it just a web

There are plethora of techniques for CSS3 and how one should go about laying the code out, what techniques to use for different browsers, and a whole set of others. Within this post we take a look at several specific CSS3 techniques and practices that you should adapt to, to improve your CSS3 coding style as well as coding technique that also affects cross compatibility.

Organizing Browser Specific Syntax

As all of us who dived into CSS3 know, there is a lot of syntax that relates to certain browsers or compilers such as the border radius element and the likes. In order to better organize and understand these elements it is best if they are stacked on top of each other sequentially as well as contain comments on top of them or to the right of them describing or listing what each element pertains to. For example, the -moz-border-radius should have a comment like so /* Mozilla / firefox */.

You should remember that these browser or compiler specific elements or syntax are only temporary to CSS3 as these browsers and compilers begin to adapt to CSS3 and its elements. For example, in the future we will no longer need this browser specific syntax for the border radius and will soon adapt to just border-radius. However, organization whether temporary or permanent is key to keeping your code neat and readable down the line.

CSS3 Fallback Practices and Techniques

As with everything that is new in the web technologies or web related area, anything new that comes out and we adapt to it must have a fallback for those that have not adapted. What this means is, the elements that CSS3 has expanded on such as the background element that includes more capabilities including the use of RGBA gradients or multiple backgrounds are not compatible with browsers that do not support CSS3.

With that said, if you are using these new additions to elements or even the new elements that are available to CSS3, you need to assure you have some sort of fallback mechanism that can take place if a browser does not support these CSS techniques. Think of it as the Internet Explorer dilemma that is ever ongoing, with every new version Microsoft release, we need to create workarounds and fallbacks to suit each of these versions that we wish to support.

Furthermore, the easiest fallback technique for CSS3 is to implement the elements that worked in previous versions of browsers in your CSS style sheet as well, or to create a separate style sheet altogether.

If you are using the fallback technique within the same style sheet by implementing cross compatible elements, make sure these fallback elements appear on top of the new elements you implemented. The reason for this is that CSS is interpreted in sequence, from top to bottom. Therefore, when the fallback element is read, it is overwritten by the other element you implemented only if that new element is recognized by the browser.

If the browser does not recognize the new element, the fallback element remains the same and is the only one identified. If you swap the fallback element with the intended element that you wish to use, making the fallback below the intended element, the intended element will be overwritten by the fallback element whether the intended element is supported or not. Therefore, the order in which you place the elements in is very important to the way you intend it to compile.

Test, Test, and Test

One of the main problems new CSS3 designers or developers are forgetting to do is test their code in the applicable browsers and their current and previous versions. By failing to do so, many times the websites become intolerable for the viewers who have browsers and or browser versions that do not support CSS3. These designers or developers automatically carry the thought that whatever they implement using CSS3 will automatically have a fallback for unsupported browsers, however, this is not true for many cases.

For example, implementing the RGBA gradients for the background that is not supported for other browsers causes no background to return, and with some website designs that rely on the background to create a contrast between the typography and the background, will make it very difficult to locate and read the typography. Therefore, always test your work in applicable browsers whether or not you think or know that certain elements you implemented have fallbacks.

Personal outsourcing isn’t quite the hot topic that it was two years ago. With virtual assistant firms available left and right, could-be assistants have become less of a unique work accessory and much more of a sustainable, ubiquitous business addition.

What was once a quirky but useful tool for the digital age has become standard — nowadays it’s rare to find a small design firm without a personal outsourcing strategy.

But while personal outsourcing has become popular, it’s certainly not a process that’s loaded with security and simplicity. Virtual assistants are notorious for packing up at random and leaving employers with projects in a state of limbo.

While thousands turn to personal outsourcing as a way of simplifying their workday, many find it achieves the exact opposite.

Managing your online assistant(s) doesn’t need to be a painful exercise, particularly with the right staffing strategy on your side. Apply these eight tips and you’ll see a noticeable increase in how efficient, effective, and worthwhile your outsourcing endeavors are, no matter how small or large your team is.

1. Never Rely on Just One Service Provider

For most people, one full-time outsourced employee is enough to complete basic tasks and manage extra work. Regardless, it’s important to keep a backup planned, especially if your work is subject to deadlines and urgent "complete by" dates.

Online assistants are known for disappearing at the worst possible times, particularly when they’re contacted through a semi-anonymous contract bidding website. So keep a backup provider ready, whether through a loose email connection or by switching through providers for different tasks and projects.

By splitting your workload across multiple assistants, you’ll end up less exposed to fallout from failed projects and mystery disappearances.

Use Elance or another outsourcing service to build a database of prospective full-time assistants.

2. Increase the Duties of Your Assistants Gradually

Three years ago, 43 Folders carried an excellent article on the psychological barriers surrounding personal outsourcing. Not surprisingly, one of the most common objections to outsourcing basic tasks is the trust factor — people are largely skeptical that a low-cost employee can manage their workload effectively.

The obvious solution to this is rarely taken, largely because people are opposed to outsourcing entirely out of fear. Guide your assistants into the position slowly by gradually increasing the importance of submitted tasks and you’ll end up with a small stable of effective, trustworthy remote employees.

