March 4, 2015 — The success of your app definitely does not depend solely on its looks: it has to be functional and solve someone’s problem, or enhance a current experience. But, given the human attraction to looks and visual cues, giving app screenshots a good amount of focus cannot be wrong. App store optimization (ASO) has become a handy addition to an app developer’s marketing plan, and promises to help increase visibility and, as a consequence, downloads. In this article, Melanie Haselmayr will take a closer look at app screenshots, one of the two key decision-making helpers for anyone who downloads an app. Read more…

March 2, 2015 — Flex items are truly accommodating and a pleasure to work with. Most web apps consist of a series of modular, reusable components. You can use flexbox for those bits of layout that induce headaches and that depend on brittle CSS hacks to work. It takes a while to have your “Aha!” moment with flexbox, because it involves unlearning what you already know about CSS layouting. But once you speak the flexbox language fluently, your process of designing responsive apps will become effortless and your style sheets will get leaner! Read more…

February 28, 2015 — As designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one—desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for March 2015. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper! Read more…

February 27, 2015 — Emphasis is relative. For one element to stand out, another has to serve as the background from which the first is to stand out. Some elements need to dominate others in order for your design to display any sort of visual hierarchy. By varying the visual weight of some elements and the visual direction of others, you can establish different levels of dominance. Three levels is ideal; they’re all that most people can discern. Designing different levels of emphasis or dominance will create a visual hierarchy in your design, with more important information being more visually prominent. It will help you communicate with visitors quickly and efficiently. Read more…

February 26, 2015 — Product Hunt is a community where people post, vote on and comment on new products they’ve discovered or launched. Whether you’re looking for the next big thing to invest in or just want to find a better weather app, Product Hunt has got you covered. As Product Hunt’s success has shown, there’s a big demand for websites that help us deal with information overload by streamlining and centralizing content. Telescope is a fast, modern platform on which to build your own community, social news app or link-sharing website. In this article, Sacha Greif will show you how easy is to extend it. He encourages you to give it a try! Read more…

February 25, 2015 — With Mat Marquis of the Responsive Images Community Group, Tim Evko decided to refactor a plugin that he had built several months ago, hoping that it would lead to a more useable and performant solution. After months of pull requests, conversations on Slack and help from WordPress’ core team, they’re finally ready to share what they’ve been working on! You can download and install RICG Responsive Images from WordPress’ plugin directory. Read more…

February 23, 2015 — It’s very easy to get bogged down by accessible output and to forget that, ultimately, accessibility is about people. Whether you are working in product, UX, development or quality assurance, remember to always give users control, over the page integrate accessibility into annotated UX and style guides and design with choice in mind. In this article, Henny Swan will explain these, and more key principles which will ensure that products are inclusive and usable for disabled people. Listening to users and actively including their feedback, along with adhering to organizational standards and guidelines, are essential. Read more…

February 20, 2015 — As with everything, it’s all about communication. Many clients expect a visual design up front, because that’s what they’re used to getting. They don’t know any better. Your job is to explain to them why this is impossible. Enlighten them about the millions of different interaction methods and feature sets out there, and help them understand that you cannot capture all of that in a static design. But before we start flipping things around, let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane, just so we know where we’ve come from and where we are now. Read more…

February 19, 2015 — Proto.io is powerful solution for prototyping native and web apps for use on a variety of devices. The learning curve is a bit steeper than with Axure, but it can be mastered with a little time and practice. Proto.io’s real strength is its built-in support for many device types and native app libraries, and its support for gestures and transitions. The first thing to know is that unlike most prototyping tools, Proto.io is a web application, so you’ll need an internet connection to do your work. Assuming you’ll have access when you need it, Proto.io offers a lot for mobile designers to love, built right into the app. Read more…

February 18, 2015 — Static analyzers look at code and find problems before you run it. They do simple checks, like enforcing syntax, and more holistic checks, like making sure your functions aren’t too complex. Static analyzers also find errors that you can’t find with testing, like instances of == when you meant ===. In large projects and on big teams, you’ll be happy to have a little help finding those “simple” bugs that turn out to be a lot less simple than they looked. Read more…