Mobile Website design & development guidelines

Like it or hate it, the Apple iPhone has ushered in the age of the “Smartphone” which in turn has delivered mobile web-browsing to the masses. The mobile browser, whilst now broadly quite capable (at least on leading platforms), has introduced a slightly different set of requirements in terms of design and development of Websites.

Many, many designers, developers and others have written articles on how to design and/or develop for the mobile browser. I am aiming to summarise what I have learnt from several sources alongside my experience an opinion in a (hopefully) relatively quick and simple way. So here goes, I’d recommend that you:

7 usability guidelines for websites on mobile devices

Tags:

• Mobile
• Usability
• Website design

Mobile Internet is continuing to grow very quickly. These guidelines will help you create or improve your mobile user experience.

1. Reduce the amount of content

Not everything shown on a PC site can fit reasonably onto a mobile web page, where space is short and every pixel counts. It’s important to reduce the amount of content shown on the mobile-optimised version.

Only include the most important content or features. Low priority content that can be removed might include content or links that are outside of the main content area, such content typically found in the right hand columns of standard web pages.

Mobile websites should be very focused. This makes them easier to read and move around, as well as quicker to load on devices that can sometimes have slow Internet connection speeds.

2. Single column layouts work best

Wide web pages are difficult to view on small mobile phone screens. Even on smart phones like the iPhone with their relatively large screens standard web pages load up zoomed out so that they can fit on the screen. Most text is unreadable until users zoom in to the part of the screen they want to view. Zooming in isn’t ideal because it adds an extra step and zooming in and out isn’t easy to do on all phones.

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Becoming a Freelancer

The web is an ocean of information, advertising and communication that is attracting more and more professionals. The web as an industry is versatile and full of interesting fields that would satisfy people of all professional backgrounds.

 

There are several reasons why someone would choose the web as their domain of work, including the following:

• The jobs are modern and challenging because the web changes quite rapidly. It’s high-paced, never stale, and always exciting.
• Online work caters to a vast and diverse client base that’s not limited by geographic factors.
• There’s room for everyone to provide something. Some are involved in art and creativity, some in programming and coding, others in management and marketing, and so forth.
• Some people feel they can express their talents better online because the web has become so ingrained in their daily routine.

15 ECommerce Web Design PSD Files

by SloDive Admin | Freebies | 1 Comment

Ecommerce sites are extremely popular and demand for ECommerce Web Design PSD Files is increasing tremendously among the designers and users. With new advancement in technology and lesser time in hands, most of the people (Including me), prefer to buy things online.

This not only saves their time and effort but they also get benefited with various promotional activities which gives them tempting offers. Apart from the brand name and good rating of the ecommerce webpage, the other majot ingredient of making an Ecommerce site popular is its easy usability. There are plenty of tutorials showcasing you the process of making a perfect Ecommerce web design, but sometime you really don’t want to start a project from scratch.

Thus we have collected 15 ECommerce Web Design PSD Files, which will be of a great help for you in your upcoming projects. These 15 ECommerce Web Design PSD Files will give you a creative edge over other Ecommerce designs and you can add some of your robust knowledge in it to make it the best creative design ever. In the last, as we always say, kindly go through the terms and conditions of use before employing your precious time on these files.

10 Tips to Boost Your HTML Forms Performance

Sometimes we get so used to doing things one way that we forget a little and important thing: to improve. We get so involved with all this CTA stuff that we forget other important things, like the contact form that comes after the pretty button.

Our task today is to improve our form, to get better conversion rates, and maybe learn something from it.

We will be talking about conversion, code, and design, in an easy and practical way.

So, let’s stop talking and rock some forms.

Designing A Facebook Fan Page: Showcases, Tutorials, Resources

Despite its privacy issues, Facebook clearly has a key role in global Internet activity. It has become a kind of universal social network, being used for both personal and business needs. For many individuals, companies and organizations, Facebook has become an integral part of their branding strategy and promotional campaigns.

Facebook provides many tools for maximizing the effect of your presence on the social network, most of all by means of business pages, also known as fan pages. Using a variety of applications and Facebook API tools, one can get creative not only with the page content, but with the design, too.

In this post, we’ll give you an idea of how to use Facebook for your business and self-promotional efforts. Below, you will find best practices for custom Facebook fan page designs, with various approaches to creating an attractive, descriptive and engaging Facebook business page. In addition, the selection of tutorials and resources for Facebook fan page development might help you get started with your own effective Facebook presence.

50 Powerful Time-Savers For Web Designers

Being a web designer is not easy. Not only do we need to have a good understanding about visual design, typography, information architecture, psychology and a plethora of other disciplines; in our work, we need to take care of so many details, so that our job becomes more and more time-consuming, requiring dozens of tools, attention span and an effective workflow for beautiful, timely and functional results.

And this is where small time-savers become handy. Be it a handy checklist, batch installer, dummy image generator or converter from Excel spreadsheet to HTML — all these things can save us a couple of minutes every day, making our work easier and more efficient. And this is why we keep collecting them for Smashing Magazine’s readers. Whether you like lists or not: this one will probably help you find those little nuggets out there that will help you avoid headaches and stress. Below we present useful time-savers for web designers.

You may want to subcribe to Smashing Magazine’s E-Mail Newsletter (32,600 subscribers) to keep updated about new useful tools, techniques and resources. The newsletter is sent out once every two weeks.

Designing A Facebook Fan Page: Showcases, Tutorials, Resources

Despite its privacy issues, Facebook clearly has a key role in global Internet activity. It has become a kind of universal social network, being used for both personal and business needs. For many individuals, companies and organizations, Facebook has become an integral part of their branding strategy and promotional campaigns.

