Articles - Page 204 | Design Shack

Graphics / 9 Jul 2012

Designing on a Retina Screen: My Thoughts on the Retina MacBook Pro

220.5 pixels per inch: 2,800 wide and 1,800 tall for a total of over five million pixels. That’s the screen that I work on now, full time. This gives rise to tons of questions: does Apple have any business making such a screen? Will it help or hinder the industry? Can you really do design work on that thing if you’re designing for non-retina screens?

Today I’m going to tell you all about my experience with the machine that threatens to change the way you do your job. I’ll hold nothing back as I rave about what I love and rant about what drives me nuts. Read along and see if you agree with my conclusions.

Critique / 6 Jul 2012

Web Design Critique #83: Tech Cores

Every week we take a look at a new website and analyze the design. We’ll point out both the areas that are done well in addition to those that could use some work. Finally, we’ll finish by asking you to provide your own feedback.

Today’s site is Tech Cores. Let’s jump in and see what we think!

Lightroom Presets / 5 Jul 2012

How to Organize Your Shoots and Catalogs in Lightroom

Typically I stick to strictly design related topics, but today we’re going to stretch that a bit with a quick discussion on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Tons of designers take photos for their projects whether they consider themselves “photographers” or not so I’m sure lots of you will find this to be a useful topic.

The main struggle that I see with Lightroom users is simply organization. How can you keep multiple shoots separate? Where should you import your files? These are important questions and the answers aren’t very intuitive so today I’ll walk you through my basic process for keeping various shoots organized.

CSS / 3 Jul 2012

3 Quick Ways to Show Attention to Detail in Web Design

With today’s current design trends I’m of the view that attention to detail is perhaps the most important part of any design, be it web or print.

In this article, I’m going to exhibit a few examples of designs on the web that lack that little bit of detail that would make the websites a much more pleasant place to explore.

Software / 2 Jul 2012

Help Prevent User Screw-Ups With These Awesome Tips

As a user, don’t you hate it when you click a button, only to realize that the resulting action really isn’t what you wanted at all? Sometimes this is a minor annoyance and sometimes it’s a complete disaster that ruins hours or even days of work.

As a designer, it’s up to you to help your users avoid these tragic mistakes whenever possible. Today we’ll look at some methods that you can use to achieve this goal.

Critique / 29 Jun 2012

Web Design Critique #82: Paul O’Rely

Every week we take a look at a new website and analyze the design. We’ll point out both the areas that are done well in addition to those that could use some work. Finally, we’ll finish by asking you to provide your own feedback.

Today’s site is the personal portfolio of Paul O’Rely, designer from Brazil. Let’s jump in and see what we think!

Inspiration / 28 Jun 2012

The 30 Best Web Design Gallery Picks of 2012

We’re well past the half way point of 2012, and it’s been an absolutely amazing year for web design. CSS3 and HTML5 are at the height of their game, responsive design is the poster child of modern web practices and we’re beginning to wrap our minds around new concepts such as serving up retina quality images to high resolution devices.

With all of this great stuff happening in the industry, the Design Shack Web Design Gallery is positively bursting with awesome new inspiration and I think it’s a great time to highlight the best sites that we’ve seen in 2012 so far. Read on to see our hand-picked selection of the thirty best sites submitted this year.

Competitions / 27 Jun 2012

Winner Announced: Win a Free Copy of CSS Hat and Turn Your Photoshop Styles Into CSS!

CSS Hat is the coolest Photoshop plugin to come down the pipeline in a long time. With a single click, CSS Hat can magically transform your Photoshop styles into CSS that you can copy and paste right into your project.

We gave CSS Hat high praise in our review and now we’ve managed to snag a copy for our readers. Read on to see how to enter!

Software / 27 Jun 2012

Brackets: Adobe’s Innovative Text Editor Project

Unlike Apple, Adobe seems to love sharing its product ideas when they’re in their infancy. This is both a good and a bad thing. As a user, it’s fun to see what Adobe has up its sleeve. Admittedly though, it’s frustrating to spend time working with a project only to see it vanish completely, never to come to full fruition. There’s also the frustration involved with using any sort of early beta project. Allowing users to check out the barely functioning version of your product might dissuade them from ever trying the finished one.

For better or worse, Adobe often shows its burgeoning products to the public, and the latest app in this trend is a text editor called Brackets. Adobe claims this new text editor will be innovative, open, focused and extensible. Will brackets live up to these lofty promises? Read on to find out.

CSS / 26 Jun 2012

Pull Off Awesome Scroll Effects With Stroll.js

Scrolling effects are all the rage these days. As the user moves down the page, content does more than move up the screen, it comes alive and becomes more interesting. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to pull these effects off with pure CSS. If you don’t know JavaScript, you’re out of luck.

That’s where Stroll.js comes in. It’s a super easy to implement library that makes applying mind-boggling scroll effects a breeze. All you have to do is paste in a couple of brief lines of JavaScript, the rest is all handled with HTML and CSS. Keep reading and I’ll show you how it works.

CSS / 25 Jun 2012

Build an Awesome CSS Slider With Four Overlays

Today’s project is a fun one. We’re going to build a standard CSS image slider with a twist: the visible image area will be divided into four distinct sections, each with a hidden message that is revealed when the user hovers over it.

The ultimate effect is pretty awesome and I think you’re going to like it a lot. Along the way we’ll play with some animations, transitions, positioning contexts and a lot more. Let’s dive in and get started!

CSS / 20 Jun 2012

Meet CodePen: Dribbble for Coders

If you follow Chris Coyier on Twitter, then you have no doubt seen quite a few mentions go by in recent months of a not so secret project called CodePen. Chris promised us that this new tool would join the ranks of jsFiddle and Tinkerbin, serving as a sort of online playground to experiment with and share CSS, HTML and JavaScript demos.

Like a kid in December anxiously awaiting Christmas day, I’ve been dying to see what Chris and his team would come up with. Fortunately, Christmas has arrived. CodePen is a live project and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.