WPElegance2Col is a Free 2Column WordPress Theme, with premium features.This Free WordPress Theme is a neat, professional, elegant theme and highly customizable. The Footers, Featured Posts section and Thumbnails can be easily disabled or enable through the Theme Options Page.
WPElegance2Col is SEO-optimized, ad-ready, WordPress 2.7 compatible with widgetized sidebars and footer.
WordPress Theme Features:
- 2-column Theme
- Sliding Featured Posts Section
- Multi level sliding menus
- Automatic thumbnails of first uploaded image of Posts, in Home page and other archives
- SEO optimized CSS layout
- Gravatar Ready Theme
- Social Media integration
- Compatible with most WordPress plugins
- Compatible with WordPress 2.7 and earlier versions
- Easily spiderable, structured navigation
- W3C XHTML and CSS Validated theme
- support for threaded comments and seggregation of comments and pingbacks/trackbacks
jPolite (jQuery POrtal Lite) is an Open Source jQuery & Ajax Based Portal Framework. This is a lightweight front-end web portal framework based on jQuery.
The focus is easy content integration at the front-end, through an intuitive naming system and conventions plus simple and easy configuration.
jQuery Portal Framework Features
- Flexible layout configurations
- Drag & Drop functionality
- Beautiful UI controls like Tabs, accordion, etc…
- RSS Reader
Raymond Selda has published a tutorial about how to Create a Tabbed Content Rotator using jQuery and the interface library called jQuery UI. This effect can be used effectively on your homepage to present customers with your products and services.
After you’re finished, you can experiment and try placing the tabs above or lining them up vertically. Try looking up some websites that use this kind of interface for inspiration. Simple variations to the interface can be a great way to learn more about CSS.
Are you an Adboe Flash developers? In this post you can find some really interesting Flash frameworks and graphical engines that help you develop quickly complex Rich Internet Application and Flash-based games. This list includes graphic UI elements, Flash and Flex components, a physical engine and an open source component to create isometric games with Flash.
Gaia Framework
Gaia is an open-source front-end Flash Framework for AS3 and AS2 designed to dramatically reduce development time. Gaia is targeted at anyone who develops Flash sites. It provides solutions to the challenges and repeated tasks we all face with front-end Flash site development, such as navigation, transitions, preloading, asset management, site structure and deep linking. It provides speed and flexibility in your workflow and a simple API that gives you access to its powerful features. For an example of Gaia-made website take a look at Inglorious Basterds Official Site.
Progression
Progression is a real powerful framework for Adobe Flash with focus on your creative work. You can just focus on user experience matter, how to transit, what dramatical effects you want to provide for your UI. Progression supports wide range of developing styles – from traditional timeline-based style to stylish class-based style. Progression packages all necessary functions of Web site development as component. You can develop web site using the component by drag & drop on the stage.
Yahoo! ASTRA
Yahoo! ASTRA, is an ActionScript Toolkit for Rich Internet Applications. It provides a collection of Flash and Flex components, code libraries, toolkits and utilities developed by Yahoo! for ActionScript developers.
ARP
ARP is an open source pattern-based Rich Internet Application framework for the Adobe Flash Platform. ARP currently supports Adobe Flash and Flex-based RIA development in AS 2 and AS 3 and is designed to be simple to use and lightweight.
JSwiff
The aim of the JSwiff project is to create an open source, pure Java framework for Macromedia Flash file creation and manipulation.
PushButton
The PushButton Engine is an Open Source, Flash game engine and framework that’s designed for a new generation of games. PushButton Engine makes it easy to bring together great existing libraries and components for building Flash games. Spend less time on code, more time on building fun games.
Fisix Engine
The Fisix Engine is a 2D verlet physics engine for Flash. It is written completely in AS3 in order to make use of flash player 9’s improved cpu capabilities. Although Flash is still slower than platforms such as c/c++, or java, which means that you most likely won’t be able to make the next Half-Life in flash, it doesn’t mean you can’t do really cool stuff with 2D particles, constraints, rigid bodies, etc. and make great looking games and simulations. Take a look at the demo here. The result is really awesome.
FFilmation
FFilmation is a really impressive, open source, Flash Engine to create isometric locations for Flash-based games.
Some times ago I wrote a post about a structured process you must know to develop a web application and many readers asked to me to write something simpler about how to manage a small web project. I think there are not general rules for that but, without doubt, a correct approach can help you manage your projects more efficently and achieve quickly the final result.
I prepared this picture that illustrates a simple process with 3 main phases you can use as reference to manage a small web project:
1. Planning
Plan what you have to do, how you have to do it and in which time.