Facebook provides many tools for maximizing the effect of your presence on the social network, most of all by means of business pages, also known as fan pages. Using a variety of applications and Facebook API tools, one can get creative not only with the page content, but with the design, too.

In this post, we’ll give you an idea of how to use Facebook for your business and self-promotional efforts. Below, you will find best practices for custom Facebook fan page designs, with various approaches to creating an attractive, descriptive and engaging Facebook business page. In addition, the selection of tutorials and resources for Facebook fan page development might help you get started with your own effective Facebook presence.

50 Useful New jQuery Techniques and Tutorials

The simplicity, advanced features and strong support are common arguments for developers preferring jQuery against other JavaScript-frameworks. In fact, jQuery is one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks, with powerful tools that can significantly improve the user’s interaction with Web applications. jQuery has an additional advantage in that it allows developers to select elements on a page using CSS-like syntax.

To help you improve your skills, in this article we present 50 useful new jQuery techniques and tutorials that have been created recently and that could make the development of your next website an easier and more interesting experience than the last.

50 New CSS Techniques For Your Next Web Design

CSS is almost certainly one of the best developments in web design since the first graphical web browsers were adopted on a wide scale. Where tables created clunky, slow-loading pages, CSS created much more streamlined and usable web pages. Plus, CSS has allowed designers to achieve a number of different styles that used to only be possible with images.

One of the best parts of CSS is that it’s so simple once you know the basics. Where tables used to make incredibly complex and sometimes impossible-to-decipher code, CSS keeps things clean and simple. Add a few comments to keep everything organized and it becomes an absolute dream to work with.

Below are 50 fresh CSS tricks, techniques and tutorials that will help you to improve the quality of your next web design. Be sure to check out our previous article: 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without.

50 Stunning Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials

Photoshop’s text and layer tools can be used to create some really awesome effects. We’ve put together a list of 60 of the best tutorials we could find to help you stay up to date on the latest trends and techniques. You’ll find some really cool grunge and glass styles (plus a few surprises!) and learn how some of the best designers create their unique effects.

Courtesy: LemonDesign

Instead of listing 100 plus tutorials that you’ll bookmark never to come back, we’ve decided to take you through the basics of typography, hopefully inspiring and then teaching you. Typography is an art just like any other. You have to feel the form, admire the curves and connect with the flow.

You may want to take a look at the following related posts:

• Digital Photography Photoshop Tutorials
• Beauty Retouching Photoshop Tutorials
• Modeling Photoshop Tutorials
• Grunge Photoshop Tutorials
• Vintage and Retro Photoshop Tutorials
• Rainbows, Glows and Light Effects With Photoshop

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]

Introduction to Typography

Typography is the art of arranging type, designing type, and modifying type glyphs. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, line spacing (leading), adjustment of space between groups of letters (tracking) and adjustment of space between pairs of letters (kerning).

Here are some resources to give you further insight:

• Brief introduction to typography
• Five simple steps to better typography
• More about vertical metrics for true typography lovers
• 10 common typography mistakes

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet to Learn

And we, too, never stop being inspired, learning and creating:

• 21 stunning typography artworks, from DeviantArt
• 30 inspiring type treatments
• Breathtaking typographic posters
• Typography is sexy
• 70 minimalist typography examples

How to Choose the Right Type

Guess if you can, choose if you dare. Typeface can make or break your design. Let the type speak for itself: its dimensions, curves, strength and space should define your purpose.

• On choosing type, from iLoveTypography
• 15 tips to choose a good text type
• From kerning to hierarchy: this is one resource you will surely bookmark

Resources to Live by

Finding quality fonts can be overwhelming because there are literally millions out there and finding the right one is a painful process. Here are a few resources I use to find a font for a project I am working on.

• 50 incredible fonts for professional Web and print design
• Fonts: the skinny, thin and beautiful
• 40+ excellent freefonts for Professional design
• How to create a font

Here Come the Tutorials

Now that you understand the importance of typography, let’s move on to the awesome Photoshop tutorials we were talking about. The above resources on type were pretty general, whereas these tutorials deal mainly with text effects that you could use in posters, magazines or whatever you wish. The basics of typography apply to most of the work you will do with the tutorials below.

Go Crazy with 3D

3D texture
Create amazing 3D-textured text with Illustrator and Photoshop in this in-depth tutorial.

Create a spectacular flaming meteor effect on text
Take typography one step further by having text falling from the sky in a burning inferno. Yes, this is the text-on-fire tutorial to end all text-on-fire tutorials. It uses a little Illustrator for the text and a lot of Photoshop to burn up the screen!

Funky 3D-style letters
A straightforward guide to creating funky 3D-style letters.

How to create high-quality metal 3D text in Photoshop
This tutorial shows you how to create 3D text and give it a high-quality metal look using only Photoshop.

Light and shade
In this tutorial we are going to take some very basic principles of light and shade to make a rather impressive-looking text effect.

Create Destructive Black and White Lettering with a Dramatic Splash Effect
Learn how to make some expressive lettering, which includes thoughts connected with a central word. You’ll turn standard text into a stunning, destructive illustration, and give it a final unique look.

Chunky 3D letters
Create big chunky 3D letters with this colorful tutorial!

Stunning 3D effects in 30 minutes
Together, with a pinch of this and a dash of that, we’ll figure out how to create this cool effect in just 30 minutes.

How to Quickly Create a Stylish Retro Text Effect
Learn how to create a quite cool retro text effect. You will learn how to use the Perspective tool to create depth and how designers can use default gradients in unusual ways.

