Archive for September, 2010
An Illustrated Diagram Of The Web Developer’s Mind
Human Brain is one of the most advanced and most powerful biological organ known to mankind. We all know or can find the functions of brain in diagrams etc. easily, but have you ever thought how a programmer’s brain and mind functions?
I just found something interesting to share with all of you. It’s an interesting illustrated diagram to understand that how complicated the developer’s mind is or how much processes are functioning to make his job done.
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The Most Creative Examples Of Vintage And Retro Style Website (40 Designs)
The designing trends have been changing so fast like the wind; you never ascertain what is popular this year will be popular next year or not. But yet some things are timeless. Same goes with a web design style which is timeless and you can rely on that and it is the Vintage style which is most often complimented by retro style.
If you fear that your web design style may get out-of-fashion with the passage of time, Vintage and Retro style would be the best options for you. Here we have gathered some amazing examples of Vintage and Retro web designs which are bold and creative in their own way. Let’s have a look and Enjoy!
You are welcome if you want to share more beautiful examples of corporate website designs that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.
National Cottonseed Products Association
7 Excellent Websites To Get Design Feedback Visually Instead Of Emailing Back And Forth
The best way to improve the design is to take positive criticism and constructive advises from others. But emailing back and forth is very time consuming that makes the whole process very uncomfortable. From last few years, so many tools have been arrived in the market that made designers’ jobs easier than ever before to get the design feedback from others. To cover this topic, we are listing down few excellent online tools to get design feedback that are free as well.
You are welcome to share if you want to share more design feedback tool that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.
Bounce
Bounce is a little app that lets people quickly to add feedback to any webpage and toss that back and forth with other people.
Fivesecondtest
Fivesecondtest is a usability testing tool that helps you measure the effectiveness of your designs. As tests are easy to setup and feedback is quick, this encourages an interative testing approach. No code is required, so Fivesecondtest can easily fit in with your existing design workflow.
Please Critique Me
Please Critique Me is a place where anybody can put their website to be criticized by the industry professionals. You would just need to submit their form with link(s) to your designs if you want to get feedback from experts.
Usabilla
Usabilla offers a fast and simple way to collect feedback in any stage of the design process. You can ask your users simple questions to collect valuable feedback and discover usability issues. Use this One-Click-Tasks to measure task performance. Your users will simply share their feedback by clicking anywhere on your website, mockup, sketch, or image. Measure time, collect points, and get valuable feedback with notes.
Concept Feedback
With Concept Feedback, you can get design, usability, and marketing feedback from their community of online professionals.
Notable
Notable makes it possible to put your feedback directly on the webpage, highlighting your points exactly. With Notable you can quickly and easily give feedback on design, content, and code on any page of a website or application without leaving your browser.
Recurse
As a designer you understand that presentation is important. Recurse is a simple solution to show clients your spiffy new design. By emulating a website with multiple flat images clients will have a better idea of what the composition will look like ‘in the wild’.
10 (More) Free iPhone Games To Kill Your Boredom
Wondering how to have fun with your iPhone? One obvious way is to play games on it. And I have found 10 great iPhone games which you won’t need to pay anything for. Read on my list of top 10 free iPhone games. Try them all out – they’re free!
You are welcome to share if you want to share more iPhone Games that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.
* Note: All these games are compatible with iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad.
TapDefense
TapDefense is a tower defense games. Like all games in this genre, your job is to fight against waves of enemies by building towers; these towers repel your enemies with various weapons. The game has 42 levels, 6 types of tower, 7 different enemies, and 6 game modes to play. Get TapDefense from here.
Topple
In Topple, you have to balance an increasingly wobbly stack of colorful shapes. You slide them into place using the touchscreen controls; to prevent the shapes from tappling, you can tilt your iPhone. The expressions on the ‘faces’ of each shape adds humor to the game and makes it very fun. Get Topple from here.
iBall3D
iBall3D is a remake of the classic Labyrinth game, but in 3D you’ll have to guide a ball from a location to another. You do this by orienting your iPhone or iPod touch, avoiding the holes. Once a level is completed, you’ll be able to send your score to the iBall3D server, and consult your world ranking position. Get the game from here.
iSplume
A ‘splume’ in this game is the round figure you see in the image above. The objective is to connect as many similarly colored splumes together. This completes the level and moves the game forward. You use the iPhone’s accelerometer to play iSplume. Get iSplume from here.