1.1 Define project scope
First step: Identify 4-5 high-level points which define the scope of your project. Don’t underrate the importance of this step because if you are able to describe your project in a nutshell, it means you have a clear idea about what you have to do. So it will be simpler to realize it.
1.2. Identify main features to implement
Second step: Identify main features of your web project and add, for each of them, some details such as relationships, general notes, ecc. For example image to have a simple project with only two main features: user login and profile management. You can represent them in this way:
That’s a simplified example only to give you an idea.
1.3. Define sitemap
Next step: define a sitemap of your project with files and folder. Be accurate in identifying all files to implement (HTML/PHP page, JavaScript files,…) because they are final deliverables to implement.
1.4. Plan a daily to-do list
Set daily milestones using a simple to-do list. So everyday you’ll know exactly what you have to do. In this way, you can easy monitor your progress measuring what you did a certain day and what had to do.
2. Developing and testing
In this phase: write HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript… code and test small portions of code during developing (preliminary test). So it wil be simpler find bugs and errors. When your web application is ready, stress it with a final test to catch errors you didn’t find during preliminary test which cause unexpected behaviors .
3. Publishing
Now you are ready to publish your project on-line. When your website or web application is on-line do a last test on what you published to assure you that it’s all ok. That’s all!
Recently, I have been doing research on Web Caching. And I have found Caching Tutorial for Web Authors and Webmasters , which is a detailed, informational document published by Mark Nottingham.
A Web cache sits between one or more Web servers and a client or many clients, and watches requests come by, saving copies of the responses — like HTML pages, images and files — for itself. Then, if there is another request for the same URL, it can use the response that it has, instead of asking the origin server for it again.
Web Caching can reduce latency, because the request is satisfied from the cache instead of the origin server, it takes less time for it to get the representation and display it. This makes the Web seem more responsive.
And also, Web Caching can reduce network traffic, because representations are reused, it reduces the amount of bandwidth used by a client. This saves money if the client is paying for traffic, and keeps their bandwidth requirements lower and more manageable.
You can also get more information about the type of web caches, how web caches work, how to control them, tips for building a cache-aware site and etc…
Axiis is an open source data visualization framework designed for beginner and expert developers alike. Axiis gives developers the ability to expressively define their data visualizations through concise and intuitive markup.
Axiis provides both pre-built visualization components as well as abstract layout patterns and rendering classes that allow you to create your own unique visualizations. Axiis was designed to be a granular framework, allowing developers to mix and match components and build complex output by compositing together basic building blocks.
Axiis is an open source project, under an MIT license. This means you can use it for personal projects, commercial work, and pretty much anything you can think of with no restrictions.
Userfly is described as usability testing made easy. Since my review of Feedback Army I have been overwhelmed with different websites offering usability services in a quick and easy package. However, Userfly seems to stand out from the crowd! I have put it to the test and brought you my findings.
After using Userfly I can see why so many people talk about it. This application is thoroughly thought out and professionally done. To top it off, they even offer 10 free recordings a month to see if the service is right for you. How could I resist the temptation of testing such a service?
How it works
Userfly describes it’s service as the following:
userfly.com provides instantaneous web user studies by recording user visits and letting you play them back to see every mouse movement, click, and form interaction. Conducting a user study doesn’t have to be expensive or a logistic nightmare. With userfly.com you can perform simple and cheap user testing with your real users. And it only takes one minute to set up!
Userfly operates through a piece of javascript you place in your head tag.
I would say this is a pretty straight forward description of the service that I found to be true. This service allows you to easily record your visitors and reports are offered you to in video format. This report also contains many other helpful features and options.
Using Userfly to record your users is only the first step, however. Let me give you some insight on how to use this to better your website.
Steps to learning from Userfly
Following these steps can help you understand your user’s interactions with your website. Learning from these actions can help you improve UX by watching the movements within your user interface.
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Embed the Code
Once you sign up you are brought to offered a tab labeled Install. This option will present you with the javascript you asked to place in your head tag. There is even an option for one click install for TypePad and Blogger users.
Be sure to check your site after you’ve installed the javascript. We had a slight mishap at UX Booth when entering the javascript. It seems that the script adds IDs to elements that don’t have IDs. Now I am not a big coder so I can not go into detail but Andrew and I looked into it a bit and discovered the CSS for our headers did not agree with having an ID added to them. For a short period of time our headers were whacked out and we had to remove the code. I continued testing on my gecko blog that I run and had no errors there.