3D text with a touch of grunge
A pretty detailed tutorial that shows you how to create grungy 3D text.

Design soft stylized 3D type
Learn the basics of creating polished 3D type using Illustrator and Photoshop.

Create a 3D flowery text effect

Create a dream-like design with 3D typograph
This detailed tutorial shows you how to create a 3D typography-based design. All the elements revolve around the theme of dreaming.

Elements of Nature

Quick and dirty Photoshop text effects from scratch (six tutorials in one)
Learn how to make six different effects using just layer styles. So really, this is like six tutorials in one!

Create a spectacular grass text effect in Photoshop
In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a rather cool-looking grass text effect.

Plastic text
Turn text into plastic using Photoshop’s layer styles.

Icy cold
Get ready for winter: create icy cold text!

Paint-splodged text
This is a quick text effect tutorial. It shows you how to simply create paint-splodged text.

Text in stitches
In this Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to convert text to a path and stitch that path using a custom brush set.

Wet watercolor
A watercolor on wet paper effect. Experiment to create different painting effects.

How to create a gold text effect in Photoshop
Learn how to create a gold text effect. I personally love this effect, so subtle yet powerful.

Colored chrome
Make chrome text and then color it!

Reflective liquid type
Create liquid text, a very handy trick.

Wood inlay
A decorative wood-inlay text effect.

Paper-craft text effect
In this tutorial, you will learn how to create paper-craft text effects.

Dramatic text-on-fire effect in Photoshop
Learn how to use a photograph of fire to strike text to the match. This is a beautiful tutorial, a must-see.

Grunge & Co.

How to Create a Copper Photoshop Text Effect
This is a strong and eye-catching text effect, though relatively simple to create. You’ll be using bevel and emboss styles, pattern overlays, and combining different techniques to mock-up the text into a related background.

Vanity License Plate
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a custom vanity license plate using a few basic Photoshop tools a piece of reference material and some creative layer stylings.

Star Wars text effect
A step-by-step guide to creating a Star Wars text effect.

Create a trendy typographic poster design
Using simple shapes, you can produce some great-looking contemporary designs that create a big impact on posters; another good example being the recent Trendy Geometric Lines tutorial.

Graffiti with Photoshop
When you don’t have the guts to pull this off in the real world, Photoshop to the rescue. Learn how to make graffiti with Photoshop.

Super-cool frilly bits typography
In this tutorial, you will learn how to mix some vectors with letters to create a really nice design. This one is a personal favorite.

Typography wallpaper in Photoshop
Why not design your own typographic wallpaper from now on?

Dirty grunge text
Create dirty grunge text in Photoshop.

Rusty text
Make text rusty by following this easy tutorial.

Warm neon glow
Six simple steps to create a warm neon glow.

Floral
Learn how to make stylish floral typography.

Splattered blood
Blood-splattered mafia-style text!

Worn and torn
Create worn and torn text with this easy-to-follow guide.

Grunge rubber stamp.
Create a grunge rubber stamp effect in seven simple steps.

Distorted letters
Learn to distort letters using Photoshop brushes with this amazingly easy tutorial.

Decorative text
Learn how to decorate text with colorful floral patterns in this tutorial.

Rough metal
Create a rough-metal text effect with this tutorial.

Light and Glass

A slick supernatural text effect
Create a smoky night effect with text, giving it an eerie supernatural feel. It’s a good exercise in using the wave distortion filter.

Smoke type in Photoshop in 10 steps
Learn how to create a smoke typography effect by playing with some brushes and adjustment layers. It’s a very easy tutorial, and you will be able to finish the whole process in 5 to 10 minutes.

Moonshine effect
In just a few simple steps, you can add a soft, calm, easy-going moon-like text effect.

Transparent glass lettering in Photoshop
In this tutorial, you’ll use some super layer effects and a bit of magic to make a lettering style that looks transparent and stunning.

Scan-line text
Create a style dubbed “Scan-Line Text,” which is basically text that glows like bright scan lines, with a smart reflection as well. Learn how to create this amazing yet simple effect with this easy-to-follow tutorial.

Create a layered glowing text effect
In this tutorial, we will create this effect using very basic Photoshop tools and layering effects.

Vibrant pop text effect
In just a few moments, you can add a vibrant splash to your text that will really give your design a pop-culture flavor!

Slow-shutter effect
Learn how to create this beautiful slow-shutter text effect.

Colorful glow
A colorful, glowing text effect, great for integrating in designs with dark backgrounds.

Retro and Vintage

Colorful retro text
A colorful retro text effect using both Illustrator and Photoshop.

Colorful watercolor
Learn to make a colorful and distinctive watercolor text effect with this tutorial.

Experiments

Furry text
Create a tactile, furry text effect that looks like the real thing!

Wrapped parcel
A cartoon-like wrapped-parcel text style.

Barbed wire
Wrap your text in barbed wire!

Light burst
An amazing light-burst effect!

Sand writing
Learn how to write a message in the sand with Photoshop.

Flower text
Create a pretty floral text effect. It looks difficult but is surprisingly easy!

 

The Ultimate Collection Of Useful Photoshop Actions

Saving repetitive tasks as Photoshop actions can save you a lot of time, allowing you to automate your work and improve workflow efficiency. A Photoshop action is a recording of a sequence of commands and operations that you can save and access later on.

We’ve searched for the best downloadable Photoshop actions that can help you improve your workflow and perform complex techniques with the push of a button. In this collection, you’ll find more than 350 free hand-picked Photoshop actions that you can use to speed up your graphics creation.

