Can User Experience Be Beautiful? An Analysis Of Navigation In Portfolio Websites

When users land on your website, they typically read the content available. Then, the next thing that they will do is to try and familiarize themselves with your website. Most of the time this involves looking for navigation.

In this article, I’ll be analyzing the navigation elements of a particular category… read more

80 Useful (Free) jQuery Plugins to Enrich Your Site’s User Experience

Most of you already aware that jQuery is a lightweight JavaScript library that emphasizes interaction between JavaScript and HTML. it’s also known for fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. Or in developer’s words “write less, Do… read more

8 Best HTML Validation Resources

Having valid code is something that is not only encouraged, but highly recommended when developing a website.  Invalid markup doesn’t exactly mean that a website won’t be read or displayed properly by a browser, however, which leaves many people wondering what the point of having valid code is to begin… read more

A Collection of Great New WordPress Themes

Every year designers are pushing the boundaries of what WordPress can do. 2012 is no different. In just a few short months we have seen a large increase in the number of premium WordPress themes being released, and the bar is certainly being raised with the new additions to the… read more

Getting to Grips with HTML5 Browser Compatibility

Over the past few years, HTML5 has gone from mythical creature to vivid reality and has taken its share of hits from skeptics and experts alike as to its readiness and viability. Now, in 2012, HTML5 is ready for use with all modern browsers, including IE9. It has… read more

Twenty Advanced CSS Tutorials

Twenty Advanced CSS Tutorials

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Top 10 Awesome Business Card Ideas For Creatives And Technologists

Top 10 Awesome Business Card Ideas For Creatives And Technologists

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Our favorite tweets of the week Mar 19-Mar 25, 2012

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Best of the Week #215

It’s time for our best news of this week. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to keep you updated about what’s… read more

Useful WordPress Tools, Themes And Plugins

If you’re looking for some great ways to improve your WordPress workflow, read on for a massive collection of free themes, plugins, tools and tutorials. These resources were all linked via the Smashing Magazine Twitter stream, Facebook stream, and other social-media streams around the Web.

These awesome resources have now been… read more

Guidelines to Follow when Building for the App Store (iOS & Android)

There are a lot of factors to consider before building and submitting a mobile application. Developers have plenty of resources on the web for consulting official documentation. But there are some traits you should consider about the overall process.

Whether you are building for Apple or Android-powered devices will… read more

Nicely Designed CSS Buttons

Nicely Designed CSS Buttons

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Device-Agnostic Approach To Responsive Web Design

This is a different take on Responsive Web design. This article discusses how we can better embrace what the Web is about by ignoring the big elephant in the room; that is, how we can rely on media queries and breakpoints without any concern for devices.

The Challenge

Let’s start our journey… read more

How Much Code Should Web Designers Need to Know?

This is an interesting topic which isn’t often discussed between web designers. Getting started in Adobe Photoshop is difficult, and you feel an exhilarating rush when you complete your first web project. But what good is a website mockup if you can’t build it?

Arguably designers by definition do… read more

Daily Inspiration #1088

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, You can submit your images and inspiration to RAWZ via http://raw.abduzeedo.com and don’t forget to… read more

Extensive Collection Of jQuery Drag And Drop Plugins

jQuery allows you to create stylish yet user friendly websites that are not only pleasing to the eye but also are very lightweight and load quite quickly. This is the reason why jQuery has a special place in the field of web development. jQuery is getting better day by day… read more

12 Awesome Websites With “Earthy Tones”

I recently met with two new clients to discuss the development of their websites.  I typically like to see if there are any specific colors they’d like to use, along with any preferences they may have towards layout and content.  I was quite surprised to hear both of them tell… read more

Navigating Facebook’s Social Graph

If you want to build applications that work with Facebook’s Graph data then you need to understand the Graph API. Thankfully, the Facebook Social Graph format is built to be as transparent and straightforward as possible. Everything on Facebook has a Facebook Graph ID: users, pages, events, groups, pictures… Learning… read more

Daily Inspiration #1087

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, You can submit your images and inspiration to RAWZ via http://raw.abduzeedo.com and don’t forget to… read more

20+ examples of beautiful and inspiring fonts

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Weekly Design News – Resources, Tutorials and Freebies (N.124)

This is our weekly column were we share our favorite design related articles, resources and cool tidbits from the past week. Enjoy :)
If you would like to receive our daily updates and keep up to date with the latest and greatest articles and resources from the… read more

Web Worker’s Library: Awesome Printed Web Design and Development Books

There’s no doubt that eBook devices such as the Kindle and the Nook have changed how people read books forever. At the start of 2011 Amazon reported that for the first time eBook sales exceeded paperbacks. It’s doubtful this trend will ever be reversed.

