Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. It is a day to inspire awareness and appreciation for Earth’s natural environment. In this post I’m sharing a nice infographic which clearly mention entire world will be online till 2017, a single SPAM message produces 0.3 grams of CO2.

Did you remember first website launched in 1991 (or 20 years old). This infographic clearly shows tour of web design, starting with those humble beginnings and bringing you all the way up to the present day. Enjoy this infographic and share your views in comment section about how much change you see in web designing?

Many times designers face a very common problem in maintaining the crisp look and feel throughout the website, and if designer is a newbie and when he/she surf across the web and found slick magazine themes website and wondered a first question raised in his mind about how to achieve this? Our research says if not all but many of them are build on CSS Framework.

Why you should go for it?

Apart from that it helps you to cut down on your development time.It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing.
Suppose you are going to make a website and start writing HTML and CSS code for it and if you need to take care of typography which is very essential part of your project, maintaining margin and padding throughout the website, and one of the most critical part cross browser compatibility.

Advantages of using it:

What I really feels which improves our work a lot:

1. Uniformity and consistency in HTML element placement, thereby reducing CSS coding errors.
2. A CSS reset that eliminates the discrepancies across browsers.
3. A solid grid that can support the most complex of layouts.
4. Typography based on expert principles that predate the web.
5. Visual design cohesion between page elements.
6. Mostly eliminates the need to use nested HTML tables.
7. Reduced effort for producing slicker web page layouts, compared to coding the necessary CSS from scratch.
8. Tools, editors, and templates for every step in your workflow.
9. Cross Browser support, which is just a pain for every designer (though it brings best out of you).
10. They comes with documentation which helps you in getting started with it.

Though there are some disadvantages such as:

1.Redundant Code: CSS files contains lot of extra code which you never need, only if you are over concerned about each and every extra bit of your page, otherwise it doesn’t effect your site performance.
2.Lack of Freedom: Though every framework has it’s own structure, it leaves you to do things around that but this is some thing which brings best out of you.
3.Fixing someone’s else bug: Another painful thing, you have to fix someone’s else bug, as you can easily fix those bug if whole code is written by you from scratch.

YAML

“As you can see there are plenty of valid arguments either way. It really comes down to your personal workflow and preference. Let us know what you think of CSS frameworks and which ones you use.”
Personally I suggest Blueprint Framework as it is easy to deploy and helps you in learning basic CSS errors.

As we discuss about CSS Sprites (a very handful technique for web performance) in earlier post,here I am going to discuss about some useful basic CSS tips for beginners.Now a beginner who is going to design web interface found it easy to deal with CSS.It can be extract independently and provides flexibility to designer.

One should have a clear structure of design before starting with its CSS, if structure doesn’t match standard rules than you might face difficulty in cross browser compatibility and your css create different layout in various browsers.

1.Use <div> avoid< table>

As many beginners who starts working with css and html go for table based structure to achieve a coherent and consistent look.Using CSS and DIV tags reduces markup code, separates content from its visual presentation, speeds up page downloads, and brings your code closer to Web standards compliance–all while making your website more appealing to search engine spiders.
Tables generally increase the complexity of documents and make them more difficult to maintain. Also, they reduce a website’s flexibility in accommodating different media and design elements, and they limit a website’s functionality.
The div tag is a block-level element that defines a section within a document. Divs are thus suitable for building the structure of Web pages.With the use of CSS and DIV tags, we can achieve the effected layout, reduce our markup code noticeably, get faster page downloads, and separate content from its visual presentation.

2.Debugging tools for CSS
CSS bugs are difficult to find ,and when you have large css file and there are numbers pf css file including in layout than it become more difficult to sort out the problem,because you stuck between error and bug.Debugging tools provide easy tweak to handle with these typical conditons.

3.Role of <id>and<class>

ID and Class are two major selectors in css.
It is often hard to decide when to use a class versus an id for an element. Here is an easy way to think of the difference:

Use a class tag if:

1. The style is used in various places throughout the document.
2. The style is very general.

Use an id tag if:

1. The style is only used once ever in the document.
2. The style is specific to a certain area of the document.

Remember that an id can only appear once in any HTML document. Once you’ve used the id, it should not be used again on that page.
class vs id
4.Use Shorthand CSS

Shorthand properties can be used to set several properties at once, in a single declaration, instead of using a separate declaration for each individual property.

