10 Fantastic Landing Page Themes & Templates

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/sF4hf-LDBGo/

A landing page is one of the most crucial components to a successful website. It makes a first impression with users and states your case for sticking around. In the age of short attention spans, you’d better put forth the effort to engage people.

In general, a well-designed landing page will feature:

A Compelling Call-To-Action (CTA)
Clear Content and Purpose
Visually Appealing Images
Attractive, Easy-To-Read Typography

While that may sound simple enough, it’s not always so easy to achieve. The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to start your next landing page project from scratch. There are a plethora of themes and templates that will provide you with a tremendous head start.

Here are 10 landing page themes and templates you can use to grab (and keep) a visitor’s attention:

All the Landing Page Templates You Could Ask For


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Appexo App Landing Page

Appexo App Landing Page is a clean, colorful and bold HTML 5 template to showcase your product or service. Based on Twitter Bootstrap 3.x and an 1170px grid layout, the template is also fully responsive. You’ll find six demo pages, smooth scrolling, animations, attractive pricing tables, a slideshow and carousel included.

Appexo App Landing Page

Pixel

Pixel is a beautiful and simple HTML 5 landing page template based on Bootstrap 3.x. It features attention-grabbing video backgrounds that can be sourced via HTML 5 video or YouTube.

The typography here also stands out as it is used to great effect. There are sections for everything you need, including pricing tables, blog posts and testimonials. Also included is a working AJAX contact form.

Pixel

Olli

Olli is a HTML 5 template that will place all eyes squarely on your product. Choose from four slightly different home page layouts and six color schemes. It’s colorful and built to take advantage of strong product photography.

A working order form is included to help drive sales. This Bootstrap 3.x template also includes parallax scrolling, three different product card layouts and integration with popular font and icon packages.

Olli

Minimal

Minimal is a HTML landing page template that is perfect for situations where you don’t need to publish a lot of content – at least not yet.  It’s really meant to serve as an attractive pre-launch or “coming soon” page.

However, it’s anything but bland. Inside, you’ll find the ability to utilize a full-width background image or video slider, along with a text-based slider. You can create something that looks exciting and helps to build anticipation for your upcoming launch.

Minimal

Holo

Holo is aimed at businesses that prefer a highly-functional single-page web presence. This HTML 5/Bootstrap template features powerful animated scrolling effects and lots of assorted jQuery goodies like progress bars, parallax scrolling and a filterable portfolio.

Both a light and dark template is included, along with the ability to easily customize colors. There’s also an AJAX contact form, clean pricing tables and a semi-transparent carousel.

Holo

Inbound

Inbound is a WordPress landing page theme that aims for versatility. Using the included page builder, you’ll be able to create just about any layout you’d like.

Also included is a banner system that enables you to add call-to-action areas to any part of your site. The theme includes 30+ custom widgets for things like pricing tables, Google Maps and image galleries.

Inbound

One

One is a WordPress theme based on Bootstrap 3.x. It comes with three design variations and includes integration with MailChimp to make collecting email addresses a cinch.

The look is quite clean with gorgeous typography and slick AJAX animations. Inside you’ll find a copy of Visual Composer to help with page layout, mega menus, a selection of custom Shortcodes and lots of popular page content sections to get you started.

One

Leadx

Leadx is a WordPress theme featuring seven demo layouts that span a variety of potential uses. Visual Composer and Slider Revolution are included for easy content and layout creation.

The theme is also compatible with top plugins like Gravity Forms and WooCommerce. Overall, the look is very modern and includes parallax scrolling, progress bars and attractive mega menus. There are also several ways to customize things on a per-page basis.

Leadx

Eventry

Eventry is a WordPress theme with a focus on event landing pages. Frankly, the landing page format is perfect for use with conferences and other corporate events. The theme sports four home page variations, along with 10 color schemes to help you get just the right look.

Other features include a countdown timer (perfect for creating pre-event hype), a handy responsive event schedule, a pre-registration form and the ability to get directions to the conference via Google Maps. It’s a beautiful and bold theme with lots of goodies tailored for event management.