Note: It’s important to check the license of each action set you download and use.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you already get your copy of the Smashing Book?]

Quick Introduction to Photoshop Actions

For those unfamiliar with Photoshop actions, they’re simply pre-recorded tasks that you can save and reuse anytime. Photoshop actions commonly have an .atn file extension. Installing a Photoshop action for more recent versions of Photoshop is easy: simply drag the .atn file onto the Actions palette or place it directly inside your Adobe Photoshop\Presets\Photoshop Actions folder. For a more comprehensive discussion of Photoshop actions, check out this complete guide to Photoshop actions.

Image Effects and Graphic Creation Actions

Cross-processing ATN
Simulate the Cross-processing (Xpro) photography technique using this Photoshop action.

1 action – Download

Lomo
Give your images a “Lomo” look and feel with this excellent Photoshop action.

1 action – Download

Lomo Cross-processing
This Photoshop action is a combination of two popular photography effects: Lomo and Cross-processing.

1 action – Download

Polaroid Generator
Automatically frame an image in a Polaroid border with this set of Photoshop actions.

5 actions – Download

Hand-Colored Vintage Photo
This is a handy Photoshop action set for giving images aged, dirty effects.

4 actions – Download

Vintage
Aly’s Vintage action set is a nice collection of six vintage image effects that you can use on modern digital photos.

6 Actions – Download

Vintage Wash
Give your images an old, vintage effect with this set of ten different actions.

10 actions – Download

Old Parchment
Easily create aged paper with this free Photoshop action.

1 action – Download

Simple Stamp Generator
Automatically create a stamp graphic with this action.

1 action – Download

Pseudo HDR
Mimic the “HDR” photo effect without having to use multiple exposures of the subject.

1 action – Download

HDR For Dummies
Here’s another easy-to-use Photoshop action set for giving photos the “HDR” effect.

3 actions – Download

IR Actions
Give your photos the popular infrared effect using Dave’s IR Photoshop action.

1 action – Download

IR Effect
Here is another method for faking the infrared photographic effect using a Photoshop action.

1 action – Download

Photo Effect Action
This Photoshop action can be used for grunge designs.

1 action – Download

Comics Photoshop Action
Give your image a comic book look and feel using this Photoshop action.

1 action – Download

Retro Love
Achieve a retro-colored image effect using the Retro Love action.

1 action – Download

Soften Skin Effect
Smoothen skin and remove blemishes with the Soften Skin Effect action.

1 action – Download

Burnt Edges Vignette
This action gives your photos burnt and high-key effects (available for low- and high-resolution images, see the “Try Me”-section).

4 actions – Download site, check the “Try Me”-section

Edge Effects
This set of actions allows you to give your images different types of edge effects.

8 actions – Download

B & Big Picture
Create a three-dimensional collage effect using one source image with the B & Big Picture action.

4 actions – Download

Photo Enhancement and Processing Actions

Black and White Photoshop Actions
This is a set of useful actions for processing black and white images.

8 actions – Download

TLR B&W Toning
TLR B&W Toning is a large action set for enhancing and processing black and white images.

30 actions – Download

Photoshop Postwork Actions
Here is a ton of excellent post-work Photoshop actions.

25 actions – Download

TLR Sharpening Toolkit
This is a useful Photoshop action pack for sharpening RGB, CMYK and monochrome photos.

33 actions – Download

TLR Tone Enhance
Enhance the tone and color of your images using this Photoshop action set.

30 actions – Download

Color Enhancing Actions
Here is a variety of actions, such as “colorboost,” “softlight,” and “contrastboost.”

10 actions – Download

Photoshop Color Actions
A nice collection of color actions to process and enhance your photographs.

10 actions – Download

Cross Coloring Tools
Here is a set of actions for dark, mid-range, and light cross-coloring of image tone.

4 actions – Download

Image Enhancing PS Actions
These are ten brilliant image-enhancing Photoshop actions.

10 actions – Download

Watermark Photoshop Action
Automate the watermarking of your images with this set of Photoshop actions.

9 actions – Download

Photographers Toolkit
A wonderful set of actions for photographers to enhance photos.

9 actions – Download

Assorted Sets of Actions

Photoshop Actions – 53
This is the 53rd set of Photoshop actions by =night-fate of deviantART.

9 actions – Download

Productions Action
This is a set of useful actions that will simplify your workflow for common Photoshop tasks.

20 actions – Download

Photoshop Automator Actions
This is one of the biggest sets of useful actions to cut down on repetitive tasks such as watermarking images, scaling images, and fitting images in the canvas. You need to register before being able to download the set.
90 actions – Download

Photography Action Set
This is an excellent collection of popular photo effects, such as HDR, Lomo, Velvia, Xpro and more.

8 actions – Download

Rather Large Set of Actions
This is a large collection of useful Photoshop actions.

40 actions – Download

Photoshop Actions – 62
Another beautiful set of assorted Photoshop actions by =night-fate.

8 actions – Download
(al)

 

Mastering Photoshop: Unknown Tricks and Time-Savers

We all have shortcuts that are essential to our daily workflow. A majority of them are staples such as Copy (Command + C) and Paste (Command + V), but occasionally we stumble upon a shortcut we wish we’d learned years ago. Suddenly, this simple shortcut has streamlined our process and shaved quite a bit of time off our day. Collected here are some lesser known but extremely useful shortcuts. Many of these are not documented in the “Keyboard Shortcuts” menu, and some of them don’t even have equivalent menu options.

Please note that all of the shortcuts listed below assume that you are using Photoshop CS4 on OS X. They will work on the Windows platform by converting as follows: Command → Control and Option → Alt.

