Una Kravets walks us through blend modes, gradients and CSS filters in this excellent talk from dotCSS. It’s especially interesting to see how some of these cool tricks might let us circumnavigate design tools completely so that we can let the browser do all the work for us.

She also has a six-part blog post series on CSS image effects (vintage washout, 3D Glasses, Vignettes, Bokeh, Lomography, and Infared).

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

[Talk] Editing Images in CSS is a post from CSS-Tricks

Apps are everywhere. They have become an integral part of our daily lives thanks to the number of smartphones and wearable devices that we own.

And because of that, apps are one of the single biggest driving factors when it comes to website design trends. Let’s take a look.

Return of the scroll

Small, vertically oriented screens have brought the scroll back in a major way. Once thought to be something you wanted to avoid because users would not move down the screen, scroll is a pretty integral part of the design process again.

And scrolling now is better than it’s ever been. Thanks to great animations, parallax effects and plenty of creative content ideas, scrolling is a lot of fun and a good way to engage users.

Don’t stop with an ordinary down the page scroll; consider a horizontal scroll or animated option that can delight users thanks to the small surprise. Just make sure to include a visual cue to two for users with scrolling effects that are outside the norm, so that they don’t get confused or abandon your website because they don’t understand how to use it.

Material Design goes mainstream

Google’s Material Design concept started as a mobile interface. The flat inspired, physics-based layered interface started as the aesthetic for Android devices, but quickly spread to iOS-based apps as well.

Designers are expanding the concept for use on full-screen websites as well.

The Material concept is simple, intuitive and rooted in realistic elements so it’s easy to use and understand. Designers are having a lot of fun with the interface style with bright colors and plenty of nifty animations.

Hidden navigation is everywhere

This is one of those carryovers that is really changing the way you think about homepage design. Hidden navigation is having a major moment right now.

The debatable design of the hamburger icon is the most widely-used application, with a icon that pops out a full menu. Website designers are opting for one of two options: A menu that pops out over part of the screen or full screen navigation. The full screen option works almost identically to how slide out styles work in apps, and with the extra real estate designers have a lot of room to create a navigation page that’s more than just a few internal links.

What’s especially nice about oversized navigation styles is that they are easy to read and click through. (Nothing is worse than tiny navigation elements that are designed almost as an afterthought.)

Cards, cards and more cards

You can hardly surf the web without coming across a card-style interface. These content containers are highly usable and stack well in responsive frameworks.

Cards are a popular option because they can be a lot of fun to design as well. Cards can be custom-tailored to fit any design style and work with almost any content type. They one thing to remember about cards is that each container should hold once piece of content and connect to one click. This one “thing” can activate a video, submit a form, move to another page, buy an item or any other number of single actions. Different cards in the same website can all do different things. (As long as users understand the actions.)

It’s an interface style that needs very little explanation as well. Social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are rooted in card-style interfaces with infinite scrolling so that new content is ever-populating. Users overwhelming seem to like and accept this design pattern.

Micro-interactions are essential

Not that long ago, micro-interactions were almost exclusively an app element. You might want to rethink that idea. The line between apps and websites is completely blurred. Users want to visit and app and then maybe the website later on and get the exact same experience.

This applies to micro-interactions as well. A micro-interaction is anything that helps the user communicate with the interface, see an action take place or manipulate the interface. Each of these bits of communication are so tiny the user hardly thinks about it, such as an alarm, text message or swipe to refresh content. (Just think of how many meeting notifications you get on your work computer or phone; those are micro-interactions.)

The linking factor to making this seamless transition is a touch of personalization and plenty of options for user customization. Using micro-interactions is tricky because there is a fine line between wanted notifications or alarms or messages and overwhelming the user.

When integrating micro-interactions stick to some of the most basic functions first to see how users react. Then you can add to the mix if your user-base is accepting of it.

And now…wearables

The next phase of website design is already happening. As wearable devices increase in popularity, so will design elements from these tiny screens.

Elements that will have an impact include small, status-based animations, such as scrolling wheels that fill up to show accomplishments, more micro-interactions and plenty of trackers. (Users are practically obsessed with data right now, from fitness-based data to earning points for shopping.)

Wearables also add another layer of gamification to daily life. This will likely carryover to website design as well.

What wearables will really do is further the line between all of our devices. Websites, apps, wearables – they all need to provide integrated experiences for users so that moving from device to device is seamless and the experience is consistent.

