Skype has recently announced that it will soon discontinue its app for smart TVs. The change will come into effect in June this year.

The reason behind the change is that Skype is more popular for users on smarthphones and tablets, and not so for users on smart TVs. To quote:

Over the years, users have changed the way they use Skype, with the majority accessing it from a mobile device – including when in the living room. We want to make sure we prioritize delivering the best possible experience to the platforms our users are asking for, which is why we’ve decided to focus our efforts in other areas while supporting key functionality on Skype for TV for as long as possible.

Skype app for smart TVs was launched back in 2010; with it being shipped as a pre-loaded component on certain TVs such as Samsung and LG, and being available for download on others. Yet, over the course of these years, the app failed to evolve, and it rarely gained much popularity among users.

Starting June 1, Skype app for smart TVs shall no longer receive updates, nor be available for download, following June 1. Those who have downloaded the app can continue using it, albeit without any support or updates.

Read More at Skype Will Discontinue its App For Smart TVs

Lexy Munroe shows a dozen or so issues with Twitter’s reliance on JavaScript that could have been handled with some kind of progressive enhancement. Sometimes picking on the big players is useful, as they really do influence how other apps choose to do things. It’s not exactly punching down.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

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Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript is a post from CSS-Tricks

When you set out to create your very own website or app, you need to have the best tools and
resources at your disposal to achieve the best results. The right tool can really make the difference
between your website being a success or it being just another drop in the ocean.
With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of some of the must have tools and resources for anyone
starting out with a website or application.

1. BeTheme

Muffin Group is a team of people that has dedicated their time to building some of the greatest themes
for WordPress available anywhere. Time and time again, Muffin Group have proven that they are not
afraid to reach for new horizons and experience with the latest technologies. More than once, their
gambit paid off. One of the best examples of this is their theme, BeTheme. This responsive, multi-
purpose WordPress template comes with more than 180 pre-made layouts with a one click installation
feature, 20 different header styles and the Muffin Builder that will allow you to create the website
you’ve always wanted easier than ever before. Even more so, some of the last updates to BeTheme have
focused on enhancing performance and speeding up your website. And the help Muffin Group provides
you doesn’t end there. You will also have one of the most powerful admin panels at your disposal and a
custom support service that works around the clock. You are guaranteed to receive a response to any
issue within 24 hours of submitting it.

2. Jupiter business WordPress theme

Introducing the fifth generation of the Jupiter Website builder. Loaded with powerful new features, the
new Jupiter business WordPress Theme will help businesses of any type step up their game. What is
new under the hood? The significant performance improvements are owed to code rewriting and a
brand new modular framework. The faster overall performance paired with file size reduction and a
faster page load time resulted in a reliable WordPress theme that was especially designed for the owner
and the user. It is, as of now, the only WordPress theme to score 95+ on Google PageSpeed. The shiny
new header styles allow customization for unique tweaks and styles. Adding a shop section is only a click
away, with the option to play around with colors, insert new fields or change up the layouts. If you have
a keen eye for details, you’ll welcome and profit from the new category showcase. This new tool will
allow you to own a neat looking website that will amaze your users and encourage them to explore,
read and buy more. Some of the success stories from customers working with this theme include tripled
sales, enhanced conversion and increased stay time. Jupiter has become the go to theme for many
digital agencies in the US. And sales figures indicate that 13% of Jupiter customers have bought more
than one license.

3. Unsplash

Are you on the lookout for some pictures for your website but can only seem to find the same boring,
stale stock photos that you’ve seen on a hundred other sites already? Then the answer to your problem
is Unsplash. This website provides you with access to amazing high resolution images that are
completely free for you to use. What’s more, if you subscribe to their emailing list, you’ll be notified
every 10 days of the new 10 pictures available.

4. PowerMockup

Creating wireframes is now a big part of creating and developing software applications or websites. With
more than eight hundred user interface elements, PowerMockup transforms your PowerPoint into a
sharper and more efficient tool for making a wireframe. Get ready to unleash your creativity and start
making mind blowing presentations from your first try. PowerMockup is highly intuitive and allows you
to make your own desktop, web and mobile prototype applications without leaving PowerPoint. A
simple and efficient add-on, PowerMockup will open directly into a library pane and will give you quick
access to dozens of mockup shapes and wireframes. Using it is incredibly simple. The Quick Search
feature makes sure you have everything you need right at your fingertips. As soon as you start typing,
suggestions will pop up, helping you find the desired element much faster. The Drag and Drop feature
lets you use the needed shapes in the blink of an eye, without worrying about loading time or additional
installs.