For example, you could start with simple tasks such as booking an appointment, searching for a hotel, or tracking down a piece of software.

Assign the same job to multiple employees and you’ll gain an understanding of who among them are proficient enough for the position — and who aren’t.

With just a week of testing and a small budget, you can put together a team of assistants that are stress-tested and capable of taking on the work you need completed.

3. Sort Your Tasks by Importance

It’s tempting to send your assistants a hundred-item list of tasks to complete, asking them to report back at the end of the month for the next chapter in a project. While this strategy can work well on long-term employees and experienced providers, it’s unlikely to mesh well with new hires.

Mistakes become more apparent without direction, and when communication is cut down, it’s much harder to eliminate errors and refine the type of work you need completed.

Work on a day-by-day basis with new employees, offering new tasks and providing feedback after they’re completed.

By cutting your major projects into smaller action-related groups, you’ll be able to focus on efficiency and eliminate mistakes before they become a liability. Start by requesting a daily progress report from assistants, and expand the reporting period as mistakes are ironed out.

4. Be Specific and Detailed with the Tasks You Assign

Ask an assistant to rent a car in New York and you could end up with a two-seat compact car conveniently located fifty miles away in New Jersey. Of course, that’s no use to you — what you wanted was a family van available for pickup from the airport.

The damage is obviously greater when applied to offline tasks, but online projects can easily go just wrong when essential details are overlooked.

Instead of asking your assistants to complete a task, ask to have a task completed according to a detailed set of instructions. Offer unspecific instructions and you’ll be met with work that’s equally inaccurate.

It may seem like an anti-productivity move at first, but offering more detailed instructions will lead to more accurate and effective output from your assistants and outsourced staff.

5. Separate Emails for Outsourced Tasks

Using your regular email address to manage staff will lead to disaster. With just a few remote assistants, messages will quickly pile up and make it near impossible to read correspondence from other contacts, let alone respond to them.

Collaborating on work requires a surprising amount of back-and-forth communication, giving you a good reason to separate outsourcing-related emails from other email.

We recommend communicating with assistants via email; the vast majority of collaboration suites out there are too bloated and ineffective to work for small, one-off tasks.

Set up a secondary email address or have your current email account automatically sort messages from assistants into a new folder or label; not only will this lead to a better ability to focus on important tasks without distraction, but you’ll also be able to automate task recording and build a separate history of communications with your staff.

6. Shop Around and Be Patient

Post an advertisement on any leading assistant website and you’ll be inundated with applications, most of which just aren’t very good. From spelling mistakes to nonsensical sentences, it’s far from uncommon to find that your first attempts at personal outsourcing are met with a questionable set of replies.

Resist the temptation to pack in the towel and stick at it — finding good assistants takes time.

Allow for at least a month when searching for a long-term online assistant, just as you would when hiring offline staff.

Cutting the process short may lead to short-term productivity gains and a quick search, but it’ll inevitably result in long-term losses due to missed opportunities and rash choices.

Spend the first few weeks trialing several different assistants and you’ll end up with a high quality hire — someone who is likely to generate long-term results and reduce your outsourcing stresses.

7. Be Nice and Professional

The employer/virtual assistant relationship is similar to the client/freelancer relationship. Whether you opt for a long-term hire or simply choose to outsource to assistants on a per-project basis, remember that you’re working on the other side of the transaction this time.

In essence, be the type of client that you like working with — your assistants will appreciate it, especially if they work with other people too.

If you plan on working with an assistant for an extended period, go out of your way to keep work efficient for them too. The goal of personal outsourcing is to increase your efficiency, and as unusual as it may sound, the greatest way to increase your efficiency is to ensure that your staff are able to work efficiently too.

Put the hours in and work out a strategy with your assistant(s); it’ll save you time and increase the amount of work they can complete for you.

8. Use Productivity Tools and Resources to Help You

Have you experimented with personal outsourcing? Before you take the plunge and hire your own online assistant, use these resources and productivity tools to ensure you go about it the right way.

The International Virtual Assistants Association has its own code of ethics, information for freelancers, and a directory of qualified virtual assistants – the perfect hiring resource.

Elance and oDesk claim thousands of virtual assistants and task-specific freelancers. Indian outsourcing firm GetFriday has a staff of over 150 personal assistants from $15 hourly.

A.J. Jacob’s piece on personal outsourcing from Esquire offers a humorous look at the possibilities of personal outsourcing.

Productivity expert Tim Ferriss compares fourteen different personal outsourcing companies and virtual assistant providers.

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• Related categories: Project Management and Productivity

About the Author

Mathew Carpenter is an 18-year-old business owner and entrepreneur from Sydney, Australia. Mathew is the owner of AddToDesign, a website which provides value added design buzz, along with Design-Newz, the premier source for aggregated design news. Follow Mathew on Twitter: @matcarpenter.

Typography is an art-form that holds great variety. While many pieces usually are 2d, there are a handful of really cool 3D style pieces that we’ve found for you today. This show great skills from the artists and can inspire us all – no matter what type of design we do daily.

So sit back and enjoy!