Though with E ink devices, image… read more

Freebie: Brilliant CSS Social Buttons

Freebie: Brilliant CSS Social Buttons

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How to Create Stunning Effects With 165 Media Queries or Less

How to Create Stunning Effects With 165 Media Queries or Less

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3 Ways Marketers Can Reach Facebook’s Mobile Audience

Victoria Ransom is founder and CEO of Wildfire Interactive, the global leader in social media marketing software. Victoria is a sought-after expert on social marketing trends and was recently named a 2012 TechFellow by the Founders Fund, NEA and TechCrunch. Visit here for more information about Facebook mobile marketing.

Facebook recently… read more

Gridpak: The Responsive Grid Generator

This article is the fifth in our new series that introduces the latest, useful and freely available tools and techniques, developed and released by active members of the Web design community. The first article covered PrefixFree; the second introduced Foundation, a responsive framework; the third presented Sisyphus.js, a library for… read more

60+ Latest WordPress Site Designs for Inspiration

Many of you should know that instantShift is proudly powered by WordPress, as a Blogging and CMS tool. If you are in search of good CMS or a web tool for your projects, we strongly recommend WordPress to you. WordPress is a great tool, and best thing is FREE!

Now days… read more

23 Fantastic Examples of Illustrated Elements in Web Design

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Illustration and hand drawn elements can give a lot personality to a layout, specially if used properly. From small illustrated icons to complete illustrated backgrounds, or hand drawn typography, it’s always a nice approach to insert illustrations in your design. Today we gathered a few examples… read more

Best of the Week #214

It’s time for our best news of this week. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to keep you updated about what’s… read more

10 of the coolest CSS3 and CSS effects

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We have 3 copies of the book HTML5 Mobile Development Cookbook to giveaway – Comment to enter

For this weeks giveaway we have three paperback copies of the book HTML5 Mobile Development Cookbook. Written by Shi Chuan, this book will show you how to plan, build, debug and optimize mobile websites.

All you have to do for a chance of winning one of these books is… read more

Sites of the Week #196

For this Sites of the Week we have selected some great sites such as Kicksend and Second Story. Also we’re featuring the amazing parallax scrolling ALA website, and much, much more! As usual we would love to hear from you, keep sending your suggestions to us and we will be… read more

Daily Inspiration #1083

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it,… read more

Symptoms Of An Epidemic: Web Design Trends

Since Elliot Jay Stocks so poignantly told us to destroy the Web 2.0 look, we’ve witnessed a de-shinification of the Web, with fewer glass buttons, beveled edges, reflections, special-offer badges, vulgar gradients with vibrant colors and diagonal background patterns. The transformation has been welcomed with relief by all but the… read more

Styling HTML5 Placeholder with CSS or jQuery

Styling HTML5 Placeholder with CSS or jQuery

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Using Backgrounds in CSS3

Using Backgrounds in CSS3

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Valletta: A Powerful But Flawed Markdown Editor

If you’re a Markdown fan, then it’s likely that you’re always looking for a new editor with amazing capabilities. As of now, there are many of them on the Mac App Store, though they all differ in abilities and features. Some are just focused on writing (Byword, for instance), while… read more

Daily Inspiration #1082

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it,… read more

The 2 Principles Behind Object Oriented CSS

The 2 Principles Behind Object Oriented CSS

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CSS3 signup form

CSS3 signup form

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40+ Excellent CSS3 Menu Tutorials

By presenting different tutorials on our site, we tend to help our fellow designers who are looking for a more specific and interactive medium to learn certain techniques and skills. And, for today’s session we have come up with 40+ truly amazing and valuable CSS3 menu tutorials. Though, there are… read more

Respect Thy Typography

Good typography shouldn’t have to rely on ornamental crutches to stand tall. Yet despite all the tools and knowledge available to us, we readily embrace a flourishing, decorative typography, with cheap tricks used in a misguided attempt to make it “pop”. This ancient art may rapidly be gaining popularity, but… read more

Daily Inspiration #1081

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it,… read more

12+ Top Resources for Beginner Web Developers

Welcome to development 101. If you’ve been eyeing Ruby on Rails or HTML/CSS freelance positions popping up across the web, but don’t have the full skills yet, here are the best resources to help you gain trust, experience and know-how.

Front-End Web Development

Front-end development seems like the early tie in… read more

15 dummy text generators you should know

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Daily Inspiration #1080

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it,… read more

Captivate your Audience with Typography

Modern web designers are incorporating innovative new concepts for digital type. In the previous decade we have witnessed the Internet transform into a powerful tool for sharing media all around the world. More specifically digital designers have adapted and web trends continue to change over time.

