Adobe Photoshop CS5 is a new, but experienced kid on the block. With its new powerful features, it provides designers with a flexible tool for printing, making a video or designing for the Web. Some of the features added in Photoshop CS5 are Puppet Warp, 3D extrusions with Adobe Repoussé, smart radius feature, Content-Aware Fill and Raw Image Processing, to name a few. In this post we showcase Adobe Photoshop CS5 tutorials from which you will learn a lot about different features of Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Photoshop CS5 Tutorials

Create a Cosmic Love Goddess With Photoshop CS5
In this tutorial author demonstrates how to create a cosmic love goddess using some of Photoshop CS5′s new tools including the Refine Edge Feature which really helps to streamline the process of masking and removing objects from the background.

Quick HDR Effect Photoshop CS5 Tutorial
In this Photoshop tutorial you will learn how to create HDR from a single image. This technique will make the bright portions of the image darker, and dark portions of the image lighter. This also gives the image a more realistic look.

Create an Abstract Light Streaks poster in Photoshop CS5
In this tutorial you will learn how to create an abstract light streaks poster from scratch using Lighting effects, Noise, and Wave Photoshop CS5 filters. Layered PSD file included.

New Techniques for Cutting Outbhair in Photoshop CS5
In this tutorial author will be replacing a dull background with a very cool sunset, and use different new features in CS5

CutOut Painting Effect Photoshop CS5 Tutorial
In this Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to turn a photo into an CutOut painting, using a few filters with a very simple technique.

Create a Dramatic and Surreal illustration in Photoshop CS5
In this tutorial, author will tell how to blend fashion photography with custom brushes into dramatic and surreal illustration using Photoshop CS5 techniques. Layered PSD file included.

Photoshop CS5: Camera RAW
In this video tutorial, author shows you how to use Photoshop CS5′s updated features to make extracting part of an image easier.

New in PS CS5: Refine Edge and Smart Radius
The brand new Smart Radius feature in Photoshop CS5 allows you to do more complex selections a lot quicker than previously.

Remove a Person From a Photo With Photoshop CS5’s Content Aware Feature
In this tutorial, author will show how Content Aware feature allows you to quickly fill in a selection with surrounding content making it look like a part of the original image.

New in PS CS5: Usable Sharpen tool
In this tutorial,author will show you how to use Usable Sharpen tool.

Playing with Inflate in Repoussé in Photoshop CS5 Extended
In this tutorial, author will show you the Inflate option in Repoussé.

How To Make 3D Text in CS5 – Photoshop tutorial
Learn how to make 3D text in Photoshop (Adobe Photoshop CS5 tutorial.

Favorite Features of Photoshop CS5
In this tutorial, we take a look at some of author’s favorite new features in Photoshop CS5.

Removing Skin Blemishes With The Spot Healing Brush
In this Photoshop tutorial, we’ll look at one of the most amazing and time saving photo retouching tools available, the Spot Healing Brush, the first of three image “healing” tools in Photoshop.

Photoshop CS5 New Features – Content-Aware Healing
In this tutorial, author shows you how content aware healing feature is helpful.

3D Type with Repoussé in Photoshop CS5 Extended
In this tutorial, author will show you charm of new feature the Repoussé. This new feature or tool will allow us to create 3D objects extruding texts, selections, paths and layers masks.

New in PS CS5: Brush Engine
This tutorial highlight a feature in Photoshop CS5, new brush engine with the exciting bristle brushes that will let you paint in a much more realistic way.

Cartoon Text with Background Animation Effect
In this video tutorial, you will learn how to create a cartoon style text and animate it using clipping masks and tweening. Photoshop CS5 is required for use of puppet warp feature.

3D Water Text Effect with Repoussé in Photoshop CS5
In this tutorial author will show you how to create a water text. Even though it might look complex it’s a very simple effect. We will be using the new Repoussé then some stock photos to create the effect.

Turn A Sunny Day
In this tutorialauthor shows us how to deal and turn cloudy days into sunny photo effects.

How to Make a Reflection in CS5 – Photoshop tutorial
You will Learn how to make a great reflection in this Photoshop CS5 tutorial.

Create 3D type art using Photoshop CS5
In this tutorial, author will use the new Repoussé tool to extrude some text in a way previously only possible in a full 3D application.

Create an Animated Banner Ad in Photoshop CS5
In this article, author will demonstrate how to use Photoshop to create an animated gif in Photoshop CS5.

Create gif animation using puppet warp
In this video tutorial, author will show you how to create a gif animation using the new puppet warp tool in photoshop CS5.

Photoshop CS5 Digital Painting Tutorial
In this tutorial author will show you the techniques and the tricks to convert a photo into a great-looking painting.

