By Cameron Chapman

We’ve all heard it: time is money. And as much as we sometimes hate to look at it in such base terms, it’s mostly true. As service providers (designers and developers), the time we spend on a project is directly proportional to how much we’re getting paid. How we spend our time also has a big effect on when money comes in.

If we want to get a better grip on our cash flow, we need to get a better grip on our time first. Sure, we all recognize that the time we spend working effects our overall income. But it’s often hard to see the relationship between time management and cash flow. Regardless of how muddy the relationship seems, there are direct ties between how you manage your time and how much money comes in when. Read on for more information on how to better manage your time so you can better manage your finances.

Take a Wide View

Time management is often dealt with on a micro level. We look at our time in blocks of fifteen, thirty, or sixty minutes, and assess how to best utilize those blocks. But when it comes to managing your time with an aim toward more stable cash flow, this micro-management doesn’t do much good.

What you need to do is take a macro view of how you’re spending your time, and manage it based on when you need to complete billable work. Rather than looking at time in blocks that make up a fraction of your day, look at it in terms of what you’re doing this week or this month.

Regular Billing Intervals

One thing you’ll want to consider when planning your long-term time management is the frequency at which you’ll be billing clients. There are a few things to take into account here. One has to do with how many projects you have going, and how staggered they are. Ideally, you’ll want your projects to overlap in such a way that you can send out bills on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. This means you’ll have money coming in virtually every week, which is a big plus for any freelancer’s cash flow.

The other thing to consider is how often clients are billed for work. Some designers might only bill their clients at the end of a project (in addition to a deposit up front, of course). While this results in larger payments, it also means payments are coming in less frequently. You’ll need to decide if you can justify billing more often during the project. Breaking down the project’s fee over three payments can not only aid your cash flow, but also your client’s.

Again, the goal here is to have money coming in on at least a semi-regular basis. Many freelancers will want payments arriving on a weekly basis, so there’s less budgeting involved. Others might prefer to have larger payments coming in less frequently. You’ll need to work out which system works better for you and the types of bills you have and then plan your projects so deadlines and billing cycles correspond with your desired payment schedule.

Set Goals and Work to Deadlines

Goals and deadlines are two of the biggest tools in your time management arsenal. Putting them to the best use take some practice, though.

You’ll want to set both long-term and short-term goals. Your short-term goals might include things like finishing up a project or landing a new client. Your long-term goals might be income-related or have to do with purchasing new equipment, hiring an employee or two, or expanding your services. Your goals don’t need to be set in stone, but you should have an idea of where you want your business to go, and then make sure you’re allocating enough time to certain projects or activities that will help you reach those goals.

Some people opt to put their goals up where they can see them. Others don’t bother writing them down, even. Either way is fine, just make sure you know what your goals are and what you need to do to move toward them.

Goals don’t have to be set in stone. There are people who are resistant to setting goals, as they feel like it might limit them and make them miss other, better, opportunities. That doesn’t have to be the case, though. Just because you’ve set a goal doesn’t mean you can’t change it or adapt it if you’re wants or needs change. The goal’s true purpose is just to keep you moving forward and give you something to aim for.

Deadlines

On most projects, you’ll have a timeline or deadline you have to work to. But sometimes a client is more lax about when their website needs to be done, giving you a deadline that’s months away. This can wreak havoc with your work schedule and your cash flow. So set a deadline that’s more closely tied to when you can realistically finish the project.

It’s also a good idea to set deadlines for yourself for stages within each project, especially for milestones that will trigger a payment. Set deadlines for things like invoicing and making any collections efforts, too. You should aim to send invoices as soon as possible, but setting a deadline of 1-2 days after work is complete (and/or approved by the client) is a good practice to get into. You at least want to be sending invoices on a weekly basis to ensure you have a steady cash flow.

Establish Good Habits

If you want to keep a steady flow of cash coming into your business, you’ll need to develop some good habits. Habits are necessary because they become second-nature after awhile. When you’re in the habit of doing something, it’s automatic; you no longer have to think about doing it. While habits aren’t necessarily essential (a good to-do list can replace them), they will make your business run smoother.

There are some habits you may want to develop that have little to do with your cash flow directly. Things like starting and ending work at the same time each day, taking regular breaks while you’re working, and taking time off are all good habits to get into, but they won’t have a direct impact on your cash flow. However, these habits all serve to make you more productive, which will have a positive impact on your cash flow and other aspects of your business.

Send Invoices Regularly

In order to have money coming in, you have to ask for it. That’s what invoices do. Depending on the volume of your business and how tight your budget is, you may want to dedicate a few minutes at the end of each day to preparing invoices, or a couple of hours one or two days each week. You also might consider getting in the habit of taking time as soon as a project (or part of a project) is finished to prepare the invoice, before moving on to the next project.

Another option is to keep a running invoice for each project, adding hours or other billable items to it as you complete them. This way, when you reach a billing trigger, the invoice will be ready and all you’ll need to do is print it out or email it.

Other Bookkeeping Tasks

Keeping track of bills and outgoing money is just as important as keeping track of income. You need to know when your bills are due or when to expect an expense so you can prepare for it and make sure the money is available. There’s nothing worse than getting a big payment for a project and then realizing you have to send three quarters of it off for your rent or some other bill.

The same goes for taxes. Get in the habit of keeping track of how much money you’ll owe for taxes and taking that percentage out of each payment that comes in. Considering in many countries you may pay anywhere from 25% to 50% of your income to taxes, this is vital to making sure you have a stable cash flow and won’t get hit with a huge bill when tax time rolls around.

Taking a few minutes each day or an hour each week to make sure your finances are in order is vital to making sure you have a stable budget and a stable business. If you’re constantly having to scramble to make payments on things, set aside the time to better manage your finances.

Respond to Requests Promptly

Sometimes the reason between you getting a contract and your competitor getting it has more to do with how quickly you respond than with the actual proposal. Once a client makes a decision to go ahead with a website redesign, in many cases they want to dive right in and get started. If you turn around and get a proposal to them within a few days, and your competition takes a week and a half, they might sign with you before they even receive the other proposal.

It’s a good idea to get into the habit of taking some time whenever a request for a proposal comes in, and deciding right away whether it’s something you want to respond to or not. If it is, take the time to gather any additional information you need and put together the proposal right away. More work will almost inevitably help your cash flow (provided, of course, your new client pays their bills when they’re supposed to).

Keep Better Track of Your Time

Tracking where your time goes helps to eliminate wasted time. Now, that doesn’t mean every single minute you’re sitting at your desk has to be spent in the most productive way possible, but if you track your time and find you’re spending more time on Facebook than actually working, you should probably make some adjustments.

There are dozens of time-tracking apps and methods out there. Any of these can be used to better determine where your time is being spent. I’d suggest keeping track of your time for at least a week before you make any adjustments. A month is better. After all, you might find that you’re less productive on a certain day of the week, but on other days you completely make up for it.

The other big advantage to accurately tracking your time is that you’ll be able to create more accurate estimates for your clients, and you’ll be less likely to undercut yourself. Maybe you think a certain web design task will only take you an hour, but when you actually look at the time you’re spending on it, it’s taking you three. While you might not be able to bill for the difference on your current project, at least you’ll know to bill more for the next one.

Make Adjustments as Needed

Time management is a constant process, not a one-time project. You can’t just set up a schedule and expect it to work for the next five or ten years. You’ll need to review where your time is going on a regular basis, monthly or bimonthly is usually a good schedule, and make sure you’re not only not wasting time, but also billing for the time you’ve spent on particular projects.

