Technology Effect

10 Useful iPhone Apps for Web Designers and Developers The iPhone has revolutionized the mobile device, and the App Store has taken it even further. There are literally apps for just about everything. While some of them are for having fun or passing the time, there are many apps that can help us perform serious tasks. There are even apps to help us web designers and developers do our jobs from anywhere. Having the ability to mange a database or update your blog all from your phone can come in handy. Here are 10 super useful iPhone applications to help web designers and developers perform tasks like these. Read More 10 Time Saving Google Chrome Extensions Google Chrome is quickly becoming a popular browser due to its speed and now its growing collection of extensions. Extensions are a great way to add functionality that doesn’t come packaged with the browser. There are extensi...

Google Chrome , like Firefox, has the ability to increase its functionality and capabilities through the use of extensions. If you’re a web developer, Google Chrome comes with a nice set of developer tools built in that will make your life easier. But there are also a number of extensions that will give you even more tools at your disposal. The great thing about extensions is that they allow you to perform tasks that would normally require you to switch over to another application. Being able to perform certain tasks without leaving your browser can be a big time saver. Here are 13 Google Chrome extensions that you should find very useful. Color Picker Color Oicker lets you quickly get the Hex and RGB values of any color! Also adjust Hue, Saturation, and Balance. Firebug Lite Firebug Lite is a tool for web developers, that allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

When starting a new web design project, it’s always a good idea to begin with a wireframe. The purpose of a wireframe is to communicate the layout of a page without getting caught up in color and design elements. Wireframes can be a big time saver as they help all parties involved come to an agreement on placement of major page elements such as headers, content areas, navigation menus, and footers. The key is to get the layout nailed down so major layout changes won’t take place once detailed design elements are in place. There are several different routes that a designer can take for creating wireframes, and there are even applications designed specifically for this. For this article, we’ve rounded up 10 excellent tools for creating wireframes . MockFlow MockFlow allows you to design and collaborate (in real-time) user interface mockups for your software and websites. It comes with numerous built-in components & icons. Axure Axure enables application designers to create...

jQuery has changed the way developers write JavaScript and the way users interact with websites and web applications. If you’re a developer, you know what a joy working with jQuery can be, especially the convenience of plugins. In this post, we’ve rounded up 14 fresh and useful jquery plugins that have been released in the past few months. You’ll find that these plugins offer a wide range of functionality, from navigation enhancements to image viewing. BubbleUp With BubbleUP, images in a list will enlarge with a smooth animation when you move your mouse over it. Then, if you move the mouse out, it will reset to the original size with the same smooth animation. Imagine the Mac Dock effect, although this plugin’s effect is not awesome like that, it’s light weight for such a similar zooming effect. Spritely Spritely is a jQuery plugin created by Artlogic for creating dynamic character and background animation in pure HTML and JavaScript.

8 Useful Online Tools for Web Designers and Developers Finding stuff to make your life easier is one of our passions. Whether it be freebies like fonts and icons, or tools to help you do your job, we search and find them so you can focus on the important things. For this post, we’ve found some online tools that are useful for design and development tasks, and the best part is…they’re all free to use. Read More 9 Useful Google Chrome Extensions for Web Designers Compared to the other major web browsers, Google Chrome is still relatively new. However, it’s popularity continues to grow rapidly. Here on WDL, Chrome is the second most used browser by our readers, right behind Firefox. With that in mind, and considering that most of you are web designers or in a related field, we thought it would be a good idea to show you some extensions for Chrome that you might find useful.  Read More 7 Useful Tools for Mobile Website Testing ...

Font Size Measures: Options and Preferences What is the Most Important Element in Designing Your Website? When you begin to design that perfect website, what do you think is the very first thing that you should be concerned with? Color? Templates? Graphic design? No. The first thing on the agenda should be font size. “Font size,” you say? “Why should one be concerned with something as mundane as font size when there’s a whole website to be concerned about? So, you must be joking, right?” Read More Key Elements in Designing a Product Landing Page Landing pages for product sales can be seen everywhere. Affiliate marketers are constantly examining some of the newer techniques to mastering digital e-commerce. When the situation involves just a small market segment, the rules for landing page design can change. Overall it takes a strong designer’s eye to create something extraordinary. Product landing pages offer fantastic insight towards dee...