Eventry

Conversi

Conversi is all about making those cold, hard conversions. The design of this WordPress theme makes great use of color to draw attention to important content. Included are copies of Visual Composer and Slider Revolution.

Beyond that, you’ll find lots of options to customize the CSS, colors, fonts and more. Other features include pricing tables, an image lightbox and a carousel. The theme is based on Bootstrap and provides two custom page layouts, along with six custom headers.

Conversi

A Smooth Landing

When it comes to landing pages, it’s never a bad idea to go with the tried and true. And that’s where the templates and themes above really shine. They provide you with the tools you need to create an effective page that will accomplish your goals.


Apple Watch Series 4 Screen Resolutions

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/apple-watch-series-4-screen-resolutions/

Apple just launched its series 4 watches that, like its predecessors, come in two different sizes. However, unlike series 1, 2 and 3 which come in 38mm and 42mm sizes, the series 4 comes in 40mm and…

Visit hongkiat.com for full content.

10 Creative Website Navigation Designs

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/7kht-mTDQ-M/

While most websites use similar navigation structures and placements, there are small proportions that break free of the traditional layouts. These websites often do so to present a unique design, while also to experiment with alternate and often improved solutions. Every website is different, and the one-size-fits-all approach can often be outdated – particularly for websites which are more visual or do not follow a traditional template-like structure.

In this article, we’ll take a look at ten of the most creative website navigation designs around in 2018.

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No Questions Asked

No Questions Asked

Opting to position their stacked navigation on the left, No Questions Asked’s website leaves the header section as clean as possible and introduces a slide-deck type layout.

Inflatable Regatta

Inflatable Regatta

The Inflatable Regatta website uses a full-width navigation with large, bold text links. It’s a simple solution which is easy to use, but one that is rarely implemented across the web design industry.

The Scenery

The Scenery

The Scenery uses the uppermost tier to position their logo and a primary CTA in the form of a contact button. The page navigation is positioned within the container and below this section. It makes for a neat and accessible navigation placement which is more closely tied to the content.

Stine Goya

Stine Goya

Stine Goya is another site to use the left-aligned vertical stack navigation. It opens up the header, allowing a large logotype, hero background, and inclusion of cart/checkout icons.

HelloSign

HelloSign

HelloSign’s blog uses a two-tier navigation design. The top tier includes search, categories and subscribe. The second tier allows for some quick-access topics. This makes it really easy for a user to filter results with little effort.

South Australia

South Australia

South Australia’s navigation is comprehensive in terms of content. There are over 30 individual items, which is why they have positioned them behind a menu link. The full-screen design is easy to use due to its spaciousness and separation of categories through color and a well-structured layout.

Bobby

Bobby

Bobby’s portfolio website splits the hero section into two halves. The left side includes six items: three navigation items at the top, and three link items at the bottom. Each is spread as far apart as possible for optimum visual separation and aesthetic effect.

Wade Jeffree

Wade Jeffree

Wade Jeffree has done away with a traditional navigation layout, instead opting for two emphatic links positioned at the foot of the main screen. They are clear and still manage to draw attention through their bold weight and underline decoration.

Newlyn

Newlyn

One of the most simple and effective navigations is by Newlyn. The hamburger icon expands to reveal a full-screen list of items. It’s incredibly spacious and in-keeping with the remainder of the website design.

Logistics Solutions

Logistics Solutions

Logistics Solutions implements some neat animation and transitional effects to expand the circular hamburger icon. It results in this eye-catching orange bubble which encompasses primary navigation items as well as company information, social links and contact details.


The Best Designers Are Taoists (Sort Of)

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/10/the-best-designers-are-taoists-sort-of/

Okay, for the love of any God you prefer, read this bit before you start writing comments…please? I’ve been studying up on philosophical Taoism lately because someone very near and dear to me is a (philosophical) Taoist, and I wanted to understand her better. What I’ve found is that web and UX designers have, by studying the data, come to a lot of the same conclusions as ancient Eastern philosophers.

