Articles by Web Designer Depot from August 2013

Advertisers on Facebook will shortly be getting some new options for sprucing up their ads with high-quality stock photographs from Shutterstock.All of Facebook’s more than 1 million active adve...

When it comes to stock elements, you can’t have to many. Sure, it’s possible that you’ll collect more than you can use in a single career, but the important thing is to have a good b...

Every now and again I come across a talk that I find to be truly inspiring or informative. Over the years I’ve made sure to bookmark these talks for later reference and now, after recently revis...

Dreamweaver has long been a curious beast, loved and loathed in equal measure. For many it is the very best WYSIWYG editor available, for others it is still just a WYSIWYG. Most developers have a pass...

Responsive web design is the buzzword of the decade already, and is ideal for the multi-screen connected world that we live in. However, the trade-off for this is in performance due to larger file siz...

Fifty years ago today, one of the greatest orators of modern times delivered his most impassioned plea. At the march on Washington, August 28th 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous “...

No matter your area of expertise, chances are you’ve worked with photographs. Web and print designers alike are no strangers to the magnificence that can be captured in photos. It’s what w...

Dribbble doesn’t have an official app and that can sometimes be a bummer. Sometimes you’re away from the computer and would like to flip through some shots to get some quick inspiration. F...

Designers often find themselves in a chicken-egg situation when it comes to content: you need the content to design, but the client wants to write content for finished designs. This is where placehold...

When it comes to styling webpages, nothing’s as tricky as forms. And when it comes to styling forms almost nothing’s as tricky as the <select> input. We can style a <select&#...

There’s a good chance you’re intimately acquainted with the work of Steve Matteson, it’s probably right in front of you for much of the day. Arguably one of the most influential desi...

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow...

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great ...

Smashing Magazine is one of the premium sources for learning the principles of web design. Their articles and eBooks cover everything you need to know to get started on the web. Incredibly, you can no...

Mocking up a product online can be difficult. Leave it floating in space and it looks wrong.But then, Photoshop it onto a desk or a work surface and you risk overpowering the product; or worse, making...

Finding the right elements for a project can significantly improve the quality of the final product, especially if your deadline’s too tight to build these things yourself. Quality is essential ...

It’s amazing how far we’ve come in the last 15 years; the web has developed at a rate it took print 150 years or more, to match. What’s exciting is that we’re still going, stil...

Establishing an online presence is absolutely essential in this digital day and age, more so if your profession lies within a creative industry. However, we’ve all heard of how well-shod cobbler...

Personal projects allow us the freedom to work on whatever we want, to experiment or to try something new. With no client demands and no set deadlines, the direction and final outcome is entirely down...

When developers build websites, they often focus on the layout and technical features but neglect one very important aspect how the user experiences the site. If users have a hard time figuring out h...

Looking for long shadow style icons? Good, then you came to the right place! Flat design has been continuing virtually unchallenged for some time now, and it’s started to develop sub-styles. One...

The power of a good visual isnt just a scientifically well-documented phenomenon; its the whole reason our industry exists. Indeed, our existence as a species is largely defined by our sense of sight....

As designers we seem to have lost our courage, churning out identical brand ‘solutions’, posting Dribbble shots of the same regurgitated formula. Perhaps it’s the lack of control on ...

When you think of minimalism in design, whitespace usually comes to mind. When the designer is strips a piece down to its bare essentials, and opts for less ornamentation and more core, one tends to s...

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow...

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great ...

When it comes to presenting screenshots of your work the most obvious choice would be to use a straightforward screen-grab. Today, however, we’re going to look at some alternative methods and di...

I’m sure you’ve heard of personas and scenarios, but let’s start with a quick explanation of how they are useful in the design process: A persona is an elementary tool of usability a...

Tired of the same old flat design? Everywhere you look there are people offering up flat icons; some are fabulous, but far too many are derivative. Occasionally you come across a set of icons that tri...

Hands down the most frustrating task in Photoshop is cutting out hair, especially when the background’s busy. For some reason it’s almost impossible to isolate hair strands convincingly an...