Want to increase your website’s conversion rate? Want more subscribers, opt-ins, members, customers? How about doing less work while you’re at it?

Too good to be true? Nope.

It’s possible if you apply the 80-20 rule: focus on the 20% that will bring you 80% of the results.

By doing an 80-20 optimization of your website — whittling your pages down to the 20% of things that produces 80% of the results — you’ll not only have a simpler site that’ll convert better, but you’ll have less work in developing and managing it since there’ll be fewer elements to think about.

Okay, so the above claim about less work was only partly true — you’ll have to do a bit more work upfront, but the benefit is less work and more rewards afterwards.

80-20 Whut?

The 80-20 rule is another term for the Pareto principle.

While dropping the term "Pareto principle" will make you sound smart and hip to your friends — not to mention increasing your conversion factor with the opposite sex — we’ll go with the simple and self-explanatory "80-20 rule."

So what the heck is this 80-20 rule? It means that 80% of all outcomes come from 20% of the causes.

Business management thinker Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. Juran developed the principle after observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.

The 80-20 rule is also a common rule of thumb in business, i.e. 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.

The 80-20 Rule Can be Applied to Your Website

The 80-20 rule applies to anything. Personal tasks, business, software, whatever.

The 80-20 rule can even be applied your website.

Hey, websites — that’s the topic of this article. What a coincidence!

Applied in designing and running a website, we can interpret the 80-20 rule to say that 20% of things on your site would give you 80% of your desired results. What this means is that you should focus on that 20% and really perfect it, instead of spreading yourself thin.

Ruthlessly get rid of the other 80% of things as they’re non-essential details that only give you 20% of the results (the return of investment for that other 80% is low).

Some examples:

• Sidebar widgets that aren’t being used
• Social media buttons (how many users do you think click on the Digg button on the article out of the thousands that visit it?)
• A list of the latest blog posts on the sidebar (users can go to the front page, it’s redundant)
• Main menu links that aren’t being viewed much such as FAQ and Help pages (move them somewhere else)

After taking things out, perfect and focus on what’s left.

Why Care About 80-20?

Yeah, yeah, so the 80-20 rule is all fine and dandy, you might say.

"But what’s in it for me?" you might ask. "Why should I care about 80-20-ing my website? What are the benefits?"

All valid questions.

First, here’s how it benefits your website visitors:

• Your visitors experience a lean, mean and simple site
• Less distraction and clicking away from the main goal or call-to-action
• Faster page response times
• The stuff that’s left will be higher quality because you can concentrate on them and perfect them

And, even better, here’s how it benefits you:

• Higher conversion rate: more subscribers, opt-ins, members, customers
• A higher percentage will go to your primary call-to-action
• Less work to do and more time to do it since you’re only doing that 20% which actually matters
• Easier design and management work — less elements to deal with

5 Steps to 80-20 Your Website

1. Figure out what’s your main goal and/or call-to-action (the 20%).
2. Round up all the rest of the things and elements on your site that don’t pertain to your main goal/call-to-action (the 80%).
3. Toss out the unneeded elements from your site; easier said than done, but it’s a critical step.
4. Determine if your changes are effective; use split testing.
5. Tweak and perfect your site’s design and interface so that the remaining 20% are prominent and emphasized.

Think 80-20 Is Bullshitake? Here’s Proof It Works

80-20 rule proponent and analytics wizard Tim Ferriss has a website optimization case study of how an 80-20-optimized website received a 20%+ higher conversion rate.

The best part? Only a few simple changes were needed to be made.

It was just a matter of reducing the homepage such that it only contained 20% of the elements that produced 80% of the results. The rest were tossed out.

These are the essential 20%:

• Clean call-to-action button
• Simple value statement
• Clear media credibility indicators

The Case Study: Daily Burn

The homepage originally looked like this.

Not bad, right? Nice, simple design.

But can you tell why it wasn’t optimized?

Go ahead, look. I’ll wait.

Back? Okay, so there’s actually a bunch of unnecessary elements on that homepage that didn’t fit with the main objective of the page; the 80%.

The things that don’t relate to the main call-to-action, which converts visitors by getting them to register:

• A number tracker of how many calories burned
• User activity list
• Latest blog posts
• A bunch of junk in the footer
• Menu navigation at the top

So the website was 80-20-optimized by trimming the unimportant 80% of the elements from the homepage.

The simplified homepage now looks like this.

What a huge improvement.

80% of the items were removed, leaving only the 20% of items that function to increase the conversion rate:

• The value statement and description
• The call-to-action button
• Media credibility indicators

So how did they know that the conversion rate increased? Two separate tests were done, split testing the simplified home page against the original (50% of visitors were sent to one design, 50% to the other).

In the first test, there was a 21.1% increase in the conversion rate. In the second test, a 19.8% increase.

So, there was a 20% increase in the conversion rate just from 80-20-ing their website. As you’ve seen, pretty simple stuff was done — no heavy overhaul needed.

But they didn’t stop there — they freakin’ 80-20′ed even more. It’s how it should be done.

They came up with 2 more variations of a new design that was even simpler.

Variation B

Variation C

And sure enough, both were an improvement over the new simplified design, with variation B being the clear winner.

