Official Web Designer Blog

Are you ready to Photo Face-Off?

Steve Jenkins — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:06:39 +0000

All designers love a good photo and Photo Face-Off (www.photofaceoff.co.uk), the latest new online photograph comparison site from Imagine Publishing and DPhotographer.co.uk, is a great way to get a look at some top notch photography.
The site has been described as Pure genius and Highly addictive and a single visit will keep you coming back for more. The site utilises the 28,000+ photographs that have already been uploaded to sister site DPhotographer.co.uk, and randomly selects two shots to battle it out in a simple point & click competition to see which one wins the face-off. Developed for photographers by photographers, Photo Face-Off is accessible, fresh and full of inspirational images taken by amateurs and semi-pro photographers. Debbi Allen, Editor of Digital Photographer said, “Photo Face-Off is great fun and we’re keen to offer a better, more interactive and more exciting website, the team behind dphotographer.co.uk has been working hard to develop this cool new feature”. We love it, but be warned, this is far more addictive than you first think.

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We love Wordpress

Steve Jenkins — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:04:04 +0000

Wordpress is probably the most popular Content Management System on the web and not without good reason. Alongside its famous 5-minute install Wordpress provides plenty of power and flexibility for users. In fact we love the CMS so much we are set to run a tutorial on how to create your own Wordpress themes.
If any of you have created a Wordpress theme that you would love us and other readers to view add the URL so we can check it out. Some our favorites reside at www.welovewp.com a great resource for information and inspiration.

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Big on Ajax

Steve Jenkins — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:46:58 +0000

Asynchronous Javascript is a language we love, but we also know that not everyone understands the in and outs of the language. However, we don’t want our readers to miss out on interactive and dynamic elements in their page design. We know Dreamweaver contains some very flexible Spry widgets, but to add more power to the page outside help is needed. This is where MiniAjax (http://miniajax.com) comes riding to the rescue. This simple, straighforward site boasts a collection of code snippets such as an Ajax star rating bar, a visual click heatmap, bubble tooltips, Ajax poll scripts, a draggable content script and many more.

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Web Designer issue 147

Mark Billen — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:56:53 +0000

As the new issue is about to go on sale this Thursday (31st July), we give you a quick cover preview and a list of what to expect inside…

FEATURES:

Viral Marketing - The truth about Artificial Reality Games

Defending Your Designs - How to Protect Creative Assets

Behind the Scenes - Wieden & Kennedy talk Honda

TUTORIALS:

Liquid Layouts in Flash, capture still images from movies

Style Spry widgets with CSS

Design attractive page headers in Photoshop

Forge Flash-y folios with the new Acrobat 9

The new features of Dreamweaver CS4 beta revealed

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Reader Survey Update

Steve Jenkins — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:00:00 +0000

If you haven’t told us exactly what you want from Web Designer make sure you get along to our Reader Survey and let us know. The results so far seem to suggest that we are doing a good job, but there’s always room for improvement.
So far we’ve learnt that 90% of you are male, 60% of you are in long term employment. You most commonly use Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver and most of you would like to see some more HTML, CSS and Javascript in the mag. Sound like you? Why not add your own opinions on Web Designer magazine by clicking here and taking the survey.

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Flash, annoying, what do you think?

Steve Jenkins — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:57:04 +0000

Continuing our ‘10’ theme here is another list that demands your attention, The 10 most annoying programs on the Internet. Take a look at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=361, note that Java appears at #5, but more surprisingly Flash creeps in at #10. The accompanying comments aren’t too complimentary, but in truth are valid. In fact, if you are designing with Flash make sure you read this as it gives all the techniques you should be avoiding if you want a successful Flash web presence.

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The 10 Commandments of Web Design

Steve Jenkins — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:37:39 +0000

A recently commissioned report by BusinessWeek.com revealed the must follow rules that top online designers live by.
1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash.

2. Thou shalt not hide content.

3. Thou shalt not clutter.

4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections.

5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels.

6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography.

7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences.

8. Thou shalt be social.

9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies.

10. Thou shalt make content king.

Some great tips in there, but is this really the ultimate 10 rules for designers to live by. What do you think?

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Free Graphic Stuff

Steve Jenkins — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:30:14 +0000

We are always on the look out for good quality artwork, photos, vectors, images etc, and the recently released site Free Graphic Stuff (http://www.freegraphicstuff.com) provides a selection of quality graphics for free. Check it out.

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NEW FORUM POLLS - VOTE NOW!!

Steve Jenkins — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:38:24 +0000

Our latest Photoshop and Dreamweaver polls are ready and waiting for you. Get voting now, you know you want to. The results will be published in the next issue (148), on sale – 28 August 2008.

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Online Readers Survey goes live

Steve Jenkins — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:03:39 +0000

There is no doubt our readers are the lifeblood of the magazine and making sure you are getting what you want is extremely important to the team. To help us create an even better magazine, we have just put our latest readers’ survey online. Please take a minute to answer a few simple questions so we can find out what you think. Head to our homepage (www.webdesignermag.co.uk) and give the Online Readers Survey banner a click. Thanks and looking forward to hearing from you!

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