Text on a… read more

What’s new for designers, March 2012

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Website Speed Part 4 : PHP Programming for Speed

Programming for speed is not what most coders think of. What they tend to consider first, and usually only, is getting it working. Sometimes people will talk of refactoring to reduce the amount of code, but again this is usually only for those that suffer with the luxury… read more

To Use or Not to Use a CMS

As web designers, we all are aware of the importance of CMSs. Simply put, a CMS helps in managing the website in an efficient manner. If you are running a photo gallery, a blog, a news site or any similar website that requires constant updates, nothing beats the ease which… read more

21 Examples of Big Photography in Web Design

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Using big photographs in a web design, either as the background or part of the content, is a great way to easily set the overall mood of a site. However, when doing this, you run the risk of creating a site that it visually too busy…. read more

Daily Inspiration #1079

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it,… read more

Pixel Perfect Tracking and Alignment

When you open up your tracking, the text will always push out to the right as letter-spacing is applied from the left. As a result, if you’re centering your type, it will be a few pixels further to the right than it should be.

Taking care of this is simple, but… read more

Best of the Week #213

It’s time for our best news of this week. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to keep you updated about what’s… read more

Free Html Theme: Bangalore

Free Html Theme: Bangalore

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40 Best Ever CSS3 Practices That Will Improve Skills

40 Best Ever CSS3 Practices That Will Improve Skills

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Making an Impressive Product Showcase with CSS3

Making an Impressive Product Showcase with CSS3

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Tips for Designing a Compact Website Layout

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It can take a lot of additional effort to build mobile-specific website templates. HTML and CSS have come a long way but there are still plenty of standards and loopholes to jump through. And with the mounting increase of various mobile devices there are more platforms… read more

Service Review: W3-Markup – PSD to HTML and CSS Slicing

Service Review: W3-Markup – PSD to HTML and CSS Slicing

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Collection Of CSS Resets

Collection Of CSS Resets

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Sass vs. LESS vs. Stylus: Preprocessor Shootout

Wielding the true power of a CSS preprocessor is an adventure. There are countless languages, syntaxes, and features, all ready for use right now. In this article, we will be covering the various features and benefits of using three different preprocessors—Sass, LESS, and Stylus. Introduction Preprocessors produce CSS that works… read more

Say Hi To Anchor – A Super-Tiny CMS

I’m going to make a bold assumption here, but I bet you’ve got a blog. If you do, then you join a crowd of millions, all penning their deepest thoughts and documenting their life. It really is hard to stand out from the crowd though.

Anchor aims to fix… read more

Why Abstraction Can Improve Your CSS

Why Abstraction Can Improve Your CSS

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Behind The Scenes Of Tourism New Zealand (Case Study)

In 2011 we saw the rise in popularity of two relatively new trends: responsive Web design and the use of HTML’s canvas. While some websites had experimented with both, in the last 12 months we’ve seen these trends move from the fringes firmly into the mainstream.

Responsive Web design is more… read more

jQuery Mobile Tutorial: Creating a Restaurant Picker Web App

With an increase in the number, diversity and complexity of smartphones, more and more companies want to have their own mobile app, but creating a native app can be pretty expensive. It requires special skills, as well as special coding tools, and then there is also the need to build… read more

Writing Unit Tests For WordPress Plugins

When my WordPress plugin had only three users, it didn’t matter much if I broke it. By the time I reached 100,000 downloads, every new update made my palms sweat.

My first goal for the WordPress Editorial Calendar was to make it do anything useful. I was new to JavaScript and… read more

Scroll to Internal Link with jQuery

One page scrolling sites have experienced a huge growth in popularity in web design in recent years. Although this type of site isn’t for everyone, it is still useful to know how they work. Today, I will teach you how to create a very simple one page scrolling… read more

100 Mac Apps To Rule Them All

This post is the answer to the first question that any new Mac user will ask: which apps are the best? The next time someone asks you this question, don’t think twice, just send them here.

We’ve spent hours and hours browsing the web, combing the Mac App Store and wandering… read more

Smashing Email Newsletter Turns Two Years Old: Comment and Win!

Two years ago, we launched the Smashing Email Newsletter. Today, we’d like to reflect on some of the greatest newsletter articles of the past year and celebrate this anniversary with our 100,000 readers with a fabulous book giveaway!