CS5 – Hair Masking – Photoshop tutorial
In this Adobe Photoshop CS5 tutorial, we will learn how to do Hair Masking

Use Puppet Warp in Photoshop CS5 to Tweak Your Images
In this quick tip tutorial author will demonstrate how to correct a Photo with puppet wrap tool in minutes.

Blending fashion image with Photoshop CS5 custom shapes
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to transform fashion photography into abstract illustration by mixed some custom shapes and applying different Blending modes using Adobe Photoshop CS5. Layered PSD file included.

Human Aquarium Illustration Photoshop Tutorial
In this Photoshop tutorial we’ll be walking through the process of creating a human aquarium illustration using some awesome techniques.

How to create Retro-style Photoshop illustration
In this tutorial, author will create some textures for background using brushes, manipulate some stock photos to give them a retro-style look, and make some color variations. Layered PSD file included.

Horizontal horizon in Photoshop CS5
In this tutorial, author will tell how to make horizontal horizon in Photoshop CS5

PS QT: Make Layer Style Options Default in CS5
In Photoshop CS5 you can finally make your own default options for the layer styles. Just go into the blending options, mess with the settings until you have what you want as your default, and click the “Make Default” button at the bottom of the window to save this as the default for all other times.

Using a good web hosting provider ensures that your website is running smoothly and do not face any down times or server side problems.

But before you choose a hosting provider, you must research and compare all the companies out there. The following points should be closely compared while choosing a web hosting company:

• Is the hosting company a reputed one ?
• What other users are saying about the company ?
• What are the different plans available ?
• How is the tech support of the company?
• Which sites are using the same hosting company for their websites?
• What are the user reviews, goodwill and customer feedback of the hosting company?

To accumulate all the data about the different hosting providers is really a tough task. You have to search Google, go to the forums and interact with different people to know the inside details of the hosting company.

One site which makes the research much more easier is WebHostingRating.com. WebHostingRating is one of the world’s largest independent web hosting directory which contains detailed information of all the major hosting providers at one place. You can read the user reviews and customer feedback of all the popular and trusted hosting companies from a single website and don’t have to look here and there and collect information.

The site also has some useful hosting guides which will help you choose the perfect web hosting company according to your needs.

Let’s see the various sections of the website in full detail.

Compare the Plans of Different Hosting Providers

On the home page of WebHostingRating.com, you will see a brief comparison of 10 major hosting providers, as shown below:

The above table compares different aspects such as the basic pricing plans, space and traffic. There is a user rating column which lists a link to reviews page written by real users who are using the same hosting provider for their website(s).

The comparison is very handy and you can compare different companies at a glance. If you want to compare the plans of two or more companies, simply select the corresponding check boxes under the compare section and and hit the “Compare plans” button placed at the bottom of the table.

The result will be something like the following:

No doubt this is useful, because you can compare all the aspects of two hosting companies side by side. It would be a lot more easier on part of customers to first compare the plans, features and then choose the company that suits best.

Know the Complete Details of a Specific Hosting Provider

If you are interested in a specific hosting company and want to know the complete details, simply perform a search at the search box. WebHostingRating.com contains the details of all the major hosting providers, so you will surely find the company you are looking for.

On the company page you will find lots of details about the features the hosting company provides. This includes server information, domain features, email features, site management, scripting, security, ecommerce, site building tools and site statistics.

The page will also list the different pricing plans and user reviews about the company. This is extremely useful because you can read the reviews and know what other customers are saying about the company. After reading the feedback, it would be lot easier to decide why you should choose this company as the hosting provider of your website.

Search Using the Catalog

Another useful feature is the “Search Host Catalog” section placed at the sidebar of WebHostingRating.com. It’s an advanced search which lets you pick certain attributes and then search the website for companies that matches with your chosen attribute. There are two attributes – price range and the location of the hosting provider.

For example: If you want a hosting company from North America and in the price range of 5-10$ a month, you can simply define the attributes in the “Search Host Catalog” section and search for the hosting company which satisfies those conditions.

Hosting Guides

The Hosting Guides section of WebHostingRating.com consists of useful tutorials and articles about Web hosting. If you are facing any problem regarding the technical aspects of your website, these guides will be useful.

In addition to the tutorials, the hosting guides section also consists of articles about the current trends in the web hosting industry. Following these guides and articles, you will find the answer to commonly asked questions and problems.

Video Tutorials

The Video tutorials section is one of the very informative sections of WebHostingRating.com. Sometimes you may have to spend a lot of time fixing bugs, you may mess your website’s settings or get into other problems.There are a lot of tutorials on the web but you have to read long pages of content which might not be the easiest way to find a solution you are looking for.