8. CloudCart

Win 12 months of free online store with CloudCart

Creating your very own online store can be a breeze or a nightmare. It all depends on the tools you use.
CloudCart is an eCommerce website builder that will help you create and release your website in 30
seconds. All you have to do is follow these simple steps: register an account, choose a template, add
your products and you can start selling. But that’s not all CloudCart offers, all the websites you create
with this tool will be SEO ready and mobile responsive. In addition to this, you will have access to a user
friendly builder that will allow you to customize your online store as you see fit without needing any
technical expertise. Also, CloudCart CHECKOUT is fully secure and PCI compliant and it is only one of the
many features that you’ll have access to while using CloudCart. Moreover, CloudCart offers you 24/7
support that is guaranteed to answer any questions you might have..

9. Wufoo

Need a form for your website? Then you need Wufoo. This simple to use, intuitive tool will help you to
create your very own form in no time. All you have to do is drag and drop the elements you need to
make up the form, Wufoo will do the rest. It will construct both the architecture and the database
needed to run the form and it will provide you with analytics to help you monitor the forms result and
make reports on the collected data.

10. Flat Icons

Flat Icons is an important resource in our current, increasing market of mobile applications and
websites. Some may choose to disregard having fine quality icons in their projects, but those who don’t
show both attention to detail and dedication to have their project be one of the best possible. To that
end, the bundles available on Flat Icons are some of the best you can find. They will work with any of
your projects thanks to their elegant and simplistic design. The bundles available on Flat Icons include
vector files that allow you to resize the icons without any loss of quality. And they come in an array of
formats: AI, EPS, PSD, SVG and PNG. What’s more, Flat Icons is offering a 15% off for all of their
products, all you have to do is use the coupon ‘bequick15′, but hurry, the coupon won’t be valid for long.

5. Swissuplabs

SwissUpLabs comprises a team of dedicated professionals passionate about marketing solutions. Their
new Magento extensions are the product of years of research and careful analysis on user behavior.
Take advantage of their powerful new releases to enhance your brand and finally get the exposure your
content deserves. Pairing top notch technological discoveries with an intuitive interface, SwissUpLabs
came up with two dozen extensions that will show you the sky’s the limit. If you are seeking to improve
your store’s usability, you’ll welcome the Ajax Pro extension. This clever tool will guide your users
through the entire shopping process without ever reloading the page. This way, you get rid of all the
boring steps the usual check-out involves and enhance the shopping experience of your visitors. You can
further improve your website by implementing the Products Questions extension. This will encourage
your readers to leave replies on products’ page, promoting a sense of openness and increasing sales
through a transparency policy. Visit https://swissuplabs.com/ right now and find out more.

6. actiTIME

If you’re ready to start managing work efficiently, you will fall in love with actiTIME. A helpful and
efficient tool, actiTIME offers its users a clear and detailed view on time expenses. This tool will help
small teams keep tabs on things easily and larger firms stay better organized. actiTIME is reliable and
flexible. It will allow you to always stay within the limits of your budget by sending you friendly
notifications concerning your expenses. Users will always have intuitive and comprehensive reports at
their fingertips to help them get a better grasp on team performance and budget control. One of the
bonus points of actiTIME is the clever mobile time tracking app. This enables users to use the software
on the go and stay up to date with the latest developments. actiTIME is integrated with QuickBooks,
which means you can effortlessly move all the data into the latter tool to do additional tax calculations,
payroll and invoicing.

7. actiPLANS

The success of a business lies in good organization and timely information. actiPLANS helps firms of all
sizes meet the needed criteria to reach their objectives and have more time to focus on important and
time sensitive matters. This leave time management tool is very intuitive and allows employees and
employers to better handle leave time. You can say goodbye to emailing your team back and forth just
to find out who is working on weekends and who is on vacation next month. actiPLANS makes sure
things run smoothly. Loaded with highly efficient functionality, actiPLANS provides detailed information
on who and when is taking a leave and when they are back, so you can always check up on your
resources. Never fall behind on work again. actiPLANS will help you stay on top of things at all times.
Whether you’re at your laptop or on the actiPLANS app, you’ll always have access to the latest updates.