Why?

There are 2 big changes:

• Value statement was made even more clear
• Much more noteworthy: one signup button instead of both the signup and tour button (so now instead of 2 options, a visitor has only one option)

By using the 80-20 rule to simplify their homepage, these folks optimized their site and increased the conversion rate.

So yeah. The 80-20 rule. It really works in improving a website’s effectiveness.

80-20 Your Website to Increase Conversions

If you want to increase your website’s conversion rate — and set yourself up to do less work while you’re at it — then you absolutely need to 80-20 your website.

You’ve now hopefully seen that the 80-20 rule applied to your website isn’t bullshitake but something that’ll actually help you.

Look at what 20% of things on your site would give you 80% of your desired results: more subscribers, opt-ins, members, customers. Then only have those elements on your site, while getting rid of the rest of the 80% of elements.

By using the 80-20 rule to optimize your website, you’ll be well on your way to increasing your site’s effectiveness.

Now go out there and destroy that unnecessary 80% from your website, soldier.

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• Related categories: Web Design and Content Strategy

About the Author

Oleg Mokhov is the world’s most mobile electronic musician and co-founder of the royalty free music store Soundtrackster. He was born in Russia, but raised in the US. Follow him on Twitter as @olegmokhov.

There are a lot of free icon sets out there for you to use. In this collection, we rounded up a few icon sets from all over the web that you can use in your design projects.

The hundreds of featured icons here are diverse in their styles: glossy, hand-drawn, realistic, textured are among the design themes you’ll find. I hope you find a handful of icon sets that you’ll bookmark, download, and use!

Note: You should read the license of each icon set before using them. Some of the icon sets featured here are available only for personal use.

If you want to discover more free icons, check out our other collections:

• 40 Beautiful Free Icon Sets
• 30 High-Quality Icon Sets for E-Commerce Designs
• 40+ Stylish and Trendy Icon Sets
• Freebie Icons category on Six Revisions

In addition, here our our collections of icon design tutorials in case you want to learn how to make icons yourself:

• 50 Excellent Icon Design Tutorials
• 50 Wonderful Icon Design Tutorials

1. Icons Pack "Web Cartoon"

40 icons – 48×48px – PNG format.

2. Near

15 icons – 170×130px – PNG format.

3. Adobe icons

5 icons – 32×32–512×512px – PNG format.

4. Blue icons

5 icons – 256×256px – PNG format.

5. So sweet

6 icons – 100×100px – ICO format.

6. Project Icons

165 icons – 32×32px (some 48px) – PNG, ICO, ICNS formats.

7. Toolbar Icon Set

35 icons – 32×32px – PNG, ICO, ICNS formats.

8. Sport balls set

6 icons -500×500px – PNG format.

9. Fruit Pack

8 icons – 16×16–48×48px – PNG, ICO, and ICNS formats.

10. 32px Mantra v2

39 icons – 32×32px – PNG format.

11. PixeloPhilia2

44 icons – 32×32px – PNG format.

12. Drinks

8 icons – 64×64-128×128px – PNG format.

13. Classy Folder Icons

29 icons (and 6 color themes) – 16×16-512×512px – PNG and ICO formats.

14. Gifts icons pack 2

3 icons – 64×64-128×128px – PNG, ICO, and ICNS format.

15. Falcon 32px

21 icons – 32×32px – PNG format.

16. Abobe CS5 Master Collection Icons

24 icons - 128×128px – PNG format.

17. Icecream icon set

6 icons – 64×64–256×256px – PNG, ICO, and ICNS formats.

18. 12 Creative Wooden Social Networking Icons

12 icons – 16×16–256×256px – PNG format.

19. Kitchen icons

34 icons – 128×128px – PNG format.

20. Folders: A Free Icon Set

9 icons - 256×256-512×512px – PNG format.

21. Gifts icons pack 1

3 icons - 64×64-128×128px – PNG and ICO formats.

22. Social and Web Icons

57 icons – 64×64px – PNG format.

23. Lovely website icons pack 1

8 icons – various dimensions – PNG format.

24. Lovely website icons pack 2

8 icons – various dimensions – PNG format.

25. Currency Stock Icons

4 icons – 64×64-512×512px – PNG format.

26. Artcore Icons Nr. 1

9 icons – 512×512px – PNG format.

27. Artcore Icons Nr. 2

7 icons – 512×512px – PNG format.

28. Mini Icon Set

22 icons – 16×16-48×48px – ICO, ICNS, and iContainer format.

29. General Vector Icons

8 icons – 32×32px – PNG and AI formats.

30. Sinem Final Version

26 icons – 512×512px – PNG, ICNS, and iContainer formats.

31. Burnt Wood: A Social Media Icon Set

12 icons – 420×420px – PNG format.

32. Gentle Romantic icons

5 icons – 512×512px – PNG format.

33. Very Emotional Emoticons

40 icons - 32×32-128×128px – PNG format.

34. Incredibly Detailed 3D Icon Set

30 icons – 128×128px – PNG format.

35. 60+ Detailed Vector Icons

60+ icons – 32×32-96×96px – PNG format.