By better managing your time, you can make sure that your cash flow is more consistent, and that you have money coming in when you need it. And the only way to effectively manage your time is to review, on a regular basis, where your time is needed, where it is most effectively spent, and where it is being wasted.

  

We are regulalry collecting useful JavaScript and jQuery snippets, libraries, articles, tools and resources and present them in compact round-ups here, on Noupe. This time we are again covering some useful JavaScript and jQuery techniques, plugins and tools that may help you improve the user experience for your site.

Useful JavaScript and jQuery Techniques

Colorful Sliders With jQuery & CSS3
In this tutorial we are using jQuery and the new transformation features brought by CSS3 to create a three dimensional dynamic slider effect. The techniques presented here – for creating sliders, and CSS dynamic resizable bars, can be used together or in part for powering all sorts of jQuery goodness.

Sponsor Flip Wall With jQuery & CSS
Designing and coding a sponsors page is part of the developer’s life (at least the lucky developer’s life, if it is about a personal site of theirs). It, however, follows different rules than those for the other pages of the site. You have to find a way to fit a lot of information and organize it clearly, so that the emphasis is put on your sponsors, and not on other elements of your design.

TipTip jQuery Plugin
TipTip detects the edges of the browser window and will make sure the tooltip stays within the current window size. As a result the tooltip will adjust itself to be displayed above, below, to the left or to the right of the element with TipTip applied to it, depending on what is necessary to stay within the browser window.
TipTip is a very lightweight and intelligent custom tooltip jQuery plugin. It uses ZERO images and is completely customizable via CSS.

Nivo Slider
The Most Awesome jQuery Image Slider

jQuery.Syntax
jQuery.Syntax is an extremely fast and lightweight syntax highlighter. It has dynamic loading of syntax source files and integrates cleanly using CSS or modelines.

jquery.timepickr.js
This is my humble attempt to enhence web time picking.

Photo Zoom Out Effect with jQuery
Today we will show you how to create a simple image zoom out effect with jQuery. The idea is show some images which are zoomed in initially and when hovering over an image it gets zoomed out. This effect could be used in photography websites or image galleries. Our example uses some black and white images to focus on the effect.

A Fresh Bottom Slide Out Menu with jQuery
In this tutorial we will create a unique bottom slide out menu. This large menu will contain some title and a description of the menu item. It will slide out from the bottom revealing the description text and some icon. We will use some CSS3 properties for some nice shadow effects and jQuery for the interaction.

Making a Mosaic Slideshow With jQuery & CSS
Today we are making a jQuery & CSS mosaic gallery. Mosaic, because it will feature an interesting tile transition effect when moving from one slide to another.

17 jQuery Plugins for Easy and Efficient Reordering and Filtering Page Elements
Having full control of elements on a page and the order they are presented in can be quite useful. jQuery as always is a safe choice to go for. There are several good quality plugins to pick from. This post provides an overview of plugins you can use to provide simple yet powerful functionality to reorder, filter, add drag and drop capabilities etc.

Create an Impressive Content Editing System with jQuery and PHP
I’m going to show you how to use jQuery and PHP to build a content editing system that will allow you or your client to easily edit .html pages visually.

jQuery MegaMenu Plugin

Excellent JQuery Plugins To Enhance Form Validation
Simple jquery plugins can enhance and beautify HTML form elements, these simple jquery scripts turn a simple HTML website to a fantastic look and feel. These plugins can be enabled very easily. In this roundup I have gathered most beautiful Jquery plugins that are related to all kinds of form validation. This list also includes roundups of some blogs. Go ahead and enjoy

gameQuery – a javascript game engine with jQuery
gameQuery is a jQuery plug-in to help make javascript game development easier by adding some simple game-related classes. It’s still in an early stage of development and may change a lot in future versions. The project has a Google Code page where the SVN repository of the project is hosted and a twitter page where you can follow the daily progress of the development.

Getting Buggy CSS Selectors to Work Cross-Browser via jQuery
Below I’ve prepared a simple table that describes a number of CSS selectors that are not cross-browser compatible, along with the jQuery syntax for each. The syntaxes are exactly the same as they would be in CSS, save for the jQuery wrapper (just remove $() and the quotes to get the CSS syntax), so using these selectors in jQuery will provide somewhat of a practice ground to prepare you for when they’re fully supported by all commonly-used browsers.

jqFancyTransitions: jQuery Image Rotator Plugin
jqFancyTransitions is easy-to-use jQuery plugin for displaying your photos as slideshow with fancy transition effects.

A demo of AD Gallery
A highly customizable gallery/showcase plugin for jQuery.

jQuery UI Selectmenu: An ARIA-Accessible Plugin for Styling a Custom HTML Select Element
Our latest contribution to labs is the selectmenu plugin, which is designed to duplicate and extend the functionality of a native HTML select element, and lets you customize the look and feel, add icons, and create hierarchy within the options. Best of all, it’s built with progressive enhancement and accessibility in mind, has all the native mouse and keyboard controls, and is ThemeRoller-ready.

Create a Content Rich Tooltip with JSON and jQuery
Today we’re going to break the mold of the traditional tooltip. This tutorial will demonstrate how to build tooltips that are powered by jQuery, with information pulled from a JSON array.

jQuery image zoom effect
So today I’m going to run through the technique used to zoom the image thumbnails and display the overlay of text.

jQuery Roundabout Shapes
Roundabout Shapes provide even more paths along which your Roundabout can move. The current version of Roundabout Shapes offers eleven additional movements.

Extending jQuery’s selector capabilities

How to show/hide a hidden input form field using jQuery
This past week I was working on a project at work which included building a request form with multiple fields. It was a rather large form that included a dropdown list with an ‘other’ option. I wanted to allow users to select the ‘other’ option which then would show an input field so they can enter a specific description of what that ‘other’ item is. I didn’t want to clutter the form by displaying that additional field by default so I used a little jQuery, thus displaying it dynamically and only when needed.

A Better jQuery In-Field Label Plugin
This is a pretty nice effect, and it can really help to save space on forms. There are a billion different ways to implement this, and I don’t suggest you use the example from above because that was just a quick way to show the effect. So let’s walk through a couple of different implementation approaches and figure out the best way to implement this feature.

Useful JavaScript / jQuery Tools

JavaScriptMVC
JavaScriptMVC is an open-source framework containing the best ideas in enterprise JavaScript development. It guides you to successfully completed projects by promoting best practices, maintainability, and convention over configuration.

PEG.js – Parser Generator for JavaScript
PEG.js is a parser generator for JavaScript based on the parsing expression grammar formalism. It enables you to easily bulid fast parsers which process complex data or computer languages. You can use it as an underlying tool when writing various data processors, transformers, interpreters, or compilers.

PhoneGap
PhoneGap is an open source development tool for building fast, easy mobile apps with JavaScript.

JavaScript Shell
A command-line interface for JavaScript and DOM.

WireIt – a Javascript Wiring Library
WireIt is an open-source javascript library to create web wirable interfaces for dataflow applications, visual programming languages, graphical modeling, or graph editors.

JavaScript Programming Patterns
In this article I am trying to present some of the techniques out there that I have discovered. The patterns I would like to mention are the following:
- The Old-School Way
- Singleton
- Module Pattern
- Revealing Module Pattern
- Custom Objects
- Lazy Function Definition

Compare JavaScript frameworks
Modern Web sites and Web applications tend to rely quite heavily on client-side JavaScript to provide rich interactivity, particularly through the advent of asynchronous HTTP requests that do not require page refreshes to return data or responses from a server-side script or database system. In this article, you will discover how JavaScript frameworks make it easier and faster to create highly interactive and responsive Web sites and Web applications.