Read More at Must Haves: Resources for Creating a Website or Application

Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are still on the rise. An end of that growth is not in sight. On the contrary, more and more users are browsing the internet while on mobile. Therefore, mobile apps have become a necessity for every serious web business and website to have. But, how do you create a mobile app? Sure, you can learn to code, build everything from scratch, spend your time digging into functions and dependencies, you name it. Or you can do things the easier way, save time and effort as well as resources by opting for a tool that lets you build mobile apps within minutes. Meet GoodBarber, a mobile app designer for both iOS and Android platforms.

GoodBarber: Mobile App Development Made Easy

What and How?

GoodBarber is an app builder for iOS and Android devices. In other words, if you need a mobile app for your product or service, GoodBarber is there for you. There are certainly quite a few options when it comes to mobile app builders. So what does GoodBarber do to help it stand out from the crowd? Read on to learn more!

The Backend

To begin with, GoodBarber offers a clutter-free backend that comes with a minimal navigation system and easy editing to work with. You can modify and edit your apps with a few clicks. Updating your app is a matter of a single click.

Furthermore, GoodBarber also provides detailed statistic and usage metrics for your apps. Need to know how many unique sessions of your app have been run so far? Or maybe you wish to track the total number of pageviews over the course of months? Yes, GoodBarber has all of that in its backend, and you need not worry about any other tool for statistics.

But then, what if you do need those other tools? Worry not, because GoodBarber is good enough to let you connect third-party external applications and track the progress of your mobile app. Thus, if you prefer to use e.g. Google Analytics, you can.

GoodBarber also comes with a built-in CMS that lets you handle and manage your content directly from the backend.

You can also sync your content across different platforms, by integrating with other services such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Instagram, and so on. If you have a website that runs on WordPress, GoodBarber has a plugin built especially for you. By making use of such integrations and plugins, you can add pagination to your content within the app or place queries and get answers from the WordPress website, among other things. You also add comments, social sharing and emails, etc.

GoodBarber allows you to add different users to your project and manage user roles much as you would on a WordPress website. You can have accounts for admins, owners, and likewise, each with its fine-grained access rights.

Plus, your end users can log in to the app via social networking profiles, or register via email. Push notifications, much like any other decent mobile app, are a standard feature of any app that you create via GoodBarber.

And lastly, just because you may not need it, doesn’t mean it is totally lacking — GoodBarber also offers a coding section for folks who might want to work on their app directly via the code.

Need Additional Features? Look at the Add-on Library

With GoodBarber it is easy to lift the mobile app above its website counterpart in terms of features. We are talking about mobile devices, so the capabilities of these devices should be used to full extent. To achieve this, GoodBarber offers an add-on library with a large number of different features grouped by interest.

Do you want to implement – say – Geofencing? You can do it. Are you fond of iBeacons? Use them. Do you want to add monetization features? Check the add-on library. It has everything you might need.

And More…

GoodBarber comes with a library of designs that you can choose from when building your mobile apps. It offers over 50 design inspirations, custom typography, as well as different UX layouts. Wanna know how many customization abilities GoodBarber has to offer? We will let this picture do the talking, because after all, a picture is worth a thousand words:

Speaking of images, just in case you need any for your app, do not worry. You can access the complete Unsplash library right from within GoodBarber’s interface. Pick, select, and off you go. Unsplash is Creative Commons Zero, so you will never worry about licences.

Pricing

GoodBarber offers multiple plans to suit your needs. You can opt for the Standard Plan, for 20€ per month, that gives you 5,000 push notifications every month. Or, you can go with the Full Plan at 40€ per month, which gives you 500,000 push notifications per month. Both the plans offer unlimited launches and installs, as well as HTML5 apps for Web and iPhone and Android mobile apps. However, the Full Plan also gives you a built-in CMS, automated notifications, maps, contact forms, Google Analytics, social media statistics as well as support for third-party ad networks.

Just in case you need more, you can go with the Advanced Plan, that costs 60€ per month, and gives you everything included in the Full Plan, along with app support for iPad and tablets. The Advanced Plan relies on adaptive design, which means your app is going to look stunning on both mobile phones and tablets, with no extra effort on your part. Furthermore, the Advanced Plan comes with API access as well.

