Webremixed Articles for tags: web-design

HTML Design Gallery - Dojo Bread

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:54:02 GMT

This site is very tasty looking. As with any food site, the focus needs to be on the food itself, and this site does a great job. I love how the site’s colors mimic the colors of the breads. Note: this site is built in XHTML Transitional, not HTML5.

Have you built an HTML5 site? Or do you know of one that does a great job with HTML5? Submit HTML5 site designs to be featured on this site.

January in Review

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:16:17 GMT

In honor of the new year, I focused a lot on new technologies in January. Microdata, microformats, CSS3 and HTML5 all are gaining better and better support among browsers. And the many articles I published this month can help you get started learning these so you're ready when your customers are. Did you miss any of these new articles? Here's a recap:

Previously in January

January 2011

January 2010

January 2009

January 2008

Even further back:

Responsive Images: How they Almost Worked and What We Need

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:00:49 GMT

With a mobile-first responsive design approach, if any part of the process breaks down, your user can still receive a representative image and avoid an unnecessarily large request on a device that may have limited bandwidth. But with several newer browsers implementing an “image prefetching” feature that allows images to be fetched before parsing the document’s body, some of the web's brightest developers are abandoning responsive images in favor of user agent detection, at least as a temporary solution. For us standardistas, UA detection leaves a bad taste in the mouth. More importantly, as the number and kinds of devices continue to grow, UA detection will quickly become untenable—just as browser detection did back in the bad old days before web standards. What's really needed, argues Mat Marquis, is a new markup element that works the way the HTML5 video element works. Sound crazy? So crazy it just might work.

Pricing Strategy for Creatives

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:00:36 GMT

Strategic pricing helps your brand and helps you to make more money. Issuing a price is like handing out a business card—it’s a great branding tool, but be careful about what it says to your market. Beginning relationships with customers at a high price makes the statement: “we’re good at what we do and we know it.” Fighting with a competitor over a low price says “I’m uncertain about my abilities, so I’ll take what I can get.” Failing to use a considered pricing policy will leave you treading water in a sea of design mediocrity, allowing you to just stay afloat while you sell commodities. Jason Blumer explains how to become strategic about your pricing—including three things you can do immediately to kick-start your journey toward strategic pricing.

It's Not Flashy, But It's Very UsefulThe History API

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:55:24 GMT

Controlling the browser history is not something that many designers think about. It's boring and behind the scenes and when done right customers won't even know it's there. But when you build a dynamic web application, the History API is incredibly useful. It helps your readers bookmark specific states within an application, not just the front page. It also gives them clues as to where they are in the application. Learn about the HTML5 History API and how it can help your web applications.

Read the full article: What is the History API

Other HTML5 APIs

Add Microformats without Adding Invalid HTML

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:11:57 GMT

One of the criticisms of microdata is that it requires you add new attributes to HTML elements. This is both more to learn, and risks causing problems for people who need to write valid HTML. Microformats are a way to add this data to your web pages using the existing tags and attributes that you already know.

Read the full article: What are Microformats?

All parts of design are importantno, Im not kidding

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:24:43 GMT

A reader calling himself “areyoukiddingme” writes about color symbolism:

Why are you making such a big deal out of what color your page uses? You should be more focused on the content on your website, the drop down menus, the organization, homepage outline, etc. Color is the last thing you should worry about. Personally, though, I would go with black letters and a white background. The only color that should be different is your logo. By the way, links should always be blue.

Do you agree? While I agree with him that text should be black on white (or very dark on very light) for good contrast and readability. But it seems extreme to say that ’[the] only color that should be different is your logo.” And I think that even if you agree completely with him, color symbolism is important. For example, if your logo incorporates a hat of some type, and it's colored green, you may be sending the completely wrong message to Chinese customers. In China, green hats are used as a term for a cuckold. Just because of the color, you have made your site logo at best funny to potential Chinese customers.

I'd love to hear what you think. Please post in the comments or give your opinion about the importance of color symbolism on web pages.

