Entries Tagged as “Design”
Free Photoshop Brushes
I spent the weekend decommissioning one of my old web servers. I stumbled upon my very first version of pixeljunkie.org. It was the original site that later became visual28.com. In addition to chuckling while looking over my old designs and poor programing tactics, I ran across some old photoshop brushes that I offered as a free download. They were hugely popular back then so I hope people can still find them useful today. These were originally created in Photoshop 5.5 but I was able import them into Photoshop CS3 just fine. If you find them useful please leave me a comment so I know people are actually reading this blog. So please enjoy them.
Need help installing your new photoshop brushes? Head on over to My Photoshop Brushes and read their tutorial on how to install your new brushes. While your there check out their brushes too as they have some really cool ones!
→ Respond NowTags: Design · Freebies · Photoshop
Top 20 Most Valuable Websites
I wanted to take a break from the rants on accessibility, and post a top 20 list of the most useful websites that I have found. These are sites that I use all the time and feel their services are incredibly valuable to me, both in my daily workflow, and in my freelance workflow. Top 20 lists appear to be very popular so here is my contribution to the community.
→ Respond NowTags: Design · Freebies · General
How users look at scrolling
I recently got into a discussion with some co-workers that still believed in the myth about users not wanting to scroll long pages. Apparently they had it in their mind that users did not want to scroll. They were likely referring to information that was handed down to them 5 or more years ago. Certainly times have changed by now. I laughed a bit, and explained that it was old information and simply not true anymore. I wish that more was written on design sites about scrolling habits of users. Perhaps then it may dispel any myths that designers have about users not wanting to scroll. I wanted to write about the topic, and so I went on a search to find a good recourse to support my claim. I did find several articles on the topic. Most of them were older articles. However, I did manage to dig up a recent article titled ClickTale Scrolling Research Report V2.0. It’s a two part article so be sure to read both parts. It is a short article and has plenty support graphs, so it is a quick read.
To summarize the article, users do scroll long pages and a good percentage of them scroll all the way down to the bottom. In fact it would seem that scrolling has little effect on users experience. According to a podcast produced by User Interface Engineering, users would rather scroll a longer page scanning for their “trigger words” than click through to multiple pages to find their desired content.
Jakob Neilson wrote in a 1994 article that scrolling was no longer as significant an issue as long as the content was valuable to the user. He did recommend not scrolling more than three full screens on an average monitor. It is also my recommendation that content links, or links to important tasks be in the first screen, or in the first 1000 pixels as users will typically look for the most important items at the top of the page. However my personal believe is that long article pages are completely acceptable. I would rather scroll a long page, than click annoying next buttons. Perhaps those next buttons are only there to increase page hits and user loyalty stats?
With blogs becoming increasingly popular and users becoming more knowledgeable of the web I believe the issues of scrolling will only be important for very long pages.
My personal design philosophy: if the content is interesting to the user, the line lengths are kept at a good length around 520 pixels, and the leading is kept at a good height (approx 130%) your users will not mind reading your longer content pages. In the end it takes balance, and it is our job as web professionals to strike that balance.
→ Respond NowTags: Design · usability
Tips for better web design
I have designed websites for the better part of 7 to 8 years now. I am a designer and web developer, so I have a lot of experience being both the designer and the programmer. I get to see both ends of the spectrum of web design. Over the years I have picked up a lot of tips to increase your productivity in the area of web design.
The most critical point of web design is the starting point. It all begins with the designer. The more informed a designer is, the more some basic steps are observed, then the more productive and profitable your next design project will be. Here area few tips to help designers create a better and more profitable design.
→ Respond NowTags: Design
Accessibility and the skip to content link
Often times, terms like accessibility, validation, and compliance get tossed around by web companies or website owners of all sizes. Large or small. It seems that running a site though an automated validator is all that many people think is necessary. Having recently developed carpal tunnel and using websites without the aid of a mouse, I find that many of these sites are not really accessible or useable to people like myself with limited mobility. There are some very simple solutions that can make your website as easy, or easier to navigate via keyboard than with a mouse. In the following article I talk about my usage of websites and how they typically fail users with mobility issues, and offer both design and programming solutions to overcome these problems. It's doubtful that any designers or programmers will get hurt from reading this article.
→ Respond NowTags: Accessibility · CSS · Design