Conclusion

As screens change size, so does the way we design for them. To create immersive interactions that users want to engage with, regardless of device, each interface must work in the same way. The idea is dramatically influencing the way all websites are designed (even those that don’t necessarily have app or wearable counterparts).

By creating something that users like on the smallest of screens and expanding that to larger devices, designers can build interfaces that are easy to understand. It also makes your interface a little more in-demand.

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There are approximately 16,009,289 live wordpress websites on the internet right now, and WordPress accounts for approximately 4.6% of all websites. In 2016, both personal and business users alike are looking to amend their website to mold a better user experience. Luckily WordPress is easy to navigate for users and changes can often be made effortlessely. Working with WordPress for more than seven years, I have compiled a list of important things to keep in mind while developing a wordpress site.

These are 13 ways to enhance your WordPress website in 2016:

1. Mobile View – Almost 60% of a websites traffic comes from a mobile device. Many websites have significant issues when viewed on mobile that will go unnoticed. Often times developers only focus on the desktop view, leaving the website poorly suited for browsing on a mobile device. Make sure your website is responsive and aesthetically pleasing, by reviewing a website on multiple mobile devices and contact the developer if any issues are found. This is the #1 priority of 2016.
2. Reduce Page Size – Large images on a page can create a heavy loading time on mobile networks. Not only does it skyrocket data usage on a mobile device, but also spoils a user’s experience due to long wait times. Use a tool such as GTMetrix.com to analyze page size to determine if it needs to be minimized. A good rule of thumb is to fabricate a page with a size no larger than 3MB.
3. Review Meta Data – Take time to peruse and modify all page titles and descriptions. It is important to include all relevant keywords and descriptions, as well as phone numbers, addresses, or services. It is essential to include the name of the city when referencing a local business. It is also smart to review the website as a whole, cleaning up and modifying any outdated or incorrect information.
4. Update WordPress Software – WordPress is open source, this means outdated vulnerabilities are often well known and can easily be exploited. Using the most recent version of WordPress is esential to maintain a secure installation. The latest version is 4.1.1. Prior to updating make sure the website and database are both backed up and that all plugins are reconcilable with the latest version. Despite the importance to update, a common issue is updating the core WordPress files prematurely, which may lead to broken functions throughout the website. If you are unsure whether or not you should update, consult an expert prior to updating.
5. Update all plugins – Updating plugins is a critical component of maintaining a WordPress installation. Shifting into 2016 it is wise to check all plugins for updates. It is essential to preserve all modifications in effect to plugins, so consider consulting an expert to confirm that the website to will continue function appropriately.
6. Deeplink Website – When applicable, insert relevant links to related information throughout the other content. If done properly this can improve the user experience as well as assist search engines in order to properly index the website and its pages.
7. Stop Pixelation – Look over all of the images on your website and confirm that there is no pixelation occurring. If the picture appears pixelated attempt to adjust the dimensions or using a higher resolution photo. Pixelated images are unattractive, if a suitable fix can not be found, attempt using stock photos. Many websites such as shutterstock.com, rf123.com, and photodune.net offer a variety of high resolution images. Using these can dramatically improve the appearance of a website and increase user attention.
8. Creating a Sitemap – Sitemaps help search engines such as: Google, Yahoo, and Bing locate all of the pages and posts throughout a website. For people new to sitemaps there are many WP plugins that can help, such as: Advanced Sitemap Generator, which automatically generates the pages.
9. Remove unneeded Plugins – Often times amateur web developers and clients alike, frenzy when exploring the opportunities of plugins and often times forget to remove them. When more plugins are installed, there is an increase in weight upon the server, which makes the page take longer to load. Through experience we find a core feature, and only use a plugin when the core functions do not accomplish what is necessary. GTMetrix (mentioned in #2) is a phenomenal tool that inspects several aspects of a site such as: HTTP requests, file load history, page size, and several other important metrics. Before removing any plugins consider consulting a professional; the plugins may be essential to the website’s operation.
10. Content Refresh – Check all content for spelling, grammatical or other errors. Get really specific with the content, adding detailed information about any services and knowledge that the website offers. Search engines work best when the content of a page is descriptive as possible. This step isn’t always easy so if needed, hire a professional copywriter to get that content ready for the new year.
11. Delete Old Themes – Many old themes have known vulnerabilities and leaving them on a WordPress installation can leave it open to attack. These old and unused themes can also use valuable resources, slowing down the website. Cleaning out old themes can improve both security and performance.
12. Clean Up Comments in Database – The high number of WordPress websites means that they are often targeted by tools like Scrapebox, which can fill a site with a plethora of meaningless comments. Some websites can receive between 20,000 and 100,000 comments over a year. Having a large number of comments can significantly increase the load time of a page. Clearing out old and irrelevant comments can help alleviate these issues.
13. Image titles – Image titles are often ignored, yet are a very important aspect of SEO and keyword density. Using descriptive image titles and keywords can help improve search engine results and is a good practice to maintain.