36. “Where Are My Money” Icon Set

6 icons – 256×256px – PNG format.

37. Twitter Icons TweetMyWeb

10 icons – various dimensions – PNG format.

38. Fliraneo icon pack

5 icons – various sizes – PNG format.

39. WooFunction: 178 Amazing Web Design Icons

178 icons – 32×32px – PNG format.

40. Free Set of 25 Icons from TurboMilk

25 icons – 16×16-64×64px – PNG format.

41. Basic set

42 icons – 16×16-64×64 – PNG format.

42. Basic Set 2

42 icons – 16×16-64×64 – PNG format.

43. Office Supplies

9 icons -512×512px – PNG format.

44. Morning Pleasure

16 icons – 256×256px – PNG, ICO, and ICNS format.

45. Social Buzz Icon Pack

12 icons – various dimensions – PNG format.

46. 3D Social Media Icon Pack

20 icons – 64×64px – PNG format.

47. NIXUS Icon Pack

60 icons – 32×32-64×64px – PNG format.

48. Vibrant Stickers Web Icon Pack

15 icons – 256×256px – PNG format.

49. Browsers – Navigateurs

10 icons – 256×256px – PNG, ICO, and ICNS format.

50. Mobile Icon Set

10 icons – 32×32-128×128px – PNG format.

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About the Author

Tomas Laurinavičius is interested in web design, graphic design and web development, based in Lithuania. He’s also the founder of Iniwoo, a site about photoshop, web design, wordpress and inspiration. If you’d like to connect with him, you can follow him on Twitter.

Twitter has gone large, really large. Everyone of us has seen the tremendous growth this nifty little service with just a basic and simple idea has gone over the years. The main thing that makes twitter so powerful is their API. The twitter API enables developers to develop their own custom twitter applications and tools. With the API provided by twitter, developers can call the twitter services and  integrate them into their applications and tools very easily. There are zillions of twitter tools and apps out there. Some offer enhanced tweeting user experience while others are useful for personal and business analytics. With twitter, we have collected some of very useful and indispensible tools that we think you should be knowing about. So here goes the list:

TwitterAnalyzer

TwitterAnalyzer is one of the most comprehensive Twitter analyzer tools out there. It tracks followers who are online when you are, number of readers that have been exposed to your message, your tweet habits, who is retweeting your updates, twitter follow statistics, growth rates, conversations being made about you, the size of your audience and your followers’ demographics. It will let you research the way your fellow tweeps behave. It will surface which messages they answer and which ones they paid attention to, drilling down to their occupations and which users and are in your line of work.

Twitter Grader

Twitter Grader is another third party app which calculates a grade for a particular twitter on a scale of 0-100. It will show you your ranking in your city, state, and country. It will also show you active and influential Twitter users that you may want to follow. The Tweet Cloud indicates the frequent user words in your Tweets with the most commonly used in larger print. This is very beneficial because its a quick overview of your content.In addition to the TwitterGrader, Hubspot also has a Facebook Grader, Website Grader and Press Release Grader that you should check out as well, if those stats are important to you.

TweetPsych

Still in Beta, TweetPsych is a work in progress. Its purpose is to build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their Tweets. It compares the content of a user’s Tweets to a baseline reading that was built by analyzing an ever-expanding group of over 1.5 million random Tweets, and then highlighting areas where the user stands out. Dan Zarella,the developer behind TweetsPsych continues to expand his set of psychological definitions, while also refining the system and its algorithm to better analyze Twitter-specific content.

TweetStats

TweetStats will graph your total tweets by the month, by the day, and by the hour. It also tells you your number of @replies and which interface you used to Twitter your tweets. By calculating the volume of your tweets and retweets it quantifies your tweet density. Most people who say they get no value from Twitter should first look at their usage and consistency to realistically evaluate what they have invested in Twitter before they consider the results.

Tweetag

Tweetag display the most discussed topics in the last 24h in general, or the most talked topics related to a given topic. You can also get a free email alert whenever a keyword appears in Twitter Lists of your choice.

Twist

This tool offers trends of keywords or product name, based what Twitter users are tweeting about. You can see frequency of a keyword or product name being mentioned over a period a week or a month and display them on a graph. Select an area on the graph to zoom into trend for specific time range. Click on any point on the graph to see all tweets posted during a specific time. One can also see the latest tweets on the topic.

TwInfluence

TwInfluence is a  tool for measuring the combined influence of your Twitter account and followers, and then assessing your reach through the quality of your followers. Since all users and all followers are not created equal, this analysis will determine the “horizon of communication” that extends beyond your own direct contacts. This is demonstrated whenever somebody “retweets” your message and its influence begins to create ripple effect throughout the Twitterverse. TwInfluence uncovers one’s reach, velocity and social capital, and its worth the time to spend with this tool to learn how these components interact.

Twitturly

Tracks popular URLs tracker on Twitter. With Digg-style interface, it displays 100 most popular URLs shared on Twitter over the last 24 hours. On Digg, people vote for a particular web content, whereas on Twitterurly, each time a user share a link, it is counted as 1 vote. This is a good tool to see what people are ‘talking’ about in Twitterville and see total tweets that carry the links.

