Facebook Hacks'n'Tricks

Facebook Timeline Shows Who Unfriended You On Facebook

2012-11-11T16:43:00.002-08:00

A useful but probably unintended side effect of the new Timeline profile, is that it allows you to very easily see who unfriended you on Facebook over the past few years. All credit to Matt Stopera for the screenshots below. And we’ll mention this video again with instructions on how to enable Timeline for your profile.

UPDATE: Facebook addressed this issue and removed all ‘lost’ friends from the yearly new friends lists. Consider the instructions below obsolete.

1) Select a year in the sidebar (TIP: Start with the year you joined Facebook and work your way to 2011)

2) Look for the Friends box that shows how many new friends you made

3) Click on the number of new friends

4) Those with an “Add Friend” button next to them are the people who unfriended you (or where unfriended by you)

5) Feel bad all day wondering why X unfriended you back in 2007.

THE 5 ALL-TIME BEST FACEBOOK CAMPAIGNS

2012-05-20T08:04:00.001-07:00

In honor of Facebook’s IPO, we present a special Top 5--a hall of fame of Facebook campaigns (none of which are actual Facebook ads, mind you).

In a dramatic bit of timing, GM announced it was pulling its $10 million in Facebook advertising mere days before the latter company’s IPO.

The high-profile move drew a line under the already pronounced question mark around Facebook’s real value as a paid advertising platform. While some, including Ford, rushed to make the point that proclaiming Facebook ineffective is simply admitting that you’re doing it wrong, the fact is, there has been little to support the notion that paid advertising on Facebook is tied to real, bottom-line results.

What we do know though, is that Facebook has been a transformative creative force in advertising. And the creative story of Facebook hasn’t been told by paid ads. The best campaigns have represented brand spending--but in talent and in development and production, not in Facebook as a media buy. But these projects have been valuable all the same--to the industry and to Facebook--in helping to reorient communications thinking around the consumer.

The most notable, and important, marketing efforts on Facebook have been those that have made the marketing industry understand the nature of social media, how to maximize its strengths, and the essential shift from broadcasting canned brand messages to inviting people to participate in a conversation.

Here (in no particular order), the all-time top five Facebook marketing campaigns.

A&E Parking Wars
Way back in 2007, the game wizards at Area|Code (now a part of Zynga) were given the brief to promote A&E’s show about parking. So the company created a Facebook game about parking. And it killed. Area|Code had already made a name with its Sharkrunners game for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. That game allowed players to control virtual research boats and crews and collect real-time data on real sharks that were tagged with GPS units and going about their business off the coast of California. Parking Wars players controlled a street and a handful of parking spaces and advanced in the game by parking on friends’ streets and issuing tickets to their “unlawfully” parked cars. Both games were compelling examples of continuous engagement--games that kept players coming back throughout the day. And a remarkable number did-- 400,000 players signed on to Parking Wars in two months, with total users growing to over 1.5 million. But Parking Wars was one of the earlier examples of a truly social game that actually involved players’ Facebook friends.

Intel Museum of Me
In 2011, Intel allowed Facebook users to create a shrine to themselves and then (virtually) walk through it. Intel and Japanese agency Projector, Inc., created Museum of Me, a “visual archive of your social life,” to (subtly) promote the i5 processor. After users connected through Facebook, the app pulled images, words, location, and other info into a three-minute video walk-through of your own museum, complete with white walls, other patrons, and music. The effect is unnerving and oddly powerful as it makes literal the exhibit you’ve already made of your life.

Take This Lollipop
One of the most interesting Facebook campaigns (and the recipient of several big ad awards recently) is a cautionary tale about Facebook itself. If people thought Intel’s Museum was a touch creepy, they were in for a deliciously upsetting treat with "Take This Lollipop," created by production company Tool and director Jason Zada as a Halloween project (so, not strictly an ad… or is it..?).

The app “dares” users to connect with Facebook and when they do, they’re delivered into the world of a scary-looking loner played with sweaty, rage-filled aplomb by Bill Oberst Jr., who strokes his mouse and generally looks insane while poring over the personal details of your life and then, seemingly, sets off after you. If Intel’s Museum of Me was an artful reinterpretation of your social life, "Lollipop" was the nightmare scenario of your nagging privacy concerns.

Burger King Whopper Sacrifice
Another Facebook classic that directly addressed the nature of Facebook and its meaning in our lives. The 2009 app, created by agency CP+B, allowed users to unceremoniously relieve themselves of “friends” in exchange for a coupon for a Whopper. As one of the creators, Joel Kaplan said of the campaign: “It was when everyone you knew was finally on it and you were becoming friends with all these people and we were talking about the frustrations of that--what does it even mean that I’m friends with someone online?” Which led to the campaign’s merciless core calculus: burger beats buddy. Facebook shut the app down not long after it got rolling but not before 200,000 friends were disappeared.

Ikea Facebook Showroom
In 2009, to promote the opening of a new Ikea store in Malmo, Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors created a simple campaign based on one of Facebook’s most crucial, and feared, features--photo tagging. The agency conjured a profile for the manager of the new store, Gordon Gustavsson, and, over a few weeks, proceeded to post 12 images of catalog-worthy showrooms. Facebook fans were able to tag furniture items with their names to win them, and in so doing, they created huge ripples across their social networks. Though critics complained that the effort felt too temporary--a one-off--it was an awards juggernaut and, more important, it was a low-cost, low-tech demonstration of the real power of social networks as a mechanism for participatory, consumer-driven advertising.

How Nasdaq Screwed Up the Facebook IPO

2012-05-20T08:02:00.002-07:00

hat a disaster.

After a lot of “we are ready for the onslaught” preening, the Nasdaq stock exchange fell apart from the minute Facebook (FB) was released for trading.

In anticipation of heavy volume, the exchange had planned to open the stock at 11 a.m., 90 minutes after the opening bell. Trading didn’t begin until 11:30, though, with the shares opening at $42, 10.5 percent above the pricing of the initial public offering. Respectable. More than 82 million shares traded hands at the open. But one-half hour into trading, the stock slid back to $38. Word is, underwriters Morgan Stanley (MS), Goldman Sachs (GS), and J.P. Morgan (JPM) stepped in to support the price of the struggling stock.

And then the complaints began rolling in for the $16 billion deal, the largest high tech deal ever and second largest IPO.

“I put in a market sell order at $42/share. It took 20 minutes to execute,” says Jason Napodano, a biotech stock analyst. Usually a market order takes about two seconds. He still doesn’t know what price he sold at. Maybe $39. Maybe higher. His E*Trade (ETFC) broker will let him know. Napodano says he had requested 1,000 shares in the IPO, but got only 100. Initially, he was disappointed about that. After Friday’s mess, less so. He’s celebrating his big $75 profit by taking the family out for pizza. Or maybe Sizzler, if he gets a better price.

Another big trader complained that after a couple of hours, Fidelity still had his order for shares listed as “pending.” E*trade and Fidelity hadn’t responded yet to requests for comment.

“Do I own $FB or not?” asked Ewell Smith of Powell, Ohio on StockTwits, a Twitter platform for investors. He, too, had placed a market order to buy the stock. It took more than an hour for his order to be filled by Scottrade. In the end, Smith bought 35 shares, hoping to build his position up to 100 or 200. With hot stocks, market orders can be dangerous. And most pros advise investors put limits on how much they are willing to pay or sell at to protect themselves.

Smith got nervous when his order wasn’t executed right away: “My fear was that the price would go up and the execution would happen at that higher price and then later in the day I could be sitting on stock that executed at say… $60 and but then had fallen back to 38.” In the end, his buy order got filled at $40.31, the price at about the time he submitted it. “I had never seen that happen before except in some penny stock trading and this was a highly publicized and supposedly legit Nasdaq stock.”

In a statement, Scottrade said that it had opened more than four times the normal amount of new accounts, plus trading volumes were 70.6 percent higher than typical monthly volumes. “Facebook orders entered prior to its opening were executed and have been reported back to our clients. We have not yet received all reports from Nasdaq for limit orders. The pending order statuses some clients are seeing that were impacted by the Nasdaq delays are currently being resolved.”

Even once those issues are resolved, Nasdaq will have plenty of questions to answer. As Bloomberg TV anchor Matt Miller noted during a rant from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Barclay’s had handled 600 million shares at the close effortlessly – about the volume of Facebook all day. Bet the NYSE is lapping up that video. Hooray for open outcry!

Nasdaq hasn’t responded yet to a request for comment. I guess you could say it’s pending.

In the end, it was a day in which almost no one was happy. You can only imagine what the investors who bought Facebook shares for $40 or $45 in the pre-IPO private markets are feeling.

And then there are the Morgan Stanley brokers. According to The Wall Street Journal, Morgan Stanley as lead underwriter took down the biggest percentage of the 421 million shares sold – 38 percent. One Morgan Stanley producer griped that he spent all week negotiating Facebook allotments with clients. In the end he got 6,000 shares to distribute, grumpy customers, and a whopping $480 commission. The Facebook underwriting was a bragging rights deal; the fees were skinny.

At the end of the day, Facebook set a record for first day trading for an IPO: 567 million shares, the most active on the Nasdaq. And the closing was just pennies above the $38 initial pricing. The only people still smiling are probably Mark Zuckerberg and his early investors.

Mark Zuckerberg Got Married Saturday

2012-05-20T07:59:00.004-07:00

His timeline announced a new “life event” the day after Facebook went public: he's now married to Priscilla Chan, his longtime girlfriend. Congrats and “likes” to the happy couple!

How To Prevent Yourself From Turning Up On Facebook Recommendation Ads

2012-05-17T15:07:00.003-07:00

If you don’t already know, Facebook has been using your personal preferences on its ads network, which includes your name, likes and other activities. To some, this may be a major privacy issuesince Facebook is using its users’ personal data without prior consent to falsely attract or mislead others for marketing or advertising purposes.

It is quite impossible to expect Facebook to change their advertising strategy especially when a majority Facebook users did not express discomfort with the issue. But if this bugs you, there is a solution that will remove Facebook’s misuse of your personal data.

This can be achieved by changing the account setting on your Facebook account. With only one simple action, your personal data will be free from exposure.

1. Account Setting

2. Facebook Ads

Click on the ‘Facebook Ads’ button on the left menu.

3. Ads And Friends

Clicking on the ‘Facebook Ads’ menu will bring you to the ads setting page. You are given two options:

Ads by third parties – Mainly for future planning
Ads and Friends – Current setting

Since we are looking at the current privacy setting, lets go to the second option that says ‘Ads and friends’, and click on ‘Edit social ads setting’.

4. Pair For No One

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and change the setting ‘Pair my social actions with ads for’ from ‘Only my friends’ to ‘No one’, and then click on the save button.

Conclusion

It takes only one simple step to be free from this Facebook recommended ads issue. Your name or pictures will no longer appear on any recommendation ads within Facebook, and you won’t be made to mislead your friends on your preferences on the social networking site.

Top 10 Fonts Web Designers Love

2012-05-17T15:04:00.003-07:00

When I was starting out with Web and graphic design, I was always wondering about the fonts that real designers use. So I conducted a research to find out the most popular fonts designers like to use, their best practices, and also out of personal curiosity, their typographical needs. It would be nice to know which font is good for which situation and today I am sharing with you the results of my research.

Through a combination of data collected from Polldaddy, Forrst, Facebook and Twitter, I got feedback from 34 designers from 14 countries answering questions about their favorite fonts and explaining to me why they love them. By analysing all the input submitted I have uncovered some interesting information, which has been put together in an infographic by friends in Piktochart.

Below that, check out the Top 10 list of free and premium fonts, and some of the interesting reasons why designers have their favorite fonts.

Click on image to see in full scale.

Top 10 Favorite Free Fonts

Here is the list of Top 10 free fonts mentioned by Web and graphic designers in the survey. Fonts that come bundled with operating systems, fonts like Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman, Georgia, and Tahoma have been excluded.

Top 10 Premium Fonts

This is the list of most popular premium (paid) fonts among designers. Some of them are very expensive but the quality of the font speaks for itself.

What Designers Are Saying

Jonny Pigg, United Kingdom

Twitter: @jonnydapigg

Impact – lovely striking bold headline font, easy to read.

Avant garde – bit common but popular with clients, smooth, no fuss lettering. Great for headings, sub-headings and body text (if there’s not too much).

Jr! hand – this turns up in a lot of my t-shirt designs.

Courier – great for sale-type banners, readable and available everywhere (handy for the Web).

R Bitten, Brazil

Twitter: @bittenworks

Frutiger – It’s temporal, balanced and natural.

Futura – elegance, simplicity, looks good almost everywhere.

Didot – elegance and personality.

Lobster/Marketscript – my favorite retro manuscript font.

Museo Slab – a recent discovery.

League Gothic – a better impact.

Courier – another elegant font.

Rockwell – good for headlines.

Gills Sans and Helvetica are always good options too.

Edgaras Benediktavicius, Denmark

Twitter: @edgarascom

Century Gothic – solid circular letters.

Trebuchet MS – high readability, web safe, nice.

DejaVu Serif – my favorite serif font.

Rockwell – my favorite slab font.

Convington – very nice modernized retro font.

Comic Sans – makes me laugh.

Keiron Lowe, United Kingdom

Twitter: @Keiron_Lowe

Lobster has been so overused it’s become the new comic sans! The most popular font used by designers is definitely Helvetica Neue.