More Articles on Color and Color Symbolism

Poll: How important is elearning to the web?

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 03:25:40 GMT

With the release of iTunes U and other ways to get more access to elearning, it seems to me like this is an area that is growing both in importance and popularity on the web. But elearning is more than just posting web content online and letting people learn from it. Good online education includes assessment, exercises, and interaction to help the students really learn what is being taught. Of course, this all used to be done with packages like Authorware, but these days, you can build great elearning solutions right in Dreamweaver. What do you think? Is elearning an important part of the web or is it out of date?

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HTML5 Design Gallery - RDWonline v8.0: The Quasareclipse

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:19:11 GMT

This is a fun example of a site that is essentially one page—although you still click through to inner pages. Ronald uses great interactive CSS3 features to make the page more interactive. I’d love to see him use the History API to get the URL to change, so it’s easier to navigate. And there are some issues with formatting in my browser. But overall it's a great example.

Have you built an HTML5 site? Or do you know of one that does a great job with HTML5? Submit HTML5 site designs to be featured on this site.

Understanding the Differences Between CSS3 Transformations and Transitions

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:42:36 GMT

When I first started learning CSS3 the transformations and transitions were hard to get. Mostly because the words were similar. I would find myself typing transform when I meant transition and transition when I meant translate, and so on. But learning what they all meant has helped me get them straight in my head. Learn the difference between CSS transformations, transitions, and even translations.

Read the full article: CSS Transformations versus Transitions

More Help with CSS Transitions and Translations

CSS Transformations Make Your Elements Even More Changeable

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:22:01 GMT

Until recently, when you created a web page, you had to stick with some form of grid, with all your elements as little rectangles on the grid all marching in rigid lines up and down the page. But CSS3 gives you a way to change that. With CSS3 transformations you can adjust your elements to be skewed and stretched, rotated and resized. And best of all, these work in Internet Explorer! Learn how to use CSS transformations.

Read the full article: CSS Transformations

More Fun with CSS3

What Fonts Do You Use?

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 07:00:00 GMT

A few years ago, I was asked on the forum:

“Just wondering --- what fonts does everyone typically use when designing websites? I usually stick to fonts or font families of Verdana, Arial, Times, and rarely Georgia.” by PACIFICWEBFX

I tend to use Arial, Geneva, and Helvetica for sans-serif fonts and Times, Garamond, and Palatino for serif fonts. Those are my preferences. But I am starting to find really interesting fonts on Font Squirrel that are a lot of fun to use, because they aren’t the standard Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif font stack, such as Calluna Regular—a free font I found today on Font Squirrel from FontSpring.

More Help with Web Design Fonts

Poll: How important is it to use typographic entities in web design?

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:22:52 GMT

Typographic entities are those characters in text that aren’t letters or numbers. Things like ”, “, and ’. But many web designers don’t realize that these characters are different from the ones that are on the keyboard. For example, the double-quotation mark—when you type the character above the comma on your keyboard you get ", a straight up and down quotation mark. However “ and ” are curved in towards the text they are quoting. This type of attention to detail marks a designer who cares deeply about all aspects of the design of web pages (that or they are a total control freak! *smile*). How important are using these types of typographic entities to you in your design?

More Help with Web Typography

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HTML5 Design Gallery - Andrés Max's Blog

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:24:21 GMT

This HTML5 site gives you an idea of how you can code a blog to be in HTML5. Some things to note about the code include that he's clearly using a wireframe grid system to create the design plus, he’s got a lot of support for mobile devices built right in, just by using the mobile meta tags. You can’t tell from the screen shot, but this blog has a fat footer which anchors the entire page. The design is simple which makes it very easy to skim. And I am in total agreement about looking forward to the Hobbit movie.

Have you built an HTML5 site? Or do you know of one that does a great job with HTML5? Submit HTML5 site designs to be featured on this site.

About.com Readers Choice Awards

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:01:31 GMT

Every year, About.com hosts the Readers’ Choice Awards to allow About.com readers choose the best of the best in dozens of categories. This year is exciting because even more About.com sites are participating.

