In the last post, we took an in-depth look at Google’s Panda and Penguin updates and how they have impacted on search rankings for businesses. Whilst we established that using black hat SEO techniques is likely to result in a site becoming penalized, we didn’t look at what’s known as gray hat SEO.

Gray hat SEO is, as the name suggests, somewhere in the middle of black hat and white hat. This means that whilst the practices may be perceived by some as being OK, for the most part they still break search engine rules and may result in losing rankings, or worse.

However, it’s important to bear in mind that whilst gray hat techniques can be used for genuine reasons and considered to be a good practice, it’s the abuse of the techniques which has led to suspicion when it comes to using gray hat.

In part one, we touched on how to harness the power of display: flex in your website layouts, and how versatile this new layout concept has proven to be. With those thoughts from the previous video kept in mind, we can now adapt the process and use it as part of a responsive design.

Responsive design allows the user to view a layout considered and targeted specifically for the platform they’re viewing the page on, and in today’s tutorial, I’ll be using the flexbox markup to show you help you create dynamic, malleable layouts for all devices, utilising traditional media queries used frequently in responsive design markup.

We’ll also be discussing the advantages of rearranging and resizing responsive elements in a flash, and what that means for your next project’s workflow. At this rate, we’ll hopefully be seeing the back of those pesky clearfixes in the near future!

The May edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, jQuery plugins and JavaScript resources, educational resources, wireframing kits, image tools, Photoshop extensions, web development tools, coding resources, and some really great new fonts.

Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there.

As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments. And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration.

It’s all about presentation. Ideas and concepts are great, but mean nothing if they cannot be properly communicated. To help others understand them, we may create prototypes or sketch out an idea to get to a meeting of the minds. Fortunately, in graphic design, we do that by creating mock-ups.

Most times when we create designs, it’s tempting to send a flat graphic, as is, to our client or out to our intended audience. It can work, but it’s much more effective when we have a way for people to actually visualize a design in its intended environment. It’s easier to understand a mobile app when it’s being presented on an actual mobile phone, rather than just a standard graphic in a simple size.

It’s best to have some photo-realistic mock-ups, but if you have vectors, that will work as well. Today, we’ve put together a bunch of PSD’s and actions for great, professional mock-ups. It includes anything from corporate branding to shirts and more. We hope you find something useful and great to use for your next project.