5.list with CSS

<ol>for an Ordered List (where the order of items is important, so items are numbered)
<ul> for an Unordered List (normally shown as items with bullets)
<li> for each item in a list, ordered or unordered.
You find that most pages on the web contain a menu of links in a navigation area. These are often marked up as a string of links, often in separate DIVs or paragraphs. Structurally, however, they are a list of links, and should be marked up as such.

6.Use measurelt tool for typography measurement: px vs em

Measurelt tool provides help in creating a pixel perfect design layout.This measurement gives an idea of how tall lowercase letters are and how large the bodies are of characters with ascenders and descenders.
measurement in css
htmlgoodies

7.Specify multiple fonts

font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
Defining font family is a good habbit for every css designers,as different platforms use different fonts.Each time you are not supposed to define same font again and again, instead of it would be a good prctice define it in a body,and if you want to use special font for specific display then define it seperately.

8.CSS reset sheet

Some tag has default value..for example in tag padding-left:40px; has default margin value. So it would again be a good practice to reset all these value to “zero” and set them as per need of design.

9. Always code for Firefox

This may seem a little weird because the majority of users use IE as a browser. However it is a lot easier to code for Firefox (or any other standards compliant browser) and then fix for IE using conditional statements such as…

10.Keep CSS Codes Clean

Whenever you start writing css always remember one thing that use minimum number of classes and div for your design,try to define similar property in one class and div.
If your CSS codes are messy, you are going to end up coding in confusion and having a hard time refereing the previous code. For starters, you can create proper indentation, comment them properly.

<ul><!–[if IE 6]>
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”/includes/css/clean/iefix.css” mce_href=”/includes/css/clean/iefix.css” type=”text/css” /><![endif]–></ul>

CSS sprites is a technique to combine unlimited number of images into one to improve the performance of your web page.Have you ever seen the CSS technique where the “on” and “off” states of a button are contained within the same image and are activated by shifting the background-position? Think of CSS Sprites as an extension of that technique.With millions of users Google,Yahoo!,MySpace,YouTube and AOL do everything they can to improve the user experience. As all of them use CSS sprites to save numerous HTTP requests for their intricate interfaces.

What does css sprites does…

Group multiple images together (usually icons or decorative images) into one sprite
Evenly space these images, aligned into one or more lines
Set this sprite to the background image of an element (usually a list)
Position the sprite to display the appropriate image by shifting the X or Y position by a multiple of the spacing
Enjoy the increased speed and reduced HTTP requests

Create your own CSS Sprite…
Step1-Create an image (or collect it from anywhere)using photshop,fireworks,gimp etc.. depends on your choice.

#nav li a.item1 {background-image:url('../img/image1.jpg')}
#nav li a:hover.item1 {background-image:url('../img/image1_over.jpg')}
#nav li a.item2 {background-image:url('../img/image2.jpg')}
#nav li a:hover.item2 {background-image:url('../img/image2_over.jpg')}
#nav li a.item3 {background-image:url('../img/image3.jpg')}
#nav li a:hover.item3 {background-image:url('../img/image3_over.jpg')}
#nav li a.item4 {background-image:url('../img/image4.jpg')}
#nav li a:hover.item4 {background-image:url('../img/image4_over.jpg')}
#nav li a.item5 {background-image:url('../img/image5.jpg')}
#nav li a:hover.item5 {background-image:url('../img/image5_over.jpg')}
As above image displays that img1,img1_over,img2,img2_over
it means that when background position changes image display changes
By using CSS Sprites we are able to lighten up this interface.We may use one single image instead of 6 images.We can combine them into one big image.Create a new image that is as wide as your widest image and and as tall as the combined height of all your images plus X pixels, where X is the number of images you have. Now place you images into this new image, left aligned, one on top of the other with one pixel of white space in between.
Now look at css after combining the images into one
#nav li a.item1 {background-position:0px 0px;}
#nav li a:hover.item1 {background-position:0px -72px;}
#nav li a.item2 {background-position:0px -143px;}
#nav li a:hover.item2 {background-position:0px -215px;}
#nav li a.item3 {background-position:0px -287px;}
#nav li a:hover.item3 {background-position:0px -359px;}
#nav li a.item4 {background-position:0px -431px;}
#nav li a:hover.item4 {background-position:0px -503px;}
#nav li a.item5 {background-position:0px -575px;}
#nav li a:hover.item5 {background-position:0px -647px;}

There is a single background-image applied to the anchor element itself, and the unique classes merely shift the background position with negative Y coordinates.