Nominations will be accepted between January 18, 2012 and February 15, 2012. The voting will begin on February 22nd and the winners will be announced on March 30th.

On the Web Design/HTML site I will be hosting the following categories:

Best Web Design
Best Windows Web Editor
Best Macintosh Web Editor
Best Mobile App for Web Designers
Best Website or Blog for Web Designers
Best Facebook Page for Web Designers to Like
Best Twitter Account for Web Designers to Follow
Best Hosting Provider

Find out more about the Web Design categories and then nominate the sites, products, and pages that you think represent the best resources for web designers: 2012 Readers’ Choice Awards for Web Design/HTML

A Pixel Identity Crisis

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:00:52 GMT

The pixel has long been the atomic particle of screen based design: a knowable, concrete unit of measurement. But layouts based on the hardware pixel are fast becoming an endangered species. Even the introduction of a new, W3C standard reference pixel, although it promises stability in the long-term, can't help us navigate the current chaos. Consider the two "standard" pixel definitions and 500 "standard" viewports your user's Android device may support. To create designs that transcend platform differences—the promise of the web and standards—you must normalize pixels across devices. Scott Kellum shows how math and media queries can keep you sane and help you design consistently across platforms.

Building Twitter Bootstrap

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:00:40 GMT

Bootstrap is an open-source front-end toolkit created to help designers and developers quickly and efficiently build great stuff online. Its goal is to provide a refined, well-documented, and extensive library of flexible design components created with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for others to build and innovate on. Today, it has grown to include dozens of components and has become the most popular project on GitHub, with more than 13,000 watchers and 2,000 forks. Mark Otto, the co-creator of Bootstrap, sheds light on how and why Bootstrap was made, the processes used to create it, and how it has grown as a design system.

An Important Time for Design

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:00:16 GMT

Design is on a roll. Client services are experiencing a major uptick in demand, seasoned design professionals are abandoning client work in favor of entrepreneurship, and designer-co-founded startups such as Kickstarter and Airbnb are taking center stage. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that design has a massive role to play in the evolution of the web and the next generation of web products. The result, says Cameron Koczon, is that designers have now been given a blank check—one that lets web designers band together as a community to change the way design is perceived; change the way products are built; and quite possibly change the world.

Transition filters, tempting but not a good idea

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 04:38:11 GMT

Many web designers desperate to get features like CSS transitions, shadows, and opacity into Internet Explorer have resorted to using a feature that Microsoft introduced to IE 4 and ultimately removed from IE 9—CSS filters. Learn more about this IE features and why you should avoid them, even if you are tempted.

Read the article: Internet Explorer CSS Filters

Where You Put Your Scripts Could Be Hurting Your Pages

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 03:22:32 GMT

A common mistake that many web developers make is to put all their JavaScript in the HEAD of the document. In fact, in a poll I did last year, 68% of respondents said they put all scripts in the HEAD . This is what we were taught, but it can affect the speed of pages downloading. Instead, get in the habit of putting your scripts last. This article explains why this is important and gives some tips for how to adjust your scripts so that they will work even if they are loaded last.

Read the full article: Where to Place Scripts in Your Web Documents for Optimal Display

Help Speeding Up Web Pages

Web Design / HTML Intern Wanted

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:08:48 GMT

Are you looking for technical writing experience on HTML, web design, or XML? I am looking for one to three interns for the first half of 2012. Interns for this site will write one article (650-800 words) per month, February through June, on topics related to HTML, web design, web editors, and XML. This internship is unpaid, but you can work from anywhere in the world and all your articles will appear with your byline along with an author profile describing you and your expertise. This internship is open to any current graduate or undergraduate students studying web design, computer science or a related discipline. Recent graduates are also invited to apply. You must know HTML and be able to write clear, accurate articles about HTML and web design. To apply: please send a cover letter, current resume, writing sample, and the URL for at least one web page you have built to webdesign.guide@about.com. Please indicate what web editor you use for building web pages and what topics you would be most interested in writing about. Deadline for applications: January 30, 2012.