[By the way, did you know we have a free Email Newsletter? Subscribe now and get fresh short tips and tricks in your inbox!]

Layers

Selection

Sifting through nests of layer sets to find the layer you need quickly becomes tiresome. Luckily, there are a number of ways to select layers more intuitively. Using the Move tool (V), you can Command + click on the canvas to select the uppermost layer with pixel data located directly below the mouse. If your layers are grouped within layer sets, this action may have selected the entire folder. You can change this behavior to select the actual layer by using the Auto-select drop-down in the Move tool’s property bar.

Changing auto-select behavior.

There will be times when you want to select a layer that is located below a number of other layers. By right-clicking with the Move tool, you’ll bring up a contextual menu containing a list of all layers located below the cursor. If your layers are properly named, you should be able to quickly select the layer you need. By holding Shift while using either of the selection methods above, you can select multiple layers. After selecting multiple layers, you can link the layers together by right-clicking and selecting Link Layers.

Right-clicking to display all layers beneath the cursor.

The keyboard can also be used to select layers. Pressing Option + [ or Option + ] selects the layer below or above the current layer, respectively. Pressing Option + < selects the bottommost layer, and Option + > selects the uppermost. Option + Shift + < selects all layers between the current layer and the bottommost layer, and Option + Shift + > selects all layers between the current and uppermost.

Sorting

Sorting layers with the mouse can be clumsy and slow. A few shortcuts speeds up the organizing. Command + [ and Command + ] moves the selected layer up or down one position in the stack. If multiple layers are selected, they’ll move relative to the uppermost or bottommost layer. Pressing Command + Shift + [ or Command + Shift + ] brings the selected layer to the top or bottom of its current layer group. If the layer is already at the top or bottom of the layer group, it jumps to the top or bottom of the parent layer group.

Viewing

Option + clicking the eye icon of a layer is a commonly known way to hide or show all other layers. There is also a way to expand and collapse layer groups: by Command + clicking the arrow next to the layer group, you can close or expand all other layer groups; this does not work on nested layer groups. Alternatively, right-clicking the arrow gives you a menu to perform the same actions; but this will work on nested layer groups.

Duplicating

There are a number of ways to duplicate data from one layer to another. Duplicating an entire layer is as simple as pressing Command + J. If a selection is active, you can use the same shortcut (Command + J) to create a new layer based on the selected area of the original layer. Pressing Command + Shift + J with a selection creates a new layer while cutting the data from the original layer. Holding Option while pressing one of the arrow keys allows you to duplicate the current layer and nudge it by 1 pixel. Holding Shift and Option nudges the new layer by 10 pixels.

Duplicating data from multiple layers can also be done more quickly using some keyboard commands. Using Command + Shift + C with an active selection copies the data contained within it to the clipboard. You can then paste it to a new layer (Command + Option + Shift + N, Command + V). If you’d like to create a flattened copy of the entire document, use the shortcut Command + Option + Shift + E: a composite of all visible layers will be added as a new layer to the top of your layer stack.

Brushes

Shape and Size

Being able to quickly adjust the brush tool is crucial to getting a swift workflow. Many know about using [ and ] to decrease and increase the brush’s diameter, as well as Shift + [ and Shift + ] to decrease and increase the brush’s hardness. However, CS4 introduced an even more intuitive way to do this. By holding Control + Option and dragging on the canvas, you can change the brush’s diameter with a visual aid. Control + Command + Option and dragging gives you control of the brush’s hardness.

The on-canvas drag makes brush adjustments more intuitive.

If you would like to completely change the brush shape to a different preset, press < or > to cycle through them and Shift + < or Shift + > to select the first or last brush. Right-clicking inside the canvas also displays a condensed menu of brushes.

Opacity, Flow and Mode

The opacity of the brush tool can be quickly tweaked using the number keys: 3 = 30%; 3 + 5 = 35%; 0 + 3 = 3%; 0 = 100%. Holding Shift when inputting the numbers sets the flow of the tool. Note that if Airbrush mode is on, these two shortcuts swap (i.e. holding Shift controls opacity instead of flow). You can toggle Airbrush mode on and off using Option + Shift + P. The same numeric input method can be used to determine the opacity of a layer when the Move tool (V) is active; pressing Shift allows you to alter the Fill of the layer.

Quick Fill

Instead of selecting the Fill tool (G), you can quickly bring up the Fill menu using Shift + F5. Even better, bypass the menu entirely using Option + Backspace to fill with the foreground color or Command + Backspace to fill with the background color. These keyboard commands can also be used to quickly set the color of a type or shape layer. To preserve transparency when filling, you could first lock the transparency of the layer by pressing / and then fill, but there’s an easier way. Pressing Option + Shift + Backspace or Command + Shift + Backspace fills with the foreground or background color while preserving transparency.

Pressing Command + Shift + Backspace to preserve transparency while filling.

Blending Modes

You can cycle through blending modes or jump to a specific one by using just the keyboard. By pressing Option + Shift + (+) or Option + Shift + (-), you can cycle forward or backward through available modes. Alternatively, you can set a specific mode using the shortcuts below.

Typesetting

Setting type is a delicate and time-consuming process, but shortcuts speed it up. First off, hiding the inversed block that is created by selecting text is extremely beneficial. Command + H allows you to toggle the visibility of both the highlight and baseline stroke, making it easier to see the final result. When finished editing your text, you can commit changes by pressing Enter on the numeric keypad or Command + Return. Pressing Esc discards changes.