To make it straightforward for you, WebHostingRating presents a full list of Video Tutorials. There are a lot of categories – from CMS to C panel from FTP to Gallery, from WordPress to Plesk – everything’s under their grip.

All the tutorials are listed in the left sidebar, pick a category and view interactive video tutorials for free.

Submit Your Hosting Company to WebHostingRating.com

If you have a hosting company and want to get listed in the WebHostingRating.com directory, go to the submit page and enter all the details and whereabouts about your company. The team of WebHostingRating.com will review your service and add it to their directory.

It’s a great way to gain exposure and targeted customers because WebHostingRating is the place where lots of clients are coming everyday.

All in all, WebHostingRating.com is a useful source of information for anyone who is interested in web hosting. If you have a website and want to change your hosting provider, make sure you read the reviews about the hosting company at WebHostingRating.com and then come to a decision.

WebHostingRating is one of the world’s largest independent web hosting directory which contains detailed information of all the major hosting providers at one place. You can read the user reviews and customer feedback of all the popular and trusted hosting companies from a single website and don’t have to look here and there and collect information.

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You may be wondering why you’re reading about the good old semantics on Smashing Magazine. Why doesn’t this article deal with HTML5 or another fancy new language: anything but plain, clear, tired old semantics. You may even find the subject boring, being a devoted front-end developer. You don’t need a lecture on semantics. You’ve done a good job keeping up with the Web these last 10 years, and you know pretty much all there is to know.

I’m writing about HTML semantics because I’ve noticed that semantic values are often handled sloppily and are sometimes neglected, even today. A huge void remains in semantic consistency and clarity, begging to be filled. We need better and more consistent naming conventions and smarter ways to construct HTML templates, to give us more consistent, clearer and readable HTML code. If that doesn’t sound like paradise, I don’t know what does.

[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!]

The Bare Necessities Of Semantics

With all the functional mumbo jumbo hidden away in HTML5, some of us seem to have forgotten what HTML is really all about. Native video support is considered way cooler than the new header tags, somewhat understandably, but from a semantic and structural point of view, these latter elements present the most valuable improvement.

Semantic importance got a serious boost when accessibility became a big deal to us Web developers. But its powers go way beyond making our content available to those lacking the skills to surf the Web in regular ways. For one, making content recognizable to all kinds of crawlers (but most importantly search engines) could greatly improve the results of search queries on the Web. Rather than wading through trailers, film websites and product pages, wouldn’t it be much nicer to filter reviews directly and find out how a certain film has been received? Currently, no trustworthy mechanism exists to recognize or filter a broad range of content types, which is a serious loss for the Web as a whole.

When looking for reviews, you don’t want to end up on a page with grayed-out links.

If all of that sounds like a far-off dream, then note that once you’ve distinguished between all the elements on your website, you will have little to no trouble styling or adding functional behavior to the page. The combination of context and proper semantics ensures a solid structure for all further front-end work, which is only made stronger by making sure every element is defined correctly.

The (Very Simple) Basics

Absolutely nothing is complex about semantics, and the basics have been preached for a long time now. A recap of the bare minimum won’t hurt anybody, though, so here it goes.

The HTML language has a range of tags with semantic meaning. If none of the available tags suits your needs, then two generic tags (span and div) are the HTML equivalents of the word “thing,” which can be used in combination with one or more classes to add (not necessarily standardized) semantic value to your elements. It’s the microformats idea without the actual microformats. Some basic examples:

• Main navigation: nav.main (HTML5) or div.navMain;
• An article: article (HTML5) or div.article;
• Article header: article>header (HTML5) or div.article>div.header

That’s all there is to it, really. Adding semantic value is about choosing the correct tag(s) and/or applying the correct label(s) to an element. It really makes you wonder why applying this simple concept consistently to professionally developed websites has proven to be so difficult, even today.

For those of you who don’t like the microformats ideology, you could also go all HTML5 and look at the HTML5 Microdata proposition. What follows in this article reflects both methodologies equally, so the choice is entirely up to you.

Sampling The Web

To illustrate my point, I took some quick samples from some of today’s leading websites. By no means do these samples hold any scientific validity, nor is this a purposeful bash of the websites I’ve singled out. They are simply chosen because I believe they best represent their kind. I hope the data speaks for itself either way.

To grasp the semantic consistency within a website, I tried finding some common content types. Content types are easy to recognize and even easier to label. Before I get to the data, though, let’s look at one way we could label products in a Web store:

• Product detail: div.product;
• Products added to your basket: .basket li.product;
• Promo product in a list: .categoryList .product.promo;
• Etc.

