How to Detect and Stop Email Tracking

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/detect-disable-email-tracking/

There are numerous services that allow the sender to track emails, including when email was opened, which links were clicked, what device was used, and even the recipient’s current location….

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Window Seat – The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking by Julieanne Kost

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abduzeedo/~3/HN1jCmrAiFM/window-seat-art-digital-photography-and-creative-thinking-julieanne-kost

Window Seat – The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking by Julieanne Kost

julieanne kost

ibby
Jan 09, 2018

 

If you share the same curious eye as famed photographer Julieanne Kost you’ll love these beautiful photographs she’s captured over the past 15 years traveling on commercial flights in the prized window seat. Kost is an accomplished photographer and fine artist based in a San Jose, California with an immense talent for capturing abstract forms and thought-provoking landscapes. We’re excited to celebrate her most recent shots from her travels throughout California, Utah and as far flung as Australia below. Kost’s book “Window Seat – The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking” is available via hard copy as well as well as an updated iBook. Also be sure to check out more of her surreal and stunning portfolio here. A big thanks to Julieanne for reminding us all to look out that window on our next flight to appreciate the art, beauty and inspiration all around us. 

 

ABOUT JULIEANNE KOST

Named one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business,” Julieanne Kost is a Principal Evangelist at Adobe Systems, responsible for fostering relationships with customers through meaningful and inspirational Photoshop and Lightroom instruction. As a highly sought-after speaker for the industry-standard Digital Imaging franchise, she devises and presents motivating and educational training sessions, sharing original techniques and tutorials worldwide — via live events, Adobe.com, her own website (jkost.com) and blog (blogs.adobe.com/jkost). She is also the author of “Passenger Seat—Creating a Photographic Project from Conception Through Execution in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom” and “Window Seat — The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking”, an accomplished photographer and fine artist, and creator and host of the popular Photoshop CC Essential Training, Adobe Camera Raw Essential Training, and the Art of Photoshop Compositing for LinkedIn Learning | Lynda.com.

 

digital photography
fine arts
photography


Collective #377

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tympanus/~3/QtNJ1BAJ2Es/

C377_WOTW

Inspirational Website of the Week: Yelvy

Innovative details and a super modern design made us choose Yelvy as the site of the week.

Get inspired

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A free learning management system (LMS) layout pack perfect for any e-course website.

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C377_joy

Joy.js

A great tool that lets you change code by clicking, dragging or hovering, and see the result immediately. By Nicky Case.

Check it out

C377_Lynn

Lynn Fisher

Responsiveness is brought to a whole new level on this website: a new design for every breakpoint!

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C377_snowman

Snowman

Create your own fancy snowman with this Christmas Experiment.

Check it out

C377_naming

Onym

A site that collects tools and resources for naming things.

Check it out

C377_Alva

Alva

With this revolutionary design tool you can start building your layouts and design with the same components that your engineers use for the production website.

Check it out

C377_iconssm

32 Free And Friendly Office Icons

A free set of modern office icons designed by Vexels.

Get it

C377_agents

Byte Arena

Byte Arena is a gaming platform for developers where you have to code the brain of an agent.

Check it out

C377_photoshop

Photoshop for designers who don’t use Photoshop.

A series of video tutorials for UI/UX designers who use alternatives to Photoshop but still need it for some retouching.

Check it out

C377_jQueryUI

The Future of jQuery UI and jQuery Mobile

Alex Schmitz announces some changes to the handling of the once so popular projects.

Check it out

C377_Chrome

Chrome is Not the Standard

Chris Krycho’s critical look on developer infatuation with Google Chrome.

Read it

C377_Floppy

Fitting Flappy Bird Into a Tweet

Jon Kantner shows how he made a 278-byte, black-and-white version of Flappy Bird using HTML and JavaScript.

Read it

C377_ShaderReload

Shader Reload

An experimental interface for live shader reloading in ThreeJS, regl, and other WebGL frameworks.

Check it out

C377_SQL

NetSPI SQL Injection Wiki

A Wiki with information on identifying, exploiting, and escalating SQL injection vulnerabilities across various Database Management Systems (DBMS).

Check it out

C377_Ren

Resn’s Little Helper

A beautiful seasonal WebGL experience.

Check it out

C377_icons

Free Icons from ThemeIsle

More than a hundred free line style icons from ThemeIsle.