Variants

There are six shortcuts for changing the font variant, but they should be used with caution. If the appropriate variant or character does not exist within the currently selected font family, Photoshop creates a faux variant. These fake variants are frowned upon within the typosphere and are extremely easy to spot. So, if you use these shortcuts, make sure that Photoshop has selected an actual variant and not faked it. Now, onto the shortcuts:

Justification

To set the justification, use one of the commands below. Note that a selection must be made within the target paragraph for these to work.

Spacing and Sizing

Properly sizing and spacing type is a tedious task, but Photoshop does provide some handy—albeit broad—shortcuts. Unfortunately, there is no way to fine-tune the increments by which they adjust. Note that these shortcuts will work only if a text selection is made; selecting a type layer is not enough. To change the type size by increments of 2, press either Command + Shift + < or >. To bump the increment up to 10 points, use Command + Option + Shift + < or >. Leading can also be modified by 2 or 10 point increments using Option + Up or Down arrow or by Command + Option + Up or Down arrow.

The arrow keys can also be used to adjust kerning and tracking. Pressing Option + Left or Right either kerns or tracks 20 units depending on whether or not a type selection is active (i.e. if the cursor is between two characters, kerning is applied; if multiple characters are selected, then tracking is adjusted). The increment can also be changed to 100 units using Command + Option + Left or Right arrow. Finally, the baseline can be shifted by 2 or 10 points using Option + Shift + Up or Down arrow or Command + Option + Shift + Up or Down arrow, respectively.

Resets

Sometimes, we have to return to the defaults. Below are some shortcuts to get you back on track.

Menus

Hidden within many of Photoshop’s menus are a number of shortcuts that make adjustments faster and easier. Just about every menu—whether for Adjustment, Filter or anything else—allows you to revert to the original settings; by simply holding Option, the Cancel button will turn into a Reset button. Depending on the menu, holding Option might even change some of the other buttons (e.g. the Done button in the “Save for Web and Devices” menu will change to Remember). Certain menus, such as the Filter Gallery, also allow you to hold Command to turn the Cancel button into a Default button.

Using modifier keys to uncover in-menu options.

Spring-loaded Commands

By default, most menus transform the cursor into the Hand tool or Move tool. These tools can be used on the canvas while the menu is open to pan the document or to adjust settings, such as the Angle and Distance settings for a Drop Shadow. More tools, however, are available via spring-loaded shortcuts. The zoom tools can be accessed using either Command (to zoom in) and Option (to zoom out) or Command + Space (to zoom in) and Command + Option + Space (to zoom out). The hand tool can also be accessed by holding the space bar.

Holding Command + Spacebar to access the zoom tool within the Blending options.

Adjustment Menus and Layers

The Curves adjustment, like most other adjustments, contains some handy shortcuts. Similar to how you can cycle through the Channels in a document, you can cycle through the adjustment’s channels using Option + 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. You can also cycle through the points on the actual curves using – and =. With a point selected, you can nudge the points in increments of 2 in any direction using the arrow keys. Holding Shift in conjunction with the arrow keys moves the point by 16 units. When working with an adjustment menu, you can toggle the Preview option on and off by pressing P. Adjustment layers don’t have a Preview option, but you can temporarily disable it by pressing and holding \.

Summary

Hopefully, reading this has taught you a few new tricks and uncovered for you some of the more obscure options within Photoshop. While memorizing shortcuts can be a chore, integrating them into your daily workflow saves you an incredible amount of time. Do you have other obscure time-savers? Share your favorites in the comments!

Related Articles

• Photoshop Secret Shortcuts
• John Nack on Adobe: Shortcut Changes in PS CS4
• Adobe Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts
• Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts
• Adobe Photoshop CS3 Keyboard Shortcuts

 

45 Incredibly Useful Web Design Checklists and Questionnaires

Designing websites can be a long and complicated process. Dealing with clients, designing prototypes, coding, programming, and testing – there’s a lot to keep track of and a lot to make sure gets done. That’s where checklists can make your life a whole lot easier. With lists of points covering multiple areas from content to usability to accessibility to standards, you’re a lot less likely to overlook important parts of a site.

Below are 45 checklists to make your design process easier and more organized. Consider using these checklists as a jumping off point for creating your own customized list, based on your own needs.

Also consider our previous articles:

• 15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website lists some important things to check before you make your sites public.
• 10 Designer’s Checkpoints To Be Aware Of offers a list of things every designers should know about their sites.

[By the way, did you know we have a free Email Newsletter? Subscribe now and get fresh short tips and tricks in your inbox!]

1. Client-Focused Checklists and Questionnaires

These questionnaires and checklists are focused on making your relationships with your clients better. Use these to gather information from your clients or prospects at the beginning of each project so that everyone is on the same page.

How to Extract the Facts with a Web Design Client Questionnaire
This questionnaire from Freelance Switch is meant to send out to prospective clients to get a good idea of what they’re looking for from a website. It can save you valuable time and allow you to create more accurate proposals.

Design checklist: What clients should provide their designer
A checklist of things that clients should provide their designer at the outset. To follow this list will ensure the client and designer are dealing professionally as well as creating an efficient workflow.

Comprehensive Web Design Checklist
This is another client-focused questionnaire. It’s aimed at getting clients to really think about what they need and want from a website.

How I Approach Logo Design – A Checklist
Learn how to figure out what the client wants to have in a new logo, what his objectives are and where the logo will be used. Also check 4 Critical Logo Design Details You May Be Forgetting About.

20 Questions To Ask Clients Prior To Designing A Logo
Before starting any project it’s essential to get the right preliminary information from your clients. This will help pave the way to a successful project, assist in bringing client’s vision into perspective and build a lasting relationship.