Products are everywhere in a Web store, so it seems logical that the product class would reappear across the pages for every instance of a product on the website. After all, whether a product is located in a “Related items” list, added to a basket or shown in full doesn’t really change its semantic nature, so why change its structure or class name?

These are all products, appearing as variants or in different contexts.

For my sample, I picked five content types (story, product, video, person, blog post) and picked four websites to represent each content type. To check for semantic consistency, I looked at the labels on a shortlist (a list of content type instances) and the content type’s detail. The following table summarizes my findings:

Apart from last.fm, none of the websites I checked got it right, even though the content types I chose were very easy to label. Apple and the New York Times came quite close, but some of the others are miles away from what you’d expect to find. And that’s just looking at the root tag of the content type. The structure and classes within are often even worse, bordering on complete randomness. Another thing to note is that blogs about Web design seem to score the worst.

Think Components, Not Pages

There is, of course, not one single cause of this problem, nor is the solution simple. But you can make one important mental shift as a front-end developer to give your work more semantic consistency. The key is to stop thinking of a website as a collection of pages and to instead look for common components.

Front-end developers tend to work the same as designers: start with the home page, finish that, and then move on to the second wireframe — copy the reusable components, adapt if needed, and then repeat until all pages are done. This process requires a lot of copying, adapting and checking older pages to find reusable elements. It is a true killer of consistency — invoking spur-of-the-moment labels and destroying semantic consistency.

Because we want consistency, both in structure and semantics, focusing on a single component at a time is better. When you need to write the HTML code for a product, check each wireframe for variations within and across products. Write code that can handle all existing variants. Once that is done, you will have a consistent and solid model to describe your component that you can used wherever you want.

Making It All Happen

I know from experience that this mental shift takes some time to get used to, and the only way to get it working is to throw yourself in and practice. I’ll share some quick pointers to make the whole process a little less daunting.

Think Beyond Styling Needs and Performance

.productList li or .products li

ul li.product

Consider the example above. As Web developers, we’ve been taught that the first option should be preferred. From a performance and styling perspective, this is indeed the case. But putting on your semantic hat, you’ll notice that to recognize the list items in the first example as products, you need to make a deduction. Singling out all products on a page isn’t as easy as looking for the product class. Automated systems should also account for the possibility that a product is defined as a list item inside a parent that refers to a collection of products. Not such a big deal for the human brain, but writing a foolproof, fully automated implementation isn’t as easy.

On top of that, the second option allows for more flexibility because it makes it possible to drop instances of other content types into the same list without running into styling hell, while at the same time ensuring semantic integrity. It wouldn’t be the first time I was asked to merge a news and event shortlist into one big list just because there wasn’t sufficient content to warrant separate lists. The second option would give you a smaller headache, especially if you’re nearing an important deadline.

Bottom line: try to minimize semantic deductions, and keep the code clear and simple. Pick unique class names for components, and stick with them throughout the entire project.

Don’t Mix Responsibilities

I know that many people like to mix wireframing, HTML and even design into one organic and homogeneous process. The downside to this is that you will have a hard time not compromising your work. When you’re designing, writing HTML and CSS is not priority number one; and once the design is done, you’ll find it tough to go back and rework your code to match HTML and CSS standards.

It’s also refreshing to try to build a website based purely on a set of wireframes, without the slightest notion of design. It helps you focus on meaning and makes it easier to spot components that are actually the same but could differ wildly design-wise. And if you’ve done it right, you’ll find that during CSS development, you don’t have to adapt the HTML at all, unless the design calls for major structural changes.

Try to build your HTML templates based on wireframes, and save the design and CSS for when your static HTML templates are completed.

Automate Your Job

Automation is a major key to success. Whether you use existing tools (such as a CMS) or build your own (as we do), automating the job of building static templates could help you to define a component once and reuse the code everywhere that the component is featured in your templates. The process itself (when done right) ensures semantic consistency and is sure to bring you new insight when constructing HTML templates.

At my current job, we build such a tool based on components (recurring HTML code blocks) and schemes (outlines of each template that refer to these components). Thrown in some simple program logic (if and loop statements, parameters) and allow for proper nesting methods, and you’re good to go.

Semantic Consistency Across Projects

Finally, keep a list of components you’ve made over multiple projects. Many components will be relevant for each new project and will be semantically identical, meaning that the HTML structure should be identical just as well (save some wrappers for visual CSS trickery, if you’re into that).

Once you have such a list of components, starting up a new project will be a lot faster, and you’ll have the added benefit of semantic consistency across all of your projects.