TwitterFriends

This tool focuses on conversation and information aspects of Twitter users’ behaviors. Two key metrics are Conversational Quotient (CQ) and Links Quotient (LQ). CQ measures how many tweets were replied whereas LQ measures how many tweets contained links. Its TwitGraph displays six metrics – Twitter rank, CQ, LQ, Retweet Quotient, Follow cost, Fans and @replies. Its interactive graph (using Google Visualization API) can displays relationships between two variables.

TwiBuzz

Twibuzz is a tool that let’s you see how often people are using Twitter to tweet your favorite keywords in real time. Try terms like swineflu, or compare two terms like google,apple. TwiBuzz will plot the current and historical tweet rate in tweets per minute (TPM) for your search term(s). TwiBuzz tracks a predefined list of terms, but you’ll find that it’s easy to add to that list. Once a term is added, TwiBuzz will have it’s first TPM data point for that query within a few minutes.

Hello, in this tutorial I’ll show you how to create an amazing colorful web blog layout with tutorials using Photoshop. In this tutorial we will use only basic tools, like rectangle tool, gradient tool, layer styles, therefore this tutorial will be the good start point for web develop beginners. A result will be a professional web layout that you can convert to WordPress blog theme.

Final Image Preview

1.Step

Create new document 1200x1800px. Open file bg file , go to Edit > Define pattern and click OK. Come back to new document, go to Edit > Fill, choose ‘pattern’ and select our pattern. Now you should have document filled with excellent pattern!

2.Step

Import logo file and place it on the top. Use Rounded Rectangle Tool with Radius set to 10px and draw a rectangle. Then set to its layer style:

Gradient colors are #4e0101 and #ad1414.
Now we should have something like that:

3.Step

Holding CTRL click on layer thumbnail. Then right click on selection and choose Transform Selection. Transform it as it is presented below:

On the new layer fill new selection with white. Then add Gaussian Blur filter with radius 25-50. It depends on how light menu should be. Duplicate layer few times and try to experiment with opacity.

4.Step

With Horizontal Type Tool insert some text using font Lucida Fax. To the text layer add style:

Using Rounded Rectangle Tool create submenu. To the layer add style: (Gradient colors: #c35a0c, #ffae00)

Now we have:

5.Step

It’s very important step. In order to make our submenu more interesting we’ll add some oblique gradients. CTRL+Click on layer thumbnail and using Gradient Tool make some gradients. You can press SHIFT while drawing to make sure that gradients will parallel to each other.

You can erase gradients on the edges. Set layer opacity to 17%;

6.Step

I found some icons on the Web and added some submenu positions. You can place there anything you want. As you can see, the submenu title isn’t visible, so using Horizontal Type Tool place it. I made a search box on the right side of menu, simply because I wanted not to leave so much space, but if you have a very large menu it isn’t needed.

7.Step

With Rounded Rectangle Tool make box and set style: (Gradient colors: # 0a324c, #0088b5)

Now do as we did in 5.step, but gradients can be thicker.

8.Step

Find any image, crop it and place over the slider’s background. Add style: (Stroke color: #072231)

Now CTRL+Click on layer thumbnail and using Rectangular Marquee Tool with option Intersect with selection select a bottom part.

Create new layer, fill the selection with black and change opacity to 80-90%; Add some text.

9.Step

With Pencil Tool make some dots. Add them style: (Color: #072638)

The “selected” dot has color: #73a7bf and additional style:

10.Step

With Rounded Rectangle Tool create box. Add style: (Gradient colors: #da690e, #e3b410)

Do as in 5.step with gradients. Add title (Lucida Fax, 14pt), text layer style:

Find some photos on Google and add them the same stroke as in 8.step

11.Step

By now, our tutorial is finished. I taught you basis, but if you want to add some new modules (Login box, Gallery slider) I give you colors I used:
Log inbox: #cec0a5, #f7f6ef;
Gallery slider: #410c1e, #ec4a7c;
Twitter: #bbc9cf, #dee8ec;

Final Result: Colorful Blog Web Layout

Download Psd file

Related posts:

1. Create Hosting Template in Photoshop
2. Create Colorful 3D Text Effect in Photoshop
3. Create Beach header

The announcement dates back to just one week ago and it has already sparked the usual trepidation around the web about what the next shiny little device from Apple could be.

From the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco on September 1, Steve Jobs will reveal the Apple’s news, music-themed this time of the year: it will probably be a product to be launched in the coming weeks, but about which we don’t have many clues yet.

The most reliable voices report about a complete redesign of the iPod lines that could probably inherit the dual cameras and Retina display from the new iPhone 4, and a New Service That Could let users listen to streaming music over the Internet without downloading songs directly to their own computer. Credible speculation, if you look back at December 2009 when Apple acquired LaLa, a streaming digital music service – currently suspended – which allowed the users, among other interesting features, to purchase streaming-only Web albums.

Some rumors report that Jobs could also introduce a new iPad model, with a smaller screen size of 7 inches versus the actual 9,7 inches, Retina display equipped and priced significantly lower than the $ 499 needed for the current basic model of the tablet.

