Designers spend hours carefully crafting every little detail in the design of their website, but the quality of their coding often comes up short. For proof, just look at the sites showcased in CSS galleries, 90% will have validation errors – Most of which are easy and simple fixes. Let’s look at some of the most common validation errors that appear time and time again, and how to correct them to really finish off your sites with high-quality code.
Articles
Using CSS Text-Shadow to Create Cool Text Effects
Learn how to use the CSS text-shadow to create cool text effects, by following this easy, step by step tutorial. Check it out and start learning!
The CSS3 text-shadow property has been around for some time now and is commonly used to recreate Photoshop’s Drop Shadow type shading to add subtle shadows which help add depth, dimension and to lift an element from the page. This isn’t all the text-shadow property is capable of though, by getting creative and playing around with the colours, offset and blurring we can create some clever and pretty cool text effects!
Post-Install Plugins to Enhance & Protect WordPress
WordPress is a fantastic, easy to install application that’s packed full of useful features. It’s all ready to rock straight out of the box, but there’s a few easy customisations you can make with a cocktail of plugins that will enhance the functionality as well as offer crucial protection. This is my collection of post-install plugins that I immediately add to every WordPress install I work on – There’s no fancy gallery plugins here, just back-to-basics additions to improve speed, SEO and security.
Super Cool CSS Flip Effect with Webkit Animation
There’s some seriously cool transform and animation effects available through the webkit engine that can really spice up the web experiences for users with the Safari browser. Here’s a quick look at how the rotateY property can produce a flip effect, and how it can be used to create a super cool Transformers themed top trumps design.
30 Web Design Blogs With Consistently Good Content
There’s a growing number of design blogs scattered around the web, each focusing on various aspects of design, such as web design, graphic design, web development, and even UX design. This collection of 30 web design blogs all have a primary focus on web design and web development, and each one consistently pumps out great content, whether it’s in the form of inspiration, discussion, theory or tutorials. If you’re looking for some scrumptious goodies to feed your creative inner geek, look no further than this feast!
10 Usability Crimes You Really Shouldn’t Commit
Over time certain conventions and best practices have been developed to help improve the general usability of websites during their design and build. This roundup of ten usability crimes highlights some of the most common mistakes or overlooked areas in web design and provides an alternative solution to help enhance the usability of your website.
15 Useful Resources to Get Clued Up on HTML5
HTML5 this, HTML5 that! There’s been plenty of HTML5 talk around the blogging world recently. It’s no longer a tiny spec on the horizon, it’s due to arrive soon! Some have already embraced it and are using it on their latest HTML5 sites. Want to join in on all the fun?
Check out this collection of some of the best resources from various blogs and websites in the industry. Each one gives an interesting insight into what’s in store with detailed write-ups, tutorials and handy cheat sheets to help you along your way.
Create Sidebars of Equal Height with Faux Columns
CSS can sometimes be a tricky business. There are times when even the simplest of layouts take some serious brainstorming! One of those frustrating times is when you want to create a series of columns of equal height, but the content in one column might be longer than the next. Here’s where the Faux Column technique steps in, let’s take a look at how this solution can make even the most complicated layout a breeze to code up.
10 HTML Tag Crimes You Really Shouldn’t Commit
You better watch out, because the HTML police are about. They scour your code and pick out the most unspeakable crimes against HTML markup. This handy list of ten HTML tag crimes sheds some light on some of the most common coding mistakes and helps provide an alternate solution. Tips include writing valid markup, making semantic choices, avoiding deprecated tags and more!
Web Design Trend Showcase: Horizontal Bands / Horizontal Layouts
The use of horizontal bands in website design has been a growing trend over the last few years with results of a fantastic looking website layout. Not only does the use of these horizontal strips provide specific containers for each page area, but it also spans right the way across the user’s monitor.
This is especially handy when taking into consideration those with an exceptionally large monitor, helping prevent the main site content being lost in a sea of flat color.
Check out this collection of excellent websites that use horizontal bands or horizontal layouts to feature their content, and follow through to a quick walkthrough of how to create the effect yourself.