Cube Runner
This game is one of the early entries on the App Store. The game’s objective is quite simple: you use the phone’s accelerometer to guide your triangular spaceship through the landscape of cubes, trying to avoid them. Players can even create their own levels thus presenting challenges to their friends. Get Cube Runner by clicking here.
Trace
In Trace, you have a little character which needs to get from point A to B without falling for the obstacles in the way. The ‘rough’ graphics are justified because Trace needs you to draw a path for your character. As you draw, the path becomes visible and your character can walk left / right on it. Download Trace from here.
iMafia
iMafia is a fun game in which you build up the ranks of your characters by having him complete different mafia-related jobs. You can grow your mafia by getting other iMafia players to join in. Get iMafia from here.
Chess with Friends
This simple game lets you play chess over the network with a friend or a random player. The game’s simple functionality and cool graphics make the game worthwhile. Get Chess with Friends from here.
JellyCar
In JellyCar, everything is made of jelly. You have a jelly-like car which you drive through a jelly-like track around jelly-like obstacles. You rely on physics to speed up your car. The great graphics of the game make JellyCar very enjoyable. Get it from here.
Scramboni
This game is a must-have for all scrabble fans. Scramboni has you unscrambling words by tapping on tiles that appear on the screen. Your game is connected to other players on the network; the person to guess most words accurately and fastest wins. Get Scramboni from here.
Stunning Moments Captured With Great Timing (Action Photography)
Today, we are showing you Stunning Moments Captured With Great Timing (Full Of Action Photography). I appreciate to all those talented photographers who taken these excellent photos with their efforts, imaginations and creativity to give us a chance to see these photographic wonders from their creative eyes. This list is not long in numbers but I promise you that when you start browsing them in details it will surely refresh you. These are the wonder creations of photographers who use their creativity with a different angle and approach to get the result that makes a difference.
You are welcome if you want to share more creative photographs and images that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well. Click on the images to go from where the images has been taken and learn more about their creators and to appreciate them.
Climber by Micky Wiswedel
The Referees by Harry Eggens
Hard work by Old Mikefield
Attack by Igor Raevshi
Water Drops by Ilhan marasli
To The Members by Dirk Smith
Nearly Floating by David Orias
The game by Vitaly Sokol aka Willyam Bradberry
A Great Way To Organize Files And Folders With FilerFrog
I like my computer files neatly organized in the folders they belong to. When I see a clutter of files in one of my folders, I immediately start sorting them out and move them to the appropriate folders. Of course this becomes quite time consuming when there are many files and corresponding folders involved.
Thankfully I have found a wonderful free program that simplifies this ordeal for me: FileFrog.
FileFrog is a great freeware that comes for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems. Sized at nearly 1.5 MB, the application quickly downloads and installs.
After the installation, you will need to restart your computer. Once restarted, you will notice a “FileFrog” category in Windows’ context menus.
The FileFrog menu offers many options through which I can organize my files. Let me start with Image Manipulation. I can select multiple image files, access the “Image Manipulation” option in the FIleFrog menu and do any one of these things: resize the pictures, resize them and save as JPEG files, convert them all to JPEG, and place a logo on them.
Other options in the FileFrog menu allow you to split files into smaller sizes, join those smaller files into the original file, encrypt a file, list details of the selected files in a TXT file, and rename files.
File organization is also competently handled. The “Organize” menu lets you copy and move files to other folders; you can also copy a file’s path to the clipboard and delete empty files and folders.
If you use some of these features more than the others, you can access the “Manage Favorite” option in the “Favorites” menu and add particular features within the Favorites menu.
With you features added, you can quickly access them through the Favorites menu in FileFrog’s submenus.
