Job description

We are looking for an enthusiastic and talented web developer to join our team. Like us you will have a passion for developing beautiful websites and user experiences. We offer the opportunity for you to work on a variety of exciting projects, developing your skills, and dealing directly with clients.

Requirements

• Proven ability to build websites using HTML5 and CSS
• Familiarity with WordPress, PHP and Javascript
• Experience with CSS precompilers (e.g. SASS, LESS) and MySQL beneficial

About Delighten

Delighten is a small, friendly digital agency based in Derby. Delighten develop websites, web and mobile applications for small and medium-sized businesses. Find out more about Delighten at delighten.co.uk/about.

Type: Full time, Permanent

Salary: £20k – £25k depending on experience.

How to apply

Please email your CV to enquiries@delighten.co.uk. It’d also be beneficial if you send us some examples of your work, e.g. a code sample, description or a link to a live website.

No agencies please.

Our office

The post Now hiring: Junior web developer appeared first on Delighten.

At first, I was tempted to send it back, but I’ve learnt to appreciate it. Here’s my experience so far.

Telling time

It’s been so long since I last wore a watch that I’ve forgotten how useful they are. It may sound obvious, but Apple made checking the time a delight. There are 10 core watch faces to choose from, which can be customised to make it feel more personal.

I particularly enjoy being one glance away from the weather forecast (above). I can also see the weather for a whole day (which really helps me to plan my day when I’m out with friends):

Siri

Say I’m cooking and I have my hands covered in pastry. I turn my watch to face me and say: “Hey Siri, countdown 20 minutes”.

“Hey Siri, countdown 20 minutes”.

A stopwatch appears and starts counting down.

When I’m driving, I might say to my watch:

“Hey Siri, remind me to print out my boarding pass at home”.

Later, when I arrive at home, my watch taps me on the wrist to remind me.

THIS IS AS AWESOME AS IT SOUNDS.

English is not my first language (I’m Polish), so computers usually struggle to understand me, but Siri was great at this. Of course we’ve had Siri on iPhone for a while, but I’ve found it inaccurate and time consuming: I had to pull my phone out of my pocket and hold down the home button. I needed free and clean hands. On a watch, it’s just a turn of the wrist and I speak.

Texting

You wouldn’t think that a watch without a keyboard would be ideal for replying to text messages, but actually this works really well, especially for short replies which the watch tries to guess for you or your voice. I usually use Siri for that – it’s very handy here.

Fitness

I love running with my watch. Every time I complete a mile I get a gentle vibration to let me know. Glancing at my wrist while running is so much easier than turning my phone on, finding the app and checking the time/mileage.

The watch also monitors your heart rate and movement. If I sit down for too long Apple Watch advises me to stand up and move for a minute before sitting back down just to keep me healthy.

Unfortunately, it sometimes gets confused and tells me to stand up when I already am. This wouldn’t be annoying if it didn’t happen so often.

 

Notifications

The first thing I did with Apple Watch is turn off almost all notifications. I only kept the essentials: phone calls and text messages. Getting notified about Instagram likes will just drive you crazy.
What’s left is really useful though:

Receiving calls on my watch may sound silly, but it’s handy to talk to my friends and family “over the watch” while cooking or shopping.

Some people have said you have to carry your iPhone around with you to use Apple Watch but this is not always the case. The thing is, your phone doesn’t need to be in your pocket anymore – I can leave my iPhone in a handbag or in another room – and not worry about missing a call. I love that!

Conclusion

I’ve seen many reviews that love to hate Apple’s new device. They tend to say this isn’t the most amazing device ever created and they’re right.

For me, this watch is defined by what it can do, not by the things that it can’t.

Yes, it has its flaws (like any first gen device) but if this same watch was made by any other company this would be the hottest gadget all year. It took 6 iPhones to get to the iPhone 6 so I’d give it time.

The Apple Watch, in a funny way, has become a part of me – it feels uncomfortable not to wear it.

I can’t wait to see what comes next.

The post Apple Watch is pretty good, eventually appeared first on Delighten.

1. Gestures are the new clicks

We forget how hard scrolling webpages used to be. Most users would painstakingly move their mouse to the right edge of the screen, to use something ancient called a ‘scrollbar’:

As a pro, you probably used a mouse wheel, cursor keys, or trackpad, but you were way ahead of most users.