How to Test your JavaScript Code with QUnit
QUnit, developed by the jQuery team, is a great framework for unit testing your JavaScript. In this tutorial, I’ll introduce what QUnit specifically is, and why you should care about rigorously testing your code.

CoffeeScript
CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. Think of it as JavaScript’s less ostentatious kid brother — the same genes, roughly the same height, but a different sense of style. Apart from a handful of bonus goodies, statements in CoffeeScript correspond one-to-one with their equivalent in JavaScript, it’s just another way of saying it.

Mind-blowing JavaScript Experiments
The following JavaScript experiments demonstrates the amazing capabilities of the modern browsers such as Chrome and Safari. In this post I will showcase to you an array of experiments that will surely blows your mind off.

Online javascript beautifier
This little beautifier will reformat and reindent bookmarklets, ugly javascript, unpack scripts packed by the popular Dean Edward’s packer, as well as deobfuscate scripts processed by javascriptobfuscator.com.

CSS & Javascript Character Entity Calculator
Enter your HTML Entity Character number (such as &#2335 or just 2335 – ?) to get the CSS and JS values for that entity.

Dygraphs: Create interactive graphs from open source Javascript library
Dygraphs is an open source JavaScript library that produces an interactive, zoom-able charts of the present time series. It is mainly designed to display the dense data sets and enable the users to explore and interpret them. It is a JavaScript Visualization Library.

Showdown – Markdown in JavaScript
Showdown – a JavaScript port of Markdown

Copy to Clipboard with ZeroClipboard, Flash 10 and jQuery
With today’s post I will show you a contrived example to get you started. I eventually hope to add this to the contextMenu.js jQuery plugin that I use, but for now this should be pretty straight forward. I do want to note that in the demo and download I am loading the latest version of the jQuery library (1.3.1) from Google’s CDN for the first time in any of my posts. For more information on how to do this see the instructions from Google.

fLABjs
fLABjs is a special API wrapper around LABjs which adapts the code to work properly in a file:// local filesystem environment. There are a number of things with core LABjs does which are not appropriate for local filesystems, such as XHR, special path handling rules, etc.

jQuery LazyLoad Ad : Delays loading of advertising
jQuery LazyLoad Ad is a jQuery plugin that takes advantage of LazyLoad delaying ads loading.

qTip – The jQuery tooltip plugin
qTip is a tooltip plugin for the jQuery framework. It’s cross-browser, customizable and packed full of features!

jQuery Collapsing and Expanding Table Rows

Improving Search Boxes with jQuery
This time we will learn how to improve a little more our sites by adding some additional interactions to our search boxes like autofocus, highlighting, autoreplace default text and more by using jQuery.

jQuery Grid Plugin

Pines Notify jQuery Plugin
Pines Notify’s features include:
- Timed hiding with visual effects.
- Sticky (no automatic hiding) notices.
- Optional hide button.
- Supports dynamically updating text, title, icon, type…
- Stacks allow notice sets to stack independently.
- Control stack direction and push to top or bottom.

jQuery Slider plugin (Safari style)
jQuery Slider is easy to use and multifunctional jQuery plugin.

Store Front theme – Back End screenshots (click the image to enlarge )

Built-in e-commerce features

We’ve explained e-commerce themes’ standard features in detail in a blog post. The features are balanced as we didn’t stuff every e-commerce features out there. Including only those that are must-haves for a well functional e-commerce Store Front. Here’s a short summary..

• One Click Auto Install

  This theme features our awesome single click install feature. You won’t have to set

  each and everything step by step (like you do with competetor theme). Simply

  Activate the theme and this theme auto populates sample products, categories and

  does the basic settings (you can remove them with single click). It’s much easier

  now to understand how the theme works and all you need to do is, edit the sample

  products and place your own. You do not need technical knowledge.

• Usability

  One of the reason it took us long time to complete the backend of the e-commerce themes is, usability. We studied best practices of building e-commerce websites, studied lots of successful online Store Fronts and brainstormed some of the key pages and functionality that may impact the sales process that your customer goes through. We reduced the steps of the process, restructured the purchase experience, debated on the small elements such as button / text / colors / notifications etc., finally concluding our base e-commerce theme to be one of the very easy to use and best performing purchase experience so far.

• Different modes of Shopping Cart

  You may sell anything – tangible or intangible using our themes. You have an option to create your website in any mode.

  • Shopping Cart

    Like the standard shopping cart that you see on other e-commerce websites. You may choose to have “add to cart” mode and let the users add all the items they want and then lead them to checkout or, you can have “buy now” mode and take them straight to checkout when they select a product.

  • Digital Shop

    If you are selling digital product of any kind, this is a perfect option for you. Are you selling icons, digital art, PDF, e-books, scripts or any other kind of digital goodies? Select this option and when a user makes a purchase, they will have an account generated at your site and they can download their purchase any time. You don’t have to worry about third party digital delivery sites.

  • Catalog mode

    Maybe you only want to showcase your items and don’t want to sell it online? Simply choose this mode and you will have “send inquiry” button instead of buy now / add to cart. Visitors thus, can send an inquiry on the products they like.

• Manage Products

  Add / Edit / Delete products are as easy as you create a wordpress blog post. You have a custom panel where-in you can edit the product description, different parameters, upload product images etc. real easy.

• Order Management

  Depending upon the settings from your admin panel, you can manage the order – approve, process or cancel / reject an order.

• Shipping Options

  As an admin, you can choose Free, Flat rate; Weight or Price based shipping option for your Store Front. What’s more you can even set free shipping for particular items in case you’ve set other option for your Store Front.

• Multiple Payment Gateways

  You have PayPal, Autorize.net, Google Checkout, WorldPay, bank transfer and Cash on Delivery as payment gateway options. Choose the gateway you prefer.

• Manage Tax

  You may specify overall tax percentage that applies to all your products and, you may choose to leave individual products tax free

• Grid view / List view

  Whenever you are browsing the product collection, you have an option to see the products in list view or grid view. It’s built-in by default.

• Guest Checkout

  Wish to provide an option to your users to checkout without registration? No problems. Simply activate the guest checkout option from theme admin panel and your buyers will not to register. They simply provide their email address and we create the logins for them. If admin wants, they can choose to send/not send their logins to them.

• User registration

  Users may register on your site or, they will be taken to registration page on the checkout procedure. They will have their own user area where they can keep track of their order, manage profile and download purchased digital products.

• Bulk Upload ( csv )

  Using another shopping cart solution for your Store Front and want to switch to our Store Front themes? No worries. You can export your data from there in .csv files and import it in your wordpress installation when you use our Store Front themes. (sample .csv file included with the theme)

• Coupon codes

  Admin can generate coupon codes for occasional sales promotion.

• Product Images

  Built in multiple product image upload. Uploaded images are auto re-sized to fit various thumbnails required throughout the site. Also the product zoom functionality is built it.

• Other parameters

  Specifying Tax, weight, color(s), size(s) are easy. Also you may specify different prices for different size/colors just in case.

• Specify product size(s), color(s), and other miscellaneous features

  You may specify Size chart if applied, When viewing a product Similar Products are automatically displayed, Several additional custom widgets are built in such as customer support, Subscribe, socialize, promo banners etc. that you can use for your Store Front website.

• Affiliate Module

  As an admin, you may choose to activate affiliate program where your customers/others can signup as an affiliate partner and start promoting your products. They will be able to track their affiliate data in real time, and as an admin, you will be able to export/check affiliate reports easily. A great way to boost your sales.

