmers are designers in their own right, but they design code and wonderfully architected systems. To design something visual is completely different and just because you have a good eye for design doesn’t mean you have a good mind to apply it.
Since so many programmers have personal projects that usually means they have to create their own websites. If you are a freelance coder, one of the greatest assets you can have is knowing the full web development process from beginning to end, and this includes design.
Here are eight mistakes that I often see developers make when applying design to a website.
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28 Dec
Are you being innovative?
Creativity, Design, Development
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With the recent passing of Steve Jobs, a lot of people and experts are crowning him one of the greatest innovators of our time, if not of all time. It’s rather hard to disagree, as he’s helped bring forth many innovations that have seriously changed the way we look at our future. And with all the talk about innovators, folks are starting to celebrate the lives of other creative geniuses at any level or platform before it’s too late. But all the talk about innovation is leaving people thinking, what is real innovation and how can one be innovative in whatever they’re doing?
Is innovation just a synonym for “invention”, or is it really just a positive spin on “imitation”? I guarantee if you ask five different people, you’ll probably get five different answers. Not because everyone is wrong, but because the exact definitions for ‘innovation’ and ‘innovator’ seem to vary by situation. Once you feel like you’ve answered the question, the next step is to figure out how you can be innovative so that it might help you go further in your situation.
Below, we will go through some definitions and examples to eventually get you to a better basic understanding of innovation, and how it can help you as a designer. Read more
10 Nov
9 great resources for keeping your skills fresh
Design, Development, Graphic Design
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Whether you are self-taught, fresh out of school, or a design veteran, continuing education has invaluable long-term effects on your ability to stay competitive and business savvy.
The immediate benefits are also abundant. Emerging techniques you learn today can be applied to a client project tomorrow for added value, or to set your work apart from the mainstream.
There was never a point at which successful designers have learned enough. The secret to being cutting edge is to stay sharp. Aside from your local library or book store, and in lieu of returning to college full-time, the internet offers you an infinite number of outlets and resources for learning.
With so many blogs, e-books and forums offering knowledge on hundreds of design-related topics, determining quality and choosing sources can quickly become overwhelming and time consuming. Below are 9 of the best resources I have uncovered and used to keep my own skills fresh, chosen for their high content quality, element of interest, value and relevancy. Read more
19 Sep
How Drupal CMS stands above the rest
CMS, Development, Drupal
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As a site developer, web designer or site administrator, you’ve probably had to go through the process of choosing between platforms. But maybe not recently—if you’ve been designing and developing web sites for very long, chances are you’ve already got your favorite go-to platform that you always use. And if your go-to content management system isn’t already Drupal, maybe it’s time to take another look.
The downside is, Drupal is huge. There is a steep learning curve and it can be a full-time job just looking through all the contributed modules to find exactly what you’re looking for. It is not a happy-go-lucky, “set it up right out of the box” platform.
But the upside to all of this is, Drupal is huge! There is nothing you can’t do with Drupal. Want to run a blog? Done. Want to run a blogging community? Done. Share links and photos, run classified ads, show Twitter updates and statuses, sell products, upload and share files, play movies, even manage a wiki? Done, done, done, done and done!
At the risk of sounding trite (and please forgive this slightly over-used phrase)…Drupal is as Drupal does…And Drupal does it all. So what makes Drupal stand out so much? Many things, but we’re going to focus on just the most important aspects right now.. Read more
15 Sep
A more versatile Mac with Parallels 7
Design, Development, Software
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[Editor's note: This is a sponsored review for Parallels 7]
One of the long-standing complaints about Macs is that there are more limited software options than for Windows-based PCs.
While the gap has closed in recent years as Macs become more popular (and let’s face it: there are some awesome Mac-only programs that PC owners are rightfully jealous of), there are still programs you can only run on a PC.
And even if the programs you want are available for the Mac, what if you already have Windows licenses for them? Do you really want to spend hundreds of dollars on buying the exact same version of your software, just for a different platform? Can you even afford to do that? Probably not.
