Posts Tagged ‘web’

Fun stuff with MODx output filters

Friday, November 9th, 2012

Here’s a quick tip about one of the great built in features with MODx. Let’s say that you have a few pages that need some different code in the header of a site. Maybe it is some custom CSS or Javascript. With MODx’s powerful output filters, you can do some pretty cool stuff that will make your like much easier.

Let’s say that you have a part in your template that looks like this:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang='en'>
<head>
    <title>[[*pagetitle]] | [[++site_url]]</title>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <base href="[[++site_url]]" />
    <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.0/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</head>

This is a super basic HTML5 head area. There’s definitely some more meta tags we’d want in there, and I’m including the google hosted jQuery, but this will work for now. Anyway, we want to put in some CSS code in there that only gets applied on certain pages. Here’s one way to do that pretty simply:

First, let’s add that style block to your template.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang='en'>
<head>
    <title>[[*pagetitle]] | [[++site_url]]</title>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <base href="[[++site_url]]" />
    <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.0/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <style type='text/css'>
 
        [[*Inline Style]]
 
    </style>
</head>

Now we can add a Template Variable named “Inline Style” to the system. I like to use textareas for these kinds of things so that you have a little bit more room to type in your new CSS rules. Don’t forget to allow this template to access this Template Variable.

Each page using this template will now be able to have some custom CSS injected into the head, through the use of this Template Variable. Now, let’s say that you want to have a default bit of CSS in there to start with. Well, you can do that with the Output Filter “default”. It looks like this:

8
9
10
11
12
    <style type='text/css'>
 
        [[*Inline Style:default=`body { background-color: #f00; }` ]]
 
    </style>

So now each page will have this CSS by default, and you can override that default CSS by putting something into the Template Variable. Pretty cool, eh?

There are a ton of different output filters, so you can do things like addition, check for value, basic if/else logic, convert strings to dates, and more! Check out the docs, and have fun with your MODx coding!


Breaking 960: Responsive Web Design for Wide Screens

Tuesday, August 28th, 2012

Responsive Web Design is taking over—resizing, adapting and shifting content so that each visitor gets an ideal viewing experience, regardless of what device they are using. Responsive web design is great for so many devices, from phones to tablets to laptops, but I’ve been noticing that the majority of responsive websites don’t adapt much beyond a 960 pixel width. W3Schools shows that 85% of visitors have a screen resolution higher than 1024, which gives us good reason to start paying more attention to the use and aesthetics beyond 960. Plus, if the whole point of responsive design is to be able to view content on any size of device, shouldn’t we also accommodate wide-width screens? The big question then is, how do we effectively design websites for those higher screen resolutions?

The Problem with 960
The 960 Grid System is based on a 960 pixel width using 12 or 16 columns and 20px gutters. The 960 has become a standard. I’m not going to deny that this system works great, it gives a perfect underlying structure to work with and divides nicely into a variety of column widths for easy use. But, I use a monitor that is 2560×1440 and when I open a standard 960 grid website, it floats in the middle of the browser with wide columns on either side, usually with some type of repeating color or photo that fills the background. On one hand, you’ve got to love the white space. It focuses your attention to the important content and gives a site A LOT of breathing room. But on the other hand, you have so much dead space, why not put it to use?

Breaking away from the standard 960 is tough, and requires a great amount of consideration to keep the site from looking overly cluttered and busy. If we go big, we’ve got to do it right. We shouldn’t just fill the page because we have the space, it needs to have purpose, still look visually appealing, and content should make sense as to not overwhelm the user.

Break it up
On first thought, the obvious answer is to let the text columns expand to fill the extra space. Wrong! If there are really wide columns of text it greatly reduces the readability. In The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst says that a good measure or line length is somewhere between 45 and 75 characters. Any longer than this and your viewer can have a hard time scanning back to find the start of your next line of text and cause misread lines of content. Breaking items into more columns of text may be the answer to utilizing the extra width.

Make it Larger
Next, you’ve got to get the size right. In most cases the larger your device, the further you sit away from it. Example: An average person sits about 18 inches from their laptop, but about 7 feet from their big screen. If you’re further away, the site will need larger text so a viewer can actually read it from a comfortable distance. Also consider a taller line height (more space between lines of text). A sufficient line height will allow the text to be more scannable.

Reorganize and Prioritize
Lastly, content will need to be reorganized for the larger layout. With so much width to play with, why not explore the placement of the content, displaying hidden content, or bringing in additional elements. Maybe the footer becomes a sidebar column or the horizontal navigation becomes another vertical column, allowing the rest of the content to be closer to the top. With all this additional content shown on the page, look out for information overload. The larger content area can make the page look cluttered. You should only be adding content that adds value to the page and still keeps it’s visual appeal. The page should still have strong hierarchy, including a good amount of white-space with elements scaled appropriately.