You can give GoodBarber a full spin on all features with a 30-day free trial, before choosing any of the above plans.

More importantly, GoodBarber also offers a Reseller Plan, that costs 200€ per month. It lets you create unlimited apps, as well as the ability to sell native iOS and Android apps at your own pricing (with no commission involved). You also get to white-label GoodBarber and offer your app building services to your clients.

Verdict

So, is GoodBarber worth the money? Or is it just another of the several app builders out there? In simple words, it is surely worth the investment and a very decent choice for building and publishing mobile apps.

That said, GoodBarber is less of an app builder, and more of an app designer. You do not truly “build” your app using GoodBarber, you “design” it. The customization features that GoodBarber offers are exemplary and can surely not be found anywhere else. There are several app builders out there in the market; but GoodBarber stands apart from the crowd by letting you design your app the way you want it. You can choose what to include, as well as what not to include. And if you need to work with code, you have that as well.

And that is not all. The entire process is so streamlined that you just cannot get confused at any step. You select the layout and design of your app, then choose your content sources, preview the results, and publish your app to iOS and Android app stores. This is it — you can select what design elements you want included, the UX of your app, and a lot more. Plus, for tablets, you can make use of adaptive design features and ensure that your apps run well across different screen sizes and resolutions.

Plus, for anyone looking to start off a decent mobile app building business, GoodBarber’s Reseller Plan is probably the most budget-friendly offering out there. Considering the fact that mobile is a very busy segment and is expected to rise even more in the coming years, mobile app development is a lucrative business. Now, coding apps might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but with the white-label features of GoodBarber, you do not have to worry about code at all.

All said and done; GoodBarber is, by all means, one of the most useful and versatile solutions for creating mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. If you are looking for one such solution, GoodBarber is surely something you should consider.

• GoodBarber Homepage
• GoodBarber Pricing

(dpe/sbu)

The idea that designers are bound to be servants of other people’s and companies’ products is extremely pervasive. Sure, you may build your own design agency but, in the end, that agency is simply a collective effort to serve someone else. From my perspective, though, the world is waking up to the idea that designers can be founders of a product and not just create the beautiful wrapping around some engineering core.

A recent study by Boston’s Design Management Institute showed that design-driven businesses have outperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500 by an astounding 228% over the past 10 years. These were companies that had design embedded within the company’s organizational structure, design leadership present at senior levels, and a commitment to design’s use as an innovation resource.

The post From Fledgling To Founder: How Designers Can Push Their Creations Into The Real World appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Creating new fresh web design projects that don’t suffer from same-old requires some intention. Luckily there are so many talented web designers sharing their work out in the world, and every week there’s something new that will blow you away with its originality. That is, as long as you’re looking. Just this past week the designer who brought us the exquisite Web Design Field Manual, Jon Yablonski shared Swiss in CSS, a project the recreates designs from the influential Swiss Graphic Design movement. With web designers creating so many cool things it’s mainly just a matter of keeping habits to look for and ways to happen upon them in our day to day lives.

1. Create a folder on your browsers quick-links bar that drops down with places to get inspired, and check it in the morning.

Putting a folder of quick-links to places to get inspired in the first slot on your browser reminds you if that you’re killing time, you might as well keep in mind these excellent places to come across new styles. Even better, right before a new project, you can take a look at your favorite spots to check out new work to push yourself into new territory with your web design style. Trying to do something you’ve never done before on every project can keep you on your toes and help you stay engaged in every project.

Here are some fantastic places to bookmark in a folder on your toolbar. Some of them you likely have come across– I like to bookmark each with the query ‘web design’ if they aren’t web design specific sites so that you can use the link to jump straight to the main type of work you’re trying to get inspired for without much thought.

Here they are:

• Dribbble
• Pinterest
• Behance
• Awwwards
• FWA
• Codrops

Codrops is directed at front-end developers a bit more than people who are strictly designers, but they make it easy to implement their very visually striking designs with tutorials.