Cameron Olivier, South Africa

Twitter: @cameronolivier

If it is free-for-web fonts, FontSquirrel is for the win but as such, my ‘favourite’ fonts are from a very limited stock.

Trebuchet Ms. mostly because it’s on the standard web compatible list, underused, has some great lines and a very tasty italic version.

Quicksand – love the light version – although the font in general is well produced and has some great lines.

Makes – for good heading text, albeit softer, with its subtle curves.

Museo Slab – a great slab-serif. All the Museo’s are great in their own right really, particularly the Slab.

Marketing Script – what a great little font – has a great hand-written feel without being ‘kiddie’. Really like using it as a constrained "easy" font.

Aller – another great font. The different weightings are handy, but the display variant lets loose a little and makes for some great headlines.

ChunkFive – a great, solid heavy font. Really like the heaviness and impact it makes in the page.

Stacey Lane, United States

Twitter: @stacigh

DIN, Gotham, Caecilia, FF Meta, Helvetica Neue.

With the exception of Caecilia, all of these are sans-serif fonts with loads of varying weights. Caecilia is also on this list because it is very geometric and I love the Slab. Also, all of these fonts have a relatively large x-height, which is my preference.

Sergiu Naslau, Romania

Twitter: @serjeniu

Franklin Gothic – this font screams for attention. It’s big, bold, and it plays well with other sans-serif fonts.

Helvetica – when it comes to readability, it’s Helvetica or Tahoma. It has its own personality (Inserat or Neue). When it comes to designing a logo, when it comes to the typography, I always play with Helvetica first.

Tahoma – this font is a team player. When it comes to integrating content into the layout and putting everything together, Tahoma looks like it was made to be there.

Brush Script Std – the handwriting look blows me away, in general. In online projects, they tell a story and it appeals to the ego too.

Georgia – this font works great when it comes to capitalizing everything. When you play with the kerning, the letters always look good. It fills the space between the letters, not add to it (too much space lettering in Helvetica may destroy the visual impact).

Conclusion

So there you have it a brief but telling research about the relationship between designers and their fonts. A big thank you to all the designers who helped me out by taking the survey, answering questions as well as sharing their favorite fonts with the design community at large. What about your favourite fonts? Have your say.

Facebook Friends: How Many Is Too Many?

2012-05-17T15:02:00.001-07:00

Those who log in to Facebook on a regular basis, like me, would agree that different types of users exist. Some of us would not fail to post an update every few hours, sharing the tiniest of details of our lives with our network of friends. Others tend to be less obsessed with that, choosing instead to maintain a low profile while observing postings from our peers on our newsfeed. We can even categorize these users in terms of the types of updates they tend to post, such as complaints about life or work, philosophical musings, photos, etc.

(Image credit: Creoleindc)

Regardless of the difference in usage, the basis of using Facebook is still for sharing information. We’ve seen users who have more than a thousand ‘friends’ in their account but we all know that not all of these friends are equal. For starters, for some of the updates you post, you’ll only wish that the posts are seen by a select few. Unless you diligently tweak your privacy settings, most of your ‘friends’ will see the majority of your postings, and vice versa. This raises the question: is having more friends on Facebook a good thing?

Fulfilling Social Needs

Usually, we would associate a ‘small community’ with a tight-knit group of people whom we are close with – family members and friends who we interact with on a regular, if not daily, basis. When it comes to a ‘large community’, the sense of kinship is lost in the midst of the multiple layers of network. This is where cliques start to form, but the in-group ties within these cliques can become so strong that people who don’t belong to the group are treated as outsiders.

The same analogy can be applied to the ‘relationships’ on Facebook. Technically, the more ‘friends’ we have, the fewer our interactions are with most of them. You usually end up having only a few ‘friends’ who would regularly comment on your posts or interact with you. More likely than not, these few are also your close friends offline.

The rest of your ‘friends’ on Facebook are obsolete, irrelevant, disconnected, and just random receivers of your updates. You’ll get updates from them as well, but you’d probably treat these indifferently or treat them as pet peeves, the same way they treat your status updates.

(Image credit: Mashable)

As a matter of fact, having fewer ‘friends’ on your list may be better, simply because the worth of your interaction with them will be more valuable. Having access to their updates is not enough, it’s the interaction that we eagerly crave. As it is with the offline world, we hang out with the people we are most comfortable with. The online world is not that much more different.

Sharing At The Cost Of Privacy

Do not underestimate the power of gossip in social networks. Nothing spreads news faster through the grapevine than word-of-mouth. The issue here is the sharing of your information to people whom you don’t even know. The problem comes when your info spreads to the friends of your friends. When you post complaints about work or study, or worse still about your business clients, eventually one of these gripes may get you into trouble when they accidentally spread to the ears of the people you were complaining about. The more ‘friends’ you have, the easier a connection can be made. The loss of your privacy through such voluntary sharing actually makes your position all the more vulnerable and you can’t do anything about it!

(Image credit: SteveWeigl)

If you exercised more restraint in the selection of your ‘friends’ on Facebook, then these updates will have less bearing on your reputation. Or you can always choose the alternative and just not post anything bad about anyone on Facebook.

Free Flow Of Information

The networking service which Facebook provides not only applies to friends per se, but also to acquaintances. The exchange of information between you and the rest of your ‘friends’ in the network is precisely what makes Facebook valuable. Just as you how you filter the news in the papers on any day, you can also filter out and read only what captures your attention on the newsfeed. The important thing is, the updates from all your peers are there; the more ‘friends’ you add, the more information you would receive.

(Image credit: Nutshellmail)

From this point of view, having more ‘friends’ would benefit the one who reads the newsfeed, more than the one who shares updates. As for the sharer, the advantage is that he or she gets to influence more people with their updates. In fact, this is what fan pages are for. The aim is to gather as many fans as possible to provide the information that fans wish to know and keep updated on. Nevertheless, there are always certain private details of your life which you’d prefer to share with only a select group of friends or family.

Quality Over Quantity, Anyone?

After reading the above, you may have uncovered the relevance of the type of friends you have on Facebook to what it is that you hope to get from the giant social network. If it is to keep yourself informed of the latest buzz among your peers, quantity matters more. The same applies to users who want to spread certain messages through the network. However, if maintaining social ties with your existing friends and family is more important to you, then the fewer the number of friends you have, the better the quality of interaction. You don’t have to accept every single friend request you receive, especially when they come from random strangers or people you have only spoken once to or have no reason to interact with ever again.

Facebook Timeline Covers - Top 40 - Really Creative!

2012-05-17T14:58:00.001-07:00

Just if you didn’t know, Facebook Timeline is the latest feature that was introduced in the recent Facebook Conference, F8. It’s generally a complete overhaul of the profile page with the new ability to view your status updates in a list sorted by time, hence the name.

With this new feature comes a new way of introducing yourself though graphic other than profile photo, and we call it Timeline Cover. And yes, what you can expect is thousands of facebookers try to be creative with their new timeline cover, spawning the hype all over the web.

In this showcase we’re gonna show you 40 awesome and creative timeline covers which either inspire you, amaze you or just make you burst out into laughter.

Also, at the end of the article, we are going to throw in a Facebook time PSD template (updated) to guide you creating one accurately. Have fun with them and enjoy being creative with yours!

Kay Int Veen. Nice use of Polaroid-style photo to introduce the profile owner! The new Facebook Timeline is actually a virtual board for you to show off your creativity, so toy around with it and show to others how creative you are!

Aly Moffatt. Creative photo with creative usage. You won’t know what’s happening by just looking at her photo in status page, but you will get shocked once you see her profile/timeline page!

Andrew Grojean. Yes, this is a timeline cover, see carefully. What a neat and amusing trick!

Nirajan Bom Malla. One of the timeline cover’s tricks that went viral is to use the screenshot of other social media site as the cover. Google+ in Facebook, will this be possible in future?

Antonio Fadda. Brilliant combination of the profile photo and the timeline cover, and yes, it’s creative.

Delphin Hauchard. Nicely adjusted profile photo and the timeline cover, what a great way to show the best moment of life.

Dustin Thaxton. Willing to show not just the single best moment of life? With timeline cover and some Photoshop works you can get more great moments of life glued onto the cover!

Eduardo Calvo. I just like this one. It’s creative, amusing and warmful at the same time.

Emanuele Bartolomucci. Very sleek way of introducing the timeline feature and the profile owner.

Enk Shahbaz Mehdi. People might start selling the timeline cover’s space as ads, will it be possible?

Oliver Alexander. And the Internet does not disappoint you, Enk Shahbaz Mehdi, but I think this was intended to be a good joke. Anyway, poke if interested!

Eyal Shahar. Fake 3D is one of the best tricks to show off your design skills, inspiring work!

Fabio Maravilla. Such a neat and detailed trick! Look at the smallest piece in the profile photo, cute!

Florim I. Qerimi. I thought it was some sort of hypnotism at the first time I’m looking it.

Gianmarco Carrieri. What a simple and sweet integration of profile photo and timeline cover.

Giuseppe Draicchio. You will never know he is doing the contact with the extraterrestrial creature by just looking at his profile photo!

Manoj Varghese Mathew. Feeling less creative? Just draw what you can think of, and it will become a creative cover!

Menteş Nihat Baran. I’m always curious about the difference between touching the alien’s finger and touching the God’s finger.

Helbert Campos. Nice blending between the real life photo and cartoonic graphic, you can even see the page owner’s shadow rendered in the profile photo!

Jeremy Bronson. It’s a big head! But wait, whose head is it? Nice one indeed.

Jerome Vadon. A beautiful way to introduce yourself with a sleek background and some sexy fonts.

Jessica Barnard. Vintage means viral, don’t you know it?

Johnny Gigantic. Probably a masterpiece, except that you won’t get much meaning by just looking at his profile photo.

Jörgen Bröms. With such a serious looking profile photo, you won’t expect his timeline cover to be so amusing.

Robert Falkén. A simple message cloud will tell that you are creative.

Lanfranco Nantele. Another nice attempt with message cloud, but in a more artistic way.

Leo Lee. What will happen if I touch on the profile photo?

Louise Lundberg. The reaction of the photo is just awesome.

Maarten Walraven. You wouldn’t know a shark is approaching him if you didn’t see his timeline cover!

Nagaraj Vijayarangan. And this guy is not as lucky as the one showcased above.

Maurizio Mazzanti. He’s trying to understand what’s happening with his new timeline cover.

Mohammad L. Azzam. Stay hungry, stay foolish, stay creative.

Murat Çizer. I like this one, to be honest.

Niels Langeveld. Perfect integration between the timeline cover and profile photo, it’s royal!

Oliver Elsner. If you want to show your creativity while remaining the professional look, go for this style.

Ori Hasson. You know, classic game never stop to impress people.

Richard Kårström. If my eyes are still functioning well, I can see a guy coming from it.

Rudolfo Nobre. There’s certainly some physic between the timeline cover and the profile photo.

Scott Lamb. It feels good for sure.

Tom Lambie. I’m sure I am a geek as I understand this joke.

10 Websites To Make the Most of Facebook Timeline Covers

2012-05-15T15:41:00.002-07:00

Ever since Facebook Timelines were released it created a spark of interest and creativity for millions of users across the internet wanting to customize their own profile page for this great new Facebook look. Many of us want to create a cover that represents exactly who we are or find something that is either “pre-made” and ready to go.

If you are more on the creative side you can check out this great tutorial on how to design your own facebook timeline cover. For those who are just looking for some great websites that will help you customize your profile and cover we proudly bring you a list of the top ten places to visit to make the most out of the Facebook Timeline Covers. Enjoy!

1. Cover Photo Finder

Cover Photo Finder

Probably the best-looking site in this list, CoverPhotoFinder.com was created by two former Facebook interns. Image categories currently include nature, architecture, abstract and animals.

Next: Once you find a cover you like, log in with Facebook and the image you have chosen will post to your wall with the message “Photo by Photographer’s Name. More awesome cover photos at http://coverphotofinder.com/.” However, you can easily delete this text before hitting the “Change cover” option, where you’ll find the image heading up your “recent uploads.”

2. Face Coverz

Face Coverz

FaceCoverz.com has a decent selection of imagery and is a good choice for anyone looking for meme-themed and geek pics.

Next: Once you allow the app permission to access your profile, it posts the photo you’ve chosen to your wall with the message “Uploaded with http://FaceCoverz.com/.” Again, you can delete this. You’ll find the image in your “recent uploads;” simply select it to feature it on your profile.

3. My Profile Cover

My Profile Cover

Set up by web and graphic designers, MyProfileCover.com offers a growing selection of decent-quality images across a variety of categories. Not all the categories are fully populated yet, but this looks like a good site to bookmark and re-visit.

Next: Unlike other sites we’ve looked at so far, MyProfileCover.com doesn’t integrate with your Facebook profile. It simply offers the cover photo at the correct size so you can save and upload it manually. The images do carry a watermark.

4. Cover Photoz

Cover Photoz

Although some are watermarked, you’ll find tons of photos and categories on CoverPhotoz.com. The selection contains quite creative imagery. The site is also developing a “create your own” option which, at the moment, is very limited, but might be worth bookmarking to check out in the future.

Next: CoverPhotoz.com simply posts the photo you’ve selected to your wall, ready to be selected from your “recent uploads.”

5. Coverize Me

Coverize Me

A former Facebook banner service, the Coverize.me site is a bit busy, but you’ll find some decent pics if you take the time to look around. The images are watermarked, but the logo is not overbearing.