Banana ≠ Curvy Yellow Fruit

Semantics is all about identifying objects, but it goes beyond simply slapping a label on every object that comes your way. If you have a blog, and you randomly throw around classes like article, story, blogpost and news, then your website will lack semantic consistency, making all your hard work amount to very little. Semantics have no point when they are not applied consistently, even though today’s technology does very little with them — which, by the way, is no surprise given that locating a simple “product” on most Web stores is nearly impossible these days.

People looking for bananas might think twice before buying these.

The next time you begin a project, try to view a Web page as a collection of building blocks. Start by constructing these building blocks first, and worry about building the pages later. Come up with a single label for an HTML component, and use it consistently across your website. It won’t make styling harder, and it won’t affect the way you write JavaScript. Over time, you can take it further by being semantically consistent over multiple projects.

If your main job is to develop static HTML templates, try to automate your work. You’ll find that you spend more time writing flexible and solid HTML structures and less time copying and adapting code from point A to point B. It makes your job more interesting and makes the Web a better and more meaningful place.

Further Resources

• Microformats
  Summarizes the microformats ideology. Read more about using class names as semantic aids.
• HTML5 Microdata
  Explains how HTML5 is built to standardize the use of flexible semantics.

(al)

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

Monoslideshow is a Flash® slideshow to view your images and videos in a web page. It can be placed on every website, in whatever size you want and filled with whatever content you like. It’s designed for maximum flexibility, whether you want to have a professional looking portfolio, or a simple image rotator on your website.

Monoslideshow is a single .SWF-file. There’s no need to recompile or edit the slideshow in the Flash® IDE. Instead, all Monoslideshow needs is information that is directly read from a .XML-file. It’s compact, extremely versatile and easy for web developers to integrate in existing websites.

You can view your customization live and build your own XML configuration file using the online demo page: www.monoslideshow.com/demo. It has  20+ Professional photo transitions, Ken Burns effect (pan / zoom), Style interface elements to match your design, Easy navigation between photo albums, Fully resizable, fits every layout, Background music and image sounds, API for Javascript and Actionscript 3, Support for EXIF data in photo captions.

This contest will run from June 30, 2010 to July 9, 2010 and we will select the winners randomly by running MySQL query. Result can be announced any day before July 11, 2010 so keep visiting here or subscribe to our rss feed to get the latest updates. To participate in the contest and win free license of Monoslideshow, All you have to do is just :

1. Just leave a comment.
2. Use valid email ID in the email box.
3. Not necessary, but you can subscribe to our rss feed and follow us on twitter as well. (To track this contest and for future updates)
4. And thats it!

So what are you waiting for now? Let’s participate in the contest and good luck!

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Monoslideshow is a Flash® slideshow to view your images and videos in a web page. It can be placed on every website, in whatever size you want and filled with whatever content you like. It’s designed for maximum flexibility, whether you want to have a professional looking portfolio, or a simple image rotator on your website.

Monoslideshow is a single .SWF-file. There’s no need to recompile or edit the slideshow in the Flash® IDE. Instead, all Monoslideshow needs is information that is directly read from a .XML-file. It’s compact, extremely versatile and easy for web developers to integrate in existing websites.

You can view your customization live and build your own XML configuration file using the online demo page: www.monoslideshow.com/demo. It has  20+ Professional photo transitions, Ken Burns effect (pan / zoom), Style interface elements to match your design, Easy navigation between photo albums, Fully resizable, fits every layout, Background music and image sounds, API for Javascript and Actionscript 3, Support for EXIF data in photo captions.

This contest will run from June 30, 2010 to July 9, 2010 and we will select the winners randomly by running MySQL query. Result can be announced any day before July 11, 2010 so keep visiting here or subscribe to our rss feed to get the latest updates. To participate in the contest and win free license of Monoslideshow, All you have to do is just :

1. Just leave a comment.
2. Use valid email ID in the email box.
3. Not necessary, but you can subscribe to our rss feed and follow us on twitter as well. (To track this contest and for future updates)
4. And thats it!

So what are you waiting for now? Let’s participate in the contest and good luck!

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The social media explosion that began taking place two to three years ago continues to grow, with more tools to integrate them into your blog than ever before.

For bloggers, these tools make it possible to share your thoughts, links to blog posts, as well as continue the conversation through Facebook and Twitter. The times ahead will include even more of the services, although there will likely be a newcomer or two whose features are simply integrated into the leading services.

Pingdom also included a number of other interesting stats about the popular networking service, as outlined below.

• Growth through January 2011 will increase by 494%, with an average increase in the range of 15-17% per month if the momentum continues.
• Less than six months after Twitter announced that they passed one billion tweets, the two billionth tweet will have been made.
• By December, Twitter will process nearly six times as many tweets as the previous year.
• It took more than three years to get to a billion tweets, but the billion mark will be reached every single month if the rend continues by the year 2011.