CoDrops – Flat Preloaders Freebie Inspiration Habits for Web Designers

2. Make an effort to work with new visual designers or front-end developers – ideally, that are better than you.

Working with new designers and developers at its best drives us to try new things. Whether it be that new interaction that a developer wants to try out or a designer who doesn’t make it as simple as you’re used to – working with new people pushes you to do your best work because you have to attempt new things.

If you are a new web designer, don’t be afraid to dive in on a project with another designer or developer – almost every place you’d work in the industry would have you working alongside others and not be yourself, so it’s good to get the practice. If you’re farther along, you might find yourself doing the same things over and over again and working with a different designer or developer in a very intentional process draws you out of yourself. It forces you to see things from a new perspective and may give you a fresh creative spark in you to create a new feature, a new way of layout out a site, or clarify an existing convention you are already using, allowing you to do better work.

3. Use Browser plugins like Benchwarmer, Panda or Muzli so that without even trying you see fresh new work from other designers.

Sometimes it’s incredibly hard to stay deliberate about getting your eyes on recent work. If you’re already busy executing the designs or developing, giving yourself the freedom to go out and “get inspired,” isn’t the first thought on your mind. That’s why it’s great to use these Chrome plugins’ that show fresh new work from other designers in your browser whenever you open your browser. The hope here is that you can get ideas without even trying.

• Benchwarmer Chrome Plugin
• Panda Chrome Plugin
• Muzli Chrome Plugin

Muzli Chrome Browser Plugin – Web Design Inspiration Habits

4. Follow crazy talented designers like Seb Lester and inspiration accounts like GoodType on Instagram so you come across amazing work daily.

When you’re scrolling through and seeing the daily selfies and self-aggrandizing hiking shots, be sure to mix in some of the best designers alive today. These aren’t web design specific but the principles and aesthetics you can pick up from these amazing designers and curators on Instagram will inspire your work and could help inform your next web design project.

• Seb Lester – Insanely precise process videos that show Seb doing amazing hand-lettering.
• Allan Peters – From the guy Target trusts to create their very Swiss-inspired, simple posters; with strong, bold designs.
• Aaron Draplin – Draplin is famous with designers for his maverick style, badge-hunting, field notes, charisma and vintage boldness.
• Ryan Hamrick – Hand-lettering and handmade excellence with a long-time designer’s attention to detail, and modern feel.
• GoodType – Daily inspiring with amazing typographic centric images to hone your mastery of letters.
• Type.gang – Another curated account honoring excellent hand-lettering and excellence in type.
• JuxtapozMag – “Turn and face the strange,” and get inspired daily by the more high-brow arena of experimental graphic design.
• HiFructoseMag – The even higher brow, contemporary art magazine – offers a lot of powerful imagery to help inform your designs.
• Designspiration – Graphic design centered account. Typography, lettering, layout, and also sometimes touches on broader areas of design.

5. Think of every new website you work on as if it’s going to be the centerpiece of your portfolio.

Beginners are great at this, but can tend to stop taking things so seriously after the portfolio is already flush with fresh work from a lot of different industries. Just having a big visual portfolio that’s easy to add new work to can remind you that you want to make your next project awesome to add to it. Get into a habit of asking for a testimonial about a month after you’ve completed the project, and these two habits post-project dangle like a carrot and can help you put your best foot forward every time.

About the Author

Tim Brown loves his work for Web Design Minneapolis and writes for his web design blog and wrote the in-depth articles “Why UX is a Hollow Shell Without Content” and “The Web Design Best Practices Cheat Sheet.”

(dpe)

How’s it going, compadres? This month’s roundup hand-picked from all across the web includes icons, design assets, illustrations, vector artwork, UI kits, some really cool code snippets, fonts, templates, some awesome tools, and much much more.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the best freebies on the Web this month!

The months of the year vector icon set

An amazing set of 12 icons representing each of the months of the year, available in Ai, PSD, EPS; PDF; SVG, and 3-size PNG format files released under a CCA3.0 Unported License.

Animals Vector iPhone Icons Set

An amazing set of over 5,000 animal icons delivered via vector files PSD format, and crafted under the iPhone icons guideline.

6-style Mobile Icons Bundle

A great bundle of over 26,000 vector icons for mobile devices, available in 6 different styles.

Nice apps and product features icon set

A nice set of 40 free icons depicting apps and product features such as maps, settings, file saving, and more delivered in Ai, PNG, and SVG format files.

