Issue #80 | Tuesday, March 19th 2013 | 136,487 subscribers | Previous issues
Dear Friends,
If you've been a Smashing Newsletter subscriber for a while now, you most probably already know that we've started introducing a series of thoroughly selected high-quality eBooks in the Smashing Library. Paul Boag's "Client Centric Web Design" eBook will be available in the first week of April 2013 in PDF, EPUB and Kindle (DRM-free) formats!
Further updates concerning eBooks written by well-respected designers and developers in the industry will be announced in our newsletters, mailings and on Twitter. Also, we've been busy organizing a variety of full-day workshops for you. Be sure to stay tuned — we're sure you won't be disappointed!
Yours sincerely,
The Smashing Team
Table of Contents
01. Your Own CSS Creatures
02. Type It Right: Quotes and Accents
03. The Secret UX Ingredient
04. Double, Triple (Or More) Your Conversion Rates
05. Free Printable Paper Templates For Sketching
06. StyleDocco: A Tool For Creating Stylesheets The Easy Way
07. Isometrify: A Free Custom Panel For Photoshop
08. Shapes Of Cities
09. What Would Responsive TV Look Like?
10. Old Handcraft Meets Rock
11. Smashing Highlights (From Archives)
12. Recent Articles on Smashing Magazine
13. New on Smashing Job Board
1. Your Own CSS Creatures
Can you imagine a colorful set of animated confetti, in which each one has a color, a personality and other striking attributes? What if you could create your own little round buddy to be part of this fiesta?
In fact, you can: Bennet Feely's project CSS Creatures allows you to simply send out a tweet with your chosen characteristics, and, in less than 20 seconds, your new friend will appear among his siblings. Apparently, the creatures are generated from 100% all-natural HTML5 and fresh-squeezed CSS3, so if you really love the characters, you can take them home with you and add them to your personal site! (tts)
2. Type It Right: Quotes and Accents
Here's a treat for all Mac-using copy-cats out there. Jessica Hische really has the best tidbits for all those who crave a solid quick reference on typography but just haven't realized it yet.
Quotes & Accents is a wonderful guide on all the useful Mac keyboard shortcuts that crown your letters with accents and frame them with the right quotation marks. Now you won't have to go on a long, exhaustive search if you want write "El Niño" the right way — that is, if you have any wish to so. And, by the way, you can type em-dashes and smart quotes by pressing on a "hyphen" and a "quote"-character on your iOS devices, too! (jc)
3. The Secret UX Ingredient
What do the creators of Clear, Mailbox and Sunrise have in common? They've discovered a simple formula that works for their apps and keeps users interested, despite their simplicity. How did they manage that?
Matthew Moore wrote a fascinating short article on "branded interactions". He describes how some simple interactions become almost synonymous with the app they were most successfully used in. As Matthew writes, "when the interaction is unique, your users can begin to associate that interaction with your product." If you can own an interaction, that's a very strong level of branding in today's interface-filled world. It wouldn't hurt to take a look at his other articles, either. They are well-written, witty and thought-provoking. (jc)
4. Double, Triple (Or More) Your Conversion Rates
If you design websites for a living, it's very likely that at some point you've dealt with (and maybe struggled with) building a well-performing landing page. You may have racked your brain to find the best strategy to increase conversion rates. Would you like to see how others have tackled this? In Step-by-step landing page copywriting, Nathan Barry takes you through the process of writing and designing the landing page of ConvertKit.
There's a lot of value to take away from Nathan's post: you get detailed insights into a real-life landing page design — a learning process with lots of advice and feedback on conversion rate optimization and copywriting. Plus, you can follow up by reading dozens of comments which are just as interesting. Many relevant and important points and questions are raised here, such as the advantages of A/B testing, what psychology says about appealing pricing schemes and whether or not you can actually build trust if you ask for your visitors' email addresses prematurely. (ea)
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5. Free Printable Paper Templates For Sketching
Thinking of graph paper (also known as grid paper or millimeter paper), most of us will probably remember math class. Graph paper is printed with fine lines arranged in a regular grid and works well for drawing, sketching or plotting functions. It's commonly used in engineering but can come handy for many other purposes as well. It's a great way to align your art project sketches or wireframes, for example.
Graph paper is available in stationery shops, but — as is the case with so many other things — you can also get it online. Paperkit is a set of free printable graph paper templates. Highly customizable, the set has its own toolbar which lets you adjust settings such as grid lines, margin size, stroke color and width, as well as paper size, to generate the exact type of graph paper that you need. Once you've chosen your settings, you can download your customized template and immediately print it, or save it for your next project. Paperkit is available as dotted or lined paper, too. (ea)
6. StyleDocco: A Tool For Creating Stylesheets The Easy Way
You probably came across style guides recently, yet have you thought about a simple and quick way to generate them right from your code, especially if you develop in the browser anyway? StyleDocco generates style guide documents from your stylesheets by parsing your stylesheet comments through Markdown.