Next: Coverize.me offers two methods of getting your pic. You can log in with Facebook and post the image (with no promo message) to your wall. You can also download the correctly sized pic from the site to manually upload.

6. Facebook Timeline Banners

: Facebook Timeline Banners

Facebook Timeline Banners has a large collection of cover pictures for your Facebook Profile, you can browse many categories and find a large collection of high quality covers to personalize your Profile.

7. FB Cover Pix

FB Cover Pix

FBCoverPix is one of my favorite places to share covers. Simply login with your Facebook account and you can even add/share your own Facebook profile creations or browse a collection of user submitted covers, a very great and reliable website that is kept very clean and easy to use.

8. Facebook Profile Covers

FB Profile Covers

Facebook Profile Covers is yet another great source, you can see the latest posted covers, like them or use them for your timeline!

9. Timeline Covers App

Timeline Covers App

Using the Timeline Covers App you can easily choose from a variety of Timeline Profile Images without even leaving Facebook. Simply login with the app and allow and like then you can start browsing a large collection of pre-designed Facebook covers.

10. Site Canvas

: Site Canvas

Site Canvas is another awesome place to customize your timeline cover. Select the template you want to use, it will automatically select the images that are included. If you don’t like the photos, you can hit the Remix Photos button to get a new set. Unfortunately you can’t reposition images, or even manually select the images so it might take a while until you get a combination you like, and then you can hit the Make My Cover button to apply it to your profile.

Facebook Advertising Explained: How It Really Works

2012-05-15T15:40:00.006-07:00

Just like any website or blog, Facebook relies on advertising to keep the site free. It wouldn’t be hard for Facebook to start charging for profiles. Charging for profiles would of course be the wrong route for Facebook to take as many users would just stop using Facebook all together, let’s face it: just like any site we use whether it be to read the news or perhaps view some funny pictures or a random and interesting article we rather not have to pay, sure you may complain about the annoying adverts that are posted on the page but for the most part they really aren’t that bad, it’s what keeps the internet free and is definitely a better alternative then having to charge users a fee to view the site, I think we can all agree there.

About Ads: Facebook

You probably signed into Facebook only to notice this small announcement that caught your eye. Ever wonder how Facebook makes money? I’m sure we have at one point but running a blog and website myself I understand that advertising runs any website small or large.

From the beginning, the people who built Facebook wanted it to be free for everyone. It now costs more than $1 billion per year to run Facebook, and delivering ads is how Facebook pays for this.

The page also stresses that advertisers choose what types of users should see their ads, and that users who find ads that don’t interest them can click the X to remove them.

As for the difference between Facebook ads and sponsored stories:

Facebook ads: A business creates an ad to promote its message. If you’ve liked that business’ page, the story about you liking the page (including your name or profile photo) may be paired with the ad your friends see.

Sponsored stories: A business pays Facebook to feature existing posts and activity that mention the business. Sponsored stories don’t include additional messaging from the sponsor. Like Facebook ads, they’re only visible to friends you’ve already shared this information with.

Great right? How does Facebook know what to display, and well all advertising for that matter? It’s true Facebook does use cookies to collect data from page to page even when you are not on Facebook. This has addressed a privacy concern as well as the Facebook Ticker Privacy that was mentioned earlier.

Here is an example: Suppose you visit a particular website or conduct a series of searches towards digital cameras, now returning to Facebook we are going to see advertisements for anything related to photography and even more specifically digital cameras. This is because Facebook was able to track where you went using cookies, a bit scary to think about but this is also done with all types of advertising. This is one way that websites are able to provide relevant ads to users while helping the business’ that serve these ads get the most out of what users actually see.

As you can see advertising is essential to any website, especially a large website like Facebook that receives billions and billions of pageviews. The cost to keep the servers running and employ people to make great changes such as the Facebook Timeline and much, much more. What is your opinion on ads? Feel free to share or discuss in the comment section below.

Beware of Facebook Timeline Scams

2012-05-15T15:40:00.002-07:00

It hasn’t been that long at all since Facebook officially launched the Timeline profiles. However a lot of people still want to know how to revert back to the original Facebook style, and for those who were “opt-in” to the new timeline look may just want to change back.

However in the process you may just catch yourself clicking through more trouble. Beware of the fake like pages as well as many pop-ups or bogus information that asks you to revert back to the old look, unfortunately once you activate the Facebook Timelinethere is no way to revert back to the original look seeing as all profiles will eventually be moved over.

As of this writing, 16 timeline-related scam pages remain live on Facebook, and together they’ve collected a total of more than 71,000 likes.

Facebook Timeline Scam Warning

Many of these pages appear near the top of Facebook search results for “timeline.”

A Facebook spokesperson said:

We work hard to educate users on how to be safe… We regularly update the Facebook Security page and its over 5 million fans with tips and information about new threats. We also work with outside experts on education initiatives.

However, the Facebook Security page contains no warning about these scams, nor is anything mentioned in the social network’s help center about the fact that timeline cannot be removed after the first seven days.

Users do have seven days to review all of the content that will appear in their timelines.

The Best Advice: Don’t Like any of these Fake Pages, never allow applications you aren’t familiar with to access any information on Facebook! Hope this helps, feel free to discuss and share this information with others!

10 Ways to Change Back to the Old Facebook

2012-05-15T15:39:00.002-07:00

Many have questioned how to change over to the new Facebook Timeline, and in the process of doing so I have had many users who just wanted to go back to the original Facebook layout- for some the new Timline layout was just a bit of a nuisance. It seems like some just don’t quite like the look of Timeline, perhaps it’s the news ticker or some other feature such as the Facebook Chat?

Whatever it may be that is your pet-peeve for Facebook we have found some great plug-ins or “apps” that will help you disable that Facebook Timeline and get the classic original Facebook look back.

We have identified five older Facebook features and functions that we used to enjoy, and found extensions for Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers that get them back.

We know we can’t stop progress in the long term (and we wouldn’t want to), but for the sake of some short-term peace of mind, we’re going retro with some tweaks to suit our preferences.

Let us know in the comments about any Facebook features that drive you nuts, and we’ll see if we can find a few options to “fix” them.

1. Facebook Classic: Google Chrome

Hide your news ticker and restore your news feed with Facebook Classic for Google Chrome.

Classic Facebook

To compensate for the fact that it rearranges the order of your News Feed, Facebook now displays a constantly updated news “ticker” above the chat bar if you have it open, or the top right of your home page if you don’t.

This continually updating stream is a source of annoyance to many, while the edited news feed itself makes many Facebook users apoplectic with rage.

Facebook Classic will solve both these problems. In addition to nixing the ticker, it reverts your News Feed to chronological order. As a bonus, you can easily toggle it on and off.

2. Facebook Ticker Removal: Firefox

Hide your Facebook News Ticker in Mozilla Firefox.

Firefox Ticker

This add-on for Firefox gets rid of the ticker, whether you have the right-hand side chat window open or not.

3. Kill Facebook Questions: Google Chrome

Hide Facebook questions and polls

Hide Facebook Questions/Polls

Facebook introduced its “Questions” service as a way for users to get more from their social circle — and to compete with up-and-coming questions services.

If however, you don’t give a flying hoot whether your cousin goes with the kitten heels or the peep toe wedges, you can vanish such annoyances from your stream with this handy extension.

4. FB Purity: Firefox

Hide Facebook Questions.

FB Purity

5. Revert FB Photo Viewer: Google Chrome

View your Facebook Photos the classic way

Revert Photoviewer

Facebook fancied up the way photos display with a new “theater” style, which makes each image a pop-up.

What was wrong with the old scroll-through-an-album method, we don’t know. But we do know a way to revert back.

This extension will get back the “previous/next” navigation, and nix the sloooow-loading windows.

6. Facebook Photo Theater: Firefox

Facebook Classic Photo Firefox

7. Get Back Old Facebook Chat: Google Chrome

Revert to the classic FB Chat.

Old Facebook Chat

Dear Facebook, what was wrong with old chat? Was it just too easy to see which of your friends was online? Too easy to ping someone a quick “hi?”

If you preferred the old way, this extension will disable the ticker and restore your Facebook chat to the little window on the bottom right of your screen.

8. Tidy Facebook Chat: Firefox

Tidy FB Chat

This Firefox option won’t get you back the old version of Chat, but it will hide all your offline friends, showing only those available, so it at least addresses one of new Chat’s UI issues.

9. Facebook Comment Fixer: Google Chrome

Facebook Comments

How many times have you posted a half-finished comment by pressing “Enter” too soon? Yeah, us too.

Call us old-fashioned, but when we’re publicly commenting on content, we like to be sure before we hit send. Having to press Shift+Enter to create a line break is just too much hassle.

This extension restores the “Comment” button, and maps “Enter” to add a new line. You can be sure you won’t post any witticisms until they read exactly as you intended.

10. FB Purity: Firefox

FB Comments

For Firefox users, the easiest alternative is F.B. Purity. One of the many features this add-on offers is the return of the “Comment” button.

46 Types of People on Facebook

2012-05-15T15:38:00.002-07:00

Facebook is its own online world nearing a billion members. There are so many different types of people on Facebook that I can assure you that everyone sees those certain posts, pictures or… Let’s just leave it at whatever it may be that nearly makes us face-palm.

How many times have you gotten on Facebook only to find that same ridiculous spam or post that your same “so called Facebook Friend” continuously posts however you don’t remove or block them as a friend for some strange unknown reason because you are afraid they won’t like you anymore when yet you have never made eye contact with them directly. Today we are going to look at the creative variety of people we run into Facebook everyday, if you know these types of people maybe you should consider sharing this.. Hope you enjoy this post and that you get a good laugh out of it.. Enjoy!

1. The “artist”:

2. The douchebag:

Source: lamebook.com

3. The person who’s trying to get over their ex:

4. The person that uses a lot of exclamation points:

5. The traveler:

6. The person who thinks Facebook is their diary:

7. The person who ends every status with “text me” or “text it”:

8. The person that replaces “y” with “i”:

9. The showoff:

10. The person that speaks their own language:

11. The person who only posts closeups of their face:

12. The idiot:

13. The person who doesn’t use commas:

14. The person with the shitty band:

Source: pleated-jeans.com

15. The person that’s always threatening to delete their Facebook:

16. The person that doesn’t know the difference between “then” and “than”:

17. The person that will always be forever alone:

18. The person that can’t sleep and wants you to know about it:

19. The drama king/queen:

View this image ›

20. The philosophizer:

21. The person who’s always changing their name:

22. The person that doesn’t know how to photoshop:

Source: lamebook.com

23. The hypocrite:

24. The old person:

25. The activist:

26. The awkward mom:

27. The awkward dad:

28. The awkward aunt or uncle:

29. The person who complains about people over-sharing on Facebook:

30. The person that really needs to read the news:

31. The person that thinks Facebook is Twitter:

32. The person who REALLY can’t spell:

33. The gamer:

34. The new mom always posting about her baby:

35. The person that complains about their job:

36. The delusional one:

37. The person with no filter:

38. The Jesus freak:

39. The person who needs to be more careful with autocorrect:

40. The creepy person you don’t know that Facebook chats you:

41. The girl with many emotions:

42. The person that hates “fake people”:

43. The passive aggressive one:

44. The person that quotes “themselves”:

45. The person who TyPeS LiKe ThIs:

46. The person who shouldn’t live on this planet anymore:

Facebook Going Public to Raise 5 Billion

2012-05-15T15:37:00.002-07:00

Facebook- it’s simply the site that keeps on sharing and growing, at such a rapid pace with over 845 million users trending the one billion mark which is expected to happen before the end of 2012. Since Facebook was launched by Zuckerberg it has always been a private company that never has disclosed it’s exact profits/revenue, although many have an idea that Facebook makes billions upon billions of dollars per year from advertising.

Could Facebook stocks be the next best thing to invest in this upcoming spring? Facebook expects to make and raise 5 billion- that’s right folks 5 billion dollars in stock which would be the largest public web offering firm in history. From that information many predict that Facebook will raise much much more, in fact 75-100 billions dollars. The shares are expected to be trading this spring under the ticker “FB.”

With over 800 million users and billions of pageviews a day Facebook generates a mind-blowing amount of money. Last year in fact Facebook earned over $3.7 billion in revenue and $1 billion in profits- those are incredible amouts of money for just an 8-year old enterprise that bases its income on the web. Google on the other hand brought in a whopping $38 billion dollars- of course Google has a larger advertising base with the adsense program spanning across millions of websites.

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook going public means that Mark Zuckerberg co-founder and CEO of Facebook will hold approximately one third of the company’s shares and about 57 percent of voting power leaving him control over the firm. A filing stated that Zuckerberg made a salarly of $483,333 last year in addition to a 220,500 bonus for the first half of 2011. Zuckerberg also received other compensation that covers chartered travel costs and other expenses totaling $783,529.

Facebook going public means a big change for the large social network that connects millions of users daily. Will you be investing any money into Facebook stock? What does Facebook perhaps have in store for the future? I’m sure we will see a lot of great upcoming features and releases made to the site. It will definitely be intersting to see where Facebook goes from being a private company for 8 years over to public.

