General
The more objects attract user’s attention, the harder it is to concentrate on the vital ones.
That quote pretty much sums-up design principles in general, doesn’t it?
UX Planet has some great advice about website header design, which by the way can also apply to email headers as well.
General
Everyone expects to see an image header at the top of an email or website. You can spark interest by breaking out of the boxy design. Take a look at these non-rectangular headers for some inspiration.
General
Animated GIFs for your Mac, the web and your iPhone. Personally, I can’t live without GIPHY!
Apple | Mac
ImageOptim optimizes images — so they take up less disk space and load faster — by finding best compression parameters and by removing unnecessary comments and color profiles. It handles PNG, JPEG and GIF animations. It’s excellent for publishing images on the web (easily shrinks images “Saved for Web” in Photoshop). Simply drag’n’drop images or folders into the window! You can also drop files on ImageOptim’s Dock icon.
I love the simplicity of ImageOptim, and it’s a free app.
General
With the recently-released Ticker on the newsfeed page and the yet-to-be-released Timeline update to your Profile page, people are barking at the moon that their status updates are now out there for the world to see; thus invading their privacy. Well uh, I hate to tell you this but, THEY ALWAYS WERE. And isn’t that the whole point of a SOCIAL network? Read more “Rant: Stop worrying about your privacy – you aren’t that important”
Apple | Mac
The Extensis Web Font Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop allows you to use WebINK fonts in the creation of website mock-ups in Photoshop. Extensis offers the WebINK service which allows you to easily use high-quality fonts on your website through their Suitcase Fusion font manager. The significance of this free plug-in is that you don’t have to already own or have installed the fonts during the design process.
Most of the Foundries available in the WebINK service have made their fonts available for use in the Photoshop plug-in, and more are being added. The fonts are available in an easy to use Photoshop panel after signing-in to the service right in the panel.
To use the free Web Font Plug-in, you need to download and install the Suitcase Fusion font manager demo, and set up a free WebINK account. If you already own Suitcase Fusion, you can simply update the app. If you don’t want to use the Suitcase Fusion app to manage your fonts, the plug-in will continue to work after the demo expires.
Apple | Mac
When Apple first released Mac OS X a decade ago, Mac users had little choice in web browsers. There was Microsoft Explorer, and Netscape Navigator, and… well, that was it. Soon after we were treated to a few more options, but nothing like we have today.
With Safari shipping on every Mac, and the world-wide popularity of Mozilla’s Firefox, you would think there wouldn’t be much room for competition in the web browser market. But the options have actually never been better for Mac users. Read more “Web browser choices have never been better for Mac users”
General
Microsoft has released a fairly extensive study of browser use on laptop computers and the effects on battery life. Not surprisingly, IE 9 comes out in the lead overall. As far as Mac browsers go, Firefox 4 takes the crown, followed by Chrome and Safari. Opera brings up the rear in the study.
I’m not sure about the usefulness of the information, as your use of the browser is only one aspect in terms of how long your MacBook’s battery lasts. And how many people use enough Watts of power just surfing the web? But the information provided is interesting nonetheless.
General
Resources
This past Monday I posted a link to a tutorial that would help you code your PSD mock-up into a fully functional HTML/CSS template. If you’re looking for a little PSD inspiration before coding, here’s a collection of 40 PSD web templates to get you started.
General
The average American spends more than 60 hours a month online, the equivalent of 30 straight days a year. I certainly hope at least one of those days per month is here at The Graphic Mac. Regardless, this infographic offers plenty of interesting information about how the world spends its time online. Not only is it great information, but the graphics are quite nice as well.