Boagworld recommends

A Match Made in Heaven: How to Interview a Client

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:06 GMT

There are several situations when you will want to interview a client or potential client. If you ask the right questions, you are in a much better position when you decide to work with someone and then determine the scope of a project.

Get Your API Right

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:41 GMT

Every project I’ve worked on in the last two years has heavily involved the use of web APIs. Libersy at the time (no idea about now) had an architecture that was extensively API based, even for communication between internal applications (an architecture...

Recommended Books for your User Experience and Usability Library

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:39 GMT

In my last article, I gave examples of the key things that I learned from Steve Krug’s great book Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition. In that article, I asked people to share key books in their Usability and User...

10 Usability Lessons from Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:38 GMT

Many people in the usability community regard Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition as the laypersons usability bible. This book explains briefly and concisely everything one needs to know about...

Keep Users Updated During Long Load Times

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:38 GMT

Load times are unavoidable in some circumstances. It is critical to be keep the user informed of what is happening and how much longer the process should take. In this post I will discuss ways to create the best user expeirence in idle downtime as well...

In Dreamweaver’s defense

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:38 GMT

One of the things that causes me great frustration being a web designer is how my coding tool of choice is constantly looked down on. That tool is Dreamweaver. Tired of all the nasty comments that are constantly thrown at it, I’d like to explain, to...

Creating Consistently Colorful User Experiences, Part 3: The Craft

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:38 GMT

Okay, so: you’ve read the theory, you know the medium and now it’s time to work your color magic. There may be millions of colors out there, but it’s your job to pick from the masses and venture forth. After all, you are the designer. It’s not about...

90 Beautiful, Useful and Free Icon Sets

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:37 GMT

Following the previous 20 Gorgeous Icon Sets That You Have To Pay For, here is a massive list of my favourite icon sets that are available for free download.

How To Approach Categories and Navigation in Blogging

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:37 GMT

Why is it that when you’re creating a linking structure for a website you call it “navigation”, but when it’s for a blog it’s sometimes called “categories”?

8 Tips for Maintaining a User Friendly Site in One Hour a Month

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:37 GMT

When you create a website, you put time and effort into making sure that every part of it is perfect. You (hopefully) test it thoroughly and go through it with a fine tooth comb to make sure it’s wonderful for your visitors.

20 Gorgeous Icon Sets That You Have To Pay For

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:37 GMT

Who needs another list of icons, specially when they aren’t free? I would say every web designer does, specially when the icons are as gorgeous and useful as the ones on this list!

Infographics Galore, 11 STUNNING Examples of Design-Enhanced Data

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:27 GMT

Like many others, I have recently gotten more and more immersed into the wonderful world that is infographics or information graphics. I have spent countless hours looking in amazement at various infographics used in all kinds of different media. Not...

Writing Microcopy

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:26 GMT

Ironically, the smallest bits of copy, microcopy, can have the biggest impact. ... Microcopy is small yet powerful copy. It’s fast, light, and deadly. It’s a short sentence, a phrase, a few words. A single word. It’s the small copy that has the biggest...

Facebook Fan Boxes: Embeddable Facebook Pages

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:26 GMT

Facebook continues to extend outside the walls of its social network. The latest: Facebook Fan Boxes, which lets Facebook Page admins embed the latest activity from their Page on their own website.

EightShapes Unify - collection of templates, libraries and other assets

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:26 GMT

is a collection of templates, libraries, and other assets that enable user experience designers to create more consistent, effective deliverables faster. The system utilizes the Adobe Creative Suite of products; primarily, Adobe InDesign is the key...

100 Login Forms

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:25 GMT

nuff said.

Using Wireframes to Streamline Your Development Process

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:56 GMT

Creating a wireframe is one of the first steps you should take before designing a website. A wireframe helps you organize and simplify the elements and content within a website and is an essential tool in the development process. A wireframe is...

Six Tools For Testing Designs On Mobile Devices

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:42 GMT

One of the most important processes when designing for the web is testing. We’re all aware that one of the challenges of web design is ensuring the site looks good in multiple browsers. As the mobile web becomes more and more important, you’ll also want...

Mastering Illustrator Effects

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:23 GMT

Have you been missing out the Illustrator Effects? Did you know it is a powerful tool for creating symmetrical shapes or adding texture to vector paths? For example, with just one simple effect, you can turn a polygon path into a flower shape. You can...

Writing Microcopy

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:14 GMT

Joshua Porter writes about the use of microcopy to create confidence and alleviate concerns in customers about the actions they take on your site. Ironically, the smallest bits of copy, microcopy, can have the biggest impact. ... Microcopy is small yet...

10 Web Apps To Build The Next Big Thing Without Writing Any Code

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:01 GMT

Ever wished that someone would overlay some data that fascinates you on a Google Map? Ever have an idea for a new desktop widget to take the computing world by storm? Well, no matter what your skill level is, there are tools out there in the world that...

Optimize Your Web Images Online With Smush It

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:28 GMT

Yesterday, I wrote about how to optimize images for the web using Photoshop. There are also a number of free applications that can help you squeeze your image files down in size, and one in particular that is particularly good is Smush.it from Yahoo. As...

Jeffrey Zeldman on "In defense of web developers"

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:29 GMT

It has only been a few days but I am already sick of the “XHTML is bullshit, man!” crowd using the cessation of XHTML 2.0 activity to condescend to—or even childishly glory in the “folly” of—web developers who build with XHTML 1.0, a stable W3C...

up and running with cassandra - The database system used by Facebook and Twitter

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:26 GMT

Cassandra is a hybrid non-relational database in the same class as Google's BigTable. It is more featureful than a key/value store like Dynomite, but supports fewer query types than a document store like MongoDB.

Pretty URLs: Pretty Easy!

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:22 GMT

Back when I wrote the third edition of Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MySQL, it was still acceptable (though certainly unfashionable) to lump all of the code together to generate a web page into a single file, and then use a URL...

Optimizing Images For The Web With Photoshop

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:22 GMT

The Save For Web command in Photoshop allows you to optimize your images for use on the web. Broadband may be allowing us to use larger images online, but it’s still important to remember the visitors who aren’t on broadband and optimize all images on a...

How to stop images breaking rounded corners in Safari

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:19 GMT

Currently when you place an image (or any ‘replaced content’) inside a block with rounded corners set by -webkit-border-radius, the image pokes through the rounded corners on Safari (version 4.01 at the time of writing).

A List Apart 287 - Introduction to RDFa II

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:17 GMT

In part I of this series, we looked at how semantic features normally confined to the head of an HTML document can be used to add semantic richness to the elements of the body. Along the way, we defined six rules of RDFa:

A List Apart 287 - Content Templates to the Rescue

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:17 GMT

As an industry, we’ve mostly figured out that if we don’t want content problems to sabotage our web projects, we have to plan ahead. Whether we’re creating the content with our clients or helping them to create it on their own, we know that it’s...

100 Login Forms

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:35 GMT

Design Reviver collects and captures a massive set of 100 login forms.