5 Awesome Facebook Timeline Features

2012-05-15T15:35:00.003-07:00

I must say I am absolutely loving the new Facebook Timeline layout, at first I had to admit I was a bit skeptic about the change, but it turns out this is one of the greatest and biggest changes Facebook has made. Many of us were able to tryout the developer release and get a preview and feel for the new profile. Let’s take a quick look at a few highlights and features that timeline has to offer, hopefully you’ll see the positives that Timeline has to offer.

5. Control What Displays on Your Timeline:

View Activity

Just like before you can choose which posts to hide or display, first click on view activity then:

Timeline Custom

Select any post in your Timeline, you can either completely remove it from your Timeline or change the privacy settings in an all new very easy to navigate and use layout. Now you can even feature pictures or status updates on your Timeline using the “feature button” this basically will move a picture or post to the top of your page so when others view your profile it will be the first thing they see other then your cover picture.

4. Update Information Easier Than Before:

: Update Timeline

Updating your information, relationships, work, education and more is easier than ever before. The simple to new layout allows you to manage everything chronologically… Seeing that Facebook is basing the new profiles just like real life from birth to present.

3. Add A Baby Photo

Timeline Born Photo

Timeline has you covered, even though Facebook hasn’t been around since most of us were born we can still go back to our date of birth and add in memories. Simply click on the born part of your Facebook Timeline, from here you will be ably to add photos and information about your date of birth.. A cool new feature Facebook has never had before!

2. Add Milestones, Make Memories

Milestones

Now we can add more to our timeline using new features such as: Milestones and other life events. Not only can we add current events that may have recently happened but we can also go back anywhere on our timeline to make changes as necessary.

1. Add Any Year, Any Month

Life Events

Not only can you add milestones anywhere on your timeline you can create your whole life on Facebook. Perhaps an life changing event took place somewhere in 1999 before you ever had a Facebook, well guess what? You can add that too, never before have you been able to easily add information to your life such as events, places you’ve been. Facebook is now creating an auto-biography for all your events, skip handing in your essay on your life, just tell your professor to check out your Facebook, with Timeline that is now easily feasible

: Add Past Events FB Timeline

Add any past event, go to the past in Facebook and create your very own online mile markers. It only takes a matter of seconds and is now possible thanks to the amazing new features of the Facebook Timeline profile.

To Review: I first tried the developer release of Timeline, I knew about it a couple of weeks before the release date, I must say at first I was a bit hesitant towards even giving it a try, but I am sure glad I did. Facebook has made a lot of changes since I first signed up for the site back in 2009, by far Timeline has been one of the best changes, it’s very easy to use and navigate through, Facebook is a very well organized site, I hope you’re all enjoying the new profile as much as I have. You can see more all the Facebook Changes since 2005 to present by reading here.

10 Useful Facebook Timeline Tips and Tricks

2012-05-15T15:31:00.002-07:00

The new Facebook look is pretty great for the most part, many users are very happy with the new look overall, there are of course a few bugs here and there just with anything new being introduced. For those who are still searching the web looking for some of the awesome features timeline has to offer we would like to help by covering 10 useful tips and tricks.
I have seen both users who like and dislike the Timeline, I am in favor of it for the most part and it tend to bring a fresh new look to Facebook. Here are 10 useful tips and tricks:

1. View All Your Content

Access Your Content

Facebook’s mysterious algorithm decides which stories will showcase on your Timeline.

However, it also includes half-hidden posts. Posts that are marked on your Timeline, but not displayed, are noted by a blue dot on the central line. You can view these posts by clicking on the individual blue dots.

A quicker method is to click on the three blue dots underneath each year. This gives you the option to view allstories within that year.

2. Hide Stuff From Your Timeline

Hide Timeline

As we’ve pointed out, the Timeline gives friends the ability to view your entire Facebook history.

For this reason, we imagine the first thing most people will want to do is to “sanitize” their Timeline. The good news is, it’s simple to hide what you don’t want showing.

When you see a post you’d like to nix, just hit the pencil icon at the top of the post and select “Hide from Timeline.” This doesn’t delete the content from your account, but it will keep it safe from prying eyes.

3. Customize Your Favorite Boxes

Customize Favorites

Next up is the ability to customize the boxes that appear under your cover photo. The “Friends” and “Photos” boxes are fixed, but you can play around with the others.

To edit the boxes, click on the small arrow icon on their right. All boxes that can be moved or removed will have a pencil edit icon appear as you hover.

Hitting on the pencil brings up edit options to remove or swap boxes. To add a Facebook app, or one of the new social apps, click on the plus sign on an empty box.

4. Hide Your Sidebar

Hide Sidebar

You can make Timeline look even less cluttered by hiding the sidebar.

To do this, click on the arrow icon at the very bottom right of your screen. The sidebar will collapse, but leave the adverts to bug you — although, we’ve got a tip for those too…

5. Get Rid of Facebook Ads

If a specific ad is really bothering you, simply adios it from your display.

Hover over the advert and click the “X” that appears at the top right. This gives you the option to hide it or hide all ads from that advertiser.

If you choose to hide the ad, Facebook gives you the further option to tailor what kind of ads appear on your account.

6. Change Primary Album Photo

Change Album Photo

Albums you’ve created will show up in your Timeline. However, you can change the large, or “primary” image.

Click the pencil edit icon to select a different image from the album that will appear in the big window.

7. Feature a Timeline Post

Feature Timeline Post

Make certain posts appear larger on your Timeline so they take up a double column space.

To do this, click the star icon in the top right corner of the post. You can minimize large posts the same way.

8. Customize Your Subscription Updates

Customize Subscriptions

When you subscribe to someone’s public updates, Facebook defaults to “Most updates.” You can change this.

Either go to the person’s profile and click the “Subscribed” drop down menu or, more efficiently, go click your “Subscriptions” favorites box (under your cover photo). This gives you a bird’s-eye view of the people you’ve subscribed to.

Now, if you hit the “Subscribed” box for each person you can tailor exact updates.

9. View Private Activity Log

View Private Activity Log

If you’ve hidden items from your Timeline, but still want to review all of your Facebook content, look to your private Activity Log. Click on the “View Activity” box under your cover photo.

Now, by selecting a type of content from the “All” drop down menu, you can browse all your past Facebook activities, organized by date.

10. View Timeline Profile As Someone Else

View Your Profile Through Someone Else's Eyes

As with the former version of Facebook, you can view how others see your Timeline.

Click the cog icon under your cover photo; then select “View as…”

You can now enter a friend’s name or click on the “public” hyperlink to see how stranger’s view your Timeline.

Create Stunning Effects With CSS Transition Delays

2012-05-15T06:31:00.003-07:00

I’m a huge fan of CSS transitions. Sure, they can be abused but on the whole they’re a really great and easy way to add a little life to your web pages. And let’s face it, they’re flat out fun to play with.

I’ve covered transitions a million different ways, but there’s one feature that I hardly ever touch: transition delays. Why would you want to delay your transition? It turns out that the effects that you can achieve become much more complex and impressive when you incorporate this one extra parameter. Let’s jump in and build some cool demos to show off how it works.

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What We’re Building

If you’d like to take a sneak peek at what we’ll be building today, check out the three demos below:

The Syntax

Before we jump into building anything, it’s worth it to refresh ourselves on the CSS transition syntax. There are four different parameters associated with transitions in CSS: property, duration, timing function and delay.

You can set the values for each of these properties individually using the syntax below. Keep in mind that you’ll want to run this code through Prefixr to make sure you’ve covered the various browsers.

transition-property: opacity;
transition-duration: 1s;
transition-timing-function: ease;
transition-delay: 2s;

Though this is the most straightforward way to declare a transition, it’s really a horribly bulky way to go about it. When we account for all of the various required prefixes, this chunk of code becomes enormous:

-webkit-transition-property: opacity;
   -moz-transition-property: opacity;
     -o-transition-property: opacity;
    -ms-transition-property: opacity;
        transition-property: opacity;
 
-webkit-transition-duration: 1s;
   -moz-transition-duration: 1s;
     -o-transition-duration: 1s;
    -ms-transition-duration: 1s;
        transition-duration: 1s;
 
-webkit-transition-timing-function: ease;
   -moz-transition-timing-function: ease;
     -o-transition-timing-function: ease;
    -ms-transition-timing-function: ease;
        transition-timing-function: ease;
 
-webkit-transition-delay: 2s;
   -moz-transition-delay: 2s;
     -o-transition-delay: 2s;
    -ms-transition-delay: 2s;
        transition-delay: 2s;

As you can see, this is a heck of a lot of code for one simple transition. For this reason, coders typically utilize the much more concise shorthand version. With this method, we can take the huge chunk of code above and convert it to the following, much more manageable snippet.

-webkit-transition: opacity 1s ease 2s;
   -moz-transition: opacity 1s ease 2s;
     -o-transition: opacity 1s ease 2s;
    -ms-transition: opacity 1s ease 2s;
        transition: opacity 1s ease 2s;

The Shorthand Syntax

To be sure we’re all on the same page, here’s a visual breakdown of the transition shorthand.

As you can see, the traditional method is to list the property that you want to enable the transition on, followed by the duration of the transition, the easing function and finally the delay. This syntax isn’t super strict though. For instance, you can swap the position of the easing function and the delay and the transition will still work. However, the order shown above is from the official spec so I recommend sticking to it.

One thing that I do frequently though is simply leave off the delay property. It defaults to zero seconds, so in the event that you want no delay, you can simply write the following:

transition: opacity 1s ease;

The Power of Transition Delays

Now that we understand the syntax behind transitions, let’s talk about why in the world you would want a delay on a transition. There may be several reasons that you might want to use this property, but the one that I’m going to focus on today is accomplishing complex animations involving multiple steps. We’ve played with multiple step transitions a little bit in previous articles but today we’re really going to have some fun.

Basically, the concept here is that you trigger two or more transitions on an event, but use delays to make them occur at different times. So let’s say we have our first transition set to last for one second, we can then set a delay of one second on our second transition to make it begin as soon as the first one ends. The results can be quite impressive!

Sequential Message

The first idea that pops into my head for utilizing delays is to set up some sort of message that presents itself to the user one piece at a time. Let’s say we want to have three pieces of text that fly in and out of a div at different times. The first step is to lay out how it all works so you can wrap your mind around it.

Default Message: “Hover Here”
One second fly out of “Hover Here”
Wait one second, then fly in second message: “Greetings!”
Wait two seconds, then fly in third message: “How are you?”
Hover out returns to default message

As you can see, we’ll first instruct the user to hover over the div, then fly out the hover message as two more messages fly in, the first of which will wait one second and the second will wait two seconds.

HTML

To bring this demo to life, we need a div that contains three different paragraphs like so. Obviously, if you were using this is a live project, you’d want to apply a class or ID, but I’ll keep it simple here.

<div>
  <p>Hover Here</p>
  <p>Greetings!</p>
  <p><small>How Are You?</small></p>
</div>

CSS

To start the CSS, we’ll style the div and paragraphs. There are a few important things here to consider. First, notice the relative positioning and the hidden overflow on the div, these are important so be sure to include them.

Next, notice that I’ve absolutely positioned the text items and pushed them up and out of the bounds of the div so that they’re not visible by default. I also included a completely optional fancy Sass 3D effect. For the complete mixin, check out this article.

div {
  height: 300px;
  background: #f3f3f3;
  position: relative;
  overflow: hidden;
}
 
/*Paragraph*/
p {
  position: absolute;
  left: 10%;
  margin: 0;
  top: -200px;
  font: bold 70px/1 Helvetica, sans-serif;
  color: #6d879d;
 
  @include threedeetext(#6d879d);
 
}
 
small {
  font-size: 40px;
}

Now it’s time to nudge our first paragraph into place and create our first transition. To do this, we’ll use the nth-child selector to target the first paragraph (“Hover Here”). Place it fifty pixels from the top, add a one second transition with no delay and create a hover effect that zooms it out of view.

/*Hover Here Text*/
p:nth-child(1){
  top: 50px;
  -webkit-transition: top 1s ease;
     -moz-transition: top 1s ease;
       -o-transition: top 1s ease;
      -ms-transition: top 1s ease;
          transition: top 1s ease;
}
 
div:hover p:nth-child(1) {
  top: -100px;
}

To finish off this demo, we need to create a hover event for the second and third paragraphs. They’re basically the same, just make sure that the “Greetings” paragraph has a one second delay and the “How are you?” paragraph has a two second delay. Also be sure to position the last paragraph further down.

 
/*Greetings Hover*/
div:hover p:nth-child(2) {
  top: 50px;
  -webkit-transition: top 1s ease 1s;
     -moz-transition: top 1s ease 1s;
       -o-transition: top 1s ease 1s;
      -ms-transition: top 1s ease 1s;
          transition: top 1s ease 1s;
}
 
/*How Are You? Hover*/
div:hover p:nth-child(3) {
  top: 110px;
  -webkit-transition: top 1s ease 2s;
     -moz-transition: top 1s ease 2s;
       -o-transition: top 1s ease 2s;
      -ms-transition: top 1s ease 2s;
          transition: top 1s ease 2s;
}
 
/*Hover Out Transitions*/
p:nth-child(3), p:nth-child(2) {
  -webkit-transition: top 0.2s ease 0s;
     -moz-transition: top 0.2s ease 0s;
       -o-transition: top 0.2s ease 0s;
      -ms-transition: top 0.2s ease 0s;
          transition: top 0.2s ease 0s;
}

Live Demo

That’s all there is to it! Now let’s check out the live demo on Tinkerbin. Here you’ll be able to see and tweak the code, be sure to play around and see what you can come up with!