Overall, FileFrog is an amazing freeware program for Windows users like me who prefer to keep things organized. For other users as well, FileFrog will prove itself to be a wonderfully helpful program.
Get FileFrog from Here
35 Magical Tutorials Of “How To Create Lighting Effect” On Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a perfect tool to add flare to images and give them some nice effects which increase the beauty of that image. One of the commonly used effects in Photoshop is the lighting effect which is mainly used for creating the feeling of creativity, technology, magic, and fantasy.
In this post we have collected 35 most useful tutorials about creating lighting effect in Adobe Photoshop and we are sure after going thorough this post, you will be able to glow your artwork in a very creative manner. Feel free to share your opinion with us.
Create an Adrenaline Filled Car Chase Scene
In today’s tutorial we are going to use many techniques to turn several stock photos into an action packed car chase scene with explosions and weapons fire.
Design a Coldplay/Apple Inspired Portrait in Photoshop
This tutorial will show you how to create a portrait based on the style of the latest Coldplay / Apple Ad featuring “Viva la Vida”
Create a Futuristic Music Player Interface in Photoshop
This tutorial requires extensive knowledge of shading and lighting, as well as a lot of time. If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that lighting is the most critical aspect of these types of pieces. In today’s tutorial I will show you how to create a futuristic non-functional interface.
In this tutorial I will show you how to create an easy and super quick text effect in Photoshop. We will play with Brushes, Blend Modes, basic filters like Blur and Liquify, and also text.
Creating 3D Lighting Effects Using Cinema 4D and Photoshop
In this tutorial we will go over how to create 3D text in Cinema 4D, render it out in regular and wireframe mode, then import it into Photoshop to add the final touches, which include all sorts of lighting effects.
This tutorial explains how to create a energetic, vibrant, colorful wallpaper.
How to Create a Realistic IES Lighting Effect
In this tutorial, artist will show you how to create a realistic IES (photometric) lighting effect. We’ll be using Photoshop CS4 as well as some free plugins and software. Let’s get started!
Mysterious hell gate, the connection between two worlds
This tutorial was comprised from some scene from that film. You may use this technique to create a poster for a similar film.
Create Abstract Landscape Art From a Photograph
Today, artist will demonstrate an alternative way to create abstract artistic pieces using a photo merely as inspiration. We will start by choosing and simplifying its components and then proceed to apply a retro-futuristic look. Let’s get started!
Create a retro sci-fi movie poster
In this tutorial artist will show the simple process that is behind this composition. We will deal in particular with blending options and textures customization. This tutorial can be followed by Photoshop newbie without problems.
Create Awesome Abstract Photo Effect via Layer Masking and Custom Patterns
In this tutorial, artist will show you how you can Create this Awesome Abstract Photo Effect via Layer Masking and Custom Patterns. Some steps can be a little tricky, but why not have a try!
Change smoke into a dazzling unicorn
Use Photoshop CS5′s New feature – Puppet Warp to create a sexy Unicorn out of smoke, and add dazzling effects to finish!
Create a Magical Flaming Heart Illustration in Photoshop
The Warp feature in Photoshop can be a powerful tool if you know how to use it correctly. In today’s tutorial we will demonstrate how to combine a few stock images to create a magical flaming heart illustration. Let’s get started!
How to Create a Highly Detailed Hi-Tech Power Button
With this tutorial we will create a hi-tech style button that can be used in splash pages, applications or Powerpoint presentations. We will use Illustrator to create complex vectors and Photoshop to develop realistic effects.
Lighting effects are an effective way to add a detailed illustrative touch to a photo. Justin Maller demonstrates how to go about combining several lighting techniques
A step by step beautiful tutorial.
In this tutorial, we learn how to recreate that solar eclipse image in a slightly retro style using nothing but photoshop.
So in this tutorial we will create a composition from scratch first in Illustrator where we will play with shapes and the Blend Tool. After that in Photoshop we will add the light effects and the pattern overlay.
Here’s a great effect that will bring some energy to your subject. We’ll be wrapping this singer’s arm with a glowing beam of light, adding sparkles, and adjusting the colors to make it all seem magical.
