Daily Web Design Inspiration & Ideas
The source site for this is: http://www.andrewsellick.com/35/sexy-sliding-javascript-side-bar-menu-using-mootools
To save realestate on your website for other things here is a nice little sliding navigation menu that sits tucked away on the side until you need it. When you mouce over the part that is visible, the menu slides out and is then populated with the menu choices. This is built using CSS and JavaScript.
A new one for today. This one was a bit more time consuming but the outcome
is beautiful! I made these on black and white background. I will make some other
color shades next.
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The source site for this is: http://www.interface-research.com/survey.html
Ever wonder where to place the website navigation or what color sceme to go with when designing a website? Well, this site, http://www.interface-research.com/survey.html has done their homework. They have surveyed over 22,000 people about website usibility preferences. This is such an important find for me. After taking the survey yourself it takes you through the results.
Interestingly enough, the color green is more trusted then blue. I couldn’t beleive, well even after choosing the website with the green color scheme myself, that 73% of the surveyees trusted a website that has a green color scheme over blue. Amazing … and so important! Make sure you fill out the survey your self.
I made some more of these seamless backgrounds. Didn’t get a chance to make
too many different colors but there should be enough basic ones to get started
with. If you wans a specific color just leave a comment and I’ll add within
a few days. Enjoy.
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When you really get down to it, Web 2.0 is impossible to pin down to one, comprehensive, cohesive definition. It’s conceptual, encompassing, fluid, evolving, malleable, and changeable. If you were to compare it to something within the animal kingdom, it would probably be best to choose a chameleon due to its ability to constantly change.
The term “Web 2.0” came into being a little over 3 years ago (2004) as a way to describe the shift in design and development of all things World Wide Web. While Web 2.0 started out as a way to define design shift and function for the web, it has now become a marketing strategy…taking on another life in that arena. Web 2.0 is also now an advertising buzz word of sorts.
Rather than attempting to define Web 2.0, it should instead be viewed simply as a set of characteristics. These characteristics should encompass the move from creating websites that essentially were stand alone ‘vaults’ of information to now designing fluid, interactive, user-oriented sites. One of the major defining features of anything Web 2.0 is its ability to be interactive and social in nature (user participation). The incorporation of features such as weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds (along with other forms of people to people publishing), social software, web application programming interfaces (APIs), and online web services (think eBay, Flickr, and Gmail) provide significant enhancements over the older, read-only websites. While many of these features existed prior to the birth of the Web 2.0 phraseology, they have been lumped into this growing movement to embrace the web as a platform for engaging its users.
There are several ways to attempt to categorize the concept of what makes a site “Web 2.0”. One prevalent list of design parameters comes from Frog Design (the designers of both Apple and Microsoft operating systems). While these guidelines were in place well before Web 2.0 was around, they are still helpful in examining how Web 2.0 was born. Here are a few of their guidelines:
These guidelines are designed to assist you in developing products that provide Mac OS X users with a consistent visual and behavioral experience across applications and the operating system. Following the guidelines is to your advantage because:
The implementation of Apple’s human interface principles make the Macintosh what it is: intuitive, friendly, elegant, and powerful.
These are only a snapshot of all of the guidelines they list in their User Experience Guidelines. Actually, the sentence at the end of their guidelines could be considered as one of the best summaries for Web 2.0’s goals in functionality: “intuitive, friendly, elegant, and powerful.”
Web 2.0 is user-centric. Its mission is to make the users the developers. It removes the need to know how to put up a web page. It moves the Internet from being the voice of web designers and programmers to the voice of every man. It is the evolution of who does the work, beginning with the programmers, moving to designers, and now to lay people. The content in Web 2.0 is the users; whether it is forum posts, videos, links, comments, blog entries, or photos. Web 2.0 sites are not as much planned as they are organic. While Web 1.0 is/was a planned city on a grid, Web 2.0 is an unplanned city with crazy streets. A good example of this is Google maps (one of the applications that put Web 2.0 on the map) which allow users to add in landmarks, their own 3d models of buildings, and create their own overlays to show things that are important to them. So, essentially it is not defined but rather very well designed in its unplanned nature which makes it hard to pin down. It is this user input ability that has brought it to the forefront above everything else on the web.