Demo: Click here to launch. Note that you’ll have to change the CSS mode to “Sass” and hit “Run” to see the 3D text effect.

One Letter At a Time

For this one, we’re only going to use a single message. However, each letter of the message will come flying into place individually. The result will be really cool and very different from what you traditionally see done with CSS.

HTML

Unfortunately, CSS doesn’t have a great way to target individual letters in a string (yet), so our HTML has to get all messy with spans. It’s a pain and the code looks a little sloppy, but it’s the best we can do without bringing JavaScript into the picture, which is out of the scope of this tutorial.

<div>
  <p><span>H</span><span>e</span><span>l</span><span>l</span><span>o</span></p>
</div>

CSS

Our first chunk of CSS will set up our div, just like last time, and style the letters. I’m using the Google Web font “Bree Serif”. I also set the opacity to 0, the position to absolute and transformed the text to uppercase.

div {
  background: #eee;
  height: 200px;
  position: relative;
}
 
span {
  font: 400 100px/1 'Bree Serif', Helvetica, sans-serif;
  margin: 50px;
  opacity: 0;
  text-transform: uppercase;
  position: absolute;
}

Now we have to apply a different transition to each individual letter. To accomplish this, use nth-child just like last time and target the spans. Notice how the primary difference here is that the delay reduces each time, starting at 0.4s and making its way down to 0.

span:nth-child(5) {
  -webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.4s;
     -moz-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.4s;
       -o-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.4s;
      -ms-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.4s;
          transition: all 0.1s ease 0.4s;
}
 
span:nth-child(4) {
  -webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.3s;
     -moz-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.3s;
       -o-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.3s;
      -ms-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.3s;
          transition: all 0.1s ease 0.3s;
}
 
span:nth-child(3) {
  -webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.2s;
     -moz-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.2s;
       -o-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.2s;
      -ms-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.2s;
          transition: all 0.1s ease 0.2s;
}
 
span:nth-child(2) {
  -webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.1s;
     -moz-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.1s;
       -o-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.1s;
      -ms-transition: all 0.1s ease 0.1s;
          transition: all 0.1s ease 0.1s;
}
 
span:nth-child(1) {
  -webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease;
     -moz-transition: all 0.1s ease;
       -o-transition: all 0.1s ease;
      -ms-transition: all 0.1s ease;
          transition: all 0.1s ease;
}

To finish this one off, we first need to declare what happens when we hover over the div. I set the spans to have an opacity of 1, brought them in from the left, and rotated them 360 degrees so that they spin into place.

From here, all that’s left is to push each individual letter into place on hover. With that finished, a single hover event will cause all of the letters to become visible and spin into place and our delays will ensure that all of this takes place sequentially.

div:hover span {
  opacity: 1;
  left: 50px;
  -webkit-transform: rotate(360deg);
     -moz-transform: rotate(360deg);
       -o-transform: rotate(360deg);
      -ms-transform: rotate(360deg);
          transform: rotate(360deg);
}
 
div:hover span:nth-child(2) {
  left: 120px;
}
 
div:hover span:nth-child(3) {
  left: 175px;
}
 
div:hover span:nth-child(4) {
  left: 230px;
}
 
div:hover span:nth-child(5) {
  left: 280px;
}

Live Demo

With that, we’re all finished. Be sure to stop by the demo below and hover over the div to see the animation and tweak it for your own uses.

Demo: Click here to launch.

Curtain Effect

By now you get the gist of how it all works, so I won’t bore you with more explanation, but I did come up with one more demo that I thought was fun. This one uses a stack of images that gradually fall away to reveal the final image on the bottom of the stack. It’s a staggered curtain effect that is definitely a lot more than you’d expect to get on a single CSS hover event.

Demo: Click here to launch.

How Do You Use Transition Delays?

Now that you’ve see some of the ideas that I’ve had for creatively using transition delays, I’d love to see what you’ve come up with. Leave a link below and show me what you’ve got!

5 Ways to Learn Web Design: Which Is Right for You?

2012-05-15T06:30:00.003-07:00

The web design education industry has exploded from a small niche to a powerful, continually expanding force. Countless people all over the planet are interested in learning about how to build and design websites, and tons of companies are cropping up promising the ultimate solution.

The good news for you is that increased competition in this field is a great thing for customers. You have more options than ever for learning just about anything you want to know concerning web technologies. The big question though is, with so many options available, which is the right one for you? We’ll go over a number of different strategies being used to teach web development and discuss how you can figure out the most appropriate for your unique learning style. We’ll also include some resources to get you started on each available path.

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So Many Options!

With some disciplines, the most difficult part of the education process is finding quality learning resources. This is definitely not the case with web design. The web is completely bursting with both free and purchasable information that will teach you all there is to know about web design and development.

The problem then shifts from one of scarcity to overabundance. With so much info available, how can you even know where to begin? Before you answer this question though, I think it’s critically important to discover which learning style is the most effective for you. Once you have this information, you can narrow your resources considerably.

Why Does It Matter?

If you’ve ever tried and failed to learn something, then this lesson should ring true with you. Sometimes you want to pick up a new skill, but there just seems to be some barrier between you and success. How can you overcome it? In a recent article, I introduced you to the freelancer’s secret to learning any new skill, which I firmly believe is a great way to force yourself into learning. However, even if you’ve put yourself in the position suggested by that article, you still have the actual learning process ahead of you.

“Odds are, you’ll find that you personally have more success using some methods than others.”

It often boils down to a question of methodology. Education professionals long ago discovered that people differ in their learning styles. Some people are visual learners, others absorb through reading and some can’t get a feel for something until they dig in with a hands-on experiment. Odds are, you’ll find that you personally have more success using some methods than others.

The key then is to find out which learning style you tend to have the most success with and find resources that focus on teaching through this method. Instead of a random Google search that leads to hours and hours of failed learning attempts, try making an educated go of choosing how you learn web design. Doing so could literally mean the difference between another failed attempt and an exciting new career.

1. School

Though I tend to focus on informal web-based independent learning solutions, I would never discount the value of a formal education. For starters, a university or even community college degree can give your resume the boost it needs to land you that awesome job.

Web design and development degrees are quickly becoming fairly ubiquitous. There’s a good chance that the major schools in your area all offer something in this area. Every school worth its salt has a website that lists available degrees and certificates in addition to some estimates for the level of financial investment that you can expect to make, so be sure that local university websites are your first stop. Understandably, a college or university degree is the most expensive route you can take, but it can also be one of the most rewarding.

Should You Go Back To School?

Obviously, if you’re about to enter college and need a degree, then this option is prime territory for you. I’ll focus on the people for whom this decision might not be as simple though: those thinking about returning to school.

If you’re an adult who has been in the working world for some time, the decision of whether or not to go back to school is a difficult one. Will the hard sacrifices of time and money pay off in the end? Sometimes they do, other times they don’t.

If you don’t have a formal degree of any kind, I recommend that you get one. Potential employers often just want to see that you’re committed enough to get through college without giving up.

If you do have a degree, just not in web development, then you might have plenty of success learning on your own. More and more the web industry is beginning to value experience and ability over formal education. Jump into learning on your own, take some low budget jobs to kick off your career and then move your way up the ladder through freelance or the corporate world.

If you find that the lack of a web dev degree is holding you back, then you should think about getting one. Otherwise, your time and resources might be better spent on real world experience. You might even consider picking up a class or two where you need it and skipping the full degree.

Learning Style

Whether you’re going with an online or in-person degree, the teaching methods will likely incorporate several or even all of the other styles below. There are some unique advantages to the school method though, especially if you’re in a real classroom with an instructor present.

Some of us learn better on our own, moving forward at our own pace. The unfortunate truth though is that self-guided learning is super difficult. It’s often far easier to pick up a new discipline if someone is pushing you to do so. School heavily leverages the stress factor to induce learning, a trick that works so well that our entire education system is based on it.

“It’s often far easier to pick up a new discipline if someone is pushing you to do so.”

With school you have homework, deadlines, term projects and a structured schedule. You either keep up or drop out. If you need to learn a lot of stuff extremely well in a short period of time, there’s almost no better way to do it than a formal class.

Further, in-person instruction is a rich learning method that gives you the unique ability to ask questions and get help where you need it, often in a one-on-one conversation. This is something that is extremely difficult or nearly impossible to find in the world of free and even premium online education.

The Bottom Line

If you have a decent budget, learn better in a structured environment, perform well under pressure, and value face to face instruction where you can ask lots of questions, school is your best bet.

2. Reading

Written instruction is the spark that lit the fire under web design education. The lowly design blog started as a novel idea and has risen to impressive heights. Even these built on the success of a far older method: books. Once upon a time, when someone wanted to learn something, a trip to the library and/or bookstore, was the first step in the process (not Google).

Reading is a timeless way to learn something, it will simply never go out of style no matter what fancy technology comes along. In a highly literate society it is often the go-to method for self-guided instruction. It’s not the most interactive or exciting way to go about learning something, but it’s often the most effective for several reasons.

Learning Style

Written learning materials are hard to beat from an efficiency perspective. The average person’s reading speed is much faster than the average person’s speaking speed, so you can pack far more education into a shorter time span than with spoken instruction.

For this reason, written instruction often goes far deeper than other methods. Books on web development tend to be massive tomes that are fairly exhaustive and cover every aspect of their topic. Even a fairly long video series on the same topic likely won’t cover a tenth of the material.

“Written learning materials are hard to beat from an efficiency perspective.”

Even if you don’t want to read a massive, all-inclusive book on a subject, reading is often still the method to beat. Design blogs like the one you’re reading now provide daily, bite-sized learning opportunities that can guide you through every step of your career, from writing your first line of HTML to keeping your advanced skill set fresh and relevant.

The downside of reading is that it can get boring if you’re the type of person who tends to favor multimedia. An even bigger hurdle is obviously your level of reading comprehension. You need not be embarrassed, the simple truth is that lots of people simply don’t absorb and retain information well through reading. If you’ve never read an entire blog post (including this one) without skimming and find yourself sleeping in a book more than turning its pages, reading might not be the way to go!

The Bottom Line

Reading-based instructional materials are perfect if you have a high level of reading comprehension and retention. The options here fall on both extremes of the time spectrum: reading can provide you with both the shortest, quickest instruction possible and the longest, deepest learning sessions that you could possibly want. Reading is also hands down the most popular method used for free instruction, so if your budget is nonexistent, blogs and other online resources are the way to go.

Reading is for the masses, but don’t mistake that statement as an implication that there’s something wrong with you if this isn’t the best way for you to learn. Don’t waste your time at the library if big books intimidate or bore you, instead search for a learning method that makes use of your interest in richer methods of communication.

Resources To Check Out

HTML & CSS Book
This simply titled book is a breath of fresh air in the world of printed learning materials for web designers. It’s gorgeous, it’s thorough, and it’s at the very top of my recommendation list for anyone looking to pick up HTML and CSS.

HTML5 Rocks
HTML5 Rocks is an awesome open source resource for web developers at all stages. There is a wealth of free information and tutorials available here that cover a wide array of topics.

3. Video Instruction

Instructional videos have been around for nearly as long as video cameras. The concept is nothing new and the effectiveness has been proven over several decades. If you need proof, consider that most of us would never dream of buying and reading through a science book but as soon as a science channel pops up on our TV, we’re enthralled for hours on end.

Video based instruction in the web development community certainly isn’t new either, but serious, in-depth and high quality video instruction definitely hasn’t hit anywhere near the level of saturation of written design blogs. This is because video learning materials are incredibly resource-intensive to produce. The equipment, knowledge, software and time necessary to create a valuable product all serve as a high barrier to entry for anyone looking to enter this market.

For this reason, the products that do exist tend to be quite pricy. The currently popular method is to sell a subscription on a monthly or yearly basis. You pay a certain fee every month and in turn are granted access to a large body of video content. It’s like Netflix for web education.

Learning Style

The learning style here is very visual. If you have no interest in books and find that you often can’t make yourself read through even a brief blog post, video instruction provides an awesome and often quite entertaining solution.

“If you think that watching a person write code for an hour is going to be exciting, you’re going to be pretty surprised with the reality.”

This doesn’t mean that you won’t get bored though. If you think that watching a person write code for an hour is going to be exciting, you’re going to be pretty surprised with the reality. For this reason, the instructor leading the videos makes all the difference in the world. Guys like Jeffrey Way and Chris Coyier have the ability to make the educational experience interesting while other instructors unfortunately drone on endlessly in a monotone voice that lulls you into a deep coma from which there is little hope of return.

Obviously, video instruction ticks the auditory learning box as well. Some people can read something a hundred times and not retain the information, but as soon as they hear it, it’s locked in their brain forever. If this sounds like you, video courses are likely going to be the best route for you. Pure audio solutions like podcasts do exist, but they’re more for general discussion. It’s nearly impossible to learn code or design without seeing what it is that the instructor is doing.

One last thing to consider is that video instruction can be time consuming. Courses are often broken up into five to ten minute segments but on the whole you’ll spend hours and hours watching video to absorb the amount of information you could probably get from a book in half the time.

The Bottom Line

If your television is constantly tuned into educational science, history or technology shows, then you probably really enjoy learning through video instruction. If you think books are lame, then you definitely need to check out this method of learning.

Videos are ideal if you can block out specific chunks of time for learning in a quiet environment. If you’re overwhelmed by all of the reading options available, you’ll be comforted by the fact that there are only a few really good video resources available at this point in time for learning web development. Just keep in mind that the really thorough options are almost exclusively subscription based.