While the lessons in this article may not be new to most of you, I thought it would be interesting to see how the principles of good design match up with Lao Tzu’s1 principles for good living. The world’s top designers are not, to my knowledge, actual Taoists. Neither am I evangelizing for Taoism. For one, I do not consider myself to be a Taoist, and secondly, evangelism as we know it is largely anathema to the ones I’ve met.

Thirdly, the practitioners of philosophical Taoism I’ve met will get a little annoyed if you call it a religion. Philosophical Taoism is just that: a philosophy, and many people adopt the philosophy alongside any religion they might already have.2

But without getting further into that3, here’s what I’ve found.

1. Don’t Struggle

“Struggle” as a concept, is unavoidable. We struggle so we can eat. But Taoist philosophy says that we should not struggle more than we have to. Take a lioness, for example: she may struggle to hunt down enough food for her cubs and her pride, but she does not struggle to be a lion. That part is instinctual, and she revels in it.

We humans, and designers/developers in particular, are very good at overcomplicating things for ourselves. We struggle not just to design and improve at our jobs, but we often struggle in ways that simply aren’t necessary. If you need examples, I’m just going to refer you back to Zeldman’s article: The Cult of the Complex. Smart designers keep it simple.

Another way good designers embrace this principle is in our love of workarounds and adaptability. While Bruce Lee himself was apparently non-religious, that whole “be like water, my friend” speech is actually one of the most important metaphors in the Tao te Ching. Water doesn’t struggle against obstacles, it goes around them. Nowadays, that sort of adaptability is basically a requirement for getting hired onto any studio or team that know what they’re doing.

2. Don’t Meddle

The Tao te Ching was, like many early self help books—I’m kidding—intended to be read by people in positions of leadership. Much of the advice is geared toward teaching local leaders—referred to in the book as “sages”—how to lead people, and more importantly, how not to. Most of the verses regarding this topic advise the sage against meddling too much in the affairs of their people.

Good designers would advise the same. Give your users a clear and easy path to the end goal, and then let them do their thing. Attempting to meddle with the way people browse will usually just annoy the hell out of them. Think of scroll jacking, modal pop-ups, the old pop-ups, obscure and unnecessarily creative navigation, and that sort of thing.

3. Be Slow to Judge

I know, Jesus said that, too. But the Tao te Ching takes the concept a bit further in suggesting that we should refrain from calling anything, anyone, or any circumstance good or bad until things have truly had a chance to play out. That is, don’t pass judgement until all the data is in4.

Designers these days are increasingly coming to rely on this same principle to inform their work. It’s one thing to “feel” like a big blue button would be better than a small green one, or vice versa. It’s another to know without a doubt that one is working better than another. While A/B testing is not always the best way to make design decisions, the importance of actually following the data to its conclusion cannot be understated.

4. Show, Don’t Tell

Taoists might make good designers, but they’re terrible marketers. I’m kidding again. It’s just that the Taoists I’ve encountered so far place far more importance on showing, rather than telling. Evangelism, as I’ve said, is not something they do. They believe that the only way to truly convince another to follow the Tao is to do it themselves, and let others observe the benefits.

Design is inherently visual, so this comes rather naturally to most of us. Good designers embrace this principle at every level with marketing, tutorials, or app walkthroughs, and of course, with the actual images in our content. After all, seeing is believing. A picture is worth a blah blah blah. We know this one.

5. Do No Harm

Correlating with that “Don’t Struggle” bit, philosophical Taoism encourages people to be themselves, to live how they want, and do what they feel is right, with just one very important caveat: don’t hurt anybody else. Violence is a last resort for self defense, and infringing on the freedom of others is anathema.

What we designers have discovered is that bad designers—the ones using dark patterns, trying to abuse SEO, and injecting two hundred trackers and a Bitcoin miner through ads—make the Internet worse for everyone. As the ecosystem of the Internet tries to defend itself, the bad actors find their gains are short-lived, sites find themselves struggling to make any kind of ad revenue, and the reputation of the whole industry is tarnished.