WYSIWYG - but you really should know HTML

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:03:06 GMT

WYSIWYG stands for “What You See Is What You Get” and there are a lot of web editors that claim to provide that. While I’m not convinced that they really can deliver WYSIWYG 100%, they do make it much easier to build web pages if you don’t know HTML. But anyone who has read my site for a while knows how I feel about WYSIWYG vs writing HTML directly . Thoughts About WYSIWYG

Poll: WYSIWYG or not?

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:09:37 GMT

I've been asking this question of my readers every few years to see how opinions about WYSIWYG editors change (or not) over time. What do you think? Do you prefer a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor or do you write HTML directly? If you do both, just choose the one you tend to start a design with.

Previous Polls

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HTML Design Gallery - Ella Design version 2

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 04:39:39 GMT

Okay, disclaimer, this site has no doctype , so it’s technically not HTML5, but I just liked the design. Her HTML5 and CSS3 playground has some interesting HTML5, but I like the look of version 2 better. Although the cookies getting attacked is cute. I would really like to see this site (version 2) redone with CSS3 and HTML5 rather than Flash.

Have you built an HTML5 site? Or do you know of one that does a great job with HTML5? Submit HTML5 site designs to be featured on this site.

Shadowing Your HTML

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:21:03 GMT

CSS3 offers a lot of new style properties to control the way your pages look. And adding shadows to boxes and text is a very popular design element. This article explains how the CSS3 box-shadow and text-shadow properties work.

Read the full article: CSS3 Shadows: Box Shadows and Text Shadows

Learn More About CSS Shadows

HGROUP is Still in the HTML5 Specification, So You Should Use it Properly

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 03:13:46 GMT

While there is some controversy surrounding the HTML5 HGROUP element , this element is still part of the specification and does serve a purpose. It is very useful for creating HTML5 outlines that don't have dozens of headings without content. But many designers use this new element incorrectly. Learn how to use the HTML5 HGROUP element.

Read the full article: How to Use the HTML5 HGROUP Element

Other New HTML5 Elements

International Web Pages

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:00:00 GMT

When you write for the Web you need to remember that your audience is potentially global. I wrote some tips on writing for a global audience that transcend the need for localization and translation. If you follow these guidelines, your site will benefit. Learn More About Writing for a Global Audience

Poll: How big do you think your international audience is?

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 04:53:23 GMT

Have you thought about your site’s audience? How international do you think it is? Have you ever looked at your stats to find out? I find it interesting to see what countries my readers come from. Do you think you have an international audience?

HTML5 Design Gallery - Funky Jones Jingle

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:57:53 GMT

This is a fun example of how the new JavaScript hooks in HTML5, canvas, and video all can combine into an interactive application. If you're at work, make sure your sound is turned down as the audio can be loud.

Have you built an HTML5 site? Or do you know of one that does a great job with HTML5? Submit HTML5 site designs to be featured on this site.

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Twitter: @About_WebDesign | @htmljenn
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Choose the best way to use CSS

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 04:08:37 GMT

There are three ways you can include CSS in a web page, and in fact, you can use all three in one page. But rather than just using one all the time, you should consider the reasons for using each method and find the best that works for the page and the site that you're working on.

Learn CSS

Get more clients for the new year

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:03:44 GMT

Do you have a resolution to grow or create your web design business? Well, if you do, then you probably want to get more clients. And one way to do that is by learning how to write a web design proposal. A proposal is a detailed document explaining what you would do for the client and what they would pay. It is a way to show your skills and the skills of your company and help encourage new clients to pick you over other web firms.

Learn how to write a web design proposal with my new article: How to Write a Web Design Proposal

More Help Getting Paying Clients

December in Review

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 03:37:08 GMT

December was a busy month for me, I went on vacation to Disneyworld, celebrated several birthdays, celebrated Christmas and prepared for 2012. I also got many new articles written about web design and HTML. Did you miss any of them? Here's a recap:

Previously in December

December 2010

December 2009

December 2008

December 2007

Even further back:

Freelancing

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Freelance web development is a very common way for web designers to earn money doing something they love. In fact, the majority of web designers do at least some of their work as freelancers, many more than those who work full time for a non-web design company. If you want to do web design as a full-time job, you should definitely look into doing freelancing.

