PicLens - veeery nifty!

Check out this very nifty Firefox (and IE) add-on, which makes image browsing on few sites a more interesting experience. Watch demo on the site or ask me to show you how it work.

PicLens | Immersive Slideshows Across the Web

Blogged with Flock

Evolution of Tech Companies’ Logos

I have too much time on my hands recently, so Interesting bit of history and info on evolution of few well know company logos.

Neatorama » Blog Archive » The Evolution of Tech Companies’ Logos

Blogged with Flock

Home Page Carousel Showcase

Hiya,

Another site to take ideas from, this time for carousels. Here are 40+ examples, maybe you will find some of them interesting.

Carousels Design Showcase | Elements of Design

Blogged with Flock

jacobs cracker

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, January 9, 2000: Is Navigation Useful?


This is a relatively old post, but it still carries some valuable discussion points.

Navigation Menus: Trends and Examples

Another decent article from Smashing Magazine. This time about trends in navigation graphic. Worth to take a look.

37+ Great Ajax, CSS Tab-Based Interfaces

Well, there is alot of navigation ideas to choose from. Some of them are on early stage of development, but still worth to look thru..

37+ Great Ajax, CSS Tab-Based Interfaces

Volkswagen uk site is top quality

Check it out, custom build your car and see the animation transitions. Good use of 3D and Flash.

Will IE8 "break the web"?

In a controversial move by Microsoft, Internet Explorer 8 is to switch off all of its new features by default. This includes improved rendering abilities for standards compliance.

Any developer who wishes to allow IE8 to render their site correctly (like Firefox, Safari & Opera already do by default) they will need to add a line or two of code to enable these features (version targeting).

The irony is having IE8 render correctly with its new features will eliminate the need for version targeting of browsers. Developers will need to version target IE8 in order to opt out of version targeting!

This is of course aimed to prevent the "breaking of the web" which refers to non savvy developers who have built their sites to work solely on the IE6 & IE7 platforms. Basically allowing lazy, overpaid developers to get away with a poor job.

For more information read the full article (rant) by Clear Left's Jeremy Keith.

SitePoint CSS Reference

Nicely done CSS Reference. Might be handy from time to time.

Great Flash navigation example

A bit related to our voting system: would be great if it could look like that :)

Adobe.com

Adobe have a new corporate front-window. It is vastly different from their previous incarnation. The homepage doesn't feel as polished as perhaps it should (thoughts?) but certainly has some nice features and the navigation is pretty tight.

Drilling down into the site and we have some nice tailored areas for the software products and really comprehensive sections focusing on all sorts of topics from solutions to downloads.



Generally, and considering the amount of varying content available, the interface design is very simple and concise.

It prompts you to continue to dig deeper and deeper, the use of grids and typography is equally varied but also, essentially, consistent. There are multiple uses of sub navigations; in page, drop downs, breadcrumbs and calls to action. Most intriguing is the brevity of the passive global nav bar, just simple text on the changing backgrounds and well designed and workable drop-down boxes.

The use of branding or rather the subtle and engaging use of 'codes' is a brave stroke. The logo is small, top right, with search box. The content, layout, typography and general user experience is weaved in such a way, the user is constantly aware (if only subconsciously) that this is the ultimate resource for all things Adobe.

Killing Some Bad Layout Conventions

Andy Rutledge examines a couple of inferior web design conventions and exposes their flaws. He then suggests some alternatives. This is essential reading.



He looks specifically at news site layouts and references the excellent msnbc.com as one to watch (couldn't agree more)...

Read article in full here. His Amazon Redux is worth a peek too.

Behance Network

behance.net is a community based portfolio site for ideas, projects and collaborations.



Behance has a really simple interface with some nice functionality, the live search, for instance just... well... works ;) and whilst the site is clearly in BETA, it still has enough polish and features to make this a great proposition.

Can you name all 26 brands?

Interesting way to promote own company by showing branding importance in way of competition.

Glazer Consulting Ltd.

Ps. if you know the answer for nr. 15, let me know :)

Blogged with Flock

Kongregate

"Founded in 2006 and currently in a state of heavy development, Kongregate seeks to create the leading online hub for players and game developers to meet up, play games, and operate together as a community."

Whats its colour (?)

"Whats its color is an image-color processing utility that will evaluate an image and give you the image's primary and complementary dominant colors of an image, how many visually unique colors are in an image, and the top ten visually unique colors in an image.



Extremely useful when creating any type of designs around an image. The more colorful the image, the better the results. Results will display your image on the best suited background for that image..."

See for yourself...

Topography

This interesting image shows a comparative abstract for the layout of an embedded media page.



I think it originates from the BBC Radio Labs blog. The site has some worthwhile links and topics, for presentation and development of online media. Worth clicking about...

Usability and Interface Design Books

Usability and interaction design are fields that are becoming more and more important for every design. Both fields consider the interactions between the user and a system; accordingly, it also applies to the interaction between users and web-sites.

A product has more chances to be successful if it’s design makes emphasis on usability. Making a website easy to use and easy to understand has direct economical impact as, for example, it guides the users across the sites, helps user to successfully sign up for a service or to complete a checkout.

Full article: here

Blogged with Flock