6. Contribute With no Expectation of Reward

Conversely, Taoism teaches that when we do good, we should do it without expectation of thanks, or reward. People who do this are often (though I’d say not always) given that recognition, and greater access to the community’s resources. Meanwhile, people that do good for recognition are usually found out, and fade into obscurity.

We’ve found this out in our community: the names we recognize in the design world are most often those of people who made our lives as designers easier. The people who wrote tutorials, ran educational podcasts, made videos, and did it all for free. Eventually, many of them did get recognition, and money, and invaluable contacts in the industry, but they had to put in a lot of thankless work first. People like me are design writers. They are design heroes.

 

1 Lao Tzu is the reputed author of the original Tao te Ching: a collection of 81 verses that outline principles for good living and leadership.

2 There is a branch of Taoism that is steeped in a fair amount of mysticism and incense which makes it look, sound, and smell like religion, but even these practitioners may tell you it’s not one. And then there’s another branch that is rather religious, with various gods and so on. There are lots of branches, and it gets complicated.

3 Wikipedia is your friend. Heck, I started my study with Dudeism, a form of Taoism that uses the movie The Big Lebowski as the source of all its symbolism.

4 There is a famous Taoist parable which illustrates this type of indifference and its utility: A farmer has only one horse. When the horse runs away his neighbors say “What bad luck!” The farmer merely says, “Is it?” Days later, the horse returns and brings with it a beautiful wild stallion. His neighbors say “What good luck!” The farmer replies, “Is it?” Enchanted by the new horse, the farmer’s son tries to ride it, but is thrown and badly injured. The neighbors say “What bad luck!” To which the farmer shrugs, “Is it?” Not long afterwards the country is under threat and every able young man is conscripted into the military, but the son cannot go because of his injuries. “What good luck!” the neighbors say. The farmer again only says, “Is it?”

– Benjamin, Oliver. The Tao Te Ching: Annotated Edition (pp. 75-76). Abide University Press. Kindle Edition.

 

Featured image via DepositPhotos.

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How to Deploy to Alibaba Cloud ECS with Mina

Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/how-to-deploy-to-alibaba-cloud-ecs-with-mina/

This article was created in partnership with Alibaba Cloud. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.

Do you have a tip for making the most out of Alibaba Cloud Services? If so, tell us about it in our SitePoint Community.

Mina is a fast deployer and server automation tool, with advanced features and powerful extensibility. Learn how Mina can make your deployment process better, how to install it, how to extend it with plugins, and run through your first automated workflow. Then learn how to use Mina to migrate databases and websites, and set up even more advanced workflows with tools like WP CLI. We’ll be using Alibaba Cloud ECS for this tutorial.

To learn more about Mina, check out our article here.

The post How to Deploy to Alibaba Cloud ECS with Mina appeared first on SitePoint.

CSS Border-Radius Can Do That?

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/10/css-border-radius-can-do-that/

TL/DR: When you use eight values specifying border-radius in CSS, you can create organic looking shapes. WOW. No time to read it all ? — we made a visual tool for you. Find it here.

During this year’s Frontend Conference Zurich Rachel Andrew talked about Unlocking the Power of CSS Grid Layout. At the end of her talk, she mentioned something about an old CSS property that got stuck in my head:

The Image is set round just by using the well-supported border-radius. Don’t forget that old CSS still exists and is useful. You don’t need to use something fancy for every effect.

 — Rachel Andrew

Shortly after I heard this talk, I thought that you certainly could create more than just circles and started to dig deeper into what can be done using border-radius.

Mastering Border-Radius
Single Value

Let’s start with the basics. Hopefully this will not bore you. You are probably familiar with CSS, and you also know border-radius. It has been around for some years now, mostly used with a single value like this: border-radius: 1em and was maybe one of the most discussed/loved CSS3 features back in 2010 when css3please.com was your best friend.

Whenever you only use a single value, all corners are rounded by this value:

As you can see in the example above, next to fixed length values like px, rem or em you can also use percentages. Those are mostly used to create a circle by setting border-radius to 50%. The percentage value is based on the width and height of the given element. So when you use it on a rectangle, you will no longer have symmetrical corners. Here’s an example showing the difference between border-radius: 110px and border-radius: 30% applied to a rectangle.