I have written many articles on doing freelance web design, covering many topics, including:

Poll: What have you tried to increase interaction with your readers?

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 03:48:05 GMT

One of my favorite things about building and maintaining websites are the people I meet and interact with. There are readers on this site that have been posting comments for many years and I feel like we almost know each other in some ways. This is a lot of fun. But increasing interaction and community on a website can be difficult. There are lots of ways you can go about it. Some are more difficult or time consuming than others. I have tried nearly all of the ideas mentioned in this poll, and some work much better than others for me. One thing you need to remember is that building an online community can take time, and it doesn’t always work for every site. But if you enjoy interacting with your readers, and not just talking at them, making a more interactive site can mean a more interesting site for both you and your readers.

I am especially interested if you have tried other methods than I mention in the poll for connecting with your readers. What have you tried? How well did it work? Would you do it again? Don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments what you’ve tried and what worked or didn’t work.

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HTML5 Design Gallery - Wordmark

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 04:01:45 GMT

The HTML code for this page is pretty heavy with DIV elements and some of that makes sense, but there are some places where sectioning elements would have worked just as well. But the real reason I'm featuring this page is because it demonstrates how HTML5 pages can become applications in their own right. This web application takes any word (or words) and displays them in the fonts you have on your local computer. This makes it much easier to pick fonts that look similar for your font stack . Notice also the use of the new HTML5 form input types to collect email, telephone numbers, and so on.

Have you built an HTML5 site? Or do you know of one that does a great job with HTML5? Submit HTML5 site designs to be featured on this site.

More ways to make your website computer-readable

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 06:21:16 GMT

Yesterday, I mentioned the HTML5 DATA element as a way to make your pages more machine-readable. But that is just one element. With either microdata or microformats, you can turn your documents into something even bigger—something that lots of computers can read and use. There are already lots of vocabularies out there for many different things, from calendars to location services, and so much more. But you can’t use those vocabularies without a way to add it to your pages. Microformats and microdata gives that to you.

Read the article: What is Microdata and Microformats?

Adding Machine-Readable Data to Web Pages

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:21:05 GMT

One of the things that many web designers forget is that web pages are built and rendered by computers (most web developers know this intimately). What this means is that a computer is used to create the HTML and the page contents, and a computer is used to display those contents to the readers in a web browser. But computers can do a lot more than simply display web pages. Computers can use data and information to create more dynamic content, but in HTML, unless the computer is explicitly told that a bit of content is something it can use, it treats all the HTML the same—as something to display in a web page and nothing more.

The DATA element can help you change that, turning little blocks of content into information that the computer can read and use to manipulate how your readers interact with the page. The HTML5 DATA element was added to the specification late this year, and it is so much more than it appears.

Learn more about the DATAelement by reading the article: The Difference Between the HTML5 DATA Element and the CODE Element

What are you hoping to find under the tree?

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 04:30:57 GMT

Christmas is in just a few days, and it’s too late to shop online for most things, but it's never too late to dream! If you could get anything at all for Christmas to help you with your web design work, what would you get? I'm hoping to get a pen tablet so that I can do more drawing directly on the computer. But if I were dreaming big, then the Ultimate Macintosh Web Designer Computer Hardware and Software Setup would be what I’d ask Santa for.

Poll: Do you create new versions of your site for the holidays?

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 03:15:02 GMT

Decorating your websites for the holidays may seem like a lot of extra effort, or it may be crucial to how your site functions. Every year, right around my birthday I start feeling like a Scrooge because once again I have not done anything to decorate my sites for the holidays. Of course, since my birthday is in the middle of December, it also feels almost too late to do anything, which is probably the other reason I don’t. And the real reason is because I'm afraid that I'll get too busy with other things and I’ll notice sometime in February that the festive lights and holly berries on my sites look a little out of date. I've asked this question in polls before. In 2009, it was pretty evenly split between the people who do decorate and the people who don't, with more people decorating their pages than not. In 2006, the results were still pretty evenly split, but more people were not decorating. What do you think now? Decorate or not?