Photoshop and Sketch chat UI kit

An unbelievably complete UI kit in both PSD and Sketch format files to prototype gestures, transitions, and animations, as well as modern concepts such as real-time collaboration.

T-shirt & hoodies PSD mockup set

A cool set of mockup templates in PSD format for T-shirts, hoodies, sweaters, and singlets that count on smart object layers for you to feature your branding logo or text.

Cute characters & avatar generator V2 (1800 Items)

An amazing set of 1800 items for generating cute cartoon-looking characters in Ai and PSD format, including body parts, several clothing items and accessories, facial expressions, features and hairstyles, and stacks more.

Noir: technical invoice PSD & Ai template

Noir is an invoice print template available in PSD and Ai formats.

Corner: free branding & identity mockup

Corner is a clean style branding mockup that contains a letterhead, an envelope, and business cards. All of them are in PSD format.

Branding & identity PSD mockup

An amazing branding and identity mockup set delivered in PSD format, including smart object layers to feature your logo, web and mobile apps, book cover, business card, and more designs.

Granite: PSD stationery mockups bundle

Granite is a bundle of stationery mockups delivered in PSD format, featuring smart object layers to feature your designs. They are free both for commercial and personal use.

Tatukada: flat full-screen restaurant web template

A web template for restaurants, neatly crafted in a tight tile layout that features a nice flat style.

Blueprint: minimal mobile PSD UI kit

Blueprint is a UI kit for mobile devices crafted in a minimal style, imitating the concept of blueprint plots.

Ventas: mobile app PSD UI kit

An amazing UI kit for mobile applications that features nicely crafted screens for app loading, news, screen-size featured image single post, profile, messages inbox, and more in PSD format.

Moon: 50 wireframe templates kit

Moon is an neatly crafted kit of 50 mobile device screen wireframe templates, featuring a clean and minimal style and including as many sorts of screens as you can think of.

Clean & minimal Sketch wireframe kit

A stunning wireframing template kit developed in Sketch, and featuring a clean and minimal style with a light gray tone for all of its elements.

Summer

Summer is a very fresh UI kit delivered in PSD format. It contains buttons, UI control elements such as toggles, inputs, and sliders. You’ll also find login, chat, location, and social media cards among others.

Cornerstone

Cornerstone is a font that features nice rounded corners contrasting with sharp ones. It includes uppercase, numeral, and common glyph characters.

Paralines: stylish uppercase display font

Paralines is a display font that includes uppercase and numeral characters.

Tulia: serif regular typeface

Tulia is a regular serif typeface that features 3 different weights and thin line composition, with smoothly biased curves and regular line width.

Caja: fancy serif typeface

Caja is a fancy looking typeface that features sharp spikes as serifs on each of its characters, adorned with void diamonds in each of them.

KUST: grunge snowy display typeface

Kust translates to Melt, and it is a handwriting typeface that features grunge-distorted style, featuring uppercase and numeral characters.

Coves: rounded sans typeface

Coves is a neat typeface that features 2 different weights for its circular grid-designed glyphs and characters, as well as several accent features for its uppercase and lowercase ones.

Pacha: tight display typeface

Pacha is an awesome display font that has unique features like Pre-Colombian patterns and ornaments, as well as automatic ligatures and rustic ends that make it seem like it’s clay made.

ELIXIA: hexagonal thin typeface

Exilia is a neatly crafted typeface that features slightly narrow composition lines that follow a hexagonal grid system. It has uppercase, lowercase, numeral, and glyph characters, including several accent features.

Creative agency PSD web template

A creative agency website template delivered in PSD format that comes with 6 completely ready-to-use screens, featuring a neatly-crafted composition of screen size background image, soft dark overlays, and big text.

QUOTES: versatile PSD website template

Quotes is a versatile website template delivered in PSD format that features a nice and clean style for its layout.

Creative flat portfolio PSD template

A creative template for portfolio websites that contains regular and masonry grids, a CV-like profile, 404 error page, contact form with a map feature, and more.

Beauty-Line: beauty landing page template

A stunning landing page for the beauty industry that features stylish tilted containers for sections’ backgrounds, flat icons and elements, circular layout images, magazine catalogue, map footer, and more.

Craft Lance: modern & clean one-page template

Craft Lance is a modern and clean-style template for one-page layout sites, delivered in PSD format, and containing 2 different home pages and minimal style elements.