Also, be sure to remove the code when you want to stop testing. It seems there is a small bug at the moment that records the occastional visitor even when you specify a pause in the session recording in the Userfly control panel.
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Wait for Users
Once the javascript is installed the recordings start rolling in. Be patient, you will want to wait an hour or two if your website does not have high traffic to attain some real valuable recordings! Running Userfly on my gecko blog, which averages only between 100 to 200 visitors per day, I got some great results in the first 10 to 15 minutes but the real eye opening recordings happened in the next few hours.
Also notice that Userfly by default will record you as a visitor too. You do have the option to block IPs through the control panel. You may consider doing this for your IP. Something else I noticed is that recordings that are very short are not added to your listings to prevent wasted time and money. I really liked seeing this!
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Understand the Reports
Each aspect of the Recordings page is important. The first portion of the Recordings page tells you what page was recorded. This is important to take note of as it is the starting point at which you viewer has landed on. Various parts of your website may have different templates and structures and it is important to take note of how possible first time visitors react with exposure to each type of page.
The next part of the report shows you exactly where the user came from, if it can be detected. I saw an interesting difference in visitors from different sources. Some of our readers that visited from PSD Tuts stuck around and read articles in depth, while visitors from social websites came and skimmed very quickly. More research is needed to understand if this is valid pattern but it is something to consider when trying to keep users around for longer.
The next two features are date, as in when the recording was captured, and page views, which tells you how many pages were viewed in the visit and how long the user was there. Both of these things can be factored into a bigger picture to see how different influences may change your users duration and exploration.
Next is the location of the visitor with an option to view this location on a map. Users from different countries or even regions may interact with your site differently. Finally you are presented the browser the user is viewing you with as well as the option to save, delete, or ban an IP.
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Watch the Videos
Watching the videos is also very simple process. Simply select a visit and enjoy.
This part is the most important bit, really. You need to set aside some time to sit and watch these. They can sometimes be boring and often time consuming. Some recordings it seems like the user fell asleep at the mouse when reading. Just remember, these interactions are what will lead you to your improvements!
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Take Note of Interactions
This really is the epiphany of Userfly. Pay special attention when watching those interaction recordings.
Are users from search engines visiting your website and immediately leaving through google ads? Is it worth the loss? Do users from a specific forum seem to stay longer? Would you consider advertising with them to increase a stable audience?
Ask yourself these kind of questions. Also, pay attention to what people click on and how they navigate. You know your design, you think it works well. You may be surprised when people click on items you never thought would look like links or not understand how to easily return to the home page. Studying these interactions can build a data bank of knowledge that will increase your UX skills and bring you up that extra notch you need!
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Correct Problems
This is it, time to bring it home. Now that you’ve amassed a list of problems that your website showcases you can now correct them! Use what you’ve learned and apply it to make the user experience better and more enjoyable for your users. It will easily increase profits, subscribers, and viewers.
Don’t stop now though. Test again, improve again, and repeat! The fight is a never ending one for people interested in improving usability.
Commodore 64 has been one of the best selling computers of all time. However, the computer was not even close to even the least advanced computers available today. It came with a RAM of 64 KB and yet we loved to play Atari and other games on it. In fact, games such as Atari created a whole new culture which is now referred to as the old school gaming culture.
In order to recreate the beauty and nostalgia of this almost antique computer, Ben Heck has modded the C64 Laptop. He used a genuine C64C motherboard and a gamecube power supply in order to start with the project. He also used the SD card to impersonate the floppy disk.
In fact, many people might now need to be told what floppy disks were all about. Nevertheless, the Ben Heck modded C64 laptop is certainly cool and would make any retro guy happy enough to forget the snazziest of laptops available today. You could sit back and enjoy an old game of Atari yet again and relive all those golden moments, which are otherwise rusting in our memories.
I am sure your colleagues and friends would be surprised and glad too, to see you carrying this cool mod if you ever get to make it yourself or get one for yourself. They would be able to relive their own youthful days too! Ben Heck is one awesome guy who always seems to mod the most amazing products. If you have been following all his mods, you would know how cool his Xbox Controller Monitor Hack] was.
Free icons are great resources for web designers as quality ones help creating beautiful outputs. But they are better when they come with the source files as it is possible to edit/improve them.
Smashing Magazine is sharing Flavour Extended icon set, a set of 450+ icons, that is created by Oliver Twardowski.
Icons are in 48*48px size & PNG format. PSD source files are also included.
The set contains icons of users, folders, file formats, actions, social bookmarking services & more.