Client Questionnaire for Web Developers
This questionnaire is very short and basic but covers the important points: audience, content, and communication.

Step-By-Step Website Development – Check List
To help you make your plan, here is a simplified checklist for the development and design of a website ($ indicates potential additional fees that may be incurred).

Project Planning Website Checklist
This website check list is a high-level check list of activities to include in your project plan. A successful web development requires attention to several strands of activity, an in particular the organization of information and changes in origanization and business processes.

2. Pre-Launch Checklists

This checklist deals less with the planning and initial stages of website design and focus on the things you need to make sure are complete prior to launching a new site. Every designer should have a pre-launch checklist to make sure they’ve completed everything on a site that they need to.

The Ultimate Website Launch Checklist
This is a comprehensive checklist of things to check pre-launch that includes things like content, style, validation, seo, and security points. Created by Dan Zambonini. The pdf-version is available as well and so is the French translation. The checklist is a very useful reference that may help you in your daily projects and will help you to prevent errors and mistake once the site is released.

Blogger’s Checklist Before Hitting The Publish Button
How many times have we hit publish on a blog and then realized we forgot to do something crucial, whether it is changing post slugs or a crucial spell check. Here is a quick checklist of what you should do before you hit publish.

3. General Web Design Checklists

The checklists in this category are general-purpose; they cover a wide variety of web design areas. This is a good place to start if you’re not sure what a checklist should include or what you need to remember when designing sites. But don’t mistake these for beginners’ resources; most of them are quite comprehensive.

Web Standards Checklist
This checklists covers pretty much every aspect of building a standards-compliant website, from accessibility to basic usability to site management. It’s very complete and well-organized.

Typographic Rules Checklist (PDF)
Another useful typographic checklist that contains not only some general typographic rules, heuristics and guidelines, but also reminders for typography in your projects.

Typography Checklist (PDF)
Compiled by Jason DewinetzIf, this list contains some useful typographic checks that you may want to consider for before launching your next project or printing your next brochure or book.

Essential Navigation Checklist for Web Design
These checklists pull together best practice in the disciplines of information design, usability and accessibility, into an easy to apply format. If you are already familiar with those topics, the checklists serve as a handy reminder that is easy to refer to and apply when planning navigation.

Checklist for usable forms
This checklist is for HTML forms along with links to a few articles that are very helpful. Check also Brian Crescimanno’s article Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist.

GUI Screen Design Checklist
This checklist covers various common problems, issues and errors that appear frequently in graphical user interfaces. Also check the legendary GUI Testing Checklist.

Web Accessibility Checklist (also available as printable PDF and in German)
This checklist, compiled by Aaron Cannon, contains over 35 checks that will help you to improve the accessibility of your web-site. Another accessibility checklist.

Checklist To Improve Your Site’s Speed and Performance
Users have short attention spans and are generally not willing to wait for a bloated Web site to load. Take advantage of these tips, tools and resources, and you’ll have a much better time capturing visitors’ attention. This article presents over 50 speed optimization tips to consider before launching your web-site.

The Ultimate Testing Checklist
Testing plays a critical role in the development of your web site and its long-term maintenance. While smaller web sites—especially those with more limited budgets—may not need to follow the formal testing procedures that are required for large-scale, commercial web sites, every site needs to be thoroughly tested to ensure that it’s error-free, user-friendly, accessible, and standards compliant. This checklist will help you test your site both during development, and after. Download this checklist, along with others covering SEO and content management. Sitepoint also offers 101 Essential Checklists (printable .PDFs, for 29.95$+ per PDF).

50 Questions to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website
This 50 questions long questionnaire might trigger something here and there for some of you or maybe brings some forgotten item from the long to-do list back into your mind.

Content Quality Checklist
In my experience, a common misperception of the evaluation of content quality is that its scope is limited to the correction of typos and grammatical errors. To truly consider content quality, we need to examine its quality along several dimensions. Consequently, the content quality checklists that follow cover everything from usefulness to voice to accuracy.

CSS Crib Sheet
While not a traditional checklist, this article does offer a pretty complete list of things you need to double-check in your CSS.

Beginner’s Checklist Before Debugging CSS
This article shares common pattern of mistakes that designers tend to make in practice. Although the following examples may be stating the obvious, it seems most beginners make these mistakes quite frequently.

Ruby On Rails Code Quality Checklist
Ruby and Ruby on Rails is often considered to be one of the most difficult language/framework combinations to truly master. You may want to give this checklist to your coding teams so they can sign off on for each of their projects. Also check Launching Ruby on Rails projects, a checklist.

Checklist for Securing PHP Configuration
The Apache/PHP/MySQL stack is immensely popular for web application development. Its components are powerful, versatile and Free. Unfortunately however, PHP comes with a default configuration that is not suitable for production mode, and may cause developers to use insecure techniques during the development phase. Inside is a check list of settings that are intended to harden the default PHP installation.

4. Usability Checklists

Usability is the single most important part of web design. If the sites you design aren’t user-friendly, if they don’t work as expected, and if they confuse visitors, there’s really no point in even designing them—they won’t get used. The checklists below can help ensure your sites are usable by the vast majority of visitors.

Web Design Best Practices Checklist
This Web Design Best Practices Checklist from terrymorris.net covers a wide variety of usability points, including page layout, browser compatibility, color and graphics use, and multimedia content. It’s very thorough, with more than 60 points to check.

The Ultimate Webdesign Usability Checklist
This checklist from NotUsable offers up more than 85 points to check covering everything from images to navigation to content to forms. It’s one of the longer usability checklists out there and is incredibly complete.