With the number of large screens growing, there is good reason to start pushing the boundaries and exploring ways to make use of wide-screen environments. To do this right, consideration has to be given to the added space. Elements need to be broken up so that they make most sense. Text and images should accommodate increased viewing distances. And content should be reorganized and prioritized so it remains visually appealing, but still lets users easily find the information they are looking for. With all these considerations in mind, we should be well on our way to creating successful wide-width responsive designs.


Mark up your markup with schema.org

Friday, July 20th, 2012

If you haven’t already heard about it, schema.org provides a method to give additional semantic meaning to your markup. One of the benefits to using microdata on your markup is the possibility of a rich snippet being displayed on a search engine’s results page.

Here is how an address could be marked up with HTML:

1941 NW Quimby St. Portland, OR

And the styles applied to it:

.address { font-weight: bold; }
.address em { font-style: normal; color: orange; }

Results in the following:

1941 NW Quimby St. Portland, OR

This is how microdata can be applied using the above example:

1941 NW Quimby St. Portland, OR

The idea here is nothing new. Microformats such has hCard and hRecipe have been around for some time. One of the things that sets schema.org apart from the others is wide variety of objects it supports. Read more information at schema.org to get started!


​The Web Diet

Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

The Web DietIn any diet you need to cut the fat in order to see results. After recently starting a new diet, I’ve realized that I’m no longer eating for taste, but eating for fuel. This means giving up the “fluff” that might taste great, but that also does nothing for my figure.

To get results, sometimes you just have to streamline and give the body what it needs to run at its highest efficiency. The same goes for your website. A healthy site cuts out excess. It should be the site you need, not necessarily the site you want. Remove the bulk and nourish it with stronger, leaner content, a thoughtful design, and a healthy organizational system. If you fueled with all of these “ingredients” it can thrive and achieve a look and feel that will appeal to your target audience.

Looking to get lean? Check out The Web Diet breakdown:

CONTENT:

  • Make it useful. Your content should be helpful and relevant to your audience or potential customer. Always consider your customers’ goals and what they are looking for.
  • Say it well. Make sure your site contains well written, credible, and original content. If you’re not a great copywriter, hire a professional. Keep information updated and fresh to give your audience a reason to come back.
  • Make sure it’s accurate. Use good grammar and spelling, duh!
  • Keep it short. To draw in your visitors, keep your text to a minimum. People have short attention spans—they skim and want to get to pertinent information quickly.
  • Give a call to action. Let users know what to do next—buy, contact, email, or sign-up. Help them make their next decision and get them to do what you want to them to.

DESIGN:

  • Give a good visual impression. You would dress up for an interview, so do the same with your site. First impressions are important, so put your best foot forward and create a design that is clean and visually appealing.
  • Set the tone. The visual appearance of your site will give your audience clues to the type of experience they can expect. White and clean could signal professional and credible, while colorful and textural could read unique and creative. Make sure your tone is in line with your business goals and your audience needs.
  • Design to your audience. Your look and feel should speak to your target audience. Choose photos and graphics that add visual appeal and makes sense for your viewer and your product or service.
  • Keep it simple. Your design should let viewers focus on your message. Let your message breathe with adequate white space. Your color, fonts and imagery should lead the user where you want them to go.
  • Make it readable. Make sure your text size and font is legible and has enough contrast for easy reading.

ORGANIZATION:

  • Logical Navigation. Put navigation where your audience would expect it—generally at the top of the page. Choose navigation language that is logical and makes the most sense for your viewer. Pages should have clear names so users can intuitively move through your site. Limit the number of items in your main navigation—aim for 5-7 links.
  • Create Hierarchy. Content should be arranged to make the most sense. Break information into sections or paragraphs. Group like elements and put information where users would expect to find it. Hierarchy allows viewers to easily scan and absorb your content.
  • Make it easy to find. Don’t bury key information in your site. Users should be able to get what they want within 3 clicks or less.

Diets aren’t always the easiest, but the results are worth it. Remember, don’t do something just because you can—cut out the bulk. Focus on what is most important to fuel your audience and make your site fit their needs. Relevant content, purposeful design and logical organization will keep your site thriving and keep viewers coming back.


Beautiful, Dynamic Words with Aierbazzi, jQuery, and @font-face kit

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

Roberto Cecchi created and posted his Aierbazzi (which means “weeds”) font to his web site back in 2008. He has been experimenting with fonts creating illustrations in a simple format, and he has posted creative use of this font for non-commercial applications. The letters in the font are placed one above the other, layering and building a new shape. It’s an interesting concept, and I wanted to re-share it here.