This list was compiled by the expert WordPress Developers at Fyresite. Several of these list items seem tedious, however modifying these can have a powerful impact on the organic rankings and positively affect your businesses revenue. The end goal is to create a website that converts users into customers.

Read More at 13 Tips To Optimize Your Businesses WordPress Website For 2016

This week, Firefox 44 has been released to the public. The new version offers better video support (VP9, WebM in addition to h.264) and adds support for Brotli compression (a new, better compression than gzip) for HTTPS connections. Service Workers are also supported now.

The new Chrome Beta channel build now includes a security panel in the developer tools. This panel shows you how secure your site is, including details on HTTPS and mixed content warnings. Unfortunately, it’s not super detailed yet, and it also doesn’t provide information like HSTS, HKPK and other security details, but I’m excited to see this and bet that they’ll integrate more features over time.

The post Web Development Reading List #122: A Performance Budget Builder, Streams, And The Web Push API appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

The rel=”nofollow” attribute has been around for quite a while on the internet, and more and more websites and blogs tend to use it to link to sites and products that they do not wish to endorse, such as sponsored links. Such links, after being assigned the rel=”nofollow” attribute, are termed as nofollow links and are not followed by search engines.

What exactly is the rel=”nofollow” attribute and what is its importance? In this article, I will be answering this question.

The Importance of rel=”nofollow”

The rel=”nofollow” Attribute

The rel=”nofollow” attribute came into being a decade ago, back in 2005, with the intention of using it as a means to combat spam comments on blogs. Generally, to earn inbound links for their websites, many spammers tend to comment on reputed sites — such comments rarely add merit to the discussion, but are only used to drop links. By using nofollow on such links, the purpose of spam comments is defeated.

You might already be aware of the syntax, but here is how the rel=”nofollow” attribute looks in practice:

a nofollow link to noupe.com

Of course, over the period of time, the nofollow attribute evolved to do much more than just being used on comment links. Today, most publications on the internet employ this attribute for sponsored links, advertisements, affiliate links, etc. In other words, rel=”nofollow” is used on links that you can possibly earn money from or links that you do not want to endorse in front of search engines.

Let us look at each scenario in detail.

Commercial Links

The rel=”nofollow” attribute is used for commercial links. For instance, if you have signed up for an affiliate deal at a particular brand, and you are promoting that deal on your blog, you will most likely add nofollow links to the given brand. Similarly, for advertisements, such as banner ads or text ads, the links are nofollow by nature.

The logic here is simple. By making sure that all advertisement links are nofollow, it becomes difficult for any brand or entity to buy their way towards a better pagerank in search engines. Inbound links from different websites are a metric when the pagerank for a given website is decided by search engines. However, nofollow links are not considered by search engines, and thus, while the visitors can click and visit the advertisers’ websites, search engines will not allot a better pagerank only because a given website has advertised itself across different sites.

Links That Shouldn’t be Endorsed

As already mentioned, this was supposed to be the original use for the rel=”nofollow” attribute, and it continues to be so even to this day. Links that you do not wish to, or cannot, endorse, should be nofollow links.

Some possible examples include, naturally, the comments on your blog. Since you cannot verify the quality of each and every link that might be shared by readers of your blog in the comments, such links should be nofollow by nature.

Furthermore, links submitted on user-contribution websites are nofollow links as well. For example, if you are running a community-powered website wherein users can share web design news and then upvote or downvote it accordingly, such links to news should ideally be nofollow so that chances of spam are negated.

For the above case, Reddit is a great example. All links, as soon as they are submitted, are nofollow on Reddit. However, after acquiring a good number of upvotes, once a given link makes it to the frontpage of Reddit, it becomes dofollow. The idea behind such behavior is that if a link has earned several upvotes, it probably is of use and is relevant, and should, therefore, be treated as such and search engines should be informed about its quality. On the other hand, in the absence of proper upvotes, the link’s merits cannot be ascertained, and it is wiser to retain the link as a nofollow link.