Aqueduct: professional magazine WordPress theme

A professional magazine theme for WordPress that comes with stacks of features, like a drag & drop home page builder, Schema markup, a responsive design, and more.

Business Elite: clean parallax WordPress theme

Business Elite is a clean WordPress theme that features parallax effects, as well as a screen-size header slider, smooth sliding transitions, a big contact form, and more.

Refur: clean & modern blogging WordPress theme

A clean and modern blogging WordPress theme that is translation-ready, and includes features like custom settings, and smooth hover effects for its elements.

Maglev: flat customizable HTML template

Maglev is a neatly crafted HTML template that includes CSS3 and jQuery features, an animated header background, pricing tables, contact form, and more.

Color: HTML5 one-page template

A one-page portfolio layout template built in HTML5, CSS & JavaScript for creatives and agencies, featuring a clear and spacious layout as well as eye-catching animations.

Multi-perspective phone iframe

An amazing mockup-like iFrame of a mobile device that features your website in a mobile screen in 3 different perspectives, as well as allowing you to modify the dimensions of the device’s screen.

CSS hover parallax animation orbs

A snippet applied to orb shaped containers that generates stunning parallax featured animations as you hover over them.

Live credit card mockup checkout form

A stunning live mockup representation of your credit card that updates as you type card information in the checkout form.

Slider animation: sidebar animated menu

A sidebar menu that features animations triggered on hover events.

SNS Button simple hover effect

A cool hover effect developed in CSS3 and applied on circular social icon-only buttons that transforms them into long ovals with the name of the action for the specific social network (share, tweet, +1).

Build a Bot

A cool code experiment that allows you to pick parts from several different robots and put them together into a brand new one.

Wavescroll: draggable or scrolling backgrounds

Wavescroll cuts the the background images of your screen-size pages into srips, and slides them gradually as you scroll along.

Social share expandable button

A cool Material Design-style button that expands into a huge white circle, revealing nice social sharing buttons.

MERN

MERN is a scaffolding tool that allows you to easily build isomorphic JavaScript applications using Mongo, Express, React, and NodeJS, minimizing the setup time, and speeding up your projects with proven technologies.

CSS ProTips: a CSS tips collection

CSS ProTips is a GitHub repository that holds a set of ever-updating tips for you to help you improve your CSS skills.

Responsive View

Responsive View is an online tool that allows you to test the responsiveness of your website across several Apple devices like iPhones, iMacs, and iPads, all at once in a single layout.

Modular: a front-end Sass & jQuery framework

Modular is a great front-end framework that allows you to build scalable, configurable and modular projects built with CSS (Sass) and JavaScript (jQuery).

Rikulo: web and mobile Dart framework

Rikulo is a web and mobile UI framework that features a structured UI model, responsive UX across desktop and touch devices, MVC architecture, flexible and precise layout control, and more.

Phoenix

Phoenix is an awesome web framework that doesn’t compromise speed and maintainability for building APIs, HTML5 apps, and much more by mixing tried and true technologies.

GitHub Importer: code migrator

GitHub’s tool to import repositories and commits from Subversion, Mercurial, Team Foundation Server, or another Git repository. It notifies you via email or in your browser when it’s complete.

Bricks.js

Bricks.js is an amazing generator for masonry layouts that contains fixed-width elements.

SigmaJS: graph-drawing JavaScript library

SigmaJS is a JavaScript library that was created for drawing graphs.

Umbrella JS: tiny & intuitive JavaScript library

Umbrella JS is an intuitive JavaScript library that was inspired by jQuery; and it integrates several general purpose methods, as well as some Bliss.js’ vanilla-inspired ones.

Sticky Elements: stunning JavaScript UI/UX library

Sticky Elements allows you to stickiness add to your website elements; which, in this case, means that when you hover over them, they get stuck to your cursor and then spring back after set limits.

Microscope: atomic design systems boilerplate

Microscope is a simple and fast boilerplate to aid you in the development of Atomic design systems by creating and organizing your atoms, molecules, organisms, templates, and pages, and much more.

SpiritJS: easy web object animation

SpiritJS allows you to easily create animations for web objects, including features like full timeline control, JSON import and export, animation inspection, GPU performance, intuitive UI, real-time feedback, and much more.