Probably, however, despite many who want a smaller model of the Apple tablet, that’s easier to carry and less bulky than the currently available version, we won’t see anything like that before next year anyway, because the introduction of a different product concept would be too close to the launch of the original iPad of just a few months ago.

Finally, we expect the announcement of the possible relaunch of the not-so-lucky Apple TV with its brand new name “iTV” which would then benefit from on-demand movies, television series and programs through a special decoder.


We’ll see then. Any expectation on your side?

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Thankfully, we’re able to do all of this with the help of our sponsors who support our community — companies that also create amazing products and provide excellent services to web professionals like us.

We’d like to thank our site sponsors between July 1, 2010 – August 30, 2010 and talk a little bit about what they do.

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Judging what’s best for an audience is never far from the web designer’s mind. The ability to predict whether a web design will soar like an eagle or sink like the Titanic is among the most subjective and complex measurements you will encounter.

While resources that explain best practices exist, and your visitors contacting you about serious issues and offering you feedback relating to your site will occur if you have the proper mechanisms in place — it’s ultimately your responsibility to be proactive and research, investigate, and determine the what, why and how to ensure widespread usability.

Designing by Numbers

Before we examine the types of statistical information you should be looking at — and the relevance they have to your web design projects — we first need to go over the 3 single-word questions that relate directly to all the design decisions you will make.

These 3 questions are ultimately at the heart of your research, analytics and motivation behind designing by the numbers.

What, why, and how is a simple design process that:

1. Defines what the issue is
2. Proves why it is an issue
3. Determines how to fix the issue with the optimal solution (if it is an issue)

What?

Of all the questions that may enter the mind of a web designer, "What?" is probably the word that relates to the task at hand. The process of understanding relevance and the usefulness of information explicitly relates to the decisions we undertake.

• What do site users need?
• What things frustrate site users?
• What can I do in this design to accomplish the site’s objectives?
• What’s wrong with the site?
• What’s right about the site?
• What can be made better?

Asking "What?" will yield to a lot of information that will help you make optimal design decisions.

What your audience requires is a fundamental principle of designing by numbers. Get Satisfaction is a feedback tool you can use to help you design by the numbers.

Why?

Next on the list of list of determining factors is the question of "Why?"

Because making changes or implementations beyond what you initially set out to achieve may cost time, money or resources — the ability to back up your ideas with hard data and facts will be enough to even make the bean-counting bosses go weak at the knees and take your professional guidance and ideas more seriously.

• Why are people not using the comments?
• Why is the community participation on the site low?
• Why are users having trouble finding what they need?
• Why do we need to support Internet Explorer 6?

Knowing what needs to be done is one thing — knowing the justification to why it needs to be done is another.

Reasons for why cross-browser support should be implemented can easily be seen when you calculate the percentages of users that use certain browsers.

How?

The last single-word question is "How?" which makes sense in that once you know what needs doing and why it’s required, the method of actualizing the "What" is important.

• How should I go about increasing user engagement?
• How can this design improve community participation?
• How can I fix the issue of users not finding the product they need?
• How can I create a design that works in Internet Explorer 6?

Statistical/Gathering Methods

When determining the best course of action for your visitors, there are 3 essential statistic types that will come into play in helping to answer the "what" question. (We shall come to the "how" and the "why" later on, so don’t worry!)

Each of these data gathering techniques have their own benefits and pitfalls so there isn’t ultimately a perfect solution.

However, designers wanting a well-rounded experience would be better off using a mixture of all 3 as they not only give you a range of quantitative results (raw numbers) but also qualitative research (such as open-ended responses and feedback).

On-Site Data

On-site data are the kind of information you obtain from website analytics software and monitoring user activity on your website.

While this type of data is often ideal in that they relate directly to your visitors, it often takes a while for activity on a new website to build up — and as such, depending on these alone may leave you in the dark as to your visitor’s basic primary needs upon launching the service.

In sites with limited or no traffic, or sites that are still in development — analytics software fails because there is no (or limited) data sources; you’re pretty much in the dark.

Most websites have some kind of visitor tracking mechanism installed, such as Google Analytics.

Third-Party/Generalized Data

Independent data are often the most useful to new websites, usually produced by large firms who provide demographic services like Net Applications or W3Counter.

These third-party data-gathering sites offer a glimpse at the general population, and by that, it will include useful details such as the browsers and devices they use, their country of origin, and so forth.

On-Site data gathering methods is going to be more accurate and will reflect your particular situation much better — for example, a web development blog will have a different audience than a cooking blog) — but accounting for independent statistics can aid you by providing a baseline to work from, especially if you have no user base.

There are plenty of statistics on the web, you just need to look! The figure above shows statistics from A List Apart’s survey of web designers.

Social Data

Socially-sourced data are a relatively new concept that has come out of the rise of networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, where people can promote or discuss your creation through an external site.

While there are still a large number of people who aren’t interested in the "social" aspect of social networking, the importance of leveraging these statistics of what visitors like, dislike and their comments attributing to such information can actually be more useful (in different ways) to the conventional number-based statistics from analytics packages.

Social networking can provide you with useful feedback to work with.