Notice that the corners on the right side are not symmetrical and keep that in mind. We’ll come back to this later.

Four Different Values

When you use more than one value, you start setting values for each corner, beginning in the top left corner and then moving clockwise. Again you can also use percentages, and you could also mix percentages with fixed-length values.

Eight Values Separated by a Slash (This is Where it Gets Interesting)

I think most of you have already done everything I explained above. Now we get to the exciting part. What happens, if you separate values with a slash and specify up to eight values? Let’s see, what the spec says about that:

If values are given before and after the slash, then the values before the slash set the horizontal radius and the values after the slash set the vertical radius. If there is no slash, then the values set both radii equally.

— W3C

So, values before the slash are responsible for horizontal distances whereas values after the slash define the vertical lengths. But what does that mean? Remember percentage values on rectangular shapes? We had different absolute values for vertical and horizontal distances and asymmetrically rounded corners, and that is precisely what you get when you use the slash syntax.

So when you compare border-radius: 4em 8em to border-radius: 4em / 8em the results are quite different.

The symmetrical corners on the left form quarter of a circle, whereas the asymmetrical corners on the right are part of an ellipsis.

The shapes that you get with this look a little odd, to be honest. But remember the circles you create with border-radius: 50%. You get a circle because both values defining one side add up to 100% (50% + 50% = 100%) and there is no straight line left, that reminds you of the original square. If you apply the same logic to the full eight value border-radius syntax, you can create a shape that looks a little like a plectrum or an organic cell:

In the end it is four overlapping ellipses that build the final shape. Easy ha!

Don’t Panic…We Made a Visual Generator for You

It took me some time to get used to this syntax. Somehow it is not that intuitive. To make things a little easier for you, we built a little tool, that helps you create your very own organic shape.

Do(n’t) Cross The Streams

Now that you know about the 8 values in total, you might feel a little sad, because our border-radius-tool doesn’t give you the option to set each value separately…Sit tight, here is the 8-POINT-FULL-CONTROL version.

If you’re old enough, you might remember this quote from the 1984 Ghostbusters movie:

“Don’t Cross The Streams.” — “Why?” — “It would be bad.”

There is something similar going on here: If you cross the handles on one side, the shape behaves…let’s say unpredictably. But see for yourself, after all, it’s not going to end up in total protonic reversal or something, but don’t say, that I didn’t warn you.

PS. Many Thanks to simurai. Back in 2010, he created some CSS3 BonBon Buttons. Even though they look a little outdated, it is the only place I ever encountered and learned about the slash syntax.

See This Cool Feature in Action

Photos by gratisography.com

See the Pen border-radius by Nils (@enbee81) on CodePen.

 

This article was originally published on Medium, reposted with the author’s permission.

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5 things you didn't know about Photoshop for iPad

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/9j_ApZKCL1Y/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-photoshop-for-ipad

It’s fair to say Adobe really has pulled some impressive updates out the bag for Adobe MAX 2018. But, without a doubt, the biggest buzz came on Monday when Adobe chief product manager Scott Belsky introduced Photoshop for iPad. A 15,000-strong crowd went wild as Belsky handed over to product project manager Jenny Lyell, who demonstrated some of the app's capabilities, stating: "This is not a watered down version, this is full Photoshop on the iPad."

Sign up for Adobe CC now

However, despite the impressive demo, getting any further information about the app, in terms of price and release date, was like getting blood out of a stone. Adobe is keeping a lot of information about Photoshop for iPad close to its chest, but we managed to get a few minutes with Lyell, who gave us a little more insight into this tablet-version of Photoshop…

01. It's taken almost three years to make

Approximately three years in the making, Photoshop for iPad came about after two engineers realised user demand via constant online searches for the term Photoshop for iPad. They decided their next challenge would be to see if it was actually possible to get the 28-year-old code base of Photoshop onto a tablet. For years, Adobe had tried it with other apps, including Sketch and other drawing apps, but these didn’t have the code base of Photoshop. So that was the dream, that was the challenge. 