Demo:
Enter a word or phrase in to the box below to see how the illustration begins to emerge. On load, the illustration shows what “ZoomCreates” looks like. Numbers and symbols won’t work, so you must only use upper and lowercase A-Z characters. Also, no spaces allowed.

:ZoomCreates

(more…)


Getting More from Mobile Sites

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

Mobile sites are generally designed for the on-the-go user. With this user-type in mind, mobile sites can become overly paired down to just the basic details that a user might need, such as directions, a phone number, and social media links. Yes, a mobile user may most-likely be on-the-go, but I think the mobile audience is shifting. When I’m away from work, I use my phone as my primary method of surfing the web, meaning I’m not just using it on-the-go. It’s the main way I access the internet and I’m now expecting more than the most basic functionality from a mobile site.

Like most people with smartphones or other mobile devices, you can find me using mine everywhere. I’m on it while I’m at lunch, estate saleing on the weekends and definitely on the couch while “watching” TV. Since I’m using my phone as my second computer, I would hope that the mobile site would have the same functionality of a laptop or desktop, but optimized for my mobile device. A mobile site has to accommodate every user, if they are out and about, or just laying in bed before they turn off the lights.

Because of this common over simplification, I often find myself clicking on “view full site” taking me away from the mobile version of the page. I’ll get frustrated when information on a mobile site isn’t intuitive or if a site is so pared down that I can’t find the information I’m looking for. And once I move away from the site, the user experience deteriorates. I have to pinch and zoom to read any text or sit waiting for pages to load. The mobile site experience becomes a missed opportunity. A better experience causes increased engagement, more conversion and a good chance someone will walk away feeling positive about your company or product.

A mobile site should create a focused experience, not a limited experience. To do this:

1. Information needs to be highly prioritized. Present the content that will be most important to the user first. A mobile site should focus on prime information pages upfront, but let you dive deeper if needed. The content users interact with should be adjusted to suit the size of their site— the same information from the full site may need to be presented in a different order from the full site to make more sense for the mobile user.

2. Navigation should be simplified, minimizing the user options. The navigation needs to be clear and intuitive to the user so they can find exactly what they are looking for. If needed, pages should include sub navigation so the user can still access any meaty details.

3. Your site should be touch-friendly. Buttons or links need to be large and easy to hit with a thumb or finger tip, based off of standard finger sizes (Apple suggests 44 pixels) Not only should it be click-able, but it should be in an area it can be easily clicked—buttons shouldn’t be placed too closely together, or you risk taking the user to the wrong link.

4. Images should be limited. Reduce the number of images to limit loading times.

The ultimate goal in having a mobile is to create a platform that is adapted to a device’s size, but mainly to what the user needs. We need to think about what mobile users want when visiting a mobile site, if it is to get things quickly on-the-go, or if they are using it as their main computer. A mobile site should not be limiting, but focused to give the user a valuable and positive experience that keeps them coming back for more.


Web Design Trends 2011: Typography

Monday, August 29th, 2011

Web safe fonts. If you are a web designer or developer, names like Arial, Verdana, Georgia, or Tahoma instantly come to mind when you hear those words. Up until recent years, designers (sometimes begrudgingly) relied on these and a small handful of other web safe fonts to allow visitors to view fonts correctly on screen. Internet browsers could only display fonts that were installed on a person’s individual computer, so this standard set of fonts became the typographical foundation for most websites.

With only a few web safe fonts available, web designs of the past have been extremely limited in the use of exciting and engaging typography. Specialty fonts online were generally reserved for main headlines and could only be placed in as static images, limiting the functionality of the type and hurting search engine optimization (SEO).

In recent years, there has been an emergence of font-embedding services, like Typekit, letting designers break out of the “safe” zone. Designers have more font options and can not only play with font style, but also the important details of leading and line height. These new options for fonts allow text to be easily updated and copied and selected from the browser, meanwhile maintaining a positive effect on SEO.

The font-embedding tools have created a boom in typographical exploration. Strong typography on a site can help tell a story as well as evoke an emotion from the audience. It can also set a tone for the site or emphasize a chosen theme. This year are seeing designs that are using large and exciting font choices, both through the use of static image and services like Typekit.