By nature human beings are creatures who crave social interaction. We are forming relationships with friends and networking deeper with colleagues every passing day. The evolution from physical to digital has been an interesting one and is still ongoing. We have seen many social networks rise and fall in just a few short years. Building a credible website community from scratch takes a lot of dedication. Even more so than dedication is the requirement for patience. Networks take time to build and will require daily care in order to mature into a strong web entity. Why Social Networks? An interesting comparison relates to the growth of the Internet and how lacking our society is on trust. Many people will connect with strangers via social profiles yet wouldn’t even pass a “hello” onto the very same person had they met physically. Websites support this node system because a large user base finds the services appealing. Having a direct connection to a large list of people you ...

The youth is powering our digital age and they will control the future of our web. The position of freelance website designer seems lucrative and very enticing from the get-go. Set your own hours, work on whatever you want, get paid to work from home and learn as you go. What could be better? Problems begin to arise when freelancers situate themselves in all markets and spread their techniques too thin. There is a subset of jobs in digital design and development which freelancers should focus into. It can provide huge benefits to master single areas in a market so expansive as the web. Check out a few of the examples below and analyze your own skills. Try listing your objectives out to see what you think you’d be best at and where you’d need improvement. The drive from within to better yourself comes with the affection of a manageable task. In this case we’re considering the entire Web Design market. Finding your Passion Before considering what area of web design to pursue ...

A common mistake in typography is the use of apostrophes instead of quotation marks. A lot of people just get the two confused, using double apostrophes instead of actual quotation marks. It's hard to mistake it the other way around, but it will be worth your while to learn the differences. Quotation Marks Via Typographic literacy Quotation marks, or quotes, are used in punctuation to emphasize a phrase or word or to indicate speech. There are four types of quotation marks: single open, single closed, double open, or double closed. Opening quotations look like tiny little sixes, while the closing quotations look like nines. Most word-processing programs change them automatically, but always double check when you're done. Example of single quotation use: "Henry said, 'good morning,' this morning," said Ben. Examples of double quotation use: The doctor said, "Take your vitamins." "Oh, my gosh!" said the woman. The apostrophe O...

Spriting is a skillset in the web design field gaining lots of credibility. We initially saw these techniques applied to high-traffic websites such as Yahoo! and Digg. Over time even smaller-scaled web apps began applying sprites to their front end design specs. We’ll be going over some of the major benefits towards using sprite images in your website designs. The benefits can be found universally in icons, graphics, background patterns and so much more. There are also many unrecognized tools to aid in frontend sprite development and shave time off projects. So Why Use Sprites? As a brief description of spriting it’s understood easiest as a front end development technique. Instead of saving button states and icons as separate images you should combine all images into a single file and use CSS positioning to move between them. As an example a button design may have all 3 states – standard, hover, and click – added into a single file spaced between each other. The benefits sh...

Mobile iOS devices have seen some tremendous growth over the 2010 period. With the growing sales of iPads and the popular release of the new iPhone 4 Apple has had an amazing year. Not only in these two markets but all iPod Touch devices are also running iOS which can access the App Store. Here we’ll be going over brief ideas of how to design icons for iOS devices. There are many sizes and scales which require careful attention to detail and focus. iOS designers are required to submit an icon with their app into the store during publishing. The process may be time consuming but the rewards are outstanding and provide a true sense of empowerment. iOS App Development The main process for designing an app for iOS requires two bits. The frontend design concept requires a branding or icon design to fit in the Apple App Store. Designers are also required to craft UI wireframe concepts for each screen of the mobile app. Developers then enter XCode and spend hours wor...