Appraisal

As webmasters and website owners, it is only natural that at times we might need to add outbound links that are of commercial nature. As such, using nofollow in these cases can be very helpful because, on one hand, we are linking to products that our visitors can make use of, and at the same time, we are ensuring that search engines do not view our outbound links as pure endorsements for the target website.

Similarly, by using nofollow on links that we cannot identify ourselves with all the time, such as user-submitted links in comments, we can make sure that even if the target websites are of poorer quality, our pagerank does not suffer by virtue of association, nor do search engines consider such links to be outbound links for the poorer website.

Lastly, nofollow links can actually help us monitor and improve our search engine optimization strategy. By being diligent with dofollow links, we can enhance our website’s reputation in the eyes of search engines that we link out only to quality content, and are therefore a source of quality content in our own right.

When do you use nofollow links on your websites? Share your views in the comments below!

(dpe)

New Years’ Eve is not far past, and yet one twelfth of the new year is already behind us. We think this is a great time to release the first new free icon set of the year. So without further ado, today we’re pleased to release the Months Of The Year icons: a set of 12 images that are all available in EPS, AI, SVG and PNG formats. This icon set was designed by Manuela Langella and is free to be used in personal as well as commercial projects.

You may modify the size, color or shape of the icons. No attribution is required, though reselling bundles or individual pictograms isn’t cool. Please note that this icon set is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. We’d kindly like to ask you to provide credits to the creator and link to this article if you would like to spread the word about the freebie.

The post Freebie: The Months Of The Year Icon Set (12 Icons PSD, AI, EPS, SVG, PNG) appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Yahoo is currently rolling out updates to its homepage and mobile app. The new design is being launched in the US, with other territories expected to follow shortly.

The new experience, which visually is an incremental evolution of the last few designs Yahoo has employed, is built around a news feed concept. The feed uses a variation on the infinite scroll, delivering a far more immersive user experience than previous iterations have managed. Hand picked stories by Yahoo’s editorial team feature at the top of the feed, ensuring that the premium content gets an airing. Alongside the curated stories are personalized suggestions for each visitor. The new site also prominently features breaking news stories; you’ll be able to track breaking news as it happens, and Yahoo will even push notifications to you as stories you’re interested in are updated with fresh details.

Yahoo’s business problems are well documented, and it desperately needs to foster some brand loyalty, while also boosting its revenue stream. The personalized news feed is central to its strategy for achieving this. As you use Yahoo, your preferences and interests will be recorded and used to deliver more content that Yahoo’s AI thinks you’ll like. The more time you invest with Yahoo, the better your feed will be; in theory, eventually resulting in a feed that’s all killer and no filler.

Yahoo’s new news feed

Having identified session abandonment as one of its key problems—SVP Simon Khalaf cites the case of users opening stories in tabs, which are all too easy to close—Yahoo hopes that a seamless browsing experience will deliver greater visitor retention, translating into longer sessions, and result in higher advertising revenue.

To the same end, Yahoo is bucking the industry trend by closely integrating user comments with its news feed. As most of the news industry moves away from comments onto social media, Yahoo is aiming to harness its community to engage users who previously only dropped in for a quick visit. It’s one of the riskiest aspects of the new design, because news sites worldwide are plagued by trolls in comment sections, and it only takes a few bad apples to make a comments section an unpleasant place to spend time. Unless Yahoo’s feed is diligently moderated it’s an approach that may well backfire.

Yahoo’s new community engagement

Yahoo has never had a problem attracting visitors, it’s a household name around the globe; its problems stem from an inability to retain visitors once they hit the site. The hope is that the dual strategy of a seamless, personalized news feed, coupled with community engagement will be the formula Yahoo needs to carve out a new niche for itself.

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According to a User Experience Survey Report, almost three-quarters (74%) of businesses believe that the user experience is important for improving sales and conversions.

So, actually how do the user experience and the sales is connected? How can you improve your sales and revenue by improving the user experience of your ecommerce store?

By improving the visitor experience, you’re making them to spend more money on your ecommerce store. Here are a few ways…

• Convert: Acquire customers through various channels and encourage them to buy. On each page, make it clear what a customer is supposed to do and direct them to the next step of the sales funnel. Thus, you can see more conversions.
• Encourage them to buy more often: By making a superb user experience, earn your customers’ loyalty to your brand.
• Encourage them to spend more: Increase average order value. You can find more on this below

Let’s take a look at few ways to make more sales and thereby revenue by improving the user experience.