Encorpada: A Classic Collection of 34 Uniquely Elegant Fonts – only $17!

Source

At last, Instagram has come to Windows — yes, you read that right! You can now download the public beta of the Instagram mobile app for Windows, which is available in the Microsoft Store starting today.

Instagram, the highly popular mobile app and social network for sharing photos, had so far been available for iOS and Android devices, whereas Windows users were left out. All of that is going to change, as the app is now available in beta. Much like all other versions, users on Windows too will need to login to Instagram using their accounts, and can then upload and edit photos.

Since the app is still in beta, users will have the option of providing feedback and sending bug reports, to help make the stable version of the app even better.

As of now, the Instagram app is available only for Windows 10 Mobile. However, over time, there are plans of offering desktop apps and supporting other versions of Windows as well.

Download the Instagram app for Windows from here. Be warned, the app is still in beta and might have minor bugs.

Read More at Instagram is Finally Available on Windows

I was on the Invision website the other day and I wanted to snag their logo for some reason or another. Sometimes you can have better luck doing that (like when you happily discover it’s SVG) than you can Google Image Searching or even regular web searching for something like “Invision Logo” and loping to find some kind of branding page with a logo kit download.

So I right-clicked their logo, hoping to “inspect” it with the DevTools and check it out.

Rather than showing me a context menu, it triggered a modal:

I was pleasantly surprised, because that’s exactly what I wanted.

Here’s a simple zero-dependencies way to do that

See the Pen Right Click Logo to Show Logo Options by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

Your app might already have a whole fancy system for showing modals. If so, then it’s even easier. Attach a “right click” event (it’s actually called contextmenu) to the logo and do your thing.

logo.addEventListener('contextmenu', function(event) {
  // do whatever you do to show a modal
}, false);

If you don’t have a modal system in place, it’s very easy to make a rudimentary one. You need an overlay and a modal element:

<div class="overlay" id="overlay"></div>

<div class="modal" id="modal">
  <h3>Looking for our logo?</h3>
  <p>You clever thing. We've prepared a <a href="#0">.zip you can download</a>.</p>
  <p><button id="close-modal-button">Close</button></p>
</div>

And a plan:

1. When the logo is right-clicked, show the overlay and modal
2. When the close button is clicked, hide them

No problem:

var logo = document.querySelector("#logo");
var button = document.querySelector("#close-modal-button");
var overlay = document.querySelector("#overlay");
var modal = document.querySelector("#modal");

logo.addEventListener('contextmenu', function(event) {
  event.preventDefault();
  overlay.classList.add("show");
  modal.classList.add("show");
}, false);

button.addEventListener('click', function(event) {
  event.preventDefault();
  overlay.classList.remove("show");
  modal.classList.remove("show");
}, false);

Bare bones styling:

.overlay {
  position: fixed;
  background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.75);
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  display: none;
}
.overlay.show {
  display: block;
}

.modal {
  position: fixed;
  left: 50%;
  width: 300px;
  margin-left: -150px;
  top: 100px;
  background: white;
  padding: 20px;
  text-align: center;
  display: none;
}
.modal.show {
  display: block;
}
.modal > h3 {
  font-size: 26px;
  color: #900;
}

Never EVER break the default context menu and override with your own custom behavior OMG what are you an evil troll you should have never been born

You’re right! Oh god what have I done! Nothing can ever change! Murderous screams!!

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Right Click Logo to Show Logo Download Options is a post from CSS-Tricks

It’s the small details that make a project shine. Solid typography, well-crafted with attention and care is one of them. A harmonious visual rhythm, typographic subtleties like soft caps, margin outdents or the correct use of hyphens and dashes — there are a lot of things that add up to it. In practice, however, publishing on the web is supposed to be fast, and the little details are often overlooked, which is a pity, because they are not only pleasing to the eye but also improve the reading experience.

The tools and resources compiled in this article will help you bring some of that meaning that typography has always benefitted from in print to your web projects. They simplify the process of establishing a solid foundation and modular scale to build upon, take care of the little details, so they don’t get lost along the way, and offer solutions to common pitfalls. Are you ready to do some catching up on that type game?

The post Tools And Resources For A More Meaningful Web Typography appeared first on Smashing Magazine.