• Blog

  Of course the themes come with blog, pages etc. functionality with some page templates so you can have a blog for your website.

View Live demo and Buy this theme. Start your online Store Front today.

Standard Features for our WordPress Themes

• Five detailed color schemes
• Fully customizable front page
• Custom Control Panel
• Localization Support
• Auto-resizing product images
• Excellent Support
• Theme Guide & Tutorials
• PSD File Included with developer version
• Drop Down & Breadcrumb Navigation
• Gravatar Support & Threaded Comments
• Built-in Ad Monetization
• Search Engine Optimized
• Widget Ready with custom widgets
• Valid, Cross browser compatible

Why buy this e-commerce theme?

Because you can have design + functionality everything built-in into our strategically designed, elegant designed themes. You don’t have to buy a theme and a plugin separately. We have included the features very thoughtfully, neglecting to stuff every feature out there into our themes and including the necessary features with best usability and easy of use.

Yes, take the right decision. Save time, money and hassles.
Create an online Store Front easily using this theme. Buy Now and Start selling immediately.

The word ‘bokeh’ derives from the Japanese for ‘blur’ or ‘haze’, and in photography describes the effect found in out-of-focus regions of images. Different lens designs, aperture shapes and sizes, and various depths of field have profound effects on the type and extent of bokeh produced in a photograph. Bokeh happens in the areas of an image beyond the depth of focus; by playing with focus and lens, photographers can create some stunning images.

This post brings together 25 examples of incredible bokeh photography, and concludes with a summary of great tutorials where you can learn bokeh techniques for yourself.

Bokeh Day. This image is an excellent example of bokeh, with the metallic effect on the bubbles and receding blur of lights offering a sense of depth and dimension. (via DW212)

Bokeh Butterfly. Bokeh photography can transport the viewer to an almost alien world of scale and color, such as this beautifully composed image of a butterfly. (via Aussiegall)

Cactus Needle Bokeh. This macro image of the miniscule hairs on a cactus uses an extremely narrow field of focus to achieve the sensual bokeh effect. (via Kevin Dooley)

Forget-me-not’s. Kevin Law’s bokeh image is another to take nature as its subject matter, with the pretty forget-me-nots’ summer blossoms set against the blurred greens of an English meadow. (via Kevin Law)

A Cup of Bokeh, Please. This superb shot juxtaposes a sharp focused mug against blurred lights for a touch of bubbling bokeh. (via Shermeee)

Sweet Disposition. Photographer Josh Liba likes to take portraits of this character called Yushi in various settings. In this case, she finds herself in a field of corn stubble at sunset, with a delightful combination of color and soft focus. (via Josh Liba)

The Smell of Bokeh. Niffty’s beautifully rendered photo captures the play of golden light on plants, cobwebs and sparkling dewdrops. (via Niffty)

When Bokeh and Alcohol Mix. A close-up shot of Christmas tree lights, using a quarter-second exposure, resulted in this colorful spiral. (via Robert S. Donovan)

Christmas. Another Christmas-themed bokeh shot that verges into the realms of abstraction, with lights reduced to discs of sublime color. (via Kevin Dooley)

Bokeh Spiral. Many of the spirals found in nature are based on the logarithmic principles of the Golden Section, such as the receding body of a plant as seen in this bokeh image. (via Eriwst)

Happy Bokeh Wednesday!. It took a lot of patience to achieve this image, but finally the photographer managed to capture the fine detail of a falling leaf’s desiccated flesh against the blurred autumnal colours of the background. (via Jesse Kruger)

Bokeh Snow Tree. Pink Sherbet’s atmospheric shot captures a blizzard blowing through the branches of a tree in Massachusetts, with the blurred snowflakes offering a sense of depth and movement. (via Pink Sherbet)

Typical Elbe Bokeh?. This maritime image uses bokeh effects to create a sense of scale and distance with the form of a freight-laden ship pleasingly blurring into the background. (via Eriwst)

Bokeh Mu’a. The feathered light in DucDigital’s bokeh photo has an ethereal, dream-like quality. (via DucDigital)

2009 Illuminate Yaletown. Bokeh photographs often feature greater blurring on lights that are further from the camera, sometimes producing startling geometric effects, such as this shot by Zen-Shooter. (via Zen-Shooter)

Lonely Night of Bokeh. The combination of blur, water, tonality and colouration in this image creates a melancholy yet alluring atmosphere. (via Studio494)

Bokeh!. This image was captured when the photographer visited Shivamogga, in the Indian state of Karnataka. The corrugated iron roof, rivulets of water and glistening, blurred vegetation are characteristic of the subcontinent’s monsoon season. (via Mynameisharsha)

Bokeh Burger. Robert S. Donovan’s tasty bokeh shot has a sizzling burger set against a barbecue’s blurry burning embers. (via Robert S. Donovan)

Sheltering Angel. A hermit crab shelters inside its shell, with the masterfully handled bokeh effect on glistening pebbles creating a sense of sunlit depth. (via Lel4nd)

Bokehlicious NY Streets. DeaPeaJay expertly handles the balance between the tree in the foreground with the lights of New York behind, achieving just the right level of focus and blur. (via DeaPeaJay)

Sunset Bokeh. Light on water has long been a favorite subject matter for photographers, and a touch of bokeh produces a particularly sedate aesthetic. (via Tanakawho)

Summer in Bokeh. This portrait captures children under sprinkler showers in the summer sun, with a pleasing bokeh effect on the joyful face in the background. (via Wendy Piersall)

Double Sweet Bokeh. This fresh photo has a bokeh blur on the polka dot background and a strawberry in the foreground, with the central fruit’s flesh picked out in stunning detail.

Bokeh Billiard. Lel4nd’s bokeh shot makes great use of depth, colour and light to capture a cool pool hall aesthetic. (via Lel4nd)

Bokeh Photography Tutorials

There are plenty of tutorials available on the internet where photographers can learn bokeh skills and apply them to their work. The effects can be produced using professional camera equipment, pocket cameras or digitally in applications such as Photoshop. Below is a brief summary of the best tutorials, covering the key areas of bokeh photography.

• DSLR Bokeh Tutorial – Roberts Donovan sets out in simple steps the techniques of bokeh photography with digital SLR cameras. This informative lesson acknowledges that bokeh skills are very simple to pick up, and equally as difficult to master.
• Pocket Camera Bokeh Tutorial – Following on from the previous tutorial, this lesson explains how to apply bokeh techniques to pocket digital cameras. Once again, simple steps layout the principles of achieving bokeh effects, paying particular attention to overcoming the automatic functions of point-and-shoot cameras.
• DIY – Create Your Own Bokeh – This is a really neat tutorial explaining how to create effects using specially cut apertures attached to lens, effectively equipping you with a DIY bokeh kit. Once you’ve mastered the techniques, the possibilities open up for endless experimentation with camera settings and different shapes and sizes of custom-cut apertures.
• Awesome Digital Bokeh Effect in Photoshop – In this tutorial, Fabio Sasso explains in nine easy-to-follow steps the process of digitally creating bokeh-style effects in Photoshop. The lesson is principally aimed at producing wallpapers, but once the technique is learned it can be applied to other types of image creation.
• Colourful Bokeh Effect in Pixelmator – As in the previous tutorial, this lesson shows how to create attractive bokeh-themed wallpapers, but using Pixelmator instead of Photoshop. The process is simpler in Pixelmator, so you can quickly grasp the skills to make bokeh effects and apply them to a range of digital contexts.

ForeUI is an amazing UI prototyping tool meant for designers, programmers and anyone who needs a desktop tool to create screen mockups for web or desktop applications. You can use ForeUI.com desktop app to create a prototype of an application or a website.