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C377_bonfire

Bonfire

Another fantastic Christmas Experiment: A gloomy forest bonfire.

Check it out

C377_bitcoin

How does Bitcoin work? I built an app to show you.

Sean Han made an app to explain how the Bitcoin cryptocurrency works.

Read it

C377_password

“Username or password incorrect” is bullshit

A controversial article by Travis Jeffery on a common security best practice.

Read it

C377_22

Vireo

Vireo is a lightweight and versatile video processing library that powers Twitter’s video transcoding service, deep learning recognition systems and more.

Check it out

C377_html52

HTML 5.2

HTML 5.2 is now a W3C recommendation. Read about the substantial changes since 5.1.

Check it out

C377_gameart

Isometric Game Art Pack: Volume 1

A free isometric game art bundle by Crevasse.

Read it

Collective #377 was written by Pedro Botelho and published on Codrops.

Free Download: Ecommerce IOS11 Icons

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/01/free-download-ecommerce-ios11-icons/

Setting up an e-Commerce site? Or looking for some high-quality icons to give your shopping a professional look. From the fine folks at Icons8 we’re offering this awesome set of 40 different iOS 11 glyphs icons dedicated to eCommerce. All icons are provided as PNG, SVG and EPS. Check the license here. 

 

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Collective #380

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tympanus/~3/jhwW3aXmtGw/

C380_wpdata

Our Sponsor
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wpDataTables is a best-selling WordPress plugin that can help you generate tables and charts in WordPress with a few simple clicks.

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C380_roadmap

Web Developer Roadmap – 2018

Some fantastic graphs that show roadmaps for becoming a web developer in 2018. By Kamran Ahmed.

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C380_password

I’m harvesting credit card numbers and passwords from your site. Here’s how.

David Gilbertson captivates us with his charming sarcasm in this fictional, yet alerting scenario.

Read it

C380_flexbox

New flexbox guides on MDN

Rachel Andrew updated the existing Flexbox guides on MDN to reflect the core use cases.

Check it out

C380_html52

What’s New in HTML 5.2?

In this article, Ire Aderinokun summarizes what additions and removals there have been to the new HTML spec.

Read it

C380_pens

Top Pens of 2017 on CodePen

The most hearted demos on CodePen of 2017.

Check it out

C380_payment

Introducing Web Payments: Easier Online Purchases With The Payment Request API

Learn about the new, up-and-coming standards for Web Payments in this article by Peter O’Shaughnessy.

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C380_dot

Dotgrid

Dotgrid is a vector tool that works by adding control points and connecting them with different line-types. Read more about it here.

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C380_meltdown

The Spectre Attack and Critical CSS

An article on the recently disclosed security vulnerabilities and measures to take as a web developer.

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C380_webperformance

8 Web Performance Expert Insights for 2018

Some great insights for better performance from the experts in the field.

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C380_fireworks

Pixel Fireworks

A fun demo of pixel fireworks by Jon Kantner.

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C380_checklist

Awesome Checklist Checklist

The mother of all checklists. Curated by Yingjie Hu.

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C380_JSFrameworks

The State of JavaScript Frameworks, 2017

The first part in a series that sheds light on the state of JS frameworks.

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C380_counters

Counters and Stones

An interesting CSS only solution to a peculiar problem. By Roman Komarov.

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C380_icons

Web & Mobile Icons Bundle

A great set of 40 UI icons in all major formats. Free for a subscription.

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Docusaurus

In case you missed it: Docusaurus is a project for easily building, deploying, and maintaining open source project websites.

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C380_structures

Recursive Data Structures and Lazy Evaluation

Roman Liutikov explores recursive data structures and how they work together with lazy evaluation.

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Free Font: ft anima

A refreshing sans serif including Cyrillic characters designed by Igor Kosinsky.

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Eel

A Python library for making Electron-like offline HTML/JS GUI apps. By Chris Knott.

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C380_ML

30 Amazing Machine Learning Projects for the Past Year

View Mybridge’s top 30 picks from nearly 8,800 open source Machine Learning projects.

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Free Font: Moncr

A very creative monospace typeface designed by Damiano Cenderelli.

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iPhone X Mockups

8 iPhone X mockups for Sketch and Adobe Photoshop with super high resolution.

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Influence Numerals

A free numeral typeface with beautiful number designs made by Katie Wasserman.