In 2015 it’s far easier to scroll than it is to click. On mobile you can scroll wildly with your thumb. To click on a precise target is actually more difficult – the complete opposite of what we’re used to on the desktop.

As a result we should expect more and more websites to be built around scrolling first, and clicking second. And of course, that’s exactly what we’ve seen everywhere:

There’s every reason to expect this trend to continue as mobile takes over more of the market. Modern sites have fewer things to click, and much more scrolling. We’ll see fewer links, more buttons, bigger ‘clickable’ areas, and taller pages that expect to be scrolled.

Websites which spread their articles onto multiple pages will soon learn this lesson. Expect these to turn into longer single pages or even, like TIME magazine, into infinite scrolling pages:

It’s too early to know if the web will expand itself onto devices like watches, but if it ever does, you can bet it’ll be almost entirely driven by gestures.

2. The fold really is dead this time

Now scrolling is so cheap, and devices are so varied in size, ‘the fold’ is finally becoming irrelevant.

Designers are increasingly free to not cram everything at the top of a page. This leads to a design trend popularised by Medium – full-screen image titles, with no content visible until you start scrolling:

With tall, scrolling pages, designers have the chance to do what magazines have taken for granted for years: fill their pages with big beautiful images. In 2015 expect to see more designs that take up much more space – especially vertically – and a lot of larger imagery like this.

3. Users are quicker, websites are simplifying

Today every young adult is an expert web user. And even the amateurs are acting like pros: using multiple tabs, and swiping to go back a page.

The result is that everything is faster. And we’ve all learned to become impatient. If you want to make a mild mannered person explode with annoyance, just make their Internet really slow for a minute.

Now websites are forced not just to become faster (a technical problem), but to become faster to understand. Designs which slow the user down have the same impact on their audience as these websites which don’t load at all.

Simpler designs are easier to scan, which means they’re faster to appreciate. It’s easy to see which of these two designs is newer, and it’s because it’s the one that user’s can enjoy the fastest:

This is the biggest reason for the death of skeuomorphic design: users are more perceptive, less patient, and clutter only slows them down.

Apps put most websites to shame with super-minimal, beautiful interfaces. And they’re doing this because minimal interfaces perform better.

Flat design is just the beginning. The real trend is towards simplicity and immediacy, and we expect that to go further than ever in 2015.

4. The pixel is dead

On a desktop, a pixel was a pixel. You even had an idea of how many pixels made up an average inch: 72 dpi. Nowadays very few people know what a pixel is.

With responsive design we’ve seen a move towards grids and percentages. But one huge area remains still unchallenged: bitmap images.

Almost all of the web is built with images that have half the resolution of a modern display, and they don’t scale. With Retina displays and modern browsers the time is right for vector images to become more popular in 2015.

We can see this trend already happening with the font-based icons and Google’s Material design. The website loads faster and scale the icons to any size without losing quality. That makes them ideal for designers and modern web browsers.

The technology exists now, but it will take time for professionals to change their habits to create for higher quality displays. Once the average desktop display becomes Retina-grade (like the new iMac), we expect designers to follow suit.

5. Animation is back

If you want to make a website look dated, cover it with animated “Under Construction” GIFs and Flash animation. But several things are coming together to make animation a rising star in modern web design.

Flat design can end up looking too consistent, boring even. Animation helps a website to stand out, and to pack more information into less space.

Mobile apps have redefined what a user expects. Mobile apps use motion to convey meaning, and websites are just starting to do the same.

New technologies like CSS animation make it easy to enhance designs without plugins, speed or compatibility issues. And Web Components (#6, below) will only accelerate this.

GIF animation is back, and surprisingly effective. You’ll notice this article makes extensive use of GIF animation, which has never been easier to create or share.

6. Components are the new frameworks

Web technology continues to get more complicated, and less semantic. Designers must embed messy code onto their pages for simple tasks, like including Google Analytics or a Facebook Like button. It would be a lot easier if we could just write something like this instead:

<google-analytics key="UA-12345-678">

And we can with Web Components, which aren’t quite ready to be used by most designers yet. 2015 is looking like their year.

Google’s Material design is here, and it may just be what gets this movement started. Powered by Polymer, and supported by all modern browsers, it provides the rich animation and interaction components from Android apps, with simple tags like these:

If that takes hold, it wouldn’t be surprising to see more component based frameworks appear in 2015. Perhaps Bootstrap 4.0?