During this the HTTP Request time reduces and size of images reduces.This is done for only 6 images ,and if you are usimg it in your website then you will be able to find some dynamic changes.

CSS  Sprite Generator

What comes first in my mind,whenever I am thinking about creating a shadow text,just go to photoshop and uses shadow property(inner shadow ,outer shadow) ,but css3 provides a just a single line of code.
To apply text shadow onto an element, add this CSS property in its style definition.

text-shadow: 3px 3px 4px #000;

The text-shadow property looks cool, but it is currently not supported by major browsers including Firefox 3.0, but will be supported in Firefox 3.1 beta. Browsers that support this CSS3 property are Safari 3+, Konquerer, Opera9.5+ and iCab.

For example,

This text will show a drop shadow in Safari, Opera or other supported browsers.

Here first two values are offset of shadow from original text corresponding to right and top offset respectively while third numeric value is the amount of blur radius that causes pixels of the shadow text to stretch by the specified amount.

Positive values for right and top offset will position your shadow to right and bottom while negative values will change it accordingly.

You can play with offset and blur values to create really nice looking text effects just with CSS. If you have been using this property for a while and created some really nice looking effects, let us know in comments below.

Why text-shadow is good?
The main goal of this property is to give designers and css coders a tool to make text effects, which could only be done before by rendering text as images with all the side effects. Text rendered as an image isn’t searchable and therefore very undelicious for search engines. Another side effect is the fact that images can be way more bigger as one small line of code in terms of file size. As you may know most css-files, which contain the whole layout of a website, are smaller than one image on most websites. So it’s really clever to use a css function instead of images for reducing unnecessary traffic.

Photoshop is a standard name in graphic design for web layput, print layout, and more.Photoshop is a popular high-end image editor for the Macintosh and Windows from Adobe.As photoshop is the most well known and widely used graphics editing software.It is recognized by most professionals as the single most important tool. Photoshop has since it’s introduction always been a tool which has evolved steadily over time – each new version bringing more new features to help in image editing and drawing. For beginner web designers – design tutorials really help to understand the basic knowledge about web design.

Urban Design Layout

Music Band Website

3D design in photoshop

Hand Drawn style Website in Photoshop


Vector layout Design

Bar Website Design

Cartoon Web Layout in Photoshop

Design Studio Layout

Real Estate Design Layout

Photo Portfolio Layout

Dark Theme Design Layout

Funky Design Layout


Stylish Design Layout

Dating Agency Layout

Bubble icons are widely used by the designers and developers for pointing any features of the web applications / sites.If you are a tweetdeck user (twitter client) then remember the its icon(a black bird in bubble like this).

How to make the icons like this

All of the above icons are generated via photoshop.The common things in all the icons are the background only.Follow this simple step to generate your own icon

1.Create any background image like this via photoshop.

a. Draw a rectangle

b. Draw an arrow below rectangle

This will create an image like below

2.Draw the shapes and text on the above background via photoshop.You can choose any texts or any shapes and just use in the above background.An example of the source psd file in red share is below.

Source PSD file

Commenting icons psd source (215) Yellow Comment Bubble Icons (23)

(courtesy via mysitemyway )

You might hear that Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.Every one have its own gumption of seeing things and here are 15 best creative photos that reflects the series of questions in your mind and you will confused why and how this photo come into existence.From the designs to the colors, direction to the stated expressions these photos have a unique story associated with it.Now find out which story affects you most.

If you have any questions or your minds wants to convey any queries regarding the above mentioned 15 nameless photography then feel free to share with us.