The need of using a prototyping tool is when you have to verify the design with your clients or colleagues and then start the development process. You can use the prototype to write the documentation before starting the development phase or perform usability testing before coding and so on.

Download ForeUI

ForeUI is available for Windows and MAC operating systems and the latest version of ForeUI (2.3.2) can be downloaded from this page

Features of ForeUI Prototyping Tool

When you run the ForeUI desktop app, you see the following work interface:

The middle pane which is shown in white, acts as a board for holding all the elements of your mockup. You can drag and drop the different elements from the sidebar and adjust the position and styling of different elements as you want.

For example: I created a screen mock up of a simple HTML website by dragging and dropping the rectangle element from the sidebar. Following is a preview of the mockup:

Just double click an element from the left sidebar and it appears on the main pane for editing. Next, you can use your mouse to resize it or place it anywhere on the plot. The right sidebar lets you add style rules to the elements e.g adjusting the background color, position, border, width, height, layers and so on.

Here are all the properties of an element which you can tweak:

Next, I wanted to see how the prototype may look in the browser. ForeUI lets you export the mockup to image, PDF or DHTML formats, hence I chose the DHTML format and exported it in my desktop. Following is the result:

This is very useful, I can create the sample of a design and export the copy to PDF or DHTML formats. Then I can email the sample to my clients or developers and they can have a rough idea about my project.

The best part is that the mockup is Fidelity independent. You can always change the style by switching the UI theme and make adjustments as desired. Currently, ForeUI supports 5 UI themes – Windows XP, Windows 7, MAC OS X, Wireframing and Hand Drawing.

Changing the UI theme is very easy, all you have to do is select the theme from the UI theme dropdown as shown below:

The Action Editor : The Action editor in ForeUI lets you define the behaviour of each element in your plot. The behaviour can be a simple message, popup window, link or anything which you want the application to perform once the user interacts with the element.

To access the action editor, select an element and click the action button, shown by a flag:

This will open a pop up window where you can define the action of the element. Defining the action is fairly easy, you have to create a flowchart and add the logic and order of events in the flowchart.

For example: If on clicking a button, you want to show a dialog box containing a Yes / No button. If the user clicks the Yes button, the required action will be performed. If he clicks the No button, he will be returned to the current page.

In that case, you can create a simple If else conditional check and design the flow chart as follows:

Here is how the output will look like:

You can define more complex conditions and logics, this depends on what you want your prototype to perform once the user’s action triggers an event. The Action editor contains a lot of options to define conditional checking, adding different events e.g onclick, mouse hover and looping.

Once you are done with defining the logic and behavior of an element, you can run the simulation and your plot will run as a DHTML page in the browser.

This is really great, you can define how your application interacts with the user and do not have to code anything. Just create the mockup, add the rules and conditional checking and export it as a DHTML page. Then send it to your developers and ask them to do all the coding or design work.

You can also export the UI file of your plot and let your developers see the flowchart and the different order of events associated with a web element. The interactive design and flowchart model is really time saving.

Sharing Resources:
ForeUI supports packing a chosen part of your design as a custom element and exporting it. This is extremely useful when you want to share a part of your design or mockup with anyone.

Consider an example: You are designing a web application and want someone else to work on the site’s navigation. You have already designed the navigation and want the developer to add more features in it.

In that case, you can export the navigation as a custom element and send it to the developer. The developer can then import the custom element as a plot and customize it the way he wants. He can add more elements, events, conditional checking, modify the layout and colors and so on.

When he has finished modifying the custom element, he can export it and send it back to you. Then you can import the modified custom element in your prorotype.

The resource sharing feature is a lifesaver, you can divide the functional areas of your application to different developers. Let them develop the different elements on their own and then merge all the elements together in your prototype.

To export a custom element, click the “Resource sharing” button from the left sidebar. This will open a new popup window where you can sign in with your ForeUI account and share a resource with other users of the ForeUI comunity.

See Examples: At the ForeUI demo page, you can see some good examples of screen mockups and DHTML prototypes. Just click a thumbnail and the demo prototype will run in your browser.

Join the ForeUI Community

ForeUI has an active community of users at ForeUI.net, where you can meet and interact with other people who are already using the ForeUI application. You can download or upload resources from the ForeUI community for Free, this includes custom elements, libraries and plots .If you have any problems or need any help, you can ask questions, leave comments or start a discussion.

More information about using ForeUI is available on the official documentation page.

The free version of ForeUI lets you test all the features for 15 days. If you seriously need a full featured prototyping tool, it’s worth giving ForeUI a try.

Brought To You By

Do you want to advertise here? Click to get more info…

  

Photoshop is powerful tool that can add wings to your creativity. With Photoshop manipulation tools, you can create and edit images for Web and print. Every industry needs poster designs for promotion of their products and services. Advertisement is of utmost importance for building a brand and thus increasing the sales. So every time you have to come up with out-of-the-box ideas. Below you will find some tutorials on poster design from 2010. Get inspired and inspire others.

Photoshop Tutorials for Poster Design

Design an Out of this World Laptop Advertisement
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to design an out of this world cosmic advertisement for a laptop/tablet style PC. These techniques can easily be applied for stock manipulation and advertising a variety of products, and you’ll learn some great tips for dealing with a variety of stock images and design situations.

Create an Aged and Textured Pirate Poster
An aged and textured pirate themed poster that’s perfect for any booty related event. This lesson teaches us that we must always lock our freezers when we are storing our hooch, in addition to some Photoshop work in recreating the ominous and evidentiary pirate poster.

The Making of 3 – A Limited Edition Poster Design
In this tutorial, author will take you through detailed walkthrough of the design process, showing how the design of “3” is conceptualised as a sketch, constructed in Illustrator and given some digital polishing with a range of final touches in Photoshop.

Create Powerball Effect for Movie Poster
This tutorial will cover how to create a powerball (or energy ball) effect. It also shows briefly on the basic layout of a typical movie poster.

Create Rockstar Poster in Photoshop
In this tutorial, author will show you how to make a Rockstar poster with vibrant colors.

Create Avatar Movie Poster in Photoshop
This tutorial elaborates how you can create a Navi image of any usual photo as you add impressive text and backgrounds to make an Avatar movie poster.

Classic Photoshop Tutorial: Create incredible B-movie poster art
In this tutorial, author shows you how to combine 3D renders with stylized photography, text and smoke to capture all the camp horror of an alien invasion.

Create a Retro Urban Gig Poster in Photoshop
In this tutorial you will create an atmospheric poster for a dance party using the textured, retro look.

Create a Dark and Surreal Geometric Space Poster using Photoshop
In this tutorial author will show you how to create an abstract space poster using geometrical shapes, masks and apply some filters in Photoshop. Layered PSD file included.

Create An Amazing Diamond Advertisement Poster in Photoshop
In this tutorial, you will learn how to Create An Amazing Diamond Advertisement Poster in Photoshop

Create a Dark and Surreal Poster Using Your Own Portrait

Photoshop Tutorial: Create vintage poster art using Photoshop and Daz Studio
In this tutorial, you will learn how to load a figure, apply injection morphs and adds art props. You’ll then discover some great Photoshop techniques to recreate a stylish poster.

Classic Photoshop Tutorial: Design striking stencil art for posters
In this tutorial, you will learn how to design striking stencil art for posters

Design a Brilliant Product Advertisement
In this tutorial, you’ll learn the steps and techniques involved in creating a brilliant product advertisement. You’ll start with a stock image of an Adidas shoe, extract it from the background, then combine it with various photostocks to create a liquifying product advertisement. You’ll learn how to build around a given product, and how to integrate branding into the design work.