7. Social saturation and the rise of direct email

Social media has been a huge success for consumers, but many content producers aren’t so happy.

The problem is saturation. With billions of posts every day, Facebook learns the posts that users are most likely to enjoy, and shows only those. Unfortunately that means over time, what you post is increasingly seen by a smaller percentage of your followers. (A problem you can solve, conveniently, by paying Facebook).

Social isn’t going away, but in 2014 we’ve seen a lot of prominent bloggers like Tim Ferriss move their focus away from social and into good old fashioned email lists. They’ve realised that email has one significant advantage over social: a much higher percentage of people will see what you send them.

I expect this post-social trend to continue into 2015, with the under-appreciated trend of Web Notifications (which work much like notifications in a mobile app).

Bonus non-prediction: CSS shapes

This cool technology won’t get noticed, except by designers. CSS shapes allow you to flow layout into shapes, like circles:

It’s incredibly cool, but until browser support is guaranteed, this is likely to be too risky to put time and effort into it you’d need almost two complete designs, for old and new browsers. And outside of designers, we don’t think many users would notice.
It is really cool though.

What to expect in 2015

In 2014 we saw mobile use overtake desktop, but the general public hasn’t caught up. Most organisations still commission a website to look good on their computer first and work on mobile second.

In 2015 that strategy is likely to look out of touch and unprofessional. As the mobile becomes the main device for browsing the web, “mobile-first” will become less of a buzzword, and more of a requirement.

Flat design may be everywhere, but when you look beyond ghost buttons the real trend is that simpler sites are faster at gratifying users.

Simplicity is not just a fashion: it’s the future. Expect it to only continue.

It will become more and more common to embed animation into blog posts, and for motion to signify both premium quality (for those who can afford it) and to support the user experience.

Pixels and the fold will slowly be set aside making more room for scrolling and click-second experiences. Web Components will make it easier to deliver app-like experiences in our websites.

Right now you see the best of mobile app design appearing in web design. With enough time, the difference between an app and a website might almost entirely disappear.

The post 7 future web design trends appeared first on Delighten.

1. Smallest first

Have you ever noticed how Facebook is easier to use on a mobile? Yet mobile is smaller, and less powerful than a desktop?

Very often, we try to design things overthinking how they’re going to look, not work – especially when designing for large screens.

When designing for a mobile though, we’re forced to think about the designs’ functionality first. We remove everything that is not necessary for a viewer to see, leaving only the most essential parts. And that focus makes everything better.

The art of becoming a good designer is to simplify things; to prioritise function over form. Designing for the smallest screen first is an easy way of guaranteeing that happens.

2. Paper is king

The problem with most software is that your actions are slower than your imagination. You invest too much of your time into implementing an idea and not enough into developing the idea.

So instead, start with pen and paper. We can scribble much faster than we can use a computer, and by reducing the gap between our thoughts and our actions, we free our minds to be more creative.

Draw, write, strategise – get everything on paper before you start designing it in your software.

3. Thieves prosper

Austin Kleon in his book Steal like an Artist writes about coming up with creative ideas. He says that no artist is original in their creative process – we all copy from others (consciously or unconsciously).

But the wonderful thing about copying is that it’s almost impossible for us to copy others perfectly. In trying to copy others, we add our own unique personality, and end up creating something new. As Derek Sivers put it: We are imperfect mirrors.

Most popular websites have similar layouts. Most successful apps work in a similar way to each other. Conventions work because they are tried and tested, and because they are already familiar to your users. Don’t be afraid to start with what others have already created.

The post 3 ways to become a better user experience designer appeared first on Delighten.

In the UK alone 51% of the people with disabilities use the Internet. It means that almost half of the disabled population don’t.

There are many ways we, as designers and developers, can improve the user experience the disabled might have when using our websites.

If we don’t want to exclude some part of our potential audience we should design for everyone and comply with a few simple accessibility rules.

Alt text for images

When adding images to your website be certain to add ALT text (alternative text). This feature is mostly used by these people who cannot see, and use a screen reader that reads out loud a web page’s content.

<img src="grumpy-cat.jpg" alt="Grumpy cat">

Alt text also helps search engines recognise your images – e.g. for Google Image search – and boosts your overall SEO.