"The code base for Photoshop is 28 years old, it’s a mammoth," says Lyell. "So how do you even comprehend that?"

But a small team at Adobe believed it was possible, and so chatted with their leaders in engineering and product, who gave them the blessing to go work on the project. The project was to be kept quiet in the early stages. "Some people were extremely skeptical in the company and weren’t sure we should be investing in this," says Lyell. Bet those guys feel silly now, huh?

02. The alpha build had just five features

As the technical aspects were going on with the development of Photoshop for iPad, Lyell was busy talking to customers, asking them questions like 'why do you actually want it on iPad? What does it help you with, what problem are/will you be solving with this software?'

"So much of the product roadmap is influenced by our customers," says Lyell. "Once we saw the life of this happening, we knew that we wanted to preview and announce it. But I didn’t want us to get away from the customers, and so we recruited this small group of people to work on the alpha build. 

"At this point there were literally only five features in there. We set their expectations, telling them it would be like using Photoshop 1.0, but that we wanted them to run with us, from the beginning, and give us as much feedback as possible so we could make sure that even at the preview stage, the product we were creating was what the users wanted. Diverting from customers' needs, even just slightly early on, could have had huge ramifications. Customers have to be by our side."

03. It can handle hundreds (if not thousands) of layers

Jenny Lyell demonstrating Photoshop for iPad

At a private Apple event, Photoshop for iPad product lead Jenny Lyell delved a little deeper into the app’s capabilities

As the Adobe design team collected hours and hours of one-on-one interviews, trying to understand user needs, there was a breakthrough moment in the timeline when they got large PSD to open on the iPad. "The whole team was in tears, freaking out," Lyell says. “This is impossible, we thought. But we’d seen it with our own eyes!"

So what constitutes a large PSD? "It was hundreds of layers that we got to open," says Lyell. With the same code base as Photoshop on desktop, Photoshop on iPad will open up any size PSD file. When asked if this would present any technical limitations, Lyell told us: "It would affect it just as a massive document on any machine would. So having the biggest single file on your mac would slow you down a few seconds vs a smaller one. Photoshop for iPad will work in a similar way, but we've optimised it a lot in terms of performance and we didn’t want to bring this out until we knew the hardware and software was ready."

04. It won't necessarily feature all your PS favourites 

If you're expecting to see the full toolset in this app, you'll be disappointed. Instead, the company has armed it with all the core tools users need to do real work in Photoshop. "Photoshop has a dozen different ways you can select an object – the 1.0 functionality is still in the code base!" says Lyell. "So we’re really rethinking how to give users all the core tools they need to do all the work they need, and give them the modern, best version of these tools so that they don’t have to feel any frustrations or inefficiencies."

05. It will feature Adobe's new AI technology

Part of the update to Photoshop CC this year includes a new Adobe Sensei selection tool. When asked if Photoshop for iPad will include this, Lyell was quick to confirm. "We definitely want to get the newest Sensei technology in there, so it’s prioritised on the roadmap," she says. 

Support and pricing

Adobe is pretty elusive about release dates and pricing models for Photoshop for iPad. When asked about when creatives can actually get their hands on the app (and trust us, we were persistent), we weren't even able to get a rough estimate as to when this is expected to ship. 

"It will be available in 2019, and we're still working out the business model in terms of pricing," Lyell said. We also asked whether it will be part of the CC suite or if Adobe is going to offer this as a standalone product and were told "we’re having conversations about that right now". 

Android users, we didn't forget about you either. When asked if this will be an iPad-only app, Lyell replied with: "Our plan is to extend to as many devices as we can right now. We still trying to sort out what's the best experience, and so are testing the different versions to see what’s optimised and what’s best for performance. We don’t want people having a poor experience, so that information will also come out during the launch." 

For what will almost certainly be a highly sought-after product, it’s a little frustrating to have no details as to when we can realistically expect this to ship to the masses. That said, 2019 is just around the corner, so let's hope it's sooner rather than later. 