Sure, you could use Bootcamp, but that means every time you want to run a Windows program, you’ll need to reboot your Mac. Not the most ideal solution if you’re in the middle of a project. Especially if you use a mix of Mac and PC programs for your work. This is where Parallels comes in… Read more
31 Aug
25+ Must-have Chrome extensions for web designers and developers
Design, Development, Extensions
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For many web designers and developers, Firefox is unsurpassable. For others, Firefox eats Chrome’s dust.
For the past two years, since Google Chrome’s release, there’s been a raging debate on which browser is superior. Mozilla’s open source product has stood the test of time and Firefox has quickly become the most used browser, having surpassed Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Don’t feel sorry for Google Chrome, however. Even in its infancy, Chrome has already reached second most popular, having already surpassed Internet Explorer and with a high chance of surpassing Firefox.
Although Firefox is more robust (primarily due to its popularity), Chrome is lightning fast and, with new extensions added daily, an exciting option for the serious web designer.
And here you are to find tools that make Chrome useful to you as a designer or a developer. Fortunately, Chrome has a burgeoning collection of extensions that will make the transition from Firefox a lot easier. Read more
25 Aug
App design versus web design: what designers can teach each other
Apps, Development, Web Design
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We often look at application design and website design as two different, if related, fields.
The lines blur a bit with web apps (which are technically both apps and websites), but we still tend to try to compartmentalize them. Even designers who work on both kinds of designs often view them as separate things.
But there are a lot of lessons that app designers and web designers can teach each other.
Each type of design has emerged to have its own strengths and weaknesses, often complementary to the strengths and weaknesses of the other field.
Below are six lessons that app and web designers can teach each other. Read more
15 Apr
The Virgin Atlantic Airways Blog: A Case Study
Blogs, Development, Web Design
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Working with a company as large as Virgin Atlantic was something of a dream come true for me. I it’s something that a lot of web designers aspire to.
Over the last few months, I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to fulfill this dream.
I was about to write this post up over on my blog but Walter very kindly invited me to share this case study with the much larger audience here on Webdesigner Depot and across the Smashing Network.
I’m no Elliot Jay Stocks and I certainly don’t claim to be, so when Virgin Atlantic got in touch with me back in November I was surprised, humbled and extremely enthusiastic at the prospect of working with the company on a new blog for the “vtravelled” website. Read more
10 Aug
5 CSS3 Design Enhancements That You Can Use Today
CSS, Code, Development
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Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the language of Web design, and the next generation of CSS design properties are just chomping at the bit to be released.
Are you eager to start using them, but don’t know where to start?
Although many of the new properties are not yet “official”, some browsers have already implemented many of the features of the coming CSS Level 3 specifications.
The problem is that many browsers—most notably Internet Explorer—have not.
The trick to using these new CSS3 features is to treat them as design enhancements. Read more
6 May
Why Does Clean Markup Matter in Web Design?
Accessibility, CSS, Development, Web Standards
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Because the web is a changing and ever evolving organism, it’s important to build sites that can grow with it and easily ride the current instead of drowning when a new wave approaches.
Clean markup and building with web standards not only helps you do this, but will save you both time and money in the long run.
As the web expands, so the technologies that it uses grow with it. While HTML has been around for a long time, it has acquired quite a few sidekicks along the way.
First Javascript, then CSS, XML and later AJAX. Wide adoption of HTML 5 is just around the corner, with Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome already enjoying nearly full HTML 5 support (the slow kid on the block, Internet Explorer, is lagging behind as usual).
In this article, we’ll review the basics of web standards, what they are, what they mean to you, and some important tips to help you deal with this important and often neglected issue.
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5 May
How to Get Started with iPhone Dev
Apple, Development, iPhone
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The iPhone is a fantastic phenomenon. It’s a communications device, a multimedia platform and much more all rolled into one single tool. Everyone wants in on this device.
The Apple store has just passed the one billionth application download (I alone account for 3% of that…) and there is a wide array of applications from the amazingly useful to the bizarrely redundant.
With millions of iPhones out there, it makes sense to have your content, or application available on that platform, but how do you go about doing this? Where do you go to get started? And what are the steps you need to take to get there?
This article is an introduction to the various ways of getting content and applications onto the iPhone. It is by no means a full guide, but hopes to point you in the right direction and give you an overview of what is involved in the process. Read more