Free online book: Dive into HTML5
Posted by Michael Gaigg
Free online book: Dive into HTML5 by Mark Pilgrim.
The paper version is titled HTML5: Up and Running (O'Reilly, via Amazon).
Table of Contents
- Introduction: Five Things You Should Know About HTML5
- A Quite Biased History of HTML5
- Detecting HTML5 Features: It’s Elementary, My Dear Watson
- What Does It All Mean?
- Let’s Call It a Draw(ing Surface)
- Video in a Flash (Without That Other Thing)
- You Are Here (And So Is Everybody Else)
- A Place To Put Your Stuff
- Let’s Take This Offline
- A Form of Madness
- “Distributed,” “Extensibility,” And Other Fancy Words
- Manipulating History for Fun & Profit
- The All-In-One Almost-Alphabetical No-Bullshit Guide to Detecting Everything
- HTML5 Peeks, Pokes and Pointers
Free E-Book: GIS in the Cloud
Posted by Michael Gaigg
GIS in the Cloud
Matt Artz blogs about Esri's latest release by Victoria Kouyoumjian, Esri’s IT Strategies Architect: "GIS in the Cloud: The New Age of Cloud Computing and Geographic Information Systems".
Download: Download free e-book
Topics covered in the e-book include:
- What Is Cloud Computing?
- Cloud Service Models
- Cloud Benefits
- Public versus Private Cloud
- Risks in the Cloud
- ArcGIS and the Cloud
Highlights of Week 14/2011
Posted by Michael Gaigg
- Observations versus Recommendations (by Harry Brignull) - use the FOG method, mark your statements Fact, Opinion or Guess
- Top 10 Free Source Code Editors – Reviewed (by hongkiat) - a listing of 11 free editors with their Pros and Cons
- How to Spot and Avoid Web Copy that Kills Websites (by Rick Sloboda) - here some downfalls of the often overlooked but actually really important subject of copy on the web
- Login / Registration Form: Ideas and Beautiful Examples (by bellefoong) - a little login inspiration, nice collection
- Progressive Disclosure in User Interfaces (by Alexander Dawson) - nice intro plus advantages and disadvantages
- The 5 Models Of Content Curation (by Rohit Bhargava) - content curation in its various situations explained
- 9 Ways To A Better Interview (by Mitch Joel) - in my opinion it boils down to caring about the other person and the subject and not getting hung up on standard questions and a script
- Tips for Creating an Excellent E-Commerce Website (by Mathew Carpenter) - some interesting tips here
Highlights of Week 36/2010
Posted by Michael Gaigg
- 20 HTML Best Practices You Should Follow (by Saqib Sarwar) - yes, we all know, but it's so easy to forget
- 10 Essential Free E-Books for Web Designers (by Grace Smith) - free? freeeeeee!
- Self-Motivating Through Creative Blocks (by Cameron Chapman) - always love the sheer simplicity in which Cameron summarizes complex subjects, must-look.
- The power of brief speeches: World War I and the Four Minute Men (by Richard I. Garber) - Five minutes means a guess; four minutes makes a promise - that's why
- A Complete Guide to Progressive Enhancement (by Cameron Chapman) - expaining why your website does NOT need to look the same in every browser, try to explain that to your client
- Getting to Grips with Content (by Kristina Halvorson) - Prune it, Put it in front of users, Give it purpose - sounds easy? Look around...
- 8 Must-see UX Diagrams (by Andrew Maier) - yes, must-see...
- The GeoServices REST Specification: An open standard for GIS Web services (by Sterling Quinn) - now this is sweet, the full GIS capabilities of ArcGIS Server via REST
- Finding the Balance: Users’ Needs Vs. Clients’ Wants (by Oliver Gitsham) - have a rationale ready behind every decision and design choice that you’ve made!
500+ Free Stunning PC Icons
Posted by Michael Gaigg
Set 'Dortmund' at http://pc.de/icons/
Download 500+ Free Stunning PC Icons
You'll find 10 sets of 1000 high-quality free .png icons in sizes 16x16 & 32x32 for bloggers and web designers to use in private & commercial projects (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License). Loving it!
Highlights of Week 30/2010
Posted by Michael Gaigg
- How Web Designers Can Adopt a Global Mindset (by Christian Arno) - Cultural differences are shamelessly overlooked, depending on your audience that might be ok but you should know... read the article.
- User Interface Design Framework (by webalys) - a really nice set of flexible GUI elements, free icon library and a graphic style library.
- The Hackday Toolbox – getting you started faster (by Chris Heilmann) - wow, what a great set of resources to get you started with YQL for PHP and JavaScript.
- How to Navigate Design by Committee (by Andrew Follett) - Andrew outlines a feasible approach to steering design discussions into a successful direction.
- Accessiblity Forum 2.0 (by buyaccessible.net) - promising blog to follow if you are into accessibility.
- 10 Free Online Books for Web Designers (by Henry Jones) - add to your never ending supply of good stuff.
Highlights of Week 10/2010
Posted by Michael Gaigg
Another week of fantastic articles! A little digging (or reading my blog ) will save you time and buying books hehe.
- 15 Desktop & Online Wireframing Tools (by Tom Walker) - I use Balsamiq Mockups, what about you?
- User Experience Books Free to Read Online (by Simon Whatley) - yes, free
- The Future of Wireframes (by Nishant Kothary) - in Nishant's words: holy guacamole!
- Do’s and Don’ts of Usability Testing (by Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain) - my take-away: don't jump to conclusions, that truly is a beginner mistake.