Resources to Check Out

Lynda
Lynda is one of the oldest and most thorough online resources for learning just about anything technical. You pay a hefty subscription fee but it’s well worth it to access their extensive library of learning videos spanning tons of subjects. Learn HTML and CSS, master Photoshop, take a course on video production and finally take on building that iPhone app idea you’ve had floating around in your head.

Tuts+ Premium
I’ve work steadily with the Tuts+ Premium folks so I’m a little biased but I think it’s one of the best options around for anyone who wants to learn web design and development. For as low as $15 per month you get access to a wealth of exclusive tutorials, both written and video. They’re adding content weekly so your membership only gets better with time!

4. Interactive

When I was in college, I signed up for a math course with a stuffy old professor bent on failing as many students as possible. Instruction was fast-paced and questions were almost never tolerated. If you didn’t understand, you didn’t belong there.

Consequently, I dropped the class and tried again using a different format. My school had these computer-based learning courses where an instructor was present, but only for support. Most of the learning was done through a computer program that allowed you to go through lessons at your own pace, re-learn troublesome topics, and take quizzes to assess your progress before official testing. The program used a very interactive teaching method that had you clicking, entering numbers and manipulating models constantly. I pulled an A+ in that class as well as subsequent math courses that I took using the same method.

“The interaction model here is closer to a video game than a textbook.”

The moral here is that for some of us, there’s something magical about computer guided learning. Instead of passively absorbing information, you’re diving into it. Your progress is continually checked so you can’t proceed unless you’re genuinely learning the material. Further, your work is checked not by an intimidating human but by a machine that won’t judge you for going through the same lesson over and over. The interaction model here is closer to a video game than a textbook.

This amazing teaching style is being adapted to the world of web development with some impressive results. There’s a new generation of web apps that guide you through the entire process of learning web development, from HTML and CSS to JavaScript, PHP and Ruby on Rails. Annoying and technical setup processes are nonexistent and your work is checked at every step. You simply read a quick lesson, then type into an on-screen terminal that makes sure you’re doing it right.

Learning Style

The learning style here is obviously a very hands-on approach. If you have a short attention span and get easily bored, even well produced video instruction can be nearly impossible to sit through. The interactive method asks for your input at every step and holds your interest as well or better than any other learning model I’ve ever seen.

“The interactive method holds your interest as well or better than any other learning model I’ve ever seen.”

This method is also great if you’re a particularly fast or a particularly slow learner. If you pick up the information quickly, you can breeze through the content while actually learning the information, not just reading it. Conversely, if your learning process is fairly slow, the computer doesn’t mind! You can enter the wrong answer again and again and you’ll keep getting more chances, and it’s easy to click back and go through a previous lesson at any time.

If you like games, you’ll love this method. Your results are saved, your progress through the course is tracked and reported and you often even work towards high scores and trophies or badges.

The Bottom Line

If you’d much rather spend a day in front of your Xbox than with your nose in a book, then this learning method might resonate particularly well with you. Learning becomes a game to be beaten and boring content comes to life. There are some free and premium options here so no matter your what your budget is, you can get started with this method today.

Resources to Check Out

Codecademy
I absolutely love this website. It’s a fantastic and currently free resource that’s small but growing fast. Here you can learn programming and/or web development through a series of interactive courses that teach you tiny bits of information at a time and let you type out the code yourself. Codecademy checks your answers and guides you through the learning process in a thoroughly enjoyable and easily approachable manner. In fact, it’s so user friendly that I even told my parents to check it out!

Code School
Code School is sort of like a premium, paid version of the Codecademy model. For $25 per month, you get access to several interactive courses on web development and programming. You type in code right in the browser just as with Codecademy, but the learning side is more robust and includes some superbly produced video and graphic content.

5. Hybrid

For some, one of the methods above stands out far from the others as the absolute best way to learn. But let’s face it, your typical learning experience will involve more than one of these learning styles. Don’t feel the need to stay within one area, if none of them hold your interest or provide what you need, jump around a little.

For instance, I like to watch video courses but I also typically have a book on my desk that covers the topic that I’m learning. Jumping between the two helps keep me interested and allows me to dig deeper than I could with a single source.

Your goal should be to find not only your single most successful learning style, but the combination of resources that will ultimately lead to you actually learning the skill that you set out to pick up. Nothing is more frustrating than trying again and again to learn something and coming out no better for it in the end. Building yourself a customized learning plan could be just what you need to end the cycle of frustration.

Resources to Check Out

Treehouse
Treehouse is a perfect example of a single service that incorporates several of the techniques mentioned above. It uses an interactive gaming system mixed with quizzes, video and written content and result is a highly polished educational program that caters to a number of different learning styles. To get the full experience, you’ll have to shell out a whopping $49 per month, but it really is a superb service so you won’t regret it.

How Do You Learn?

The message that I’m trying to get across here is that you can learn web development, regardless of your past successes and failures. Sometimes something as simple as a style of learning is all that’s holding you back. Exploring your interests and favored ways to learn can dramatically improve your odds of success.

Be sure to take some time o consider all of the various methods above and find the one or two that you think will work best for you. It often helps to eliminate those that you know won’t work and use that as a starting point for choosing new techniques to try.

Leave a comment below and tell us about your learning style. Do you learn better through school, reading, video content, interactive software or a hybrid method involving several or even all of these methods? We want to know!

Awsome stock photos provided by BigStock

Preparing Your Web Design for Print

2012-05-15T06:29:00.003-07:00

When was the last time a client asked you to design something for print? Did you feel comfortable meeting the request? There are a few key standards that you should understand to make the successful jump from online to printed design.

When planning a print project you really have to take the medium, format and printing press in mind when putting together a project. It is also important to understand the differences in how color works, font embedding and other just preparing your flier, magazine cover or business card for print.

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Know Your Medium

The first step in preparing for a print project is to know what you are printing on and what kind of press is printing it. Talk to your team members about these considerations and plan for the unexpected in advance.

Determine what you will be printing on. Glossy paper, card stock, copy paper, newsprint? Each medium has a set of considerations of its own. Thinner paper types tend to have more bleed between the ink and paper, which can cause a degree of softness in images and text. Thicker paper types have far less bleed but can have a heaver ink lay, which can sometimes result in smudging because of the longer drying time.

Every printing press can have its quirks as well. Look at other projects that have come from where yours will be printed. Note how the finished products look. Are certain colors heavier than others? How sharp is the registration? These are things you will want to account for in your design.

Software

Adobe InDesign is the preferred software for designing print materials from magazines and newspapers to brochures and leaflets to business cards. There are other applications that can do some of the same things as InDesign but this product has become the industry standard (the runner up is Quark).

What’s nice about InDesign is much of the functionality will seem familiar for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop users. The buttons, icons and shortcut keys are the same. (And for those who purchased the Adobe Creative Suite to bundle other software, InDesign is probably already installed on your computer.)

InDesign is specifically designed to create and prepare print projects for printing. You can create documents of any size and gain much more functionality when it comes to working with typography, as compared to the limited palettes in Photoshop. InDesign settings also make it easy for novice print designers to meet set specifications prior to publication.

Color Differences

Successful printing can hinge on color selection and choices but even more important is accounting how print colors are created before they hit the press.

RGB and CYMK

Online, designers create each color using an RGB (red, green, blue) formula. This is the standard for how computer monitors display color.

For print, presses use a combination of four colors, CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) to create each hue. Designers should create, or convert, all colors in their document according to where it will be published – online or in print.

A layer of ink is put down in each color – cyan, magenta, yellow and black – to create everything on the page in process printing. That is why preparing colors based on the CYMK formula is so important.

Black

Black is also a consideration. You have three options when creating black for CMYK printing – rich black, four-color black and 100 percent black.

Rich black should be used for large, solid areas on most printing presses. Rich black will give you a rich color and will not look gray, something that can happen with 100 percent black. Rich black can also be True or 100 percent black results from printing using a single plate. True black should be used for small text, such as in magazines, books and newspapers because it eliminates registration concerns. True black, though, can have a washed out or gray look when used in large spaces.

Four-color black also uses each of the printing plates and has an almost infinite number of color-mixing combinations. Four-color black is risky and should be avoided in most projects. Any mix of four-color black, including rich black, should not be used for text blocks. Any skew in registration can render the text unreadable.

Keep Fonts in Check

The biggest problem with fonts happens during the processing of files from your computer to the actual printing press. To ensure that fonts appear as designed, prepare your files for print by sending the fonts with the project or turning text into outlines.

InDesign can help you send the fonts to the printer using the package or preflight options. This will create a folder that includes all of your original images and font files that can be submitted with the finished product file to a printer. One thing to keep in mind is the licensing regarding fonts when transmitting font files. You may consider having a written agreement with the printer that states all materials transmitted with your document are for use only for printing said document and must be deleted once the project is finished.

Another option for font preparation is to turn text into outlines, which essentially turns each letter into an image. The major consideration is that text is no longer text and can’t be edited. Text that has been converted to outlines is perfectly compatible because the document no longer contains fonts. Most importantly, if you choose this option, keep two copies of your project – one with all of the fonts as fonts and another with fonts as outlines. If you don’t have the text version, a simple edit can result in hours of rework.

Prepress Considerations

Getting your files ready for print can be just as important as the overall design. Make sure to have a discussion with the printer to outline print specifications and acceptable file formats. (Most printers accept .a1, .indd, .qxp, .pdf. and .eps files.)

Resolution

Typically commercial printing jobs require image files to be submitted at 300 dpi (dots per inch) or greater. This is more than three times the resolution of standard web publication, which is 72 dpi. If a file is created at 72 dpi and stretched to the print specification of 300 dpi (or even higher) text and images will become blurry and pixelated, resulting in an unprofessional-looking final product.

Size

Always turn in a document that meets the specified size. If the project calls for an 8-inch by 11-inch flier, the document size should be just that. Files turned in at the wrong size can be rejected by the printer or resized in at the print facility. Resizing can result in a project with the wrong proportions or overall look.

Bleed, trim and safety

Finally you want to make sure that your file fits within the printable image area. Make sure to ask about and honor bleed, trim and safety specs. (You can even create these “lines” using layout software such as InDesign.)

Bleed is the area at the outside edge of the document that allows for edge-to-edge design. The bleed will keep edges from being cut off and leaving white lines. As a general rule, extend your image 1/8 inch all the way around the outside margin of your document.

Trim shows where a document will be cut off by the printer. This is generally the location of the page margin before any bleed.

Safety is the area that is guaranteed to fall within the printing margins. While images can extend beyond the safety, relevant artwork and text should not to guarantee it is visible. Set the safety at 1/8 inch all around the inside margin of the trim.

Conclusion

Preparing or converting a digital project for print takes some time and planning. A general understanding of the printing process can help you make your project more successful.

Be aware of the differences in online and print publication. When preparing a project for print, talk to the printer to nail down specifications in advance and properly prepare your project for printing before it hits the press.used for large type on presses with keen registration. Mix rich black as 30 percent cyan, 30 percent magenta, 30 percent yellow and 100 percent black (C30, M30, Y30, K100).

Web Design Critique #80: The New Responsive WebAppers Site

2012-05-15T06:28:00.001-07:00

It’s time for another awesome web design critique, where we take a look at a real website and analyze the design. We’ll point out both the areas that are done well in addition to those that could use some work. Finally, we’ll finish by asking you to provide your own feedback.

Today’s site is WebAppers, a great place to find open source web resources. Let’s jump in and see what we think!

If you’d like to submit your website to be featured in a future Design Critique, it just takes a few minutes. We charge $49 for critiquing your design – considerably less than you’d pay for a consultant to take a look at your site! You can find out more here.

About WebAppers

“WebAppers is a blog dedicated to share top quality open source resources for web developers and web designers daily. As a web designer, you’ll find some of the best free icons, stock photos, brushes, fonts and design inspirations. As a web developer, you’ll also find some of the best Javascript and Ajax components like modal windows, menus, galleries, tooltips, charts, calendars plugins and a lot more.”

Here is a screenshot of the homepage:

How would you rate the design of WebAppers?

Absolutely fantastic!A good piece of designFairly averageIt needs quite a lot of work...

VoteView Results Polldaddy.com

First Impression

If you’re wondering whether a Design Shack critique is worth it, you need look no further than the repeat customers. WebAppers was actually the customer for our14th web design critique and they’ve come back to have us take a look at their brand new, completely redesigned responsive site.

My first thoughts for the new design are very positive. This is no small update, they’ve taken the site in a completely new visual direction and I really think it’s better for it. The old site had a cobbled together sort of look, like various non-matching resources were thrown together. The new design, by contrast, is very clean and professional and comes off as a completely custom piece of work. And it’s responsive to boot!

We’re still very early in the responsive evolution of the web so my hat goes off to anyone who’s actually taking the initiative to remove RWD from the comfortable area of theory and put it into real world practice.

Let’s dig deeper into the site’s design and see what is working well and what could stand to be improved.

New Logo

The old WebAppers logo had this sort of 80s rocker appeal. There was a cat of some sort, some lighting bolt shapes; it was quirky but fun.

I always found the logo to be a little confusing though. I could never quite tell if the lightning shapes were meant to be just that or if they were perhaps a lion’s mane. And what did any of that have to do with open source web resources anyway?