You can simply write example HTML snippets in your stylesheet comments, prefixed with 4 spaces or between code fences (```). StyleDocco will then display a preview using the applied styles on your example HTML code. The previews are displayed in a resizable iframe, so that you can display your responsive design at different viewport sizes. StyleDocco is free open source software, and can be download from GitHub. It was inspired by original Docco by Jeremy Ashkenas and Knyle Style Sheet. (ml)
7. Isometrify: A Free Custom Panel For Photoshop
Some people love to make others' lives easier, and Kamil Khadeyev is certainly one of those people. On his blog, he shares a custom panel for Photoshop that helps to transform objects with isometry and generate a custom-sized grid for them. Right now it uses an angle of isometry of 26.565 degrees, which is common for most pixel art work, but Khadeyev is working on an option to let the user define the angle. The panel is intended to be used with shape layers only, which means that you can use raster graphics but the result will not be perfect. The pixel grid snapping also still has some minor issues, but moving them manually shouldn't be a problem.
So far, the panel has three buttons for transforming shapes either to the right, the left or the top. There is also a button for an isometric grid pattern. But that's not all. Khadeyev has already planned for more options such as extruding and moving shapes. You're welcome to suggest more ideas. (ml)
8. Shapes Of Cities
Every large city around the world has some architectural monuments which differentiates it from other cities. These monuments are so strongly associated with the cities that it's possible to recognize them just with a simple silhouette.
In Yoni Alter's project Shapes of Cities you can explore the overlapping outlines of many buildings. The artist used different colors to enable you to distinguish one from another, and the result is a flashy collection of city postcards. It might be a fun game to try to recognize a city from its shapes. Try it out! (tts)
9. What Would Responsive TV Look Like?
What if your TV responded to your viewing habits, adapted to the screen size and even detected your accessibility needs? For one, you might never get off your couch, but you might also leave your kids in front of the TV without being too worried about nightmares over bedtime.
In his article on Responsive Television Bryan Clark proposes a vision of what a TV version of responsive design could be. Adaptation to different screen sizes is the least of it — and most likely the easiest part to implement right now. Clark imagines a much wider range of customization options for the different elements on the screen — such as a bigger sports ticker — as well as smarter accessibility detection and HAL-like awareness. Kids won't be able to watch the horror movie from behind their parents' backs anymore because the TV detects what they are trying to watch and pauses (oh, the injustice!). An interesting read, whether you approve or not. (jc)
10. Old Handcraft Meets Rock
There is probably nothing more inspiring than watching other creative designers and craftsmen in their creative process. Designer and traditional sign-writer David A. Smith is one of these passionate artists whose enthusiasm is contagious. Filmmaker Danny Cooke has captured Smith's love for the special but nearly forgotten turn-of-the-century craft of creating reverse glass signs and gilded mirrors in a stunning 20-minute film.
The film accompanies Smith as he creates the cover artwork to John Mayer's "Born and Raised" album. Sneak a peak into his creative routine from the first hand sketches to the application of fragile gold leaf on a finished glass panel. Watching this ephemera trading card-style work of art come to life is a magical and inspiring trip back in time. A definite must-see for every artist! (cm)
11. Smashing Highlights (From Archives)
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iCandies: Free Icon Set For Your User Interfaces and Apps
We are glad to release iCandies Icon Set, a set with 60 high quality icons in 64×64px, 48×48px and 32×32px, available in .EPS, .AI and .PNG. The set is designed to give your projects a sleek and geeky style or provide crisp, attractive icons for your modern and fashionable-looking interfaces.
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Why User Experience Cannot Be Designed
A lot of designers seem to be talking about user experience (UX) these days. We're supposed to delight our users, even provide them with magic, so that they love our websites, apps and start-ups. User experience is a very blurry concept. Consequently, many people use the term incorrectly.
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Speeding Up Your Website's Database
Website speed has always been a big issue, and it has become even more important since April 2010, when Google decided to use it in search rankings. However, the focus of the discussion is generally on minimizing file sizes, improving server settings and optimizing CSS and Javascript.
12. Recent Articles on Smashing Magazine
13. New on Smashing Job Board
Here are the job openings published recently at our very own Smashing Job Board:
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Front-End Developer at Album Agency (San Clemente, CA)
Album is a 10-year strategic branding partner for emerging consumer brands, located in San Clemente, CA. We're looking for a freelance Front-End Developer with 2-3 years experience and a strong understanding of UI/UX to help streamline our workflow and build awesome web experiences for our clients.
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Interactive Producer at nFusion (Austin, TX)
We are seeking an interactive producer that will manage the development and production of our interactive technology solutions. The ideal candidate will possess a strong work ethic with excellent attention to detail, possess knowledge of core interactive technologies and technical development processes, possess solid communication skills (written and verbal) and have a hunger for responsibility and learning.
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Software Architect at arvato (New York, Chicago, San Francisco)
Arvato Systems North America is looking for a Software Architect/Team Lead to support the design process for eCommerce stores with a focus on reusability. This position will be involved in all phases of product development from review of functional specifications through assisting with the design and oversight of the development activities.
Search this year’s government job 2018 such as the central government’s jobs and state government jobs in every state. In this government job (Sarkari Naukri) page, you can get update the latest and upcoming Sarkari Jobs 2018 Naukri notifications.
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