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HTML5 Design Gallery - Happy Holidays from Moosylvania

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:29:42 GMT

Moosylvania decided to send their customers a little cheer this year by creating a singing moose Christmas card app. What's interesting is that they did it using HTML5 and with that HTML5 created an iPhone app, an Android app, and the web page you see featured above. You can find out more about what they did to create this app on their blog . This is a cute example of using HTML5 to create not only a web application, but also mobile applications. Be aware if you are in a sound-sensitive environment that the application/website does have sound (activated after you select it, thankfully) that can be somewhat loud. And keep in mind that it’s a singing moose... :-)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all my readers!

Have you built an HTML5 site? Or do you know of one that does a great job with HTML5? Submit HTML5 site designs to be featured on this site.

Defining copyright in the meta data

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 03:50:22 GMT

It's very important that you understand copyright on the web both so that you can protect your own work and so that you don't inadvertently steal someone's property. But did you know that there is a meta tag you can use to define the copyright information of your web pages? This meta tag isn't technically used by any browsers or widely used applications (like search engines) but it is a way to get your copyright notice onto all your pages without impacting the design.

Learn more: Copyright Meta Tag

Understanding Copyright and the Web

Is your site warm, cool, or neutral?

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:28:47 GMT

A warm color palette

Most websites have a color palette that they stick with. And while you've probably learned a lot about color theory and color harmony , the theory can be somewhat tedious to remember. An easier way to come up with pleasing color palettes is to think about what you want the site to convey: is it emotionally hot or a controversial topic? Then you might want warm colors to match that or possibly cool colors to keep the tone more cordial. Is your site formal and calm? Then cool colors can help convey that meaning and neutral colors can keep the emotions from flying high.

Learn more about color families in this article: Color Families

More Help with Color and Design

Poll: What's your favorite web browser?

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:18:39 GMT

Lately I can’t decide. I used to be a Firefox fan—it had all the plugins I used most (Web Developer Tools, CoLT, and screengrab), it was fairly fast, and it supported modern technology. But then this year Firefox developers went into a frenzy of updates. It seemed like every week I was being told to download a new version. And apparently I’m not the only one who thinks this. Every time the browser updates many of my plugins break as well. And many of them I use every day. It is very annoying to constantly lose plugins.

Mozilla’s solution seems to be to be to create “silent” updates, but this is annoying too as it could take up bandwidth on an already slow connection. Chrome already does this, which I also find annoying. And yes, I know you can turn this off, but it’s still annoying. Plus, for those of you who are pro-silent updates, PC World indicates that silent updates may be a bad security risk. Also Chrome causes problems on some of the sites I use (like banking sites, I can’t log in with Chrome).

Then there’s Safari, which while I like it, it seems to never update except for security patches so it feels like it is falling behind on CSS3 and HTML5 support. I could use Opera, but I find it awkward to use on non-mobile devices.

And of course, the elephant in the room—Internet Explorer—I’m on a Macintosh, so the last version I could use of IE was IE5 (which was still a rev back on the Mac, so more like IE4 for Windows users), and I’m not going to turn on Parallels just to browse the web.

So, what browser do you prefer to use for your own personal browsing? and why? I want to like my web browser again, I just can’t figure out which one to like.

HTML5 Design Gallery - Toy Story 3Trefl.com

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 04:47:58 GMT

Having just returned from a trip to Disney World, I admit I’m fairly Disney-focused right now. But this Polish site is very intriguing even without Buzz and Woody. If you simply view the source you will see a lot of the standard HTML5 sectioning elements , including use of FIGURE and FIGCAPTION . But you won’t see the CANVAS and Flash they use to create the interactive element at the top. That's because this page is dynamically created based on what features your browser can support. Yes, this results in a lot of work for the designers, but in my opinion it’s worth it. This site looks great no matter where you view it.