Back then, we planned to launch the Smashing Newsletter only if we had… read more

Free Html Theme: Concept

Free Html Theme: Concept

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21 Most Useful WordPress Admin Page Hacks

WordPress needs no introduction among designers and writers. It use to known as the synonym for blogging but now days it is used to create any type of website of any complexity. WordPress has reached phenomenally high usage rates. There are over 70 million publishers who use WordPress, making it… read more

Tutorial: Create 5 subtle background patterns

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Weekly Design News – Resources, Tutorials and Freebies (N.123)

This is our weekly column were we share our favorite design related articles, resources and cool tidbits from the past week. Enjoy :)
If you would like to receive our daily updates and keep up to date with the latest and greatest articles and resources from the… read more

Creative Fuel #1: Gridset, Status Board PSD, AP Rebrand & More

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Creative Fuel is a periodic collection of design and creativity awesomeness found around the web. Find out about new apps and services, the best freebies, and other significant news from the design community!

Gridset

Mark Boulton has announced Gridset, a tool for making incredibly custom grids. Instead of grabbing… read more

SXSW Through Your Eyes: Show Us Your Photos and Videos

Starting March 9, Austin, TX once again becomes the center of the media universe. South by Southwest invites tech, music, and film lovers to the capital of the Lone Star State for 10 days of panels, presentations, and parties.

If you’ve never been, the conference and festival is split up… read more

25 New & Free CSS Templates! [Freebies]

25 New & Free CSS Templates! [Freebies]

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Startup Allows You to Stream Programs, Games Remotely From Your PC

If you’re using Photoshop on your PC and need to access it over the weekend while visiting family out of town, the last thing you’d want to do is download expensive software to their computer. What if, however, you could still get the Photoshop work done on your aunt’s PC,… read more

Box – CSS Framework

Box – CSS Framework

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Small Demons: Enter the Storyverse

I’m a sucker for anything Adam Lisagor is commissioned to make a video for, and Small Demons is no exception. While I was originally drawn in by the internet-celebrity video endorsement, I signed up for the service and have continued to use it because of how awesome Small Demons actually… read more

21 Inspiring Design Agency Websites

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From time to time we like to check out how design agencies (studios, firms, etc.) showcase their design skills in their websites. It’s always nice to see how designers and other creative professionals are presenting themselves to us, so today we gathered a few inspiring examples… read more

How to optimize your CSS

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The Challenge of Responsive Images

Images are one of the most important elements on a web page in terms of user experience. Few objects on a page have the same impact on everything from emotional responses to bounce rates.

When users are viewing your site on mobile devices, small screens, or in other unusual… read more

How to Create a Accordion Menu (CSS3+jQuery) [Tutorial]

How to Create a Accordion Menu (CSS3+jQuery) [Tutorial]

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CSS pitfalls and how to overcome them

CSS pitfalls and how to overcome them

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Daily Inspiration #1073

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it,… read more

CSS Clearing Floats Snippet

CSS Clearing Floats Snippet

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Best of the Week #212

It’s time for our best news of this week. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to keep you updated about what’s… read more

Daily Inspiration #1072

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it,… read more

CSS3 Tricks: Jumping Featured Boxes

CSS3 Tricks: Jumping Featured Boxes

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Is It Time To Change Our CSS Practices?

Is It Time To Change Our CSS Practices?

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Creating Different CSS3 Box Shadows Effects

Creating Different CSS3 Box Shadows Effects

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How To Hire a Great Developer [FLOW CHART]

Thomas Edison once said that “genius” is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. In the world of technology startups, that 99% involves a heck of a lot of coding and wireframing. If you’ve got an idea for a startup, that’s great — but odds are that an idea is all you… read more

HTML & CSS – Design and Build Websites Book Competition – The Winners

An unbelievable 411 comments! That is how many comments last weeks HTML & CSS – Design and Build Websites Book Giveaway generated. Its been by far and away our most popular competition ever and clearly underlines how good the book is.

It is just a pity we only have… read more

Photoshop to CSS, Shadow in Web Design

Photoshop to CSS, Shadow in Web Design

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Create Cute Characters in Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator can be a little tricky to get your hands around, particularly after getting used to the workflow of applications like Photoshop. The differences between layer use and the creation of objects and shapes can be really strange at first hand.

In the following tutorial you will learn how to… read more

Daily Inspiration #1071

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it,… read more

Top 35 Free Download HTML5 And CSS3 Templates

Top 35 Free Download HTML5 And CSS3 Templates

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Quick Look: MobDis

Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the polls below if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review!

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting MobDis. The developer describes MobDis as a mobile marketing platform for agencies servicing local businesses…. read more

8 tools to make your website for free

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CSS3-Only Tutorials and Techniques for Your Next Design

Today we are showcasing some of best tutorials and techniques that will help you create beautiful and functional designs by using only CSS, focusing primarily on the properties of CSS3. All with absolutely NO JAVASCRIPT. For the most part, the techniques we have highlighted below, can be used… read more