Read more:

Adobe launches video app Premiere Rush CC13 iPad Pro apps that come alive with Apple PencilProject Gemini: Adobe announces new digital art app

Live Accessibility And Performance Audits At SmashingConf Toronto

Original Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/10/smashingconf-toronto-a11y-performance-audits/

Live Accessibility And Performance Audits At SmashingConf Toronto

Live Accessibility And Performance Audits At SmashingConf Toronto

Markus Seyfferth

2018-10-17T13:20:35+02:00
2018-10-17T14:10:37+00:00

Earlier this year, many of your favorite speakers were featured at SmashingConf Toronto, however, things were quite different this time. The speakers had been asked to present without slides. It was interesting to see the different ways our speakers approached the challenge.

Two of our speakers chose to demonstrate how they audit a site or application live on stage: Marcy Sutton on accessibility, and Tim Kadlec on performance. Watch the videos to see an expert perform these audits, and see if there is anything you can take back to your own testing processes.

To watch all of the videos recorded in Toronto, head on over to our SmashingConf Vimeo channel.

Accessibility: Marcy Sutton

Marcy took two example components, built using React, and walked us through how these components could be made more accessible with some straightforward changes.

Performance: Tim Kadlec

Tim demonstrates how to test the performance of a site, and find bottlenecks leading to poor experiences for visitors. If you have ever wondered how to get started testing for performance, this is a talk you will find incredibly useful.

Enjoyed watching these talks? There are many more videos from SmashingConf Toronto on Vimeo. We’re also getting ready for SmashingConf New York next week — see you there? 😉

Smashing Editorial
(ra, il)

Develop WordPress Themes Faster with Gulp

Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/fast-gulp-wordpress-theme-development-workflow/

faster development

This article is part of a series created in partnership with SiteGround. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.

WordPress’ simple theme development is partly responsible for its success. A developer with front-end and PHP knowledge can consult the excellent Codex and get started on their next masterpiece.

Theme development is possible with just a text editor and graphics package, but modern toolsets can revolutionize your workflow. In this tutorial we’ll use Gulp to run tasks including:

copying newer PHP theme files
optimizing images
compiling Sass SCSS files into a single, minified CSS file
merging ordered JavaScript files, remove debugging statements and minifying
automatically refreshing the browser when files are updated.

What is Gulp?

Gulp is a JavaScript-based build system which takes your source files and transforms them into optimized versions. If you’re new to Gulp, please refer to An Introduction to Gulp.js for full installation and usage instructions. A summary of the initial steps:

The post Develop WordPress Themes Faster with Gulp appeared first on SitePoint.

Tackle type transgressions with these tip-top tickets

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/dAzA544bs6k/tackle-type-transgressions-with-these-tip-top-tickets

Learning the rules of typography can be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because hey, you can do good typography with thoughtful font pairings and everything!

6 embarrassing examples of bad kerning

And a curse, because as soon as you've digested a few typography tutorials you'll immediately start to spot all the appalling typography that's out there, befouling the world with its terrible kerning, stretched type and Comic Sans.

Even worse, the police just don't want to know about it. But now you can take matters into your own hands with the Uniform Ticket Book, from Hoefler&Co's 100 per cent totally real Typographic Violations Division.

Uniform Ticket Book

Stamp out crimes against typography!

Billed as standard equipment for the modern design enforcer, the Uniform Ticket Book lists 32 common typographic infractions, from basic selection and composition violations such as poor typeface choice and improper word spacing, through to more serious crimes such as the use of artificial italics or mansplaining Font vs Typeface. Each infraction comes complete with appropriate penalties, and there's a useful Other section at the bottom for more exotic type transgressions.

Uniform Ticket Book

If you give ’em a good short sharp shock they won’t do it again

The Uniform Ticket Book is designed to provoke maximum anxiety with its searing orange print and ironic use of Helvetica, and it comes with 50 tickets that you could probably tear right through on a walk down the average high street on your lunch hour.

It's available now for just $10 from Hoefler&Co's Design Shop, where it's pointed out that the Uniform Ticket Book is for novelty use only; we're sure they're joking about that bit. Go out and get them, but hey, be careful out there.

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