Twitter’s Bootstrap has taken off like a rocket since its release a year ago. The popular CSS framework supplies a responsive grid system, pre-styled components and JavaScript plugins to a parade of websites. One of Bootstrap’s appeals is that it just works. It’s a significant time-saver when starting a website, so much so that major organizations such as NBC, NASA and the White House are adopting it. And it empowers even the non-designers to turn out something decent.
Web apps can be split into two major components: a front-end that displays and collects information, and a back-end for storing the information. In this article, Lalith Polepeddi will demonstrate what a relational database is, and how to properly design your database to store your app’s information.
There are a lot of JavaScript libraries available, and most are really good at providing the traditional DOM-centric interactions that your typical websites need. But when it’s time to build a manageable code base for a single-page app, that’s where a whole suite of new frameworks come in to smooth things out.
A record number of shoppers are turning to their smartphones to research potential purchases. Meanwhile, the bigger question - are those same users willing to complete the purchases on their mobile device? - is quickly being answered. The US, for example, saw an 81% spike in mobile e-commerce (m-commerce) sales in 2012, comprising a $25 billion market.
Designing with users in mind is a tricky thing. Not only does it require of us a sound understanding of who our users are, but the actual act of translating what we know about them into a well-designed product is not always an obvious or easy path.
Responsive Web design has been evolving rapidly ever since Ethan Marcotte coined the term two years ago. Since then, techniques have emerged, become best practices and formed part of our ever-changing methodology. A few obvious examples are the multitude of responsive image techniques, conditional loading, and responsive design and server-side components (RESS), among many other existing and emerging strands stemming from the core concept of responsive Web design.
Hundreds of tools may be available for interaction designers, but there is still no industry standard for interaction design the way Photoshop and Illustrator are to graphic design. Popular programs are out there, but many of them have considerable drawbacks, which has led me to explore alternative apps.
Earlier this year, Jeremy Girard was in the beginning stages of a redesign for the company’s website. They had already been planning to use a straightforward responsive approach to Web design, which is their preferred solution for multi-device support. After hearing some frank discussions at An Event Apart conference in Boston about the limitations and challenges of responsive Web design, he realized that their solution needed a bit of adjustment.
Creating style guides is fast becoming common practice for web designers, especially when dealing with content heavy sites. With a website style guide, designers are able to set and maintain a look and feel by creating a set of rules which the design follows. The process becomes flexible, easily updateable and consistent. During this tutorial Aaron Lumsden is going to demonstrate how you can implement a style guide in your own site or project.
The previous article, Understanding the CSS Clip Property by Hugo Giraudel offers a great overview of the CSS clip property and the rect() function. Today Mary Lou wants to explore the practical side of it a little bit more. She is going to create a neat and simple effect for revealing some extra content and expanding a fullscreen overlay. She wants to show how to leverage the CSS clip property to make a smooth transition when clicking on a box element.