Conclusion

What do you think of these stats? How will Twitter integrate “premium” services to better monetize the service – after all, the traffic to their website and through third-party applications will certainly increase during this period, too. How will you integrate Twitter into your site to better capitalize on the new traffic?

  

In our past articles, we’ve experimented with better ways to engage users on web pages with CSS3. We love getting into the nuts and bolts of web design by showing off some nifty coding tricks. In this article we’ll take a step back to provide some reasoning for designers to embark on that next redesign.

Great web design happens with sound user needs, solid business goals and focused metrics. Learning how to deconstruct a website is an important step in building a plan that aligns the company vision with the needs of users. A good review will put the focus on the profitability of the business.

We deconstructed a few popular web pages below to stimulate the discussion around specific interaction issues many companies face. We were not part of any of the design decisions and did not have access to the business objectives; our recommendations are based on experience and repeated patterns we observe in web design. And with that, here are five content heavy homepages deconstructed.

[By the way: The network tab (on the top of the page) is updated several times a day. It features selected articles from the best web design blogs!]

Mashable

Mashable is a huge social media news website. Mashable does a good job fronting up articles — they know their audience. It’s refreshing to see a single focus on the top of the page. They also do a good job of presenting headlines and pumping out regular content to their news-thirsty readers. Advertising, however, seems at odds with their content strategy in many places on the page (this is a common trend in content sites). It may be useful to consider changing the placement of advertisements to encourage more click-through.

Full interactive view | Summary view

1. Regular readers might understand this statement, but based on the content on the homepage, it’s really hard to understand how these articles tie to social media.
2. Holy navigation! People read body copy first, so this much navigation on the top probably doesn’t create more clicks into the site.
3. This is great, but it gets lost and it’s not clear that you can read more by clicking on the ‘+’ symbol.
4. Good use of the bandwagon technique to get people following Mashable.
5. Right now these might be good for encouraging participation with the content, but it should be watched closely because of burnout. The homepage is heavily devoted to using these social media tools (which it should eat it’s own dogfood) &mdash as long as the site stays focused on good content, the use of them should only help grow readership.
6. Butting the headline up against the image actually creates more interest in the summary. It’s a good technique to create a quickly “scannable” headline.
7. With all the good things the layout does to get you invested in the content, the buttons create a heavy distraction, though the numbers on the buttons are extremely useful to users. The Google Buzz icon shouts for attention.
8. A Med Rec like this performs better near the top when it’s tied to content. In the stream of information, this type of add will be ignored.
9. Interesting approach to get people to view the sky scrapper ad. Tying these headlines to the ad probably increases the click through on the ad. $
10. Square ads this low on the page probably don’t perform well- integrating them between content articles will increase activity. $$$
11. We called this out on TechCrunch — taking sponsored events like this and putting them into ad space defeats the purpose of a powerful publishing platform.
12. Where are the benefits? Please sell me on why I need this iPhone app. If it is a money maker, or provides more compelling ways to connect to users, then it makes sense to promote it. $$$
13. According to usability studies, clouds like this don’t help users very much.
14. We assume this is more for SEO than readers- it’s a daunting list of topics to get through at the bottom of a page. Users will click on a high percentage of links if they are focused at the bottom of a page. This list, however, is too long to reap this benefit.
15. These probably provide a revenue stream or help paying for the services. Not very useful for users.
16. Interesting placement: this probably does fine in the middle of the page. Is it sponsored? Might be good to call this out.

MSN

MSN’s current design is a radical departure from their old homepage and a welcome change in a crowded market of news aggregators. MSN has struggled to separate itself from Yahoo and Google – this makeover helps differentiate the service.

Microsoft has struggled to drive profits with their web properties because of their lack of laser-like focus on users. The airy, light feel of the page makes it very approachable and inviting. Users will rejoice. It may be useful to create stronger hierarchies below the fold to encourage more return clicks — the way it is designed now doesn’t make the links look very valuable.