There are three things every creative yearns to hear: “we pay the total up front,” “our staff is ready to sexually reproduce with you at your request,” and “be as creativ...

The August edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, jQuery resources, web development tools, responsive design tools, color resources, coding resources, and ...

Typography is a subject of two extremes: you love it, or you hate it. Designers who love typography revel in all manner of archaic terminology like kerning, lining figures and ligatures.Designers who ...

One of the key concepts in any responsive design is the change of viewport size. That’s because mobile viewports vary greatly from desktop viewports. To control the viewport size we traditionall...

For me, working with startups has been a huge learning experience. Over the last two and a half years I’ve experienced working both in-house and as a consultant for two startups, as well as rece...

The inspiration for Apple’s color scheme in the iOS7 beta design has been a jealously guarded secret for months. Jony Ive, known for his rational, logical approach to design doesn’t pull t...

For a long time JavaScript functions have existed that allow us to create drag and drop interfaces, but none of these implementations were native to the browser. In HTML5, we have a native method of c...

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow...

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great ...

Give your flat design a boost with this Flattastic UI kit, designed by Vlade Dimovski, free to download and simple to use. The PSD is properly layered, with intuitive naming, making modifying it for y...

Over the past few days, I have taken a crash course in coding and am actually learning how to do it.Now, don’t everyone applaud me I’ve always been extremely transparent and forthright in...

With the amazing apps available for Mac these days, Windows users must get sick of hearing about “the latest must-have app” that they can’t use. Fortunately there are still a few gem...

For years, I’ve continuously read how print is a dying industry and how print designers are in danger. It’s hard to argue, when many big name newspapers and magazines of the past see more ...

For the average user there’s little difference between products offered by Yahoo! and by market leader Google. Yahoo!’s position is largely dictated by brand; or rather by Google’s s...

Cloud computing is one of the buzzwords in the web design and computing industry that seems to have a very simple definition, but a myriad of uses. It is a phrase used to define the use of the interne...

Every time we use CSS, we use selectors. But despite this, CSS selectors are one of the more neglected parts of the specification. We talk about the big transformations in CSS3 but all too often forge...

The flat design juggernaut continues to roll on, crushing everything in its path. With an emphasis on simplicity, it’s easy to manage basic design principles when you’re working flat. Esse...

Patterns have graced our designs for thousands of years. The texture, color and life added by patterns have enhanced design the world over. The love of pattern reached new heights with the advert of t...

Most designers struggle with putting a price on their services. Many end up using a pricing model that leaves them run ragged trying to pay the bills, rather than one that lets them build a healthy, s...

Responsive web design is popular and its absolutely no secret. Its what experts are calling for and what many brands are switching to. Its not just about creating a mobile-ready site, but about making...

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow...

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great ...

One of the very best frameworks to build new sites on is Twitter Bootstrap. Mobile-first, lightweight and powerful; it’s a great starting point. The only issues with Bootstrap are that it’...

It’s clear that the mobile web is on the rise. Taking a look at the stats, it’s hard to see how desktop browsing can survive the onslaught. People use smartphones for almost everything. 91...

With so many social media B2B strategies for your business, the options can sometimes get a bit overwhelming. That is why it is important to state this disclosure. The strategies we discuss below are ...

For years premium design and development software has been the exclusive preserve of Adobe. Since they outmaneuvered Quark and purchased Macromedia, few tools have been able to compete with their prod...

Facial hair (or lack thereof) can say a lot about a man. A days worth of scruff could mean a late night out the day before, and two weeks of growth likely indicates hes channeling his inner lumberjack...

Im a little choosy about who I follow back on Twitter. As with my other opt-in social sites, Im not into quantity but quality. Having the right connections are good for business and, after all, busine...

A few weeks ago Alex Cornell, posted what he describes as “The Worst Portfolio Ever”a page of clichs, overused trends and boring copy. His motivation was presumably to educate the masses a...

Stop resizing that browser, youre gonna wear it out! How many times have you heard that one? Well okay, maybe not so many times, but if you develop responsive design web sites, you know what Im talkin...