How to create abstract hyperspace poster using Photoshop
In this tutorial, author will demonstrate how to create hyperspace photo manipulation using Photoshop shapes, brushes, clouds filter and Blending modes. Layered PSD file included.

Create Blood and Milk Typography Poster in Photoshop
Author shows how with few basics steps you can create awesome typographic poster. With this technique you can create interesting flyers for dance clubs or you can use it for advertisements.

Design a Tropical iPhone Advertisement
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to design a tropical underwater iPhone advertisement, complete with clownfish, starfish, and bubbles. You’ll learn how to isolate a variety of stock images, using custom brushes, extraction methods, and image manipulations.

How to create a Retro-style poster in Photoshop
In this tutorial, author will show you how to create a retro-style poster in Photoshop. Author uses custom brushes, multiple images, different blending modes and applies different layer styles.

How to Create a Retro Sci-Fi Computer Game Poster
Combine stock photos and design resources to create an awesome retro sci-fi themed game poster that takes inspiration from Atari games of the 80s. By mixing up bright and vibrant cosmic designs with old, distressed and grungey textures we’ll create a retro futuristic poster design for ‘Galactic Attack’.

Amazing X-Ray Vision, Meets Walkman: Icon of the 80’s Poster Design Tutorial
Following this tutorial should enhance your skills with paths, layer styles, smart objects, filters and of course lighting.

Create a Vibrant Colorful Alcohol Product Ad in Photoshop
In this tutorial, again inspired from the movie “Sin City”, author will show you how to create a movie poster.

Add Your Face to Movie Poster
In this tutorial, author will show you how to add your face step by step.

Design an Underwater Omega Code Poster (Requires 3D Max)
In this tutorial, you’ll learn step by step how to create a brilliant 3D shatter triangle effect, and then combine it with underwater elements to create a brilliant finished work. From polygons in 3D Studio Max, bombs to shatter the geometry, and underwater creatures added in Photoshop, you’ll learn everything you need to create your own digital artworks.

Config steps for VPN

1. Creating BGP VPNv4 session
   1. Router bgp
      1. i.    No bgp default ipv4-unicast
      2. ii.    Nei x.x.x.x remote-as
      3. iii.    Nei x.x.x.x up lo 0
      4. iv.    Add vpnv4
         1. Nei x.x.x.x activate
         2. Nei x.x.x.x send—community extended
         3. Nei x.x.x.x route-reflector-client                               if a BGP router will be a RR
         4. Create VRF
            1. Ip vrf <name>
               1. i.    Rd ___                                             {AS:AS} or {IPv4 address:AS} format
               2. ii.    Route-target import ___
               3. iii.    Route-target export ___
               4. iv.    exit

1. apply it on interface
   1. int ____
   2. ip vrf forwarding <name>
   3. exit

1. PE-CE routing
   1. For OSPF

1. i.    Defining the process and assigning networks
   1. CE router
   2. Router ospf <process-id>
   3. Network x.x.x.x x.x.x.x area <area-id>
      1. PE router
      2. Router ospf <process-id> vrf <name>
      3. Network x.x.x.x x.x.x.x area <area-id>
   4. ii.    Redistribution
      1. On PE router
      2. Router ospf <process-id> vrf <name>
         1. i.    Redistribute bgp metric                             {specifying metric is optional}
         2. Router bgp
            1. i.    Address-familly ipv4 vrf
               1. Redistribute ospf <process-id> match internal external 1 external 2
2. RIP as PE-CE
   1. i.    Defining the process and assigning the networks
      1. CE router
      2. Router rip
         1. i.    Ver 2
         2. ii.    No auto-summary
         3. iii.    Network x.x.x.x
            1. PE router
            2. Router rip
               1. i.    Ver 2
               2. ii.    No auto-summary
               3. iii.    Add ipv4 vrf
                  1. Ver 2
                  2. No auto-summary
                  3. Net x.x.x.x
   2. ii.    Redistribution
      1. PE router
      2. Router rip
         1. i.    Add ipv4 vrf
            1. Redistribute bgp subnets
            2. Router bgp
               1. i.    Add ipv4 vrf
                  1. Redistribute rip
3. EIGRP as PE-CE
   1. i.    Defining the process and assigning network
      1. CE router
      2. Router eigrp <as number>
         1. i.    No auto-summary
         2. ii.    Net x.x.x.x x.x.x.x
            1. PE router
            2. Router eigrp <As number>
               1. i.    No auto-summary
               2. ii.    Add ipv4 vrf
               3. iii.    Network x.x.x.x x.x.x.x
               4. iv.    Autonomus-system
   2. ii.    Redistribution
      1. PE router
      2. Router bgp
         1. i.    Add ipv4 vrf
         2. ii.    Redistribute eigrp <as-number>
         3. Router eigrp <as-number>
            1. i.    Add ipv4 vrf
            2. ii.    Redistribute bgp metric
4. BGP as PE-CE
   1. i.    Defining the process and assigning network
      1. PE router
      2. Router bgp
      3. Add ipv4 vrf
         1. i.    Nei x.x.x.x remote-as
         2. ii.    Nei x.x.x.x activate
         3. iii.    Nei x.x.x.x up lo 0
         4. iv.    Nei x.x.x.x ebgp-multihop                        { iii, iv & v are Optional steps }
         5. v.    Nei x.x.x.x as-override
            1. CE router
            2. Router bgp
               1. i.    Nei x.x.x.x remote-as
               2. ii.    Nei x.x.x.x activate

Config steps for VPN

1. Creating BGP VPNv4 session
   1. Router bgp
      1. i.    No bgp default ipv4-unicast
      2. ii.    Nei x.x.x.x remote-as
      3. iii.    Nei x.x.x.x up lo 0
      4. iv.    Add vpnv4
         1. Nei x.x.x.x activate
         2. Nei x.x.x.x send—community extended
         3. Nei x.x.x.x route-reflector-client                               if a BGP router will be a RR
         4. Create VRF
            1. Ip vrf <name>
               1. i.    Rd ___                                             {AS:AS} or {IPv4 address:AS} format
               2. ii.    Route-target import ___
               3. iii.    Route-target export ___
               4. iv.    exit

1. apply it on interface
   1. int ____
   2. ip vrf forwarding <name>
   3. exit