Full interactive view | Summary view

1. It’s interesting how companies alert people to a new site. Putting a beta or preview label allows a team to deal with failure upfront. But why?
2. The navigation is simple and easy to drill down to a topic (large clicking area), but the drop down menus get in the way. They’re a bit slow to respond to the rollover.
3. Great use of a headline. Big and bold. A huge departure from the old MSN homepage.
4. Now, this is a bold move by one of the most traffic pages on the Web. The white space alone seems like a huge risk for such an advertising dependent page.
5. This is a new trend by Yahoo as well: cycle more news stories onto a single page. The problem is that these are too small to accurately control.
6. Incredible discipline to not jam the ad higher on the page. If you compare this design with the old homepage, they’re still able to get the ad higher on the page.
7. Bummer, unlike the top nav, the clickable area on this subnav is relegated to the words.
8. Interesting treatment on the search bar. This is a huge departure from the previous Bing search box. Associating the search clicking action with Bing is good, but it’s going to be extremely difficult to get people to say, “just bing it.” All other search filters have been removed: it seems like a smart move.
9. Very odd placement for a security update! This has to be a business requirement that was thrown into the page.
10. Amazing amounts of effort and money have been thrown into being with the cool kids, Facebook and Twitter. Microsoft put $250,000,000 into Facebook, so it’s surprising that Twitter gets free advertising.
11. We are surprised again by the constraints of this redesign. Local, movies, maps and jobs are probably the four most used links (Yahoo on the other hand forces you to choose your links). This was a sound choice by MSN.
12. Huge effort around local content. Full headlines are important (Yahoo truncates the headlines of local news).
13. This is a nice addition; local content is going to start growing.
14. Useful settings, but it’s unclear why this was included as a main nav item. The functionality is different.
15. Instead of just showing popular searches, contextual information is provided next to the term. Very cool.
16. Odd placement of “advertisement,” the top ad has this below the ad.
17. Very sparse. A small call to action might increase use of the search form.
18. Interesting constraint on this footer nav for a huge business that has hundreds of business units. It will be interesting to see this one playing out.
19. It’s incredible to see a big white patch here. It gets filled with your information from the social site, but it’s an activity that most people will not do. Anyone in advertising yelling?
20. Big departure: links are not blue and not distinguished unless you rollover the text.

Smashing Magazine

True to its roots, Smashing Magazine has a strong focus on content. Over the years it’s added depth to the site through new content and features. With most growing websites, it’s balanced new opportunities with its bread and butter, web design articles.

The number of new visitors that come to the site is staggering (based on referral traffic we seen). This makes it extremely difficult to balance the needs of the new readers with their loyal followers. Staying focused on good content makes this task easier. From a business perspective, it is recommendable to better align revenue streams (ads, jobs, books, etc) with the content. The risk of alienating readers is small; most users will tolerate offers if Smashing Magazine reduces the overall clutter and redundancy on the site.

Full interactive view | Summary view

1. Good use of different images on each page load. Returning users will find this subtle technique draw them into the graphic. The competition with the top horizontal ad makes this a battle of attention: where do you want me to click?
2. Integrating content from a network is a great way to encourage cross traffic and it should be balanced with the overall goals of the site. Finding a middle ground between a tab and fully featured posts would help this effort.
3. The white space around the logo gives it some nice breathing room and focus. To give return users a little more value, tighten up the spacing and bring a little more content above the fold.
4. Generous size ads for the advertisers, but the wall of ads probably lowers the overall click-through. $$$
5. The Twitter and RSS numbers provide strong validation of the site. The graphics are nice, but the visual style is not used anywhere else on the page.
6. This is a great idea, but the value is unclear: why do I want to sign up for the newsletter?
7. Great use of big images to sell the story. However, a wide gap is created when the ad is placed at the top.
8. Excellent use of quick links under the header. Too many sites try to hide these in drop downs.
9. Yes! Simple, big headlines scream: Read our content.
10. There are some great articles that get lost in this list. This duplicates the tab on the top of the page. It’s a balance between creating traffic and loosing traffic.
11. This is an odd place to introduce general site content.
12. This additional list of tweets doesn’t help attract new followers. The text is out of context with replies and the visual style seems out of place.
13. This is near the headline, so it’s a great benefit to the advertiser… but it also pushes the width of the content much wider.
14. This is a revenue stream that is hidden down in the sidebar. Integration of jobs into the site will make traffic to this section higher. $$$
15. Focusing on the headlines and lead-in is a good tactic. The usability doesn’t fall apart with a slower loading image down the page.
16. Placing this new property on the lower half of the page reduces the exposure this new effort requires. It also suffers from ad blindness.
17. Popular posts are great, but more context might make the value of the links go up. When sprinkled down the page the impact declines.
18. The footer has good links. Improving the hierarchy of links will provide more clicks and revenue. People tend to look for launch points after scrolling down a page.
19. This type of personality goes a long way in building a loyal following.
20. The addition of pagination doesn’t provide much context for the vast majority of visitors. Focusing on a single call to action will increase the number of clicks.

TechCrunch

TechCrunch has put a heavy emphasis on providing great, up-to-date content. This is a strategy that will continue to fuel their growth. They have a number of efforts on the page that aren’t presented well, but their focus on content will continue to drive traffic to those initiatives.