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Collective #380 was written by Pedro Botelho and published on Codrops.

5 Apps to Monitor Data Usage on Your Smartphone – Best Of

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/mobile-apps-to-monitor-data-usage-smartphone/

It’s always a good idea to keep track of your mobile data usage so you can avoid exceeding your data usage quota. Among the two main mobile operating systems, Android natively provides you an…

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Marketing Design Elements Every eCommerce Website Needs

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/iNdPCjv0g0E/

When you’re setting up your own online shop, in all your worrying over the site itself, you may forget one very crucial step: marketing. You don’t need a team for DIY marketing; get on social media, start blogging, and snatch up those free ad credits from hosting providers.

But even more important than advertising is its appearance. A distinguishable logo, visually appealing marketing content, and beautiful website will set you apart in the eCommerce world. Luckily, you don’t have to be a seasoned artist to create decent designs. Get a grasp on the basics, and you’re already on your way.

The Importance of Graphic Design

Graphic design is easy to pick up though difficult to master. But when marketing an eCommerce site, or any sort of website, good composition is key. Your website, advertisements, and even the pictures you post on social media must have an appealing and original appearance, or viewers will quickly click away.

Theme

The first thing to consider is what theme you’re after. Minimalistic? Retro? Modern? Artistic? What you’re selling can play a big role here. A store that sells games or computer parts may want a futuristic, dark, or shiny theme to complement the products.

If you already have a website with a solid theme, you can use the same or a similar design and color palette.
Chose a theme that’s linked to your products, your company, or your website’s look.

Strive for originality above all else. What makes your website, ad, or email different from everyone else’s?

The minimally designed Depot WooCommerce Theme

Placement

Graphic design is not so much about art and imagery as the way the picture is put together. Placing pieces correctly and using proper spacing is essential.

Sketch or use an image editing program to plot out each element’s placement. You don’t need to worry about alignment and symmetry yet. Just see how it looks on paper.
Look at how the pieces make up the whole. Squint your eyes to see if its looks appealing without all the details.
Use placeholder text and pictures until you have a good idea of what the final product will look like.
If you’re uncomfortable starting from scratch, don’t be ashamed to use a template.

At the very least, you should study what others have done, whether you’re tweaking a website, creating an advertisement, or writing a blog post. The single rule of art: always use reference images!

Perfectly positioned elements: Grana.cc

Lines and Shapes

Despite how simple they seem, basic lines and shapes can be put to great use in a picture. A straightforward design is often better than an overly complex one.

Lines can separate or link content, or surround and highlight important parts of the image.
Simple shapes draw the eye. Combining different types can make a dynamic and appealing picture.
The strong imagery provided by bold and distinguishable shapes sticks in potential customers’ minds.

Color

Color is one of the most essential aspects of design. Your choice of hues can create a treat for the eyes or a lurid mess. What makes a “good” color palette is debatable, but there are a few rules to remember.

Don’t use too many colors. 2-4 is ideal.
Contrast is eye-grabbing and great for adverts, but can be garish and displeasing.
Analogous colors are more harmonious, but can appear dull without contrast.
Consider the mood of the image. Are you trying to rouse excitement? A flaming red will surely draw attention. Or are you more of a chill sort of business? Gentle blues, greens, and whites are perfect. If you sell cute products like toys, pastel may be proper.
If you’re unsure, the safest bet is to borrow your website’s color scheme.

Typography

Arguably the most important in graphic design, typography is itself an art. Finding the right font, color, and placement is necessary if you want people to pay attention to what the words say.

Use different font sizes for different types of text (header, body text, buttons), but stay consistent between them.
Pick 1-3 fonts, and no more. Small images such as banners look best with one or two.
Don’t overuse stylistic or cursive fonts.
Make sure the text is legible. Use a contrasting color so that text pops and is easy to read.

Be mindful of the content as well. Get to the point quickly. Use short words and sentences. Include a call to action that encourages people to “click here” or “call now”.

Simplicity

In graphic design, it’s generally better to go for a more simple style. It’s easier and often looks better.

Don’t cram all free space with giant text, random stock images, and other clutter.
White space is a blessing; it draws attention towards the visual elements and causes less eyestrain.
Make use of basic shapes before complex images.

In general: Use as little fonts, colors, and graphics as you can. Pick a few fonts, a small palette, and a handful of images. It’s better your creation be called “plain” than “ugly”.