Another great example of this user-centric focus is found in this article about IBM’s new Mashup Starter Kit. “IBM, which sells to corporate customers, sees a lot of potential in giving businesspeople the ability to build their own applications via tapping into various information sources.” The Mashup Starter Kit includes a server component called the Mash-up hub which “is like a Web 2.0 website where people can register feeds, rate feeds–the things are inside the catalog. Business people not only wanted to do mash-ups, they want to have more control of information, like a freshness of it for instance.” This product is a prime example of the nature of Web 2.0, which is to give the user control.
Ultimately when using the term Web 2.0, you have to examine your reasons for using it. Are you a site developer/designer attempting to describe your creative style to a prospective client? Are you the client attempting to explain your website idea to a designer? Or are you a web surfer discussing a really cool site you stumbled onto? The irony is that the term covers it all!
Whatever position you’re in with Web 2.0, it seems that the discussion eventually comes back around to this phrase: ‘user-friendly and interactive’. The complex blend of emerging technologies, old standard systems, and everything in between is what ultimately creates anything Web 2.0.
Here is another good resource about the Apple guidelines: Click Here
Use the Expiration line of code if you want the cookie to last globaly throughout all the browser windows. If you do not include the Expiration line and just use the one Response.Cookie(”blownies”) - “something” line the cookie will only last in this specific window until it is closed.
‘create a 10-day cookie
Response.Cookies(”brownies”) = 13Response.Cookies(”brownies”).Expires = Date() + 10
‘create a static date cookie
Response.Cookies(”name”) = “Suzy Q.”Response.Cookies(”name”).Expires = #January 1,2009#
‘you can also specify domain if going from a http to https.
Response.Cookies(”brownies”).Domain = “domain.com”
The source site for this is: http://www.yuxt.com
Here is a nice idea for a bright, colorful Web 2.0ey logo design. It is clean and appealing. Love the gradient of colors in each of the letters. Gray hair-line border and the slight drop shadow make the logo stand out. The transparent layer of white half-circle over the entire logo makes it have a reflective or glossy look. Nicely done!
I had to quickly post this one here. I’ve been using this quick and easy, static login script on multiple ASP applications. Just copy tha code, paste it into your code, set a password and it’s ready to go. Don’t forget to change the login form action value.
<%@ Language=VBScript
Option Explicit
Dim bLogInSaved, cmd, pw””””””””””””””””””
‘ SET YOUR PASSWORED HEREpw = “password”””””””””””””””””””
If Session(”letin”) = “allow” Then
bLogInSaved = True
else
bLogInSaved = False
End IfIf Request.Form(”password”) <> “” Then
If Request.Form(”password”) = pw Then
Session(”letin”) = “allow”
bLogInSaved = True
else
bLogInSaved = False
End If
End IfIf Request.QueryString(”logout”) = “1″ Then
Session.Contents.RemoveAll
bLogInSaved = False
End IfIf bLogInSaved Then
%>
<p> PASSWORD PROTECTED PAGE GOES HERE </p>
<%
ElseResponse.Write “<center><form name=”"login”"” & _
” method=”"post”" action=”"ThisPagesName.asp”">” & _
“<table width=”"345″” border=”"0″” cellspacing=”"0″” ” & _
“cellpadding=”"0″”><tr><td width=”"190″”>” & _
“<font size=”"2″” face=”"Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif”">” & _
“Please enter the Password:</font> </td>” & _
“<td width=”"155″”><input type=”"text”" ” & _
“name=”"password”"></td></tr></table>” & _
“</form></center>”End If
%>
The source site for this is: http://www.izea.com
This nice, colorful logo belongs to the new Social Media tools site. I like the variety of colors they used in it. Just like eBay and Google, the colors are bright and work well together. The lightbulb icon in the logo gives the assumption that “IZEA” really stands for, or means “IDEA”. Nice short domain too. Notice the container of the logo is a thought or talking bubble like they use in the comics. The green outline keeps the logo nice and tight. Also the shinyness or the 3-d effect brings the logo into the popular Web 2.0 look.
The source site for this is: http://www.idacrea?ive.com
Another, better, in my opinion, outside the box website layout design. The unique ideas used on this site are amazing. Make sure you flip through their site. When the site opens, you will see a splash screen, just go past it and that’s where the site is.
I have to rant about splash screens, can’t help it. Dont Use Them! I personally think they are anoying. Having said that, the splash screen is allowed when the site is meant for entertainment purposes. The visitor is not necessarily looking for any kind of information in a hurry so they will most likely not mind going through a splash screen. Ecommerce sites or sites that are trying to sell a product or service should stay away from them. Think of them as a gate between your customer and the sale.