Remove friction by building trust

Web visitors are passive. Whenever you ask your visitors to take an action, for example to buy from your website, there remains some sort of friction that keeps them from buying from your site.

The reasons for the friction can be many. Maybe your prospective buyer is afraid to purchase from your store. In fact, as digital crime rises higher and higher it’s absolutely vital that prospective buyers trust their vendors.

If there’s no trust, it is more likely the buyer will hesitate to purchase from your store. One of the best ways to strengthen this trust is to assure the user that their information is safe with you.

Here are a few ways to reduce friction and increase sales by building trust.

Add an SSL certificate

Adding an SSL certificate to your website helps build a perception among your customers that you are trustworthy. It also tells your customers that sensitive data like credit card and personal information will not be intercepted, sold or misused.

That said, does adding an SSL certificate increase sales?

Let’s examine a few case studies.

After featuring an SSL badge on their site, online hotel booking site Central Reservation Service saw a 30% increase in their conversion rates.

Let’s look at another case study. According to Symantec, adding EV SSL to their clients has increased their conversion rate anywhere from 10% to 87%.

Looking to choose the right type of SSL for your online store? Follow this excellent guide: How to Choose the Right Type of SSL and SSL Provider.

Add reassurance copy

Adding reassurance copy beside your call to action button is another great strategy that can strongly encourage your prospects to take an action. Joanna Wiebe of CopyHackers.com calls the reassurance copy “click triggers” as it can help entice users to click the CTA button.

Here are a few examples of reassurance that work great for ecommerce store.

• Free shipping: Because free shipping is everywhere, one would think that’s the only way to do ecommerce. Adobe’s Digital Marketing blog reported that free shipping is an expectation from consumers all around the US. Studies reveal that 93% of customerswould buy more products if they found the shipping was free. So if you’re offering free shipping on your site, make sure you prominently display the term free shipping where the call to action is.
• Privacy policy: Another best way to increase conversions with reassuring copy is to place a privacy policy statement near the CTA button. However, if you’re not careful about choosing the right wording, you could seriously hurt the conversion rate.

Personalized content

If you’ve ever visited B2C websites like Amazon.com, you might have noticed that you are being served by a series of product recommendations that Amazon believes you might be interested in. Amazon shows recommendations and related items based on your previous purchases, searches, preferences and interests.

For example, if you searched for ‘Google Nexus’ on Amazon, on your next login you would be probably seeing callouts to buy a Nexus phone. In addition, you’ll also be shown some related items that Amazon thinks you might be interested in.

This way of providing personalized content is one of the most user-friendly marketing methods out there. It’s no surprise that compared with untargeted promotional content a user is more likely to convert when they are shown relevant personalized content that is tailored around their interests and preferences.

So how would you create a personalized user experience on your ecommerce store?

Use a recommendation engine

Use a recommendation engine to target your customers with personalized recommendations across multiple pages of your website and multiple channels such as email, website, landing pages and promotional copies. You can see a complete list of recommendation engine software here.

Focus on metrics

It is true that you can’t determine the effectiveness of a user experience design based solely on the statistics data. However, you can still make assumptions using statistics by conducting quantitative and qualitative analyses.

In fact, validating your assumptions can often reduce the likelihood of failure. On the other hand, wrong metrics and false assumptions can kill off your business. So it is important that you make the right assumptions by measuring the right data.

Here are a few data sets you should be tracking to know if the user experience is in line with your business goal of making more sales and thereby more revenue.

• Visits to purchase: How long after visiting your site for the first time does a visitor makes a purchase?
• Average order value (AOV): The average order value can be calculated as follows: AOV=Total revenue/ number of orders. Calculating conversion rate along with the AOV can give you the whole picture about the profitability of your store. Here are a few usability hacks you should consider for improving average order value.
• Net promoter score (NPS): According to David Gilboa, the founder of Warby Parker, Net Promoter Score is a measurement of customer satisfaction. It is basically a way of labeling customers on the scale of one to ten based on a single survey question- how likely are they to recommend your company to their friend? It is an important data for your ecommerce store because it determines how likely your customers are to become loyal customers and mini-referral engines.

Use RJMetrics

RJMetrics is a tracking tool that helps you get important metrics of your business like lifetime value, churn rate, average revenue per customer, etc. Knowing more about these metrics can help you make smarter decisions to grow your business further.