Icons are the road signs of the Internet, they let you know at a  glance  what action to take,and if you are going to design a web application, it’s important to make sure the user interface is easy to use.Icons provides the ability to easily bookmark or share content ,ease to understanding about task so that it is handful to users. on popular social media platforms is now a must have feature for web sites. It’s also important that this feature isn’t over looked by web site visitors.If you are thinking about creating icons for your desired task why not use icons that have already been created for you. Here are some of the best icon sets out there for use in web application designs.It will be time consuming for you.
Web2 Icons

Web Applications Icons

Handy Icons

Social icons made of wood

Hand drawn icon set

Hand drawn icons

Web 2.0rigami

Round Socialize Icon

Perfect Blog Icons

Twitter Bird Icons

DelliFeed Icon Set

Download these icons from above links..

Are you thinking about latest trend for web layout,here comes the solution of it.The first thing comes in your mind is color combination of your design and got stuck with it.The color scheme of a website is obviously one of the most significant design decisions that needs to be made.So what comes to your mind when you think of the color white? As it is the most simple ,peaceful and elegant color.As you can see use of white color in web design of many blog, online portfolio, e-commerce and many more sites. White is used for font color, background color, link, images and many more.Some of the best designed websites on the web are in white,as white looks clean and is a great backdrop for dark text.Design with combination of black on white, blue on white, brown on white provide an extremely attractive design.

Using Illustration with White

Illustration, handwritten design, cartoon characters and grunge is the new web trend. Web designers and graphic designers shows their creativity using through this illustration and artwork.As white color is root of all the beautiful things that lays underneath.
Using White to Brighten up Other Colors

One thing that you have to keep in mind is that white can make any other light and bright color to bring out its depth, intensity and richness.You would think simple plain web sites are exciting like the colorful websites and you would be wrong. Color such as red, blue, light green , pink and any other light color will look focused and pleasant.

Therefore, if you are planning to mix up other color in links, menu, buttons use the color wisely, rather then looking like a mess. Here are some website that makes white and other colors work together and makes it sexy.

Photography is our passion,as it gained the interest of many artists.Photography is the result of combining several technical discoveries.

Photography is used by amateurs to preserve memories of favorite times, to capture special moments, to tell stories, to send messages, and as a source of entertainment.Here are some photographic techniques which can help you to achieve optimal pictures for your designs. In this post we present useful photographic techniques, tutorials and resources for various kinds of photography.You’ll learn how to set up the perfect environment and what techniques, principles and rules of thumbs you should consider when shooting your next perfect photo.

High Speed photography

This guide shows how to capture super fast moving moments.The photos like the one you are seeing here. It’s a glass of Champaign, being shot with a BB gun.
Tilt-Shift Photography

It refers to the use of camera movements on small- and medium-format cameras; it usually requires the use of special lenses.Tilt-shift photography is a creative and unique type of photography in which the camera is manipulated so that a life-sized location or subject looks like a miniature-scale model.“Tilt-shift” actually encompasses two different types of movements: rotation of the lens relative to the image plane, called tilt, and movement of the lens parallel to the image plane, called shift. Tilt is used to control the orientation of the plane of focus (PoF), and hence the part of an image that appears sharp; it makes use of the Scheimpflug principle. Shift is used to change the line of sight while avoiding the convergence of parallel lines, as when photographing tall buildings.
Tilt-Shift Photography Photoshop Tutorial
Black and White Photography

Black and white photography starts before the shot is even taken. In this article you’ll find some quick tips on what to look for to ensure the perfect black and white landscape – e.g. camera settings for black and white photography and what filters are good for black and white landscapes.
Black and White Photography Guide
Infrared Photography

In infrared photography, the film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light.Thanks to digital photography, we can take infrared pictures whenever we please, mix them with “normal” ones and see the results on the spot, tweaking the settings to our heart’s desire.
Infrared Photography with a Digital Camera
Night Photography

Night photography refers to photographs taken outdoors between dusk and dawn. Night photographers generally have a choice between using artificial light or using a long exposure, exposing the scene for seconds or even minutes, in order to give the film enough time to capture a usable image, and to compensate for reciprocity failure.
Learn Night Photography
Motion Blur Photography

Motion blur is frequently used to show a sense of speed. You can artificially achieve this effect in a usual scene using cameras with a slow shutter speed. Also Adobe Photoshop can be used for this purpose, though sometimes images may look unnatural and unprofessional.
How to Capture Motion Blur in Photography
Macro Photography

Macro photography is close-up photography
Introduction to Macro Photography
RAW Processing

A raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor. Raw image files are sometimes called digital negatives, because they serve the same role as negatives in film photography. But unlike negatives, these files need much more processing.
RAW vs. JPEG: The Real Story
You can take the RAW image file and make all of your choices about size, color, contrast, etc., and then output it to a new original each time (which might be a JPEG). This is greatly aided by the fact that there’s 12-bit color. The software can make easier choices and less compromises.
Smoke Art Photography

This articles features smoke art photography tips from Stoffel De Roover; it describes the typical setup, important techniques and necessary adjustments for a perfect smoke art photo.
Panoramic Photography

A panorama — or panoramic photo — is usually made by stitching several pictures taken with the same camera into one.
How To: Panoramic Photography
Making a panoramic photo really is only taking the pictures, stitching them together on your computer. The more effort and attention you put into the first step, the easier the second step will be and the more realistic your final photo will look.

Image via Wikipedia

We all know that the internet, a.k.a. the World Wide Web, was once owned and utilized only by government officials, scientists, professors of universities, and others who had a knack at using the Cyber-world for important purposes. These involved business, scientific discoveries, reports, etc. But now with the growing development of the World Wide Web, we’re seeing a whole new virtual arena where normal regular people can use all kinds of online applications and integrating them with different aspects of human life such as social networking or making money online. This transition or innovation is known as web 2.0 and is coined by O’Reilley Media back in 2003 to refer to sites and services that utilize the internet as their medium or platform.

Web 2.0 has basically changed the way we once used the internet. People can finally share their interests and even earn more money just by setting up a website. By using all kinds of online applications and internet tools, and eventually become an online community that shares the same interests and even hold transactions with one another, the internet has obviously become our virtual playground. You can also see the big change through the birth of new terms associated with web 1.0 applications, which have no empowered social networking and the growth of active online communities. Lastly, for those leaning towards the internet marketing industry, harnessing the powers of web 2.0 have broaden their scope in terms of target audience, effective increase of traffic, advertising, and the like.

Web designing doesn’t simply means design a website or having simple dot com page.Their are few basics that consequences the intellect why we need a website,what we need in website and how to get a flaw less website.Without mouthing “jagrans” i want to introduce you with following essential gyans on a successful web designs:

1. Avoid hasten in completing the website – You should keep in mind that you devote a proper timing in channelizing all the keynotes required in developing a website.Any loopholes may creates flaws in you website so you should maintain patience in designing your website.
2. Induce a “Plan” before starting a website – Before starting the new work first of all you need to push off what actually you are going to start.Think twice on the roots of the needs which arise the website and then plan how you are going to accomplish your needs via this website.
3. Whole website should be eye candy and very easy to read – If your website have unreadable texts then its useless and deviates from its actual motive.So you should keep in mind that all the text is easily deciphered.
4. Habituate style sheets and table less designs – CSS based designs are always flexible and universal variable.
5. Maintain the decorum of theme and consistency – All the pages in the website should have same color schemes and should follow the decorum which is maintaining through out the websites.
6. Comfortable and easy navigation – Website navigation is key models in defining the overall performance of the site.In web design the website you keep in mind that the navigation should be easy , simple and attractive.
7. Avoid the use of bulky flash files – Flash sites are attractive but they are just for single time.It takes hell lot of time in loading such that 95% of new visitors like to close the tab instead of waiting lot time.So you should keep in mind that in case you are using the flash files then it should be very light.
8. Build a sitemap for easy navigation and searching – You make a xml file containing all the important links of your website.Sitemap is important as it create easy for search engine bot in fetching the important pages of your website.
9. Examine your site regularly for loading time and link errors – After completing site their are unwanted errors in the links and some times it takes too much time in loading.So you should analyze your site regularly to track these sort of errors in your websites.
10. Proper SEO ,keyword handling ,social buzz and feedback – You should keep in mind that after completing your website you need to have unbiased reviews about your website in order to debug its issues.A proper search engine optimization and keyword handling help in easy track of your website.Social media buzz is require to let your friends and friends if friends know about what really are you doing and aim to do via your new website.And finally feedback is what you need to link a relationship with your viewers. If you really don’t know about these then you should contact some professionals like Utah web design to help you up with supports and suggestions.

Above are the 10 essential gyan on web designing that you should follow before thinking of making any website.Feel free to bother me regards any queries and feedback are always welcome.