GoodUI is a website that regularly shares handy tips for creating “converting and easy-to-use” user interfaces.
The tips are described in detail, visualized nicely and usually easy to apply.
Some of the tips in the list include: “try recommending instead of showing equal choices” or “try undos instead of prompting for confirmation”.
New tips are being added regularly and they a mailing list to update you about these fresh items.
For any client job or professional app/service, making a clear contract with the customer is one of the key points for the success of the project and happiness for both sides.
Recently, Smashing Magazine has brought together design/development-related contracts that exist on Docracy and encourages everyone to share any new ones.
The list includes sample contracts for web design, icon design, copyright ownership and licensing, app design and much more.
Simply, a must-bookmark for creative in case you don’t have a ready-to-use contract yet.
P.S. You should also check Docracy for any kind of contracts. It is a great legal resource.
Speeding up websites has a huge effect on the success of the website as it directly effects the user experience and search engine rankings.
Browser Diet is a very nice guide that lists the steps needed to be taken for a better front-end performance.
It is created by a team of experts that work on large projects and presents the “best practices” under categories like HTML ,CSS, JS, server, images and more.
Also, the guide is not only listing these practices but also sharing “how to implement them” in detail.
Simply, a must-bookmark (and it is open source).
For anyone building websites, testing their compatibility and making them work on major IE versions is a nightmare.
However, since the latest versions (9 & 10), things are becoming more stable on the IE side and we need to create less IE-specific code.
In order to simplify this testing process, Microsoft has launched modern.IE, a platform that consists of tools and information for testing + improving IE compatibility.
The platform includes a web-based scanner that finds any issues and also tells how to fix them, virtual testing tools that works remote or local (for all operating systems) and detailed information regarding improving compatibility.
Cheatsheets are great as they help us quickly find the feature of a library, language, app, etc. we are using.
OverAPI is a fresh project which collects all the designer/developer cheatsheets into the same place and presents all of them in a consistent interface.
This not only simplifies browsing them but also saves us time on searching for the latest cheatsheets as the list is regularly updated.
Currently, it is possible to find data for many popular languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Python, MySQL, jQuery, Ruby and more.
Windows 8 has arrived and the familiar look of Windows OS has completely changed with the tile-based Metro UI.
This is a big move by Microsoft as this new UI will be used in all their platforms including desktop, tablet, mobile and their website as well.
Personally, I liked the Metro UI as it fits into many aspects of the modern web design like simplicity, grid-based interfaces (good for responsive layouts) and it is consistent in every part (there is really a style guide behind it).
Although tile-based UIs is nothing new, Metro UI will definitely inspire many designers and we’ll see websites similar to it.
If you like the Metro UI and planning to create your next website with inspirations from it, here are all the resource to create Windows 8 Metro UI-like layouts:
Metro UI CSS is a pretty complete framework for building Metro-like websites.
It is created with LESS and has a grid system, styles for typography, tables, forms, buttons, and images
There are also built-in JavaScript components for the popular tiles, menu, sidebar, accordion, progress bars, notices and more.
BootMetro is like a theme for Twitter Bootstrap that brings every feature of Bootstrap but with a Metro design.
It is actually some more as there are custom styles for the tiles, application bar and some other components.
There are lots of internet companies/services that we use daily; Twitter, Facebook, GitHub, Skype, Dropbox and more.
In case you wonder "how they make money", a website exists to answer this specific question.
Although we probably know the monetization method behind each or most, the website is still fun to browse (and has a nice presentation).
The website currently lists ~50 companies and clicking any of them simply provides the information needed.
WebPlatform is an open community, backed by the Internet giants, for documenting the web technologies.
The website aims to provide accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive references + tutorials for every part of client-side development and design, with quirks and bugs revealed and explained.
It already has a pretty huge content for categories like JavaScript, HTML, CSS, SVG, Canvas, media queries and more.
Besides this content, there is also a Q&A part where anyone can ask web design/dev-related questions to an active community to get answers.
For the web design/dev community that grew with W3Schools, WebPlatform is another must-bookmark.
When creating a responsive website, there are many challenges to cope with like defining the breakpoints, managing the block, handling images, video, navigation, etc.
This Is Responsive is an impressive and must-bookmark resource for anyone working on such layouts.
It features responsive patterns for the layout, tables, navigation, forms, images and more.
Also, it has a very well categorized list of links to responsive-related resources where you can find articles, tutorials and libraries/plugins.
There are lots of information on the web that PHP developers make use of. However, many of them are outdated and can guide anyone to write "bad code".
"PHP: The Right Way" is a very detailed and free documentation of PHP's best practices to help anyone write better code.
There is no standard way of writing code and the website aims to show the generally accepted practices and alternatives. Also, there are lots of links to authoritative tutorials on the web.
It has topics from the setup of PHP to the basics, security, caching and much more.
Simply, a must-check guide for any PHP developer. And, you can help the documentation to be improved further (it is hosted on GitHub).