Quick Usability Checklist
This 7-point checklist from Ux Booth covers some of the most important elements of site usability.

The Blog Usability Checklist
19 point checklist that should be useful to any blogger looking for a practical way to evaluate (and improve) the usability of their blog. Many of the principles here will apply to websites, as well.

25-Point Website Usability Checklist
The 25-Point Website Usability Checklist offered by UserEffect covers all the basic areas in which to check your site, including accessibility, identity, navigation, and content. It’s shorter than many other checklists, but it still covers all the important items. A printable .pdf-version is available as well.

Everyday Usability—14-Point Checklist for Success
This checklist offers up fourteen points for making your website more usable and more effective. It covers everything from user testing ideas to link checking.

Usability.Edu: 25 Incredibly Useful Usability Cheat Sheets & Checklists
A truly useful collection of usability cheat sheets and checklists for forms, blogs and more, all listed in alphabetical order. Useful!

The Usability Toolkit
The Usability Toolkit is a collection of forms, checklists and other useful documents for conducting usability tests and user interviews.

Key questions to ask your usability testing supplier (PDF)
This document gives you some of the key questions you should ask your usability supplier and explains what to listen for in their answers. You can use it as a checklist during invitations to tender, when interviewing usability providers or when reviewing proposal documents.

Dr. Web: The Ultimate Usability Checklist (in German)
An extensive German usability-checklist writte by Stefan Nitzsche.

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklists

Common Sense SEO Checklist
Chris Coyier’s list of pretty straightforward things to consider when publishing SEO-optimized content on your website.

The Ultimate SEO Checklist
Optimizing your web site for search engines should be an integral part of your web site project, from the very beginning to the very end. Shirley Kaiser’s checklist that can be used as a guide to optimize your web site for search engines.

The Beginner’s Checklist For Small Business SEO
Consider some essential SEO checks that are important for local small business sites. The following is a checklist of all the tasks that may be necessary for you to generate great results. See also The Beginner’s Checklist for Learning SEO and The Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet.

SEO Checklist
There are “over 200 SEO factors” that Google uses to rank pages in the Google search results (SERPs). What are the search engine optimization rules? Here is the speculation – educated guesses by SEO webmasters on top webmaster forums. Should you wish to achieve a high ranking, the various confirmed and suspected Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Rules are listed below.

6. Marketing Checklists

Viral Marketing Campaign Checklist
Once you’ve decided you’d like to create a viral marketing campaign, its easy to become too focused on the details, and miss the forest for the trees, but a good campaign is the integration of a lot of parts. Here’s a quick checklist to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!
Here’s an extensive checklist for verifying you’re doing everything you can to market your website from Search Engine Guide. More information is linked from the headline of each category on the list.

Improving Conversion Rates Checklist
If your Web site gets great traffic but no sales or sign-ups to back it up, it’s time to take a good, hard look at it. Chances are, your site is scaring off customers. Follow these tips to make your Web site more friendly to customers and encourage better conversion rates.

Landing Page Checklist
The landing page checklist below is unique in its scope and detail. It is designed to help you assess what you have already done and what is left to do on any given landing page.

Checklists for starting your first business
If you don’t have a business of your own, or are new to starting businesses, you’re probably at a loss for some of the details of what you need to do. So let’s work them out, keeping everything as simple as possible.

7. WordPress Checklists

WordPress: The Complete Post-Install Checklist
Depending on how you’ve installed WordPress (manually or by a “one-click-install” that many hosting providers offer) – one of the very last installation steps is to choose a blog name and provide an email address. That’s where this checklist begins. More checkpoints.

WordPress: Blog Maintenance Checklist
If you use WordPress to run your website, at the minimum, you need to regularly check updates on such things as your theme and the plugins you are using. This WordPress-powered blog maintenance checklist is a reminder of tasks that you may need to do as well as tracker of such things as version numbers of plugins and themes.

WordPress: Theme Development Checklist
A list of essential checks that you should consider before releasing a theme or launching your WordPress-powered blog. Another checklist and yet another one (incl. a printable PDF-version).

Moving and Upgrading Your WordPress Weblog: A 20-Point Checklist
Now, there are many types of “moves” that can be performed for a weblog. This one not only involves changing hosts but also upgrading the blog platform version. And it all has to be done at the same time. It turns out that it’s not a problem-free switch. So what about a “brute force” process for moving and upgrading your weblog? On the off chance that it’ll help someone, here it is. Check also the WordPress Upgrade Preparation Checklist.

8. Ultimate Web Design Checklists

149 Mortal Sins That Will Send Your Site to Web Design Hell
This checklist from Web Pages That Suck is one of the most complete checklists out there. It primarily focuses on front-end design.

The Official ‘Successful Website Checklist Challenge’
This checklist breaks down important points over six different categories: Planning, Design/Layout, Usability/Accessibility, Content, Website Optimization/Standards, and Search Engine Optimization/Marketing.

PC Limited’s Web Design Check List
This is a very comprehensive checklist that includes ten steps for planning your site designs. Steps include sizing up your competition and choosing a domain name, among others.

A Solid Web Design Checklist
This checklist includes both pre- and post-launch points to verify in a variety of categories, including typography and layout, accessibility, and consistency.

A Website Design & Development Project Checklist
This checklist is aimed at both designers and their clients, and offers some great starting points for creating an effective working relationship.

Test Your Website: A 57-Point Checklist for Maximum Usability
In addition to offering 57 points to check your site’s usability, this article also offers more resources for each of those points. A very valuable resource for creating more usable websites.