Full interactive view | Summary view

1. Boxing in the ad around a piece of content helps increase click-through. The logo, however, doesn’t offer much in terms of actions and is likely to reduce the click-through.
2. TechCrunch does a great job of getting feed sign-ups, but these actions get lost in the shuffle. It is very likely that people who subscribe to a feed are more likely to engage in the site. $$$
3. Good choice: people want content, not navigation. However, the calls to action for these destinations should be stronger within the page.
4. The downside of a “modular,” boxed in design is that intersecting lines fight for the user’s eye.
5. The downside of this advertising model is repeated ads- it grabs the attention of a user, but this effort will provide limited value for the advertiser.
6. In a blog structure like this, content space is valuable: but why treat the event as an ad? Content that supports the event would drive more invested clicks.
7. Is this an ad? Editorial? Clicking on this graphic takes you to a blog entry, but it appears to be advertising. It’s very misleading.
8. Good information. It costs money, but why treat this as an ad?
9. Interesting use of buttons to show popularity of a post. For design consistency it would be nice to right align with the dotted line.
10. Great use of images and headlines to draw people into the site. This feature is a huge win over most editorial sites. An A/B test might reveal having one big rotating editorial image and headline would actually encourage more clicks down the page and increase advertising click-through rates.
11. This is great. Showing activity encourages more activity.
12. Boxing in the ad increases the click-through. Removing the dotted line to the right might increase it even more.
13. Bold headers are a good choice. Users appreciate the simplicity of a clear call to action. They can choose to read the article or not.
14. This is where a user would expect to see search, though it feels a tad crammed and the rounded form elements don’t seem to gel with the heavy grid system.
15. Logos seem odd and out of place. For a site that considers placement of content, these seem to be thrown onto the page.
16. Eventually the value of these placements will go down as users continue to return for content. Reducing the number of ads and increasing payments might encourage more click-through.
17. These two ad placements probably don’t get a high click-through rate.
18. Humor keeps things real. Even if it is for stats.
19. Content, content, and content. TechCrunch gives users what they want. A long scrolling page of content keeps people coming back.
20. Considering a better footer might increase traffic and engagement. $$$

CNN

CNN made a bold move by restructuring the entire website and putting a huge emphasis on video. It’s a very stark contrast from their old website, and while we like the dynamic elements, the three column approach makes it difficult to understand the hierarchy of the information. It could be helpful to reduce the heavy red banner, simplify the columns and use more of the design choices made on the article pages.

Full interactive view | Summary view

1. This red header competes with the content. It’s a branding effort that fights with the use of the site. Over time people will be influenced more by the quality of the content.
2. This is a unique branding decision to center align the logo. It certainly creates awareness of the logo, but over time it will get in the way of what users want: content. 84 pixels is a lot of vertical space to highlight a logo.
3. This is a nice feature. It’s great to know how current the content is. As a large news organization is something that users will appreciate. It’s also a competitive advantage over smaller news outlets.
4. It’s an interesting technique, but the headline gets lost as white text on black. I’m also conflicted-should I start reading on the left or center image.
5. Based on our experience, placement of the ad here probably reduces the click-through, especially considering that people are trying to figure out if they need to read the center feature block or left feature block.
6. This blocky navigation competes with the content. It seems a bit out of place.
7. This video call to action is nifty, but it creates noise by centering it over the image.
8. Does the general population understand what beta means? If it’s not ready for everyone, invite people to a private release of the feature.
9. Clicking on this sign-up link pops up a sign-up form, but it’s unclear why I would want to sign-up. The benefits are not highlighted.
10. Don’t Miss? If CNN wants clicks it should be a directive, like ‘click on these feature stories’. This will increase the percentage of click-through.
11. This is surprisingly small text for a feature story. Most older people will have difficulty reading this summary text.
12. Creating gutters like this only adds more noise. Convergence of lines like this direct the eye in the wrong direction.
13. Scrolls like this are less neat. Users don’t like these features.
14. This must have been an organizational fight to put this at the bottom of the page.
15. Oh, just what I needed at the bottom of my national news page, weather?
16. Wholly content blocks batman! This seems like an odd choice to put this content in the middle of the page.
17. Why put this in the middle of the page? Shouldn’t this just be balanced near the top of the page with stories that people want to read? So the ‘confused seal on the side of the road’ is not a hot topic?

Conclusion

A grounded, business-focused approach to redesigning a web page will go a long way helping companies understand the value of design. Deconstructing a web page is a great tool to open up the conversation and start a productive dialog. Balancing the needs of users with the business goals is critical to the success of a company.

So, what should you include? Historical examples bring context to the existing web page and provide insights that influence a redesign. Referencing other pages also makes it easier to understand a broader perspective. And let’s not forget, revenue opportunities!

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