Yearly Archives: 2009
Dec 18, 2009 by Matt | Posted in Design
An awful lot of websites have started adding these silly toolbars to the bottoms of their pages. Mashable, CNET, and many small WordPress blogs now have them, and I often wonder if they actually provide users with any real function. (TechCrunch had used the same Meebo toolbar as Mashable, but they seemed to have removed it.)
I find the toolbars to be pretty much useless, and distracting as I try to read. What’s the point?
Are there any users that actually utilize the functionality offered by the JavaScript toolbars? If you have one and don’t see a quantifiable positive reaction from your users, ditch it. If your users find it useful, by all means, keep it. Soliciting feedback would probably be a good idea with something as obtrusive.
Dec 17
Have you tried Smashing Magazine’s The Smashing Book yet? I haven’t, but the full-color 313 page paperback is very tempting at it’s $29 price. Most computer-related books are much costlier than that, and they’re not by an online publication notorious for “smashing you with…
Dec 16
Looking for a PHP photo gallery package that’s super easy to use? Look no further than WebAssist’s PowerGallery. It has a slick interface that far surpasses any I’ve seen in similar scripts. It looks good, it’s clean and simple, and it feels polished, which…
Dec 15
It seems that Microsoft China has ripped off the design, UI and code of Plurk, China’s most popular microblogging service. Microsoft’s “MClub” (club.msn.cn) doesn’t just look uncannily similar, a lot of the JavaScript looks to have been copied and pasted. We were first tipped…
Dec 14
Here is a basic, and easy to implement tip, that will do wonders to make your website easier to navigate: Link your logo/banner to the front page. If a user clicks on the logo, they should wind up on the home page of the…
Dec 11
Fuel Your Coding has a three-part series worth checking out. It covers how to build your own lightweight PHP framework for your projects. There are quite a few php frameworks out there. Some huge, some small; Some useful, some not. I often hear developers,…
Dec 10
Tired of messing around with image files to create tasteful (and expandable) button graphics? Why don’t you just use some CSS3 techniques to build them on the fly? Smashing Magazine’s Pushing Your Buttons With Practical CSS3 describes how to use box-shadow, text-shadow, and border-radius…
Dec 9
The Mac version of Google’s Chrome web browser has arrived as a beta. The search giant has deemed it stable enough for the general public’s consumption, but a few features are still under development. One notable feature missing is the bookmark manager. I’ve tried…
Dec 8
BuySellAds has announced two new ad programs that are currently in beta stage: “premium” banners and Pay-Per-Click text ads. As you know, we have traditionally sold display ads at fixed 30-day rates. It is important to note that we are not abandoning the sponsorship…