1. PE-CE routing
   1. For OSPF

1. i.    Defining the process and assigning networks
   1. CE router
   2. Router ospf <process-id>
   3. Network x.x.x.x x.x.x.x area <area-id>
      1. PE router
      2. Router ospf <process-id> vrf <name>
      3. Network x.x.x.x x.x.x.x area <area-id>
   4. ii.    Redistribution
      1. On PE router
      2. Router ospf <process-id> vrf <name>
         1. i.    Redistribute bgp metric                             {specifying metric is optional}
         2. Router bgp
            1. i.    Address-familly ipv4 vrf
               1. Redistribute ospf <process-id> match internal external 1 external 2
2. RIP as PE-CE
   1. i.    Defining the process and assigning the networks
      1. CE router
      2. Router rip
         1. i.    Ver 2
         2. ii.    No auto-summary
         3. iii.    Network x.x.x.x
            1. PE router
            2. Router rip
               1. i.    Ver 2
               2. ii.    No auto-summary
               3. iii.    Add ipv4 vrf
                  1. Ver 2
                  2. No auto-summary
                  3. Net x.x.x.x
   2. ii.    Redistribution
      1. PE router
      2. Router rip
         1. i.    Add ipv4 vrf
            1. Redistribute bgp subnets
            2. Router bgp
               1. i.    Add ipv4 vrf
                  1. Redistribute rip
3. EIGRP as PE-CE
   1. i.    Defining the process and assigning network
      1. CE router
      2. Router eigrp <as number>
         1. i.    No auto-summary
         2. ii.    Net x.x.x.x x.x.x.x
            1. PE router
            2. Router eigrp <As number>
               1. i.    No auto-summary
               2. ii.    Add ipv4 vrf
               3. iii.    Network x.x.x.x x.x.x.x
               4. iv.    Autonomus-system
   2. ii.    Redistribution
      1. PE router
      2. Router bgp
         1. i.    Add ipv4 vrf
         2. ii.    Redistribute eigrp <as-number>
         3. Router eigrp <as-number>
            1. i.    Add ipv4 vrf
            2. ii.    Redistribute bgp metric
4. BGP as PE-CE
   1. i.    Defining the process and assigning network
      1. PE router
      2. Router bgp
      3. Add ipv4 vrf
         1. i.    Nei x.x.x.x remote-as
         2. ii.    Nei x.x.x.x activate
         3. iii.    Nei x.x.x.x up lo 0
         4. iv.    Nei x.x.x.x ebgp-multihop                        { iii, iv & v are Optional steps }
         5. v.    Nei x.x.x.x as-override
            1. CE router
            2. Router bgp
               1. i.    Nei x.x.x.x remote-as
               2. ii.    Nei x.x.x.x activate

  

Information graphics (or infographics) are used to display information in ways that are more creative than plain old text. These days, they surround us in the media, published works, road signs and manuals. Lately, the Internet has been flooded with infographics on various topics, ranging from science and technology to society and culture. In this article, we’ll look at the process of designing an infographic about programming.

What the Infographic Shows

This infographic exhibits pioneers in the field of programming, along with the history and current statistics of various programming languages. Also included are some random facts and algorithm diagrams to make the infographic more visually appealing. Click on the image to enlarge.

• Large resolution view (.jpg, 2 Mb)

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has one of the most influential and popular Twitter accounts? Join our discussions and get updates about useful tools and resources — follow us on Twitter!]

Fewness Of Words

All of the pioneers in this infographic have had a big impact on the field of programming. Still, this list is in no way comprehensive. Programming languages like C, C++ and Java have shaped the programming world, and so including their creators here was essential. The same goes for pioneers such as Ken Thompson, Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds, who have each made significant contributions to the open-source world.

You might also notice that some important algorithms — such as dynamic programming, brute force and hash tables — are missing. The reason is that explaining these algorithms in a single diagram is difficult. Hence, they were replaced with ones like insertion sort and merge sort, which are relatively simpler to explain. Eight Queens and N-puzzle have often been used as illustrative problems for various programming techniques, and so they, too, are included here.

Designing The Infographic

Infographics are visual representations of information, data and knowledge. So, layout, color and typography are critical to user comprehension. Let’s consider each of these in turn.

Layout

Given the available information, I decided to divide the infographic into three major sections:

1. The most important people in the history of programming,
2. A timeline of the history of programming,
3. Statistics on programming languages.

The goal was to make the infographic simple yet beautiful. I came up with the following possible layouts to display the information:

The red squares denote illustrations, the arrows denote timelines, and the blue rectangles denote statistics on programming languages. In the third layout, the green circles denote random facts and algorithm diagrams.

This first layout is simple but lacks the attractiveness of a good infographic. So, I decided to abandon it.

In the second layout, the illustrations are arranged in a circle. But including the relevant information for each illustration consistently would have been difficult. So, I abandoned it, too.

I decided on a layout that combines the sine wave with golden rectangles, two properties that I discuss in an earlier article. I put random facts and diagrams of algorithms in the remaining golden rectangles to make the infographic more attractive.

I used Pixus to create the golden rectangle grid for this infographic. It comes in handy when you have multiple golden rectangles in a design.

Color

Colors present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to changing neighbours and changing conditions.

— Josef Albers

Picking the right colors is one of the most important things in graphic design. Color affects visual hierarchy and legibility of type, so it’s important to choose the right colors, and not just the expected ones. In an infographic, the background should blend perfectly with the illustrations. In this case, the illustrations looked dull against a white background and looked ugly against a dark background.

I chose a light shade of gold (#f9ebb3) for the background. Then, I applied a granular pattern to the background layer and scaled it down to 51%. I also reduced the opacity to about 52%. The illustrations now look good against this background.

I opted for “academic” colors for the typography because they blend well with the background and the illustrations. We all know that contrast is king, and so I used mostly primary colors for the illustrations because they contrast well with the text blocks.

You can always get help from Adobe Kuler if you have trouble choosing colors for your design.

Typography

The typographer’s one essential task is to interpret and communicate the text: its tone, its tempo, its logical structure, its physical size, all determine the possibilities of its typographic form. The typographer is to the text as the theatrical director is to the script and the musician is to the score.

— Robert Bringhurst

Use two or a maximum of three font types in a design. I chose Colaboarte Light for the programmers’ names and Calibri Italic for their descriptions. Both are sans-serif.

Within a single typeface family, variations in weight, width and style can vary the rhythm substantially, thus affecting communication. To control this, I italicized Calibri to a font size of 15 and kept the programmers’ names at 21. Alignment is flush-left. I also used Calibri for the descriptions of illustrations but gave it a different color to distinguish it from the descriptions of programmers. I chose the ChunkFive font for the numerical values in the illustrations.

Displaying Stats

To envision information — and what bright and splendid visions can result — is to work at the intersection of image, word, number, art. The instruments are those of writing and typography, of managing large data sets and statistical analysis, of line and layout and color.

— Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information

For years, we have been displaying information in bars graphs and pie charts. In fact, Edward Tufte coined the term “chartjunk” to refer to useless, uninformative or information-obscuring elements in quantitative displays. But this trend has shifted in recent times with the rise of infographics.

I opted for three different ways to display the statistics on programming languages. The Project Euler statistics are displayed in circles of different radii. The project is based on mathematical problems, and so displaying the statistics in geometric shapes was apt. The StackOverflow statistics are displayed as appearing in text editors of various sizes and colors, while the Tiobe Index statistics are displayed in terminals of various sizes and colors.

Final Thoughts

An infographic is all about displaying information in creative ways. The process of designing infographics can help us understand and implement certain graphic design principles much better than by designing for the Web alone. It’s all about applying the fundamental principles of design; we’ll always come up with better results if we can do that well.

Useful Links and Resources

• Anatomy of an Infographic
• Data Visualization and Infographic Resources
• 50 Most Stunning Examples of Data Visualization and Infographics

Also check out these related books:

• Visual Display of Quantitative Information
• Envisioning Information

(al)

© Adit Gupta for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags:

  

According to AdMob, the iPhone operating system makes up 50% of the worldwide smartphone market, with the next-highest OS being Android at 24%. Sales projections for the Apple iPad run anywhere from one to four million units in the first year. Like it or not, the iPhone OS, and Safari in particular, have become a force to be reckoned with for Web developers. If you haven’t already, it’s time to dive in and familiarize yourself with the tools required to optimize websites and Web applications for this OS.

Thankfully, Safari on iPhone OS is a really great browser. Just like Safari 4 for the desktop, it has great CSS3 and HTML5 support. It also has some slick interface elements right out of the box, which sometimes vary between the iPhone and iPad. Lastly, because the iPhone OS has been around for quite some time now, a lot of resources are available.

I know that most discussion about the iPhone OS platform centers on native applications. But you can still create powerful, native-looking applications using HTML, JavaScript and CSS. This article focuses on three phases of building and optimizing your website: design, coding and testing.