The big trend right now is to go huge with your headlines. These over-sized headlines capture the attention of the audience immediately and can make a site stand apart from their web-safe counterparts. Not only that, they can also create a visual hierarchy with the rest of the elements on the page as well as improve legibility for the viewer. The trend of typography on the web is definitely long-awaited and something I think it will keep growing and continue to be explored through a variety of methods. Typography lends a richness to websites that we haven’t seen in past years and gives web designers a whole new way to present information.

Check out the designs below for great uses of large typography.

CarsonifiedTapp3 MediaNeiman GroupMarie CatribsJeroen HomanChirp TwitterBlack Estate Vineyard


Pinterest: catalog what you love

Monday, June 13th, 2011

I think my dreams have come true! Today I stumbled upon a new site that quickly struck my interest. Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that let’s you share and organize all of the images you find on the web. As I’m sure many designers do, I have saved TONs and TONs of images on my computer to use as references for design, pattern, texture, color, typography and the list goes on. The problem is, I save these images into one huge folder, and about once a month, have to take the time to organize them into each of their specific folder categories so I actually have a chance of them be useful.

With Pinterest, you create a link in your tool bar that quickly let’s you pin (bookmark) an image from the interwebs. You can then, from what I’ve read, create different pin boards that allow you to organize all of the images you have pinned. On top of that, you can edit, comment, repin, and follow other people who have awesome boards. Pinterest isn’t just for designers either, you can pin any kind of image you like, from fashion, to weddings, to foodie photos. I requested an invite immediately and I’m on the wait-list to start pinning. Just visiting the site was inspirational, it’s awesome to see what other people have pinned, and I can’t wait to start my own pinboard!


Tutorial: Subtle Web Backgrounds Using Photoshop Texturizer

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Subtle web background textures are extremely popular in current web design. They can be used to give a site depth and and add richness in a way that isn’t too overwhelming. I’ve been really into using these subtle textures in my web designs and I’ve been on the hunt for how to create my own textures from scratch. Today I’m going to share one way to create these patterns for your own web designs.

In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create a repeatable pattern in Photoshop and then use Photoshop’s texturizer to make a unique subtle and repeatable web background (as seen on the left). The texturizer’s great, because it allows you to add texture to an image without altering the image below. If you’ve already got a repeatable texture, you can jump down to section B to get started with the Texturizer!

A. CREATE A REPEATABLE TEXTURE

1. Find a Photo. Start with finding a high-res pattern image. I choose to work with a great fabric texture found here, but you could easily use a different photo or create your own.

2. Convert Texture to Grayscale and Resize. Bring your texture into Photoshop and convert to Grayscale. To do this go to, Image > Mode > Grayscale. Resize your image as necessary. I scaled mine down to create a more subtle look. Go to Image > Image Size to adjust the scale of your pattern.

(more…)


2011 Web Trend: Creative Navigation

Monday, April 25th, 2011

Again and again I’ve run across experimental and creative ways to navigate a page. I’ve uncovered side-scrollers, one-page vertical scrollers, parallax scrolling, animation, story-telling, and even horizontal scrolling within horizontal scrolling (and the list goes on). These new types of navigation systems can give web sites an exciting and engaging way to captivate users, forcing them to interact differently with content, experiment, or be taken on a journey through your web site. But be careful, because something new and different can often confuse or scare users away.

More traditional styles of navigation are comfortable and expected to users, enabling them to easily guide themselves through your content. By steering your users in a non-traditional style, you can risk losing your audience. For this reason, it’s vital that your navigation remains effective. A non-traditional navigation needs to be smart, thoughtful, and content appropriate. An e-commerce site probably wouldn’t benefit from a single page scroller, because of it’s high-volume of information. But a smaller scaled portfolio or promotional site could potentially benefit from a more dynamic style of navigation. If you are in a specific design, illustration or web field, giving your users a new way to get around can be a great way to show off personal style, technique and skill.

Want to experience it for yourself? Check out these examples of creative navigation below:

Nike Better World
This site uses parallax scrolling to create a dynamic site with depth. Just scroll to explore and animate.

Jax Vineyards
This site uses a mixture of vertical and horizontal scrolling, for a clean, minimal look and feel. Constant top navigation is smart and let’s users interact easily with the site and side. Scrolling arrows are large and easy to maneuver.

Ben The Body Guard
This web site takes you on a journey, once you figure out about its vertical scrolling feature. Follow Ben along the dark streets to figure out all you need to know.

Youzee
This vertical scroller takes you step by step. Just click the button on the home screen to get started. Use the icon driven nav at the top or scroll on through each page.

crushlovely
With a constant navigation on the left, it’s easy to get around this vertical scrolling site. Each “page” is broken up vertically with a different color theme.

Polecat
This is a vertical stroller that allows you to jump between pages with a simple top navigation.