Keyboard accessibility

According to W3C:

When content can be operated through a keyboard or alternate keyboard, it is operable by people with no vision as well as by people who must use alternate keyboards or input devices that act as keyboard emulators.

If you’d like to test whether your website is compliant put the mouse away and test your website using a keyboard only. Use:
If you’d like to test whether your website is compliant put the mouse away and test your website using a keyboard only. Use:

• Tab or Tab + Shift to navigate between the links and form controls
• Enter to follow a link or activate a button

There are some problems we need to be aware of when making websites accessible through a keyboard though.

No “Click here”

Make sure the links you provide on your web pages make sense. Avoid links such us:

• more;
• click here;
• see details.

They are ambiguous and confusing. When taken out of context they mean nothing and so if that confuses your user he’s likely to dislike your website and leave.

Transcripts or subtitles for the hard of hearing

By providing a transcript from a podcast or adding subtitles for videos we make sure this audio resource is accessible to those people who have hearing problems.

There are many resources that help to create transcripts in HTML file.

• how to create transcriptions,
• transcription services.

Colour contract compliance

Users with colour deficiencies or users with low vision will see better if there is a contrast between foreground and background colours, particularly between text and its background. Basically, make sure your website is easy to see and read for everyone.

If you’re not sure if your website is colour-contrast compliant there is a great colour contrast check tool that can help you check that.

Form labels

Form labels are important for speech output users who cannot easily recognise what the form element is by looking at the surrounding content.

<label for="search">Search Delighten</label>
<input type="text" id="search" name="q" />

<label for="search">
   Search Delighten
   <input type="text" name="q" />
</label>

<input type="text" name="q" title="Search Delighten" />"

Making a site accessible to people with disabilities helps everyone have better online experience and increase the number of people who can access your site.

To see an example of a website which is accessibility compliant view the Derbyshire Disability website. You can also find out more about that project here.

Delighten can help you discover how well your website is doing online and check your website’s accessibility compliance. Here’s an example report. If you’d like to know more, please get in touch.

The post Why accessibility in web design is more important than you think appeared first on Delighten.

Since Google has been the most used search engine in the last few years there are things you must do to comply with in order to be found online by your potential clients. It’s easy – Google sets the rules and we must follow them.

We took a look at what Google mean by “expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness” and provided you with some useful information below.

E.A.T. – Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness

In order for Google to determine your website as worth showing and visiting you need to:

Get out there

Appear in Google search by setting up your Google Places account. If someone searches for you and sees your location your business is more likely to be trusted.

Provide expertise in your topic

If the information you possess is interesting, original and useful you don’t need to be an “expert” in your field to be considered one. You gain the title as soon as your information is found useful and reliable to other users.

Update your website regularly

If your website has outdated information it will no longer be useful to people who seek up-to-date content. Make sure to either post new posts regularly or repost what you already have in your blog (as long as it’s still accurate).

Link to sources you took the information from

By citing, referencing and quoting experts you automatically provide expertise on the topic you might know very little of. This builds trust.

Take care or your reputation

Google knows what websites are worth showing by looking for how highly it’s liked. Make sure you ask your clients to leave you feedback or other positive review on Google +, Yelp, LinkedIn or Facebook. Your reputation matters:

Popularity, user management, and user reviews can be considered evidence of reputation.

Create more meaningful content

Google pays a lot of attention to unique content within your website. Meaningful content can be anything from posts and PDFs to e-books and videos. By providing this, you also create another benefit: off-site optimisation.

Off-site optimisation is websites that link to you, share your content, add backlinks to your site. They, by utilising the information you provide, make you look trustworthy.

Engage

Create relationships with other people. Your company will gain more trust if you start interacting with other users directly: enable comments on your blog you can reply to, or indirectly: provide support with a product you sell or leave your email address as an alternative to a contact form. Quality relationships create quality links to your site. Make sure you create them.

Use the right language

Google would never see your website as authoritative if it’s filled with errors. Proper spelling and grammar build trust.

There is a number of tools that can help you check you grammar and spelling. Grammarly is one of the best ones.

Make your site accessible to everyone

Google prioritise sites that are user-friendly. Make sure your websites not only are available on mobile devices but also to people with accessibility difficulties. Building accessible websites is one of the best ways to optimise for search engines.

The post Why the quality of your site is decisive in effective Google search ranking appeared first on Delighten.