The new logo takes a simpler, text-based approach. I actually love the visual of the page curl “W”, the center of which also serves as an “A”. It’s just a flat out cool idea that was pulled off quite successfully.

I also like that the logo clearly states what the site is all about. As soon as I load the home page, my eyes drift to the logo and I know what the page is offering me. This is extremely important and it’s all too often in these critiques that I’m telling a designer the opposite (that it’s difficult to see what their site is all about).

Layout

As I mentioned above, the new layout is responsive, and by that I mean that it uses media queries to reflow the layout at a number of preset breakpoints. To be “fully responsive” some say that a site must also be built on a fluid grid like the one seen on Smashing Magazine, a project which no doubt inspired this one in some way.

WebAppers doesn’t reflow itself to every minute change in the browser width (at least until the smallest iteration), and to be honest, as I play around with it, I think that’s fine. It’s still a remarkably flexible design that adapts well to all kinds of different screen sizes, which is a lot more than most websites can claim.

In the wide version, there are four primary columns. From left to right they are the navigation, primary content, secondary content sidebar and advertising. The two sidebars have been designed to look almost like drawers that slide out of the main content, a perfect metaphor considering that they collapse as the width narrows.

As we narrow the window down, we drop the advertising column on the far right. The content doesn’t merely disappear at this point though, instead the ads appear above the right sidebar, pushing that content downward. This is an elegant solution that looks great and still maintains most of the original content.

There’s a subtle jump after this that narrows the main content column slightly. The container becomes narrower, the text size decreases and the images reduce their width. If we narrow the window even further we get the most significant layout shift:

Here we can see that the third column has completely dropped away and any content that was inside has become hidden. This means that the ads have disappeared completely (Smashing Magazine does the same thing) and the sidebar containing the popular content and search field is gone as well.

My only real problem here is that from this point on the site doesn’t appear to be searchable. I’m all for shifting design as the screen size changes but functionality is a touchier subject and reductions must be approached with caution. Searching seems like a fairly primary feature and I’d likely be frustrated that I can’t perform this task on my phone or tablet.

Eventually, the site breaks down to a single column layout with the navigation now appearing in a simple native dropdown menu, which typically work well on both mobile and desktop devices.

Overall, I think the layout works really well, and with the exception of the search functionality, I’m not sure I would change much about it.

Looking behind the scenes we can see that this project was helped along by Twitter Bootstrap, which is nice because the page doesn’t look like your typical copy/paste Bootstrap project at all and proves that you can use that toolkit under the hood without sacrificing custom design.

Aesthetics

Now that we’ve discussed how the structure or bones of the site work, let’s take a look at the icing on top. The site takes on a largely gray color scheme with subtle pops of color here and there. It makes heavy use of attractive, minimal icons and of course Helvetica as its primary and nearly exclusive typeface.

My least favorite aspect of this entire site is the lack of contrast. Everything on the page has a sort of monotonous feel with nothing really standing out. I can see how the muted look is meant to be easy on the eyes, but it’s bland enough that it almost feels a bit straining.

The solution for this, as far as I’m concerned is so easy that it only involves replacing a single file: the background texture. I grabbed a dark texture fromSubtle Patterns and gave it a test run on the WebAppers site with great results.

The dark background adds some much needed contrast to the site and really highlights the main content by pushing it to the forefront of your attention. It’s amazing how much of a difference a little tweak can make!

One other small thing that bugs me slightly is the shadow effect on the article titles, seen in the screenshot below:

One one hand, I think it’s a cool effect. On the other, I think it makes the text considerably more difficult to read. Perhaps if the shadow’s opacity were simply reduced it would be less distracting.

Summary

I think the WebAppers redesign is definitely a success. The site is more beautiful than ever and has taken a nice jump towards being device agnostic. It’s easy to use, the branding is more logical and the content presentation is really nice.

My one big concern is the lack of visual contrast, a concern which completely vanishes with the inclusion of a darker background pattern. I’m also skeptical of the decision to drop the search functionality on the narrower versions of the layout. I don’t think visiting the site on my iPhone should necessarily mean that I lost the ability to search.

Other than these issues though, it’s a great site. Be sure to stop by and give it a test drive. I think you’re going to like what you see.

Your Turn!

Now that you’ve read my comments, pitch in and help out by giving the designer some further advice. Let us know what you think is great about the design and what you think could be stronger. As always, we ask that you also be respectful of the site’s designer and offer clear constructive advice void of any harsh insults

Build a Library of CSS Image Label Options

2012-05-15T06:27:00.003-07:00

Today I’m working on another awesome free download for PixelsDaily. Here you’ll be able to see my thought processes, goals and code, and later you’ll be able to download the whole project to use in your own work.

Basically, our goal here is to create a simple effect so that when the user hovers over an image, a hidden text label pops up into view. This is of course extremely easy to do so we’re going to go a step further by building a whole bunch of options for the developer to choose from. This will provide you with some good practice for how to create flexible effects that can be applied in different ways without too much code repetition.

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Sneak Peek

If you’re anxious to see the result before you go through the code, check out the demo below and hover over each image to see how it’s different.

Demo: Click Here to launch.

The Plan

Here’s what we want: a simple text label with a black background to appear over the image when the user hovers. Now, since it’s going to be animated into place, I came up with a total of ten different variations that equate to roughly the same element being used in different ways:

We have two main parameters to set here. The first is where the the label will come to rest (top, center or bottom) and the second is where it will come from (top, right, bottom, left). What we’ll want to do is provide a basic repeatable HTML structure for developers to use when adding an image, then give them some classes that can be applied to control everything about the label’s behavior. With this in mind, we can proceed to the first step.

The HTML

<div class="label top">
  <p>Persistence in Memory</p>
  <img src="img1.jpg" />
</div>

For the HTML, we need a simple wrapper div that contains a paragraph and an image. The paragraph will serve as the hidden text label and the classes applied to the div will tell us two things: first, that we want to give this div the label treatment and second, which label treatment to give it.

We could skip the generic label class, but that would mean that all of the styles associated with every label would have to be duplicated in each version of the label, which would make for a big fat mess of unnecessarily repetitious code. This way we can apply most of the styling to one single class and save the changing styles to our specific classes.

Now let’s expand this out so we can try the ten different effects that we’re aiming for in our final result. We’ll keep all the divs for this tutorial, but the classes should be flexible enough that you can use block level list items as well if you’re building a gallery. We really just want to make sure each image effect works in an individual setting.

<div class="label top">
  <p>Persistence in Memory</p>
  <img src="img1.jpg" />
</div>
 
<div class="label bottom">
  <p>The Scream</p>
  <img src="img2.jpg" />
</div>
 
<div class="label bottomright">
  <p>The Last Supper</p>
  <img src="img3.jpg" />
</div>
 
<div class="label bottomleft">
  <p>Mona Lisa</p>
  <img src="img4.jpg" />
</div>
 
<div class="label topleft">
  <p>Starry Night</p>
  <img src="img5.jpg" />
</div>
 
<div class="label topright">
  <p>Girl with a Pearl Earring</p>
  <img src="img6.jpg" />
</div>
 
<div class="label centertop">
  <p>Whistler's Mother</p>
  <img src="img7.jpg" />
</div>
 
<div class="label centerbottom">
  <p>The Kiss</p>
  <img src="img8.jpg" />
</div>
 
<div class="label centerleft">
  <p>American Gothic</p>
  <img src="img9.jpg" />
</div>
 
<div class="label centerleft">
  <p>Water Lilies</p>
  <img src="img10.jpg" />
</div>

Starter CSS

Now that we’ve got a good idea of what our HTML structure will look like, it’s time to jump over to our CSS. To start off, toss in a lazy man’s reset (or something more robust if you prefer) and a background pattern.

* {
   margin: 0;
   padding: 0;
}
 
body {
   background: #f5f5f5 url('wood_pattern.png');
}

Now it’s time to implement some generic label styles. Most of what we need to do will specifically apply to the paragraph, but there are a few things that should be done here as well. Start off with the specific styles that you need to make the layout work. since we’ll be working with images of varying sizes, I used inline-block for the display context with a top vertical alignment. I also set the overflow to hidden and the position to relative, both of which are vital for this experiment.

Next I threw in some optional visual styles. These are separated so that a developer who downloads these files can easily see how to customize the look and feel of the items without screwing up how they work.

.label {
  /*Position*/
  display: inline-block;
  vertical-align: top;  
  overflow: hidden;
  position: relative;
  margin: 20px;
 
  /*Skin*/
  border: 7px solid #fff;
  -webkit-box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px rgba(0,0,0,0.5), 0px 10px 7px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
     -moz-box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px rgba(0,0,0,0.5), 0px 10px 7px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
          box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px rgba(0,0,0,0.5), 0px 10px 7px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
}
 
/*Extra Padding Fix*/
.label img {
  display: block;
}

Notice the peculiar block positioning context applied at the end here. For whatever reason, this layout was giving me an extra four pixels of padding at the bottom of each image that couldn’t be manually overridden. This fixed this problem.

Status Update

At this point we’re looking good. Our images are lining up nicely and have the styling that we want. The only weird part is that the text labels are all screwed up and that’s what we’re going to attack next.

Style the Labels

Now it’s time to style the labels. Once again, it’s very important to figure out which styles can be reused and which need to vary. To do this, I simply ran ahead and created a bunch of different individual labels, then looked through to see where my code was redundant.

The realization is that each label will have to have absolute positioning (which works with the relative positioning from before), padding, a set width, transitions and visual styling. These properties will be identical, no matter what direction we’re coming from or what the final resting place of the label will be.

.label p {
  /*Position*/
  position: absolute;
  padding: 10px;
  width: 100%;
 
  /*Skin*/
  background: #000; /*fallback*/
  background: rgba(0,0,0,0.7);
  color: #fff;
  font: bold italic 18px/1.5 Helvtica, Verdana, sans-serif;
 
  /*Animation*/
  -webkit-transition: all 0.5s ease;
     -moz-transition: all 0.5s ease;
       -o-transition: all 0.5s ease;
      -ms-transition: all 0.5s ease;
          transition: all 0.5s ease;
}

Status Update

As you can see in the image below, all of our labels are working now and look perfect. Notice that they’re all positioned at the top by default, keep this in mind as we move forward and shove them around.

Position Each Label

From here, we have a lot of styling to do. Really we have a tiny bit of styling to do, but we have to do it ten different times because each label is unique. For each label, we need to position the paragraph element out of the bounds of the picture, then bring it back in on hover.

To begin, we want a label that will start just above an image that will fly downward on hover and rest at the top. To do this, we set the top value to -50%, which then changes to 0% on hover. Similarly, for the same effect from the bottom, we start with a bottom value of -50% and change that to 0%.

My method here is very specific so take note. The trickiest part of this whole idea is figuring out how to make it work on a wide range of image sizes. We don’t want the developer to have to manually enter in a size every time, it should just work when someone slaps on the required classes.

By utilizing the top and bottom properties the way we are, we ensure that nothing is image-size-specific. The value of 0% on the bottom property will always push our label down to the bottom of the image we apply it to, no matter how far that may be.

/*TOP LABEL*/
.top p {
  top: -50%;
}
 
.top:hover p {
  top: 0%;
}
 
/*BOTTOM LABEL*/
.bottom p {
  bottom: -50%;
}
 
.bottom:hover p {
  bottom: 0%;
}

Next up, we need to style our labels that swing in from the sides. We can swing in from the top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right. Here are the values for these. The method is straightforward and just like the two we just went over. Each time we set the resting position just off to one side, then bring it back into view with the hover. For these, the left and right properties come into play in addition to the top and bottom properties.

/*BOTTOM LEFT LABEL*/
.bottomleft p {
  bottom: 0%;
  left: -150%;
}
 
.bottomleft:hover p {
  left: 0%;
}
 
/*BOTTOM RIGHT LABEL*/
.bottomright p {
  bottom: 0%;
  left: 150%;
}
 
.bottomright:hover p {
  left: 0%;
}
 
/*TOP LEFT LABEL*/
.topleft p {
  top: 0%;
  left: -150%;
}
 
.topleft:hover p {
  left: 0%;
}
 
/*TOP RIGHT LABEL*/
.topright p {
  top: 0%;
  left: 150%;
}
 
.topright:hover p {
  left: 0%;
}

To finish off, we need to code our centered labels. These are the hardest of the bunch to figure out. On hover, you want to place them fifty percent of the way down or up, minus half of the height of the label. So when we want to slide in from the top, we set the top value to 50% and apply and negative margin of 20px (half the height of our labels). Unfortunately, this does assume a single line of text and the specific font-size that we’ve set up. If either changes, then the height will be different and the item won’t be centered. The only way I know around that is to use some sort of display: table setup.

/*CENTER FROM TOP*/
.centertop p {
   top: -50%;
}
 
.centertop:hover p {
   top: 50%;
   margin-top: -20px;
}
 
/*CENTER FROM BOTTOM*/
.centerbottom p {
   bottom: -50%;
}
 
.centerbottom:hover p {
   bottom: 50%;
   margin-bottom: -20px;
}
 
/*CENTER FROM LEFT*/
.centerleft p {
   top: 50%;
   left: -150%;
   margin-top: -20px;
}
 
.centerleft:hover p {
   left: 0%;
}
 
/*CENTER FROM RIGHT*/
.centerright p {
   top: 50%;
   left: 150%;
   margin-top: -20px;
}
 
.centerright:hover p {
   left: 0%;
}

Optional: Going Further

Now, if you’re crazy about repetition, you can go even further with making sure your code is as brief as possible. We separated out each label above for the sake of readability, but the result is a lot of values that are repeated throughout. We could go in and either manually combine selectors or use Sass @extend and come up with a much more concise result. The tradeoff here of course though is that you’re repeating your selectors because some appear in multiple places.