Design a Beautiful Cosmic Space Scene in Photoshop
Follow this step by step walkthrough of its creation in Photoshop, from the making of the planets, to the vibrant nebula and bright lens flares.
Design a Vibrant Blackberry Inspired Ad
The Blackberry Loves U2 TV promo features some awesome, bright and vibrant lighting effects. Let’s take a look at recreating the style to produce a Blackberry inspired design of our own.
Create an Intense Movie Poster
In this tutorial, we’re going to create a poster for a fictional movie called “Fugitive.” The movie is meant to be a suspenseful thriller that features one’s escape under the cover of darkness, despite man’s attempt to capture the lone hero. Thin and cheesy plot? Check. Awesome opportunity to better your PSD skills? You got it!
Create a Simple Vibrant Light Effect in Photoshop
Starting away from the computer, we’ll use a few household objects to create some photographic resources. Then follow this Adobe Photoshop tutorial to manipulate the images with various tools and techiques to produce a vibrant design made up of intense light streams effect.
This tutorial will teach you to create stunning effects using glows, loads of Colour Dodge, and lots and lots of neon – hot pinks and lemon yellows are prominent here. You’ll also learn how to utilise white in all the right places, so that white areas look less like negative space and more like the result of added energy and light.
Add A Sparkle Trail To A Photo
In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to learn how to add a sparkle trail to a photo, using a custom Photoshop sparkle brush we’ll be creating.
In this tutorial, we’re going to see how to engulf text in an explosion of light and color.
A step by step Fantasy Art Photopshop Tutorial.
Change your text into magic glowing sparkles
In this tutorial you learn how you can convert your normal text into magic glowing sparkles. Using stroke path and layer style it isn’t so hard to get this texteffect
Design A Very Hot Winter Composition
A detailed and step by step tutorial.
This tutorial will mainly explore the brush engine and you will also learn how to create custom brushes and use them effectively, combined with some interesting layer styles.
This tutorial will teach you how to create creative and stylish fire lines in 10 easy steps!
Creating Energy Spheres in Photoshop
A step by step and beautitulf tutorial how to Creating Energy Spheres in Photoshop.
A wonderful step by step tutorial, in this you will learn how to create an abstract lightbulb.
This tutorial will show you how to create a fireworks effect using only Photoshop. I will not use any other images, everything will be created within photoshop.
5 Best Free Websites To Learn Foreign Languages
Whether you are about to visit a foreign a country or a restaurant with foreign staff, your knowledge of foreign language can prove to be very helpful and impressive. Normally people attend classes to learn new languages. What they do not realize is that there are a number of online resources that can be used to learn foreign languages.
Below you will find five such free online resources that help you learn languages.
LiveMocha
LiveMocha offers free and paid plans. It provides its users with a unique combination of tutorials and practice with native speakers from around the world.
With Word2Word, you get access to many online language learning tools. These include language learning computer programs, flashcard tools, and much more.
LangoLab
LangoLab lets you watchvideos with captions. You then answer questions related with the video. You can choose the level of language you want to learn. These levels include Newbie, Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced.
Busuu
Busuu features a brilliant interface that will many users will find very friendly. Amongst its others tools Busuu offers interactive learning resources such as asking you what the current weather is like.
Skritter
Skritter is a tool to help you learn Japanese and Chinese characters. This is a great website for learning the brush stroke techniques – something that matters a lot in these languages.
Intervals Makes Online Project Management With Time Tracking And Task Management Easier Than Ever
If you have a small startup or a company, you must have used a project management application for managing tasks, clients and projects. There are tons of online task and time management services out there, among which Intervals is one of the best solutions to choose from.
If your team members are struggling with time tracking and task management and you are losing clients and offers just because your project management application is not up to the mark, it’s high time you test out Intervals’ online project management software.
Intervals is ideal for small business organizations, creative agencies, web designers, web developers and anyone who needs a project management app without having to install or download anything. Just sign up for an account, and start managing projects from anywhere, all you need is a web browser and an Internet connection.
Plans and pricing
Intervals provides a 30 day free trial on any plan you