Before we get into the three phases, let’s look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of building a Web app rather than a native app.

Advantages of building a Web app instead of a native app:

1. No Apple approval process or red tape, which is especially important given the terms of service dispute going on right now.
2. Optimizing your Web app for other popular platforms like Android and Blackberry with the same code is much easier.
3. You don’t have to learn Objective-C.
4. If you’re charging users, you don’t have to share revenue with Apple.
5. You get 100% control over the means of payment, promotion and distribution to users… which could also be a negative, depending on how you look at it.

Disadvantages of building a Web app instead of a native app:

1. No presence in the App Store.
2. Installing the app on a device is a little trickier.
3. No access to some of the features that are native to the iPhone OS, such as push notification and GUI controls.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has one of the most influential and popular Twitter accounts? Join our discussions and get updates about useful tools and resources — follow us on Twitter!]

Design

Designing a Web app for this platform is much like designing a native app, so you’ll have access to some really great tools. Whether your wireframing tool of choice is pencil and paper or desktop software, you’re covered.

Inspiration

Not many people know that Apple has a “Web apps” section on its website, which is dedicated to showcasing optimized websites.

Featured Web app on the Apple website

There are also some galleries elsewhere that showcase the finest in mobile Web design:

• Apple Web Apps Listing
• Mobile Awesomeness Design Gallery
• CSS iPhone Design Gallery
• Well Placed Pixels
• Apple App Store (Even though these are native apps, you can find great visual inspiration here.)

Paper

Paper prototyping has long been my tool of choice for wireframing new ideas or websites. What I really like about the tools below is that they provide perspective on the size and dimensional constraints that you’re dealing with. To successfully optimize a Web app for the iPhone OS, you have to cut things out. I suggest keeping the design minimal by wireframing with a sharpie and one of the tools listed below.

Notepod is great for sketching out rough ideas for the iPhone and iPad.

• Notepod: iPad and iPhone sketchbooks
• App Sketchbook
• PixelPads
• UI Stencils sticky pads
• Apress iPhone Application Sketch Book
• Printable iPhone Wireframe Template (free)

Digital

Once you know exactly how things will lay out in your design, we can move to the desktop and get specific. I really like wireframing with OmniGraffle, but sometimes diving straight into Photoshop makes sense. Either way, these tools are a huge help in making it happen.

iPad GUI preview from Teehan + Lax.

• iPhone GUI PSD 3.0 and iPad GUI PSD (Photoshop)
• Layered iPhone GUI elements (Photoshop), from Designer’s Toolbox
• PSD Vector Kit (Photoshop), from Smashing Magazine
• iPad and iPhone stencils; see more at Graffletopia (OmniGraffle)
• iPhone and iPad Development GUI Kits, Stencils and Icons

Hungry for more? This article has a good rundown of additional design tools.

Coding

When you start coding for Safari on the iPhone OS, understanding how the browser works is important. Also, there are subtle differences in the iPhone and iPad’s browsers, such as how form-select boxes work. Most importantly, Safari has great CSS3 and HTML5 support, so you can use modern code without having to worry about cross-browser compatibility.

Education

Apple actually does a really good job of documenting Safari for the iPhone OS. The only shortcomings in my opinion are a lack of help with browser detection and window orientation. Read each of the articles below for everything you need to know about coding for this browser.

iPhone Human Interface Guidelines for Web Applications
This is a good overall summary of how Safari for the iPhone OS works. It’s certainly worth scanning through, because it has some good advice, although no specific coding examples.

iPad Human Interface Guidelines
This document does a good job of distinguishing iPhone elements and iPad elements. This is also worth scanning through, because it has some great advice on designing for the iPad.

Safari Web Content Guide
This document gets specific about the viewport, webclip icons, unique meta tags and event handling, among many other topics. Code examples are provided. I recommend reading it cover to cover before getting started.

Preparing Your Web Content for the iPad
This document provides tips on testing your website on the iPad, but its discussion on browser detection isn’t as detailed as I would like.

Browser Detection
David Walsh provides good examples of proper browser detection for the iPad and for the iPhone on his blog. Options for PHP and Javascript are included.

Detecting iPhone Window Orientation
This iPhone development tutorial from Nettuts provides a good example of how to vary style sheets according to the iPhone’s orientation.

Detecting iPad Window Orientation
Detecting iPad’s window orientation is much easier. Here’s what the code looks like (no JavaScript required):

<link rel="stylesheet" media="all and (orientation:portrait)" href="portrait.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" media="all and (orientation:landscape)" href="landscape.css">

jQTouch Mobile Framework

While the iPhone has a few mobile development frameworks, jQTouch is far and away the best. jQTouch gives you all of the tools to make your mobile Web app look and feel like a native one. Visit the website, and go to the demo website from your iPhone to get a feel for it.

My only complaint when building my first website with jQTouch was a lack of documentation and tutorials. I had to figure it out by playing with the demo website’s code. Here are some jQTouch articles that proved helpful in coding my first website:

• jQTouch Wiki on Google Code
• Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, Chapter 4: Animation
• PDF slides about getting started with jQTouch, by Philipp Bosch

Testing

A crucial and somewhat tricky part of building a website or Web app for the iPhone OS is testing. It’s a little more complicated than testing in a web browser, but familiarizing yourself with a couple of tools should make the process simple.

Liveview

Liveview is a really clever testing tool for when your app is in the design or initial coding phase. It allows you to broadcast an image from your desktop onto your phone so that you can see what it looks like. This is useful for getting text size and the visual specifics just right, because sometimes visualizing from Photoshop is hard.

Using the iPhone Simulator

In my opinion, no good iPhone or iPad emulators are available. The ones that are available are a waste of time. Much better is to download the latest version of the SDK and use Apple’s official iPhone OS simulator, which of course supports the iPad as well.

Setting up the SDK and a local testing environment takes a few minutes but is well worth the effort, rather than depending on unofficial and often inaccurate emulators. I’ve written a step-by-step tutorial about setting up a local testing environment that’s worth a read. One great thing about local testing is that it’s faster and does not require an Internet connection. I highly recommend going this route until you are ready to launch.

PhoneGap: Best Of Both Worlds?

PhoneGap is a game-changer for Web developers. If you would rather create your app in HTML, CSS and JavaScript but want it to run natively and have it be available in the App Store, then PhoneGap is the solution. It’s an open-source development tool that not only compiles your code for native use on the iPhone OS but also works for Android, Palm, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices.

PhoneGap also steers clear of the recently controversial 3.3.1 clause of Apple’s terms of service. In other words, apps compiled with PhoneGap will still be approved. Check out the list of apps that are built with PhoneGap to learn more.

Feeling Overwhelmed?

If you are, then some good hosted services will make it easier to optimize your website for multiple platforms without having to start from scratch. There are various levels of flexibility available, but all the services use a WYSIWYG-like editor to help you create mobile websites on the fly. Depending on your Web app and client, one of the following may be a good fit:

Mobify is a great alternative if you don’t care to build from scratch.

• Mobify (which powers Smashing Magazine’s mobile website)
• Wapple
• Mofuse
• Mobi10

Conclusion

It’s a great day to be a Web developer, because non-desktop platforms like the iPhone OS open up greater possibilities for us to express our creativity and entrepreneurial savvy, while allowing us to adhere to modern Web standards. All of the tools you need to create great a Web experience on the platform that’s currently dominating the mobile space are out there. It’s up to you to make the most of them!

(al)

© Nick Francis for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: ipad, iphone, mobile