CSS Sprite Tips and Techniques

Spriting is a skillset in the web design field gaining lots of credibility. We initially saw these techniques applied to high-traffic websites such as Yahoo! and Digg. Over time even smaller-scaled web apps began applying sprites to their front end design specs.

We’ll be going over some of the major benefits towards using sprite images in your website designs. The benefits can be found universally in icons, graphics, background patterns and so much more. There are also many unrecognized tools to aid in frontend sprite development and shave time off projects.

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Finding Your Passion in Web Design

The youth is powering our digital age and they will control the future of our web. The position of freelance website designer seems lucrative and very enticing from the get-go. Set your own hours, work on whatever you want, get paid to work from home and learn as you go. What could be better?

Problems begin to arise when freelancers situate themselves in all markets and spread their techniques too thin. There is a subset of jobs in digital design and development which freelancers should focus into. It can provide huge benefits to master single areas in a market so expansive as the web.

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How to Build the Perfect Web Community

By nature human beings are creatures who crave social interaction. We are forming relationships with friends and networking deeper with colleagues every passing day. The evolution from physical to digital has been an interesting one and is still ongoing. We have seen many social networks rise and fall in just a few short years.

Building a credible website community from scratch takes a lot of dedication. Even more so than dedication is the requirement for patience. Networks take time to build and will require daily care in order to mature into a strong web entity.

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Best Practices for Mobile Web Interfaces

We’ve seen tremendous growth in the mobile market since smart phones have taken over. Most of the tech-savvy adopters who understand the benefits couldn’t go a day without their precious iPhone or Android device. Websites are continually required to hold up to these standards and have adapted to fit a dire need.

The increase for demand of mobile-fashioned websites will drive webmasters into a scuttle. Website layouts have to be updated and require tweaks to the formatting so everything will display properly on mobile devices. I’ve described some best practices below and how you can re-build your site to be entirely mobile friendly.

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Why You Should Stop Using CAPTCHAs

There are few amongst us who won’t have, at some point or another, filled in a CAPTCHA code. CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” and they are most commonly used to stop automated submissions of web forms, such as registration or contact forms.

CAPTCHAs are widespread, but are they actually damaging the usability of your website? I would argue that there are better alternatives to CAPTCHAs and that you should break the habit of using them on your sites.

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The Business Side of Design

The bottom line. Something you use a majority of your resources and strategy to maintain. You make sure your costs are under control, you manage your supply chain effectively, your financial side is running like a well oiled machine. So what else can you do to make your business more successful? (more…)

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Where is the Future of Web Design?

Everything seems to be moving at such a faster pace than it used to. We’re seeing instantaneous developments and access to information like never before through the likes of Google and Wikipedia. All of this information has me questioning where the future of web design is heading.

Although it’s not so easy to read the future we can make some heavy conclusions and predictions about where things are heading. With current trends in the design landscape unfolding we’re starting to see paths illuminate and new ideas sprouting up. Those of us who follow these trends will be the designers who can rise above the rest and fill into the new age of technology.

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Giving Your Older Web Designs a Refresh

Every once in a while it doesn’t hurt to give your website design a refresh. It helps to remove older blocks of code which were slowing load times and costing you pageviews. It can also help to re-evaluate what you’re trying to do with your site and how your audience should interact with each page element.

I’ll be going over a few tricks to ease the process of a website refresh. The redesign process isn’t something that should be happening weekly, but it is a powerful process that should be applied to your site every so often. If you’re starting to feel lackadaisical about your site’s design that may be a clue you could use a refresher.

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Increase Your Website’s Effectiveness with Confident Copy

Want to increase your website’s effectiveness? To have a higher conversion rate: more of your website’s visitors become subscribers, customers, members? You can increase the likelihood of that happening by having your message be more clear and confident. In other words: increase your website’s effectiveness with confident copy.

It might seem like forehead-slapping common sense, but a lot of web designers, freelancers, and entrepreneurs get caught up in design tweaks, form designs, and other details that don’t matter nearly as much as simply being more confident with their message. By simply having more confident copy, you can increase the likelihood of that next visitor converting into a new subscriber, customer, or member. (more…)

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3 Simple Ways to Get Paid More by Clients

As freelancers, we all want to make more money. But freelancing doesn’t scale, so there’s always a ceiling. There’s a limit as to how many clients you can take on, right? So how do you make more money, if you can’t or don’t want to take on more clients? Well, if you’re better than average in what you do and can put in just a little bit of extra effort, you can get paid more by clients. (more…)

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