Articles by Smashing Magazine from September 2011

    Designers are visually literate creatures. We use visuals to express our ideas, ...

Designers are visually literate creatures. We use visuals to express our ideas, whether by building wireframes, sketching interfaces or pushing pixels. As a result, the majority of knowledge captured ...

    Making an eBook is easy, regardless of your coding experience. This is good, bec...

Making an eBook is easy, regardless of your coding experience. This is good, because 99.9% of your time should be spent on writing and getting your book out there, rather than on technology.EPUB And K...

    Local development refers to the process of building a website or Web application...

Local development refers to the process of building a website or Web application from the comfort of a virtual server, and not needing to be connected to the Internet in order to run PHP and MySQL or ...

    Pricing your own product is always a tricky proposition, and the more critical t...

Pricing your own product is always a tricky proposition, and the more critical the price is to your products success, the more difficult it is to set. Its easy to look at another product and say how m...

    Google Search likes simple, easy-to-crawl websites. You like dynamic websites th...

Google Search likes simple, easy-to-crawl websites. You like dynamic websites that show off your work and that really pop. But search engines cant run your JavaScript. That cool AJAX routine that load...

    Michelangelo once said,The best of artists has no conception that the marble alo...

While the reality of client work sometimes makes it challenging to gather and produce content prior to starting the design, this is now widely accepted as being necessary. You may have heard this refe...

    People in boardrooms across the world love a good graph. They go nuts for PowerP...

People in boardrooms across the world love a good graph. They go nuts for PowerPoint, bullet points and phrases like run it up the flagpole, blue-sky thinking and low-hanging fruit, and everything is ...

   Part 1 of "Improving the Online Shopping Experience  focused on the upper part of the purchase funnel and on ways to get customers to your website and to find your pro...

Part 1 of Improving the Online Shopping Experience focused on the upper part of the purchase funnel and on ways to get customers to your website and to find your products. Today, we move down the funn...

   While you already use many functions in WordPress to communicate with the database, there is an easy and safe way to do this directly, using the $wpdb class. Built on the g...

While you already use many functions in WordPress to communicate with the database, there is an easy and safe way to do this directly, using the $wpdb class. Built on the great ezSQL class by Justin V...

   This is not a normal Smashing Magazine post. Im not going to teach you something new or inspire you with examples of great work. Instead, I want to encourage you to complet...

This is not a normal Smashing Magazine post. Im not going to teach you something new or inspire you with examples of great work. Instead, I want to encourage you to complete a Web design challenge. I ...

   Metrics can be a touchy subject in design. When I say things like, "Designers should embrace A/B testing  or "Metrics can improve design,  I often hear concerns.M...

Metrics can be a touchy subject in design. When I say things like, Designers should embrace A/B testing or Metrics can improve design, I often hear concerns.Many designers tell me they feel that metri...

   In recent years, it seems WordPress has been growing at an exponential rate. It’s also become a much better piece of software, almost becoming a transparent experienc...

   The flexible box layout module or "flexbox,  to use its popular nickname is an interesting part of the W3C Working Draft. The flexbox specification is still ...

The flexible box layout module or flexbox, to use its popular nickname is an interesting part of the W3C Working Draft. The flexbox specification is still a draft and subject to change, so keep your...

   Created by Ryan Dahl in 2009, Node.js is a relatively new technology which has gained a lot of popularity among Web developers recently. However, not everyone knows what it...

Created by Ryan Dahl in 2009, Node.js is a relatively new technology which has gained a lot of popularity among Web developers recently. However, not everyone knows what it really is. Node.js is essen...

   For drawing and painting digital illustrations, Adobe Illustrator is a favorite among designers for many reasons. One of the reasons is some of the amazing time-saving feat...

   Created by Ryan Dahl in 2009, Node.js is a relatively new technology which has gained a lot of popularity among Web developers recently. However, not everyone knows what it...

For drawing and painting digital illustrations, Adobe Illustrator is a favorite among designers for many reasons. One of the reasons is some of the amazing time-saving features that come with it. The ...

   Amazon turned sweet sixteen this year, and, by extension, so did online shopping as we know it. As online shopping has grown over the past 16 years, so have user needs and ...

Amazon turned sweet sixteen this year, and, by extension, so did online shopping as we know it. As online shopping has grown over the past 16 years, so have user needs and expectations related to the ...

   With CSS animation now supported in both Firefox and Webkit browsers, there is no better time to give it a try. Regardless of its technical form, whether traditional, compu...

With CSS animationnow supported in both Firefox and Webkit browsers, there is no better time to give it a try. Regardless of its technical form, whether traditional, computer-generated 3-D, Flash or C...

   Today we are glad to release a yet another freebie: a Facebook Fan Page GUI PSD, designed by Hike and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The PSD will speed up...

Today we are glad to release a yet another freebie: a Facebook Fan Page GUI PSD, designed by Hike and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The PSD will speed up the process of creating prev...

   I was a competitive road cyclist for four years. My bikes were good, but my race results were much less impressive. Instead of medals and trophies, all I had to show for it...

I was a competitive road cyclist for four years. My bikes were good, but my race results were much less impressive. Instead of medals and trophies, all I had to show for it were shaved legs and a farm...

   We spend a lot of time learning and thinking about the designs we see online, yet what we miss quite often are practical insights into the design process and workflow of ou...

   Anyone designing Web-based properties today requires a basic understanding of interaction design principles. Even if your training is not formally in human-computer interac...

Anyone designing Web-based properties today requires a basic understanding of interaction design principles. Even if your training is not formally in human-computer interaction, user experience design...

   Ive been using LESS religiously ever since I stumbled upon it months ago. CSS was never really a problem for me, in and of itself, but I was intrigued by the idea of using ...

Ive been using LESS religiously ever since I stumbled upon it months ago. CSS was never really a problem for me, in and of itself, but I was intrigued by the idea of using variables to create somethin...

   When we started Smashing Magazine, we didnt expect anything. We didnt have a grand master plan for a successful online magazine for designers and developers. We created som...

   Youre developing a new website and have decided to use some CSS3 and HTML5, now that many of the new specifications are gaining widespread support. As youre coding the them...

Youre developing a new website and have decided to use some CSS3 and HTML5, now that many of the new specifications are gaining widespread support. As youre coding the theme and thinking of how much e...

   In part one of this series, we looked at the consequences of designing and developing software in isolated environments. Some people work in lonely silos where no process e...

   PayPal is the most popular platform for receiving online payments today. The ease of opening a PayPal account and receiving payments compared to opening a merchant account ...

PayPal is the most popular platform for receiving online payments today. The ease of opening a PayPal account and receiving payments compared to opening a merchant account with a traditional payment g...

The entire process of designing digital applications comes with many challenges and decisions. For the majority of projects, you will be designing in somewhat familiar territory. But what happens when...

   In a perfect world, cross-browser testing would be straightforward. We would download a legacy version of a browser, run it, and be able to instantly test our pages and scr...

In a perfect world, cross-browser testing would be straightforward. We would download a legacy version of a browser, run it, and be able to instantly test our pages and scripts without a single care i...

   The entire process of designing digital applications comes with many challenges and decisions. For the majority of projects, you will be designing in somewhat familiar terr...

   Google+, Hipster, Connect.me and Instagram! They all hit a gazillion users in no time at all — and you can even read all about it in everyday media t...

Google+, Hipster, Connect.me and Instagram! They all hit a gazillion users in no time at alland you can even read all about it in everyday media today. This is every product creator’s dream. Ok,...

   We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sour...

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a mat...