Have you built an HTML5 site? Or do you know of one that does a great job with HTML5? Submit HTML5 site designs to be featured on this site.

What I Learned About the Web in 2011

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:00:23 GMT

As the year draws to a close, we asked some A List Apart readers to tell us what they learned about the web in 2011. Together their responses summarize the joys and challenges of this magical place we call the internet. We need to continue to iterate, to embrace change, and challenge complexity to keep shipping. Above all, we must continue to reach out to one another, to teach, to support, to help, and to build the community that sustains us.

Are You Annoying Readers with Your Mobile Site?

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:40:57 GMT

I have been browsing websites with an iPad for nearly two years now, and while the web has definitely improved for tablet mobile viewing, there are still a lot of sites that do it wrong. Some of the most common problems I see include:

Forcing my tablet browser to view the pages in a mobile format better suited to a smartphone. My tablet is big! It can handle your full-size or nearly full-size design!
Related to the above, forcing me to view a mobile version of the site that doesn't have the content I want. In one case, when I clicked on a link to an article on my iPad, the site took me to their mobile homepage instead. And since that homepage only had the top 20 articles, I couldn't find the one I wanted to read.

Content is important on websites, and keeping the content streamlined is also important—and even more important for mobile viewers. But you need to strike a balance. Just because many of your mobile readers go immediately to the contact page to find out your phone number doesn't mean that all of them do. While you're trimming the content from your mobile sites, keep in mind that people who can't find the content you've trimmed may not come back to your site on their desktop browser.

Learn more about mobile content design in this article Don't Limit the Content on Your Mobile Sites, But Limit the Content

More Suggestions for Mobile Design

Webremixed Articles for tags: web-design

HTML Design Gallery - Dojo Bread

January in Review

Responsive Images: How they Almost Worked and What We Need

Pricing Strategy for Creatives

It's Not Flashy, But It's Very UsefulThe History API

Add Microformats without Adding Invalid HTML

All parts of design are importantno, Im not kidding

Poll: How important is elearning to the web?

HTML5 Design Gallery - RDWonline v8.0: The Quasareclipse

Understanding the Differences Between CSS3 Transformations and Transitions

CSS Transformations Make Your Elements Even More Changeable

What Fonts Do You Use?

Poll: How important is it to use typographic entities in web design?

HTML5 Design Gallery - Andrés Max's Blog

About.com Readers Choice Awards

A Pixel Identity Crisis

Building Twitter Bootstrap

An Important Time for Design

Transition filters, tempting but not a good idea

Where You Put Your Scripts Could Be Hurting Your Pages

Web Design / HTML Intern Wanted

WYSIWYG - but you really should know HTML

Poll: WYSIWYG or not?

HTML Design Gallery - Ella Design version 2

Shadowing Your HTML

HGROUP is Still in the HTML5 Specification, So You Should Use it Properly

International Web Pages

Poll: How big do you think your international audience is?

HTML5 Design Gallery - Funky Jones Jingle

Choose the best way to use CSS

Get more clients for the new year

December in Review

Freelancing

Poll: What have you tried to increase interaction with your readers?

HTML5 Design Gallery - Wordmark

More ways to make your website computer-readable

Adding Machine-Readable Data to Web Pages

What are you hoping to find under the tree?

Poll: Do you create new versions of your site for the holidays?

HTML5 Design Gallery - Happy Holidays from Moosylvania

Defining copyright in the meta data

Is your site warm, cool, or neutral?

Poll: What's your favorite web browser?

HTML5 Design Gallery - Toy Story 3Trefl.com

What I Learned About the Web in 2011

Are You Annoying Readers with Your Mobile Site?

It's Not Flashy, But It's Very UsefulThe History API

All parts of design are importantno, Im not kidding

About.com Readers Choice Awards

HTML5 Design Gallery - Toy Story 3Trefl.com