.top:hover p, .topleft p, .topright p {top: 0%;}
.top p, .centertop p {top: -50%;}
 
.bottom:hover p, .bottomleft p, .bottomright p {bottom: 0%;}
.bottom p, .centerbottom p {bottom: -50%;}
.bottomleft:hover p, .bottomright:hover p, .topleft:hover p, .topright:hover p, .centerleft:hover p, .centerright:hover p {left: 0%;}
.bottomleft p, .topleft p, .centerleft p, .centerleft p {left: -150%;}
.bottomright p, .topright p, .centerright p {left: 150%;}
 
.centerbottom:hover p {bottom: 50%;}
.centertop:hover p, .centerleft p, .centerright p {top: 50%;}
.centertop:hover p, .centerleft p, .centerright p {margin-top: -20px;}
.centerbottom:hover p {margin-bottom: -20px;}

See It In Action

We’re all finished! Be sure to check out the live demo below and hover over each image to see the different effect.

Demo: Click Here to launch.

Conclusion

This project forced us into a lot of good thinking. We had to consider several times how to keep our code brief and free of repetition. We also consistently asked what was best given that we want others to be able to download and change our code with very little trouble. Sometimes when we saw a way to make our code more concise, it came at the price of readability and ease of use, which isn’t the best method for a free download.

Feel free to grab this code and use it however you like. Also keep an eye out for the download sometime in the coming weeks on PixelsDaily.

Adobe Muse Test Drive: Is It Worth $15 Per Month?

2012-05-15T06:27:00.001-07:00

Adobe has an interesting relationship with folks who design websites. Photoshop and Fireworks have you covered from a static image perspective, but tools to build live, functioning websites are another story completely. Flash is no longer the poster child of modern web technologies (quite the opposite), GoLive went the way of the dinosaurs and Dreamweaver, though still widely used, is regarded by many to be a bloated mess.

One area that Adobe is intent on pursuing is web design for non-coders. They’ve made it their mission to bring the world of professional website creation to the huge market of designers who can’t write a lick of code. Thus far, they’ve largely fallen short of that goal (Project Rome anyone?). Their latest attempt, Adobe Muse, has finally exited beta and is available as a part of Adobe’s new Creative Cloud service ($50 per month) or as a stand alone product ($15 per month). Is Muse worth your time and money? Will it really allow you to create professional level websites without coding? Read on to find out.

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A Long Time Coming

I’ve written a lot about Adobe’s road to releasing Muse. In 2010, I discussed whyProject Rome fell far short of anything usable for serious designers. Many of the ideas from that project made it into the Muse beta, which launched a rant from me all about why adobe doesn’t understand web designers.

Given my history on the subject, is this article even worth reading? Won’t I predictably just bash Adobe and Muse and tell you to use Flux or code by hand instead?

Yes and no. Do I think Adobe has found the solution the industry has been waiting for? Not remotely. However, Muse has a lot of merit. There’s plenty that I really like about it in addition to what I think could improve. I will say this: Adobe is closer than ever. To see why, read on.

A Weak Start

I downloaded my thirty day trial of Muse, launched it, chose to create a new site and found myself looking at this window.

I was already disappointed. From step one Adobe is forcing me into a static width mindset. Print designers might find this familiar, but it blatantly disregards the current state of web design, which is rapidly traveling in the direction of fluid widths and media query driven breakpoints (responsive web design).

Here’s another problem that I had with this dialog: there are no units. The default page width that pops up is 960. 960 what? Pixels? Inches? Girth units? Seasoned web veterans will assume that this is a pixel based value, but this app isn’t built for seasoned web veterans, it’s built for newbies who need more information than what is offered here.

I was also confused about the margin and padding options presented to me. Was I setting global values for margins and padding? Why would I want to do that? When I code by hand I typically reset these values to zero, is that what I should do here? It turns out though that these values are for your main container. Again, a little more information would go a long way.

It’s not all bad though. I do really like that you can set up columns right off the bat. Really this just amounts to some guides being slapped on the page, but that’s a good thing. I like that setting up a grid doesn’t mean that I’m forced to stick to it in all circumstances.

Meet Muse

The Muse interface is just familiar enough that you’ll know how to get around if you use other Adobe products. There’s a positionable panel of tools on the right, a strip of buttons and options along the top and your main canvas in the center.

The app was built in AIR, which annoys the crap out of me as a Mac user. The result is something that almost looks native but feels quite different than a dedicated Mac application. This leads to several frustrating quirks. For instance, the main panel looks a lot like something you’d see in Photoshop.

Consequently, you expect it to work the same. Unfortunately, this panel can’t be anchored to the side of the screen like you’re used to, which means that it always feels in the way. You can reduce it to an icon strip, but it collapses to the left, so the default right side position becomes a poor spot.

No matter, you can simply move it to the right and keep it collapsed to save room. Like in Photoshop, clicking on a icon expands only that part of the panel, oh wait, no it doesn’t. Instead it expands the entire panel, which entirely defeats the purpose of the button strip.

Moving along, below you can see some of the options and buttons that reside along the top of the interface. There are three main view modes: plan shows you all pages in an outline, design is where you do your building and preview is where you see an in-app live web preview of your site (hit Command-Shift-E to preview in the browser).

Near the center of this topside panel is where you find what would normally be your floating toolbar containing the following: Selection Tool, Crop Tool, Text Tool, Zoom Tool, Hand Tool and Rectangle Tool. This is also where you apply various styles, add links, etc.

Building a Webpage

From here, the workflow is fairly intuitive. If you want to place some text, you grab the text tool. If you want to draw a box, use the rectangle tool; it’s that easy. As a coder, it scares me that I can’t manually set the parameters for elements that I add, but I guess that keeps things simple. For instance, if I want to set a paragraph to 300px wide, I just have to eyeball it or use my grid. And forget the box model, you just shove things where you want them.

One thing that Muse does pretty well is integrate with Photoshop and Fireworks. You can place a file from one of these apps, go back and make changes, and the edits will be updated automatically in Muse.

One of the things that I thought was a little clunky was working with the canvas. I couldn’t figure out how to simply select the background. It turns out just clicking on it does the trick, but there’s really no visual feedback to tell you that you’ve got it right.

From here you can apply a background fill or image with all of the options that you’d expect. If you’re working with an object, you can apply gradients and shadows, define hover states, round the corners, add links to other pages, etc.

Muse’s Workflow: The Good And The Bad

There’s a lot about Muse that Adobe got right. It’s really easy to just pick up and run with. I figured out pretty much everything I needed to with no outside instruction whatsoever. I think non-coders will really appreciate it as something more powerful than the typical WYSIWYG without being as overwhelming as something like Dreamweaver.

At the very least, it’s a great way to mockup websites, and its price range puts it into an area that’s somewhat competitive with online wireframing services that offer a lot less.

Now, from a coder’s perspective, there’s a lot I would change. I know the app isn’t built for coders, and maybe it should stay that way, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t share the constructs used to build web pages. The metaphor here is broken. Adobe needs to stop building page layout apps with web functionality and instead build a visual front end to the coding process.

Working with objects should be much more closely related to working with CSS than it is here. I should be able to set my color with RGBa, define the margins and padding for a button, set a paragraph’s width to 30% of the browser window, and create a font-family, but I can’t do any of this. Adobe has chosen familiarity and pretense over web design constructs and I think they’re on the wrong side of that fence.

The Code

After getting to know the interface, I busted out a super simple page so that I could see what the process is like and, more importantly, take a look at the output. Here’s what I came up with (click the image to see the live demo):

When you check out the demo, be sure to hit View Source so you can take a look at the code that was generated. I kept the page design simple for a reason: so I could see if the resulting code was also simple. A page like this would use a minimal amount of handcoding and should be fairly easy to sort through whether you can write code or not.

The good news is that Muse exports HTML and CSS, so thankfully the Flash only idea died with Project Rome. Predictably, the resulting code is extremely div heavy. Using the default navigation menu, each link uses a list item and not one, but two divs.

For the most part, the classes have straightforward names applied, but the ID names are useless and vague (example: “u154-4″). Overall though, it’s far from the worst WYSIWYG output I’ve seen. I can still easily read through it and see the structure. It’s certainly fluffed up, but only enough to make a coder roll his/her eyes instead of an abomination that will make him scold your very existence.

So Is It Worth It?

In the title of this article I promised to tell you whether or not Muse is worth the $15 per month. This question is difficult to answer simply because I question who the product is for. If you plan on building sites for a living, this isn’t the way to go. If you simply want to run your own little site, having a monthly fee simply to own the software isn’t exactly a thrilling prospect.

Bottom line: Muse is worth the money… in the short run. In the first few months, you’ll have a great piece of software with very little expense. However, using the subscription model, after two years, you’ll have paid around $360 for Muse. In my opinion, this pushes the upper limit of what the software is genuinely worth at this point. This may change as updates come, but if there’s no significant improvement, it simply doesn’t seem worth the expense in the long run when RapidWeaver is $80 and Flux is less than $150 (both Mac only options unfortunately).

How Adobe Could Make It Better

It’s interesting that I state that RapidWeaver might be a better way to go. With its rigid template-driven structure, RapidWeaver is far from anything that you would use to build a site from scratch. However, Rapidweaver has a rich third party plugin market capable of pushing it to greatness far beyond the default rigidity. With Blocks and Stacks, Rapidweaver becomes an impressive freeform site builder.

This gives me an idea for how Muse could be made a lot better with very little effort. Adobe should take a page from the RapidWeaver book and open up a marketplace where users can provide plugins. This way users decide what’s missing and how it should be integrated. If I want to use Muse to build responsive web pages, I’d simply download a plugin that would add the missing functionality. Granted, I’d prefer for Adobe to just understand the web design industry and build a tool that fits the market better, but in lieu of this option I’d take a RapidWeaver-like plugin market.

What Do You Think?

Now that you’ve seen my take on Muse, I’d love to hear yours. Do you think Adobe has finally nailed the idea of codeless web design or are they still treading water, pushing out products that aren’t moving the industry forward?

More importantly, how can Adobe refocus their efforts and create a product that you’d gladly shell out $15 a month to use?

Adding Custom Relationship Status Options

2012-05-14T15:13:00.002-07:00

Sometimes it’s not just complicated. It’s more than that.

We talked about missing relationship statuses before, but here’s a mockup of how the relationship status menu options would look like if it covered more love life scenarios.

Refacer Ivo recently commented on our post about the polyamory status with a tip how to actually have custom relationship statuses with multiple people on Facebook.

With the new design you can now create a custom friend list and “feature” it in the left hand side. So in the same place where for some people it says “Married to” and shows one face, you now can feature several faces under a heading like “Polyamorous with”. ─Ivo

Here’s how you can add a custom relationships:

Go to the Featured people tab in your profile editor.
Click “Create new list” and enter a name to describe your special relationship (eg. “Friends with benefits”)
Select the person(s) you want to include in this list and click “Create list”.
Now save the changes and go back to your profile to see the result.

You can create multiple lists, but please be aware that the persons you add will receive a notification about being included so you can NOT do this covertly.

Finally, an example of how Don Draper would do it, even though he seems to be forgetting ‘a few’ women.

Hate The New Facebook Photo Viewer? Just Remove It!

2012-05-14T15:11:00.005-07:00

week, Facebook rolled out a new photo album viewer called TheaterBox, which shows all Facebook photos in a pop-up window with huge, black frames. The advantage of the lightbox is that you don’t leave your current position in the profile or news feed you are viewing by going to another page. The major disadvantage is the completely different photo viewing experience, which is bound to be confusing and/or annoying to millions of people.

But don’t eat your mousepads out of frustration yet. We have a simple solution for those of you who absolutely hate the lightbox.

Here are simple instructions how to kill the “TheaterBox” pop-up window manually:

Go to your browser’s address bar, remove &theaterfrom the end of the URL and hit Enter.

That’s it! There’s your old school photo viewer again.

UPDATE: An even easier solution is to just hit refresh (F5) and it’ll go away. Thanks for the tip, Cocos111!

There are also a few browser plugins and extensions that will automatically remove the &theater bit for you. So far we have found these, but feel free to add your discoveries in the comments to this post:

Google Chrome Extensions:

No Thanks, Theaterbox: here.
Facebook Lightbox Killer: here.

Mozilla Firefox Add-on:

Facebook Lightbox Killer here.

Happy Facebook photo viewing!

Discover Friends With Most Similar Likes

2012-05-14T15:11:00.002-07:00

Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out which of your Facebook friends you have the most common interests with? No, there’s no application required to show you that kind of information; it’s built right into Facebook’s Page Browser.

Besides allowing you to discover possibly interesting Pages, the browser also shows you the top 25 of Facebook friends most similar to you. Expand the top by clicking “Show all (25)”, and click on the “mutual likes” link behind the people’s names to see an actual list of the things both of you have “liked”.

As expected, family members scored pretty high at liking the same things (probably a DNA thing). But we were surprised to see one of the friends we hardly ever hang out with on the number one spot. Time to turn that friendship up a notch, perhaps?

Any interesting results on your end?