- How to Increase Conversions on any Website in 45 Minutes (by Andrew Follett) - improvement can happen in less than an hour, keep it down to the top 3 items!
- 43 Essential Controls for Web Applications (by Theresa Neil) - just being able to name them properly (not to mention program them) is a huge communication plus.
- How to Choose Right CSS Frameworks (by Joel Reyes) - a must read for any web programmer. Know at least one css framework really well.
- Why you only need to test with five users (explained) (by Jeff Sauro) - I mean, really well explained.
- Email verification – is your call-to-action strong enough? (by Harry Brignull) - it's tough to lose customers that WANT to be customers. Consider lazy registration as well!
- "Call to Action" Buttons: Guidelines, Best Practices and Examples (by hongkiat) - Another really important article. Talks about size, color, labels etc.
Free book online: The Principles of Successful Freelancing
Posted by Michael Gaigg
I know this might be a little off-topic but nevertheless useful to many of us. The book 'The Principles of Successful Freelancing' of Miles Burke is available for free to download (only valid for the next 10 days starting today), so get it now!
Contents
- Considering Freelancing?
- Prepare for the Transition
- Manage Your Money
- Set Yourself Up
- Win the Work
- Give Great Service
- Achieve Work–Life Balance
- Where to from Here?
About the author
Miles Burke has been creating web sites since 1994. In 2002, Miles founded Bam Creative, an award-winning Western Australian web company. Miles serves as Chairperson of the Australian Web Industry Association, and has been awarded for his entrepreneurship in recent years; he’s a recipient of the Contribution to the Web Industry award in 2005, winner of the WA Business News’ 40under40 award in 2007, and appears in the 2008 edition of Who’s Who in Western Australia. Miles can also be found writing at Miles’ Blog.
Links for freelancers
- 85+ Tools & Resources for Freelancers and Web Workers by Sean P. Aune
- 7 Productivity Tips, Plus Tools for Freelancers and Web Workers by Elliott Kosmicki
Have more useful links? Post them in the comments section.
Free book online: Search User Interfaces
Posted by Michael Gaigg
Marti Hearst generously made her upcoming book "Search User Interfaces" available for reading online. She is definitely not a newcomer to the scene and the book for sure not a Best-Of compilation, moreover the book is written in an academic fashion that backs up its theses usability studies, log studies, or some other form of proof (like it!) - like Harry Brignull states: "Caution: actual thought may be required when reading this book."
Contents: Search User Interfaces
The book has two main parts: search fundamentals (Chapters 1-7) and advanced topics (Chapters 8-12).
0: Preface
1: Design of Search User Interfaces
2: Evaluation of Search User Interfaces
3: Models of the Information Seeking Process
4: Query Specification
5: Presentation of Search Results
6: Query Reformulation
7: Supporting the Search Process
8: Integrating Navigation with Search
9: Personalization in Search
10: Information Visualization for Search Interfaces
11: Information Visualization for Text Analysis
12: Emerging Trends in Search Interfaces
References
Index
Powerpoint Wireframe Stencils as Free Download
Posted by Michael Gaigg
The last couple of weeks were pretty busy for me. We were trying to design an application that has potential to grow beyond national importance and get high visibility. Needless to say expectations are high. Time constraints aside, my focus was to extract the goal of the application and streamline the user experience, do I sound like a marketing person yet?
Powerpoint Wireframes
In order to get quick and accurate feedback from our client I wanted to create visuals as early as possible. That's when Microsoft Powerpoint came in handy. I created wireframe mockups and iterated through the slides via video conference which turned out to be not only useful but essential to the mutual understanding. The client was able to adjust their process, our project managers increased their knowledge about the domain and our developers identified potential issues with integrating our mapping software.
Free Download
Download Powerpoint Wireframe Stencils
During the process of designing the wireframes I created my own set of Powerpoint stencils that covers all common interface elements as well as a set of small icons.
Powerpoint Wireframe Stencils
Example Usage
Just recently I started to redesign www.actress.at, the website of my sister who is an actress currently located in Berlin, Germany.
What better opportunity than this to put the wireframe stencils into work. After talking with her for some time over the phone I got a good sense of what her vision is based on the needs of job. Together with some photos from her agency and videos from youtube I created the following three mockups:
Mockup for the Homepage of Eva Gaigg's redesigned webpage actress.at
Mockup for a page inside the navigation architecture, in this case videos but also applicable for photos and other presentation items.
Mockup for the response form, probably a critical part of the application since this will be the butter on the bread.
Next Step: XHMTL Prototype
Following the wireframes exercise we created a color palette and implemented an XHTML prototype which roughly took us 3 days. Screen snapshots fed another set of Powerpoint slides for the big demo and will eventually go into the design doc as well. So far, so good.
Help me to improve the stencils
I really hope the wireframe stencils will be helpful for your work (as they made my life easier). I am interested in your opinion. What is missing? What can be improved? Send me your suggestions, ideas, updates
About Me
I'm Michael Gaigg, Lead UI Engineer at Esri's Prof. Services.
I have over 8 years of experience in designing map interfaces and can't stop thinking about improving them.
Help me by sharing your thoughts, ideas and comments.
Categories
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- Code Samples & Tips (8)
- Conclusions (4)
- Design Guidelines (11)
- Designing Map Interfaces (3)
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- Here and there (21)
- Map Applications (7)
- This Week's Highlights (53)
- Usability & UCD (22)
- Web Design (21)
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