CategoryPerformance

July 18, 2011 — In this article, we’ll discuss performance in relation to design and present seven guidelines that can help shape design decisions related to performance while accounting for the needs of end users and businesses. These guidelines are based on the experiences of our teams in designing native mobile apps for a broad product portfolio and on multiple mobile platforms. Read more…

April 21, 2011 — Trent Walton designs and codes a Web page and adds visual enhancements twice: once with CSS3, and a second time using background images sliced directly from the PSD. He times himself and compares. Read more…

March 23, 2011 — Website speed has always been a big issue, and it has become even more important since April 2010, when Google decided to use it in search rankings. Read more…

November 24, 2010 — The attention span on the Web has been decreasing ever since Google had arrived and changed the rules of the game. Now with millions of results available on any topic imaginable, the window to grab a visitor’s attention has decreased significantly (in 2002, the BBC reported it is about 9 seconds). Picture yourself browsing the Web: do you go out of your way to read the text, look at all the graphics, and try to thoroughly understand what the page is about? The answer is most likely to be a straight “no.” With bombardment of information from all around, we have become spoiled kids, not paying enough attention to what a Web page wants to tell us. Read more…

April 12, 2010 — If you want to “go big” visually with a website, delivering complex interaction and a rich experience across a wide range of browsers, Flash is the only way to go. Right? Nope. Given the widespread adoption and advancements of modern browsers and JavaScript libraries, using Flash makes little sense. But it does have its place on the Web, considering the need for progressive enhancement. Read more…

January 6, 2010 — Website performance is a hugely important topic, for big companies such as Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, slow websites mean fewer users, less happy users, and thus lost revenue and reputation. Read more…

November 11, 2009 — Redesigning a website is a big job (needless to say) and should be handled with care. Many of us with a portfolio, blog or other website have probably thought about a redesign or at least know we need one. For many designers, though, that redesign never comes. As big and important as it is, the job can turn into a hugely daunting task that we put straight on the backburner of our to-do list. Why is doing a simple redesign so daunting? Why is it so difficult to follow through, even when we’ve decided to do it? How can we work on designing our clients’ websites successfully every day and then perpetually neglect our own? The problem is both a lack of correct planning and a lack of understanding of the root need for the redesign. Once we’ve identified these elements, we’re set for success. In this article, we’ll discuss how to plan and execute a redesign, and how to find the perfect timing for it. Read more…

August 13, 2009 — Before getting started with Photoshop, we all should have first visited the “Edit > Preferences” menu and change the “Performance” settings to fit our personal taste and computer specifications, but this isn’t always the case – in many situations designers simply forget these aspects. Read more…