Summary

The user experience of your site can have a direct impact on your business. Let’s sum up various ways to improve sales by improving user experience:

• Build trust: Buyers might be afraid to share personal information with you. In order to encourage sales, show them you’re trustworthy.
• Personalized content: Personalized content tailored around each user’s preferences is more likely to help in conversion rather than regular content. Use automation tools or recommendation engine software to create personalized content.
• Focus on metrics: Validating your assumptions with metrics can improve the user experience and reduce the likelihood of failure.

Read More at How to increase sales by improving the user experience of your ecommerce store

Oracle has recently announced that its Java plugin for web browsers shall soon be retired and put to rest. This news is being welcomed in the web development community, especially because the said plugin had proven to be insecure on multiple occasions.

It will not be in effect right away, but the next edition of the Java Developer Kit, shall have the browser plugin as deprecated. Thereafter, in later versions, the Java browser plugin’s functionality will be fully removed.

While this move is expected and a logical one, it comes a bit too late, as most major web browsers have already prepared for a world without Java plugin. Chrome and Firefox have given up on the Java browser plugin, and even the new browser, Microsoft Edge, does not support plugins. As such, only Internet Explorer 11 remains the active major web browser that still supports the Java browser plugin.

The Java browser plugin has been notorious for being a security menace, all thanks to its bugs and security issues. Thus, this announcement from Oracle comes a bit late, but is a logical and correct one.

You can read more about this development on the official Oracle blog.

What do you think of this move by Oracle? Share your views in the comments below!

Read More at Oracle Has Retired Java Browser Plugin

Online communication bugs me. Actually, bugs isn’t accurate. Maybe saddens and fatigues. When volleying with people hiding behind their keyboard shield and protected by three timezones, you have to make a conscious effort to remain optimistic. It’s part of the reason I haven’t taken to Twitter as much as I probably should.

I’ve talked on this subject before and it’s something I often have in the back of my mind when reading comments. It’s come to the forefront recently with some conversations we’ve had at Western Devs, which led to our most recent podcast. I wasn’t able to attend so here I am.

There are certain phrases you see in comments that automatically seem to devolve a discussion. They include:

• “Why don’t you just…”
• “Sorry but…”
• “Can’t you just…”
• “It’s amazing that…”

Ultimately, all of these phrases can be summarized as follows:

I’m better than you and here’s why…

In my younger years, I could laugh this off amiably and say “Oh this wacky world we live in”. But I’m turning 44 in a couple of days and it’s time to start practicing my crotchety, even if it means complaining about people being crotchety.

So to that end: I’m asking, nay, begging you to avoid these and similar phrases. This is for your benefit as much as the reader’s. These phrases don’t make you sound smart. Once you use them, it’s very unlikely anyone involved will feel better about themselves, let alone engage in any form of meaningful discussion. Even if you have a valid point, who wants to be talked down to like that? Have you completely forgot what it’s like to learn?

“For fuck’s sake, Mom, why don’t you just type the terms you want to search for in the address bar instead of typing WWW.GOOGLE.COM into Bing?”

Now I know (from experience) it’s hard to fight one’s innate sense of superiority and the overwhelming desire to make it rain down on the unwashed heathen. So take it in steps. After typing your comment, remove all instances of “just” (except when just means “recently” or “fair”, of course). The same probably goes for “simply”. It has more of a condescending tone than a dismissive one. “Actually” is borderline. Rule of thumb: Don’t start a sentence with it.

Once you have that little nervous tic under control, it’s time to remove the negatives. Here’s a handy replacement guide to get you started:

See the difference? Instead of saying Sweet Zombie Jayzus, you must be the stupidest person on the planet for doing it this way, you’ve changed the tone to Have you considered this alternative? In both instances, you’ve made your superior knowledge known but in the second, it’s more likely to get acknowledged. More importantly, you’re less likely to look like an idiot when the response is: I did consider that avenue and here are legitimate reasons why I decided to go a different route.

To be fair, sometimes the author of the work you’re commenting on needs to be knocked down a peg or two themselves. I have yet to meet one of these people who respond well to constructive criticism critique, let alone the destructive type I’m talking about here. Generally, I find they feel the need to cultivate an antagonistic personality but in my experience, they usually don’t have the black turtlenecks to pull it off. Usually, it ends up backfiring and their dismissive comments become too easy to dismiss over time.

Kyle the Inclusive

Originally posted to: http://www.westerndevs.com/communication/Why-can-t-you-just/