Designers Demographics

Now that we have covered the "what", we need to examine the "why" (and by association) the need to focus our attention on all the pretty percentages, pie charts and graphics that appear everywhere.

Ensuring your visitors can use and enjoy their experience with your web design is important and determining how we can provide that experience will all be down to using the statistics methods above and then narrowing the focus down onto what is most relevant for your audience.

While pretty numbers may seem impressive on their own, they’re not worth anything if they don’t speak to your niche, so successful sourcing of your data is critical.

Review websites are notorious for having subjective criteria of questionable validity.

If you’ve exhausted local statistics and have a general idea of the visitors you’re getting (and perhaps where they found you), and if you’ve gone further afield to seek out related demographics relating to research on an area which affects your niche, its worth going beyond the number crunching and seeking out "intelligent hits" that may help guide your decision making. Asking your community (or perhaps your competitions if you don’t have one!) what would enhance the experience can be great, just don’t try to please (or annoy) everyone and only implement what will benefit your users!

Getting to know your visitors can simply be a matter of knowing how to communicate.

With all of this information in regards to what you’re investigating the "why" (as in why changes need to be made) will become quite apparent. While it may seem natural, it’s quite easy to become so fixated on the number of visitors or re-tweets we get, that we actually ignore the most important thing a statistics package (or some solid research) can tell us – that our visitors will have their own specific set of needs and requirements that need addressing. As a final point on the matter of "why", if we don’t actively seek out ways to improve ourselves, we can’t hope to gain new customers.

Visitors may have JavaScript disabled which could leave them excluded from statistics.

A Quick Measurement

The next thing to take into account is how to filter the information once you’ve collected it (which meets the "how" element). Having lots of statistics and ideas may help, but filtering the stream of data will be critical to making sense of the best route to take in fixing a common problem or deciding the next step. The simplest way to prioritize your data is to follow the below, the higher up on the list the item is, the better and more potentially useful and reliable your research will be. Once the best information is extracted, you can refer to the numbers when making decisions for the design.

Determining the quality of your information is a mission critical part of the process.

Importance of Location:

• Local
• Independent
• Social

Importance of Type:

• Statistics
• Research

Importance of Reliability:

• Proven
• Trends
• Unproven

Importance of Margin:

• Significant
• Proportionate
• Insignificant

Note: Using the above, a locally sourced bunch of statistics that are proven (by a significant margin) to be the best course of action would ultimately be the peak of what you can gather. Though as your research will lead to talking with customers, individual needs should be accounted for as well.

Variable Considerations

Before rounding up this article, it’s important that we consider the variables which may impact your statistics. While it’s great that there are plenty of studies that may assist you in decision making (like how to build a perfect font stack or what browsers you should support), it’s very important that we highlight the issues that will break down the cold harsh numbers and give you a little more to work with. Without making this article particularly heavy going (which isn’t the intention), the two types of variables you want to consider are mechanical and personal, and both relative to the visitor.

The first of these (mechanical) will directly affect the way in which your visitor interacts with your site, this isn’t as a result of their physical being, but more of their circumstances and equipment. In web design it’s obvious that the device used, the OS installed, the browser used, the scripting or plug-ins available or something else will affect their experience. While these are usually listed as independent statistics in packages, they are often related to each other in that a single user will contribute to a number of these breakdown listings, thereby it may directly affect the results.

Nothing forces greater demands on a website than the range of browsers that exist.

The second and probably one of the more important factors are the personal variables. The reason why these variables are so important is because they will often not appear in statistics packages and require you to undertake independent research to get the numbers or determine the viability of catering to their needs. Such factors include the accessibility level being required, the usability of a site (which won’t be a number) and the findability of information. While harder to pin down, it still makes sense to account for such variables as they directly and quite dramatically affect visitors.

Note: Error Margins also play a part in statistics, research made by a human rather than a computer can be subject to biases, errors and omissions – some of which may go unnoticed. The significance of information can also fluctuate depending on the audience who visit the site at any given time.

Research Matters

While this article is not a comprehensive guide to research and statistics (there are entire books on the subject), the importance of knowing your visitors is showcased. When you come to build a site or implement a new feature, it’s important that you do your homework to avoid falling into a pitfall that could have otherwise been foreseen earlier. Taking the time to understand how products like Google Analytics work, what their weaknesses are and how to get a well rounded overview and an intimate knowledge of your visitors gives you the best possible chance of hosting a great experience.

It’s also worth noting that while this article does indeed focus on the numbers and opinions that lead to decision making, it’s very important not to forget the individual as a person who visits your realm (no person should be directly treated as a statistic, they are all just as important to the full equation as each other) and while numbers are great for measurements, opinions often lead to the most amount of innovation. With this article highlighting the benefits of research and accounting for more than a personalised view of a site, hopefully you will go on to target a loyal audience in the future!

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• 15 Tools for Monitoring a Website’s Popularity
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• Related categories: Web Design and User Interface

About the Author

Alexander Dawson is a freelance web designer, author and recreational software developer specializing in web standards, accessibility and UX design. As well as running a business called HiTechy and writing, he spends time on Twitter, SitePoint’s forums and other places, helping those in need.