How to Use Design In Marketing

Now that you know the basics, how and when to apply them? Marketing isn’t all ads and email campaigns — it begins with your site, and everything you post online.

Logo and Site Design

If you haven’t begun your eCommerce website yet, these basics of design will serve you well. Usability and simplicity should be your main goal. If no one can find your shop in the clutter, you’re losing money. Instead, go with something that’s easy to navigate and isn’t an eyesore.

Using an eCommerce platform like BigCommerce may be the solution. Your website is the most significant part of your marketing strategy — what’s the use of advertising if your website isn’t up to par?

An eCommerce package has vital features like a drag-and-drop builder, a CMS with analytics and inventory management, and upselling tools. Even if you’re proficient in web development, including these can be difficult. With an eCommerce program, it’s seamless.

As for your logo, bright colors and simple shapes will be the best way to something memorable. Three colors is perfect, and some of the most recognizable logos are one color and even one or two shapes.

Don’t forget about your company blog. Posts shouldn’t just be a block of text! Use images and clever typography to create a more beautiful blog.

Advertisements

When it comes to adverts, resist the urge to make something that’s overly bright or flashing. No one likes seeing one of those pop up, and you’ll only get blacklisted.

Instead, create something simple that stands out from a typical webpage but still draws the eye. Incorporate small animations to further pull attention, without disrupting or annoying viewers.

Email Marketing

Emails may be made primarily of words, but that’s no excuse to ignore how it looks. The layout of text and images is the difference between a successful email campaign and ending up in the trash folder. Always use pictures; plain-text emails are visually boring.

Consider using a service like MailChimp to create more pleasing layouts for your mail. Sites like this contain templates you can customize and drag images into easily.

Social Media

Even on Twitter, graphic design plays a part. An account filled with nothing but links and text posts is no fun! You’ll get more followers if your social media is interesting and full of variety.

While this falls more under image and video editing, similar principles with color palettes and typography still apply.

Create Something That Stands Out

With knowledge of design and how to apply it, you should be able to launch a successful and beautiful marketing campaign. Just remember: simplicity, strong colors and shapes, clear theme, and good typography. Eye-catching, but not distracting.

Keep these guidelines in mind, and you’ll be effortlessly creating beautiful websites, eye-catching ad banners, and wonderfully laid out blog posts and emails. And you didn’t even have to hire an artist!


Dwelling On The Past: The Importance Of Self Reflection (Part 2)

Original Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/01/importance-self-reflection-part-2/

Current and aspiring web professionals must continually grow in order to stay relevant. Our field doesn’t allow for stagnation. In part one of this series, I discussed the importance of project retrospectives in facilitating and documenting team growth. We don’t always have the luxury of engaging in team retrospectives, or even of working on teams. Personal reflection provides similar benefits, while focusing on your individual experiences.
Personal reflection enables us to process and make meaning of all of the great (and not so great) learning and working experiences we’ve had.

Archer Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom Haugomat

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abduzeedo/~3/XX7hTvWP9YM/archer-farms-coffee-packaging-illustration-tom-haugomat

Archer Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom Haugomat

Archer Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom Haugomat

AoiroStudio
Jan 05, 2018

Staying in the layers of projects related to packaging, we are featuring this lovely series of illustrations for Target’s renowned Archer Farms Coffee by Collins. Designed by Paris-based illustrator and art director Tom Haugomat from Messieurs Dame. Working mainly in illustration, animation and painting; you should definitely follow his Behance for the latest work. I would also add that the graphic design was done by Jules Tardy and Flora Chan, all the skillsets together for a beautiful and easy to ready packaging design.

More Links
Learn more about Tom Haugomat via his Tumblr
Follow Tom’s work on Behance
Packaging Illustration
Archer Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom HaugomatArcher Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom HaugomatArcher Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom HaugomatArcher Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom HaugomatArcher Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom HaugomatArcher Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom HaugomatArcher Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom HaugomatArcher Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom HaugomatArcher Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom HaugomatArcher Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom HaugomatArcher Farms Coffee Packaging Illustration by Tom Haugomat

 

illustration
illustrations
digital art


10 Surprising Ways Chatbots Are Revolutionizing Ecommerce

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/01/10-surprising-ways-chatbots-are-revolutionizing-ecommerce/

From simply ordering food to booking appointments, hiring services, and or even making bids, customers use online shopping as a friendly, and efficient way to shop.

Establishing an online store as unique in its niche is essential for staying ahead of competitors. As the number of consumers increases on a daily basis, online stores have started deploying chatbots to engage customers. Here are 10 ways chatbots can be used to meet the needs of customers, and store owners, some of which may surprise you…

1. Gathering Customer Data

Chatbots are steadily becoming a major source for gathering data. They manage this because they gather far more customer data than any other form of analytics. Nuances in speech, response times, even typing accuracy can be mined as big data sets to understand users.

More importantly, rather that being generalized data, the information gathered is niche specific, and so far more valuable to a site’s owners.

2. Streamlined Store Management

Chatbots can be easily integrated within an online store which allows tasking of multiple operations from a single control point, be it a window or the dashboard. Rather than focusing on developing an application, stores can optimize their services since no application is required for users to gain access to facilities.

3. Greater Outreach

While mainstream marketing strategies provide a significant degree of success, chatbots bring an untapped potential for higher outreach on ecommerce stores. Through them, specific target groups can be catered uniquely, allowing each potential lead to be dealt according to their preferences.

Customers are not only more inclined to complete their purchases but are also willing to buy additional items recommended by chatbots.

4. Boosting Leads

Chatbots can be integrated into existing marketing strategies aimed at enhancing lead generation. They can be optimized with relevant responses depending on user choices, which guide them towards products and services either through manual search or interest.

If a chatbot detects a predefined pattern in customer navigation, it automatically sends related products and services offered by the seller or an affiliate to improve browsing. Moreover, it increases the chances that the customer will purchase additional items, leading to higher conversion rate.

Because the responses of chatbots can be programmed to be selective in nature depending on customer choices, data and behavior, it effectively reduces the chances of inadvertently spamming customers, yielding greater acceptance from the buyer.

5. Increasing Revenue Through Cross-Selling and Up-Selling

As the code is designed to review customer preferences and purchase history, chatbots can identify items which are related and recommend by shoppers. Often, customers are searching for complimentary products, and chatbots scale the analytics to suggest similar items.

While users keep browsing on various pages of the store, the data is being collected in the background for chatbots to assist leads into conversion.

6. Personalized Engagement

The AI behind chatbots is programmed to mimic human interaction and can respond to user behavior with the same information and pattern as a sales representative would. Because they have access to greater reserves of data, these tools can generate faster and more precise recommendations based on user profile. This allows chatbots to engage customers in real time on a personal level.

7. Managing Sales Services

Chatbots can handle complex customer queries, allowing them to become an integral part of sales and support. As an Interactive agent, chatbots function as an artificial conversational entity to initiate a textual or auditory dialogue with a customer who needs help regarding products and services.

By stimulating a human presence, customers are inclined to converse and get the information they need without any intermediate delay.

8. Reducing Human Resources

Chatbots not only augment the sales funnel but also help by sealing financial leakages to strengthen the revenue curve. While online stores are an ideal solution to unburden businesses from recruitment overheads, chatbots function by further reducing hiring cost by supplying all the abilities of many dedicated resources combined.

These tools can monitor store’s live interactions, queries, tracking, and analytics without the need of a single human resource.

However, this does not mean they are entirely self-sustaining modules. To ensure maximum performance is delivered, these tools require maintenance and testing on a periodic basis by qualified professionals.

9. Availability

Many online stores target global audiences located in different time zones. To ensure seamless user experiences, it is imperative for sales services to remain functional at all times; if a potential lead is unable to receive help and support during a query, it is more than likely that an abandonment will follow as a consequence.

Chatbots can function consistently by relaying information simultaneously, catering to all types and category of audiences. Deploying them for sales support guarantees your customers have a reliable channel for resolving queries at their disposal.

10. Gathering Customer Feedback

Customers are among the most valuable sources for gathering information when optimizing websites and its elements. In case the webpage is receiving traffic but is unable to convert leads, chatbots can be set to conduct surveys regarding what they seek in an online store to revise the store elements accordingly.

Chatbots and Ecommerce

As technology introduces new online solutions to customers and merchants, ecommerce stores have transitioned from static shopping platforms into evolved machines that not only enhance their business but also provide an improved user experience for customers.

Auto-interaction tools such as Chatbots provide an excellent list of compelling features that can be integrated into online stores to passively modify store management and ultimately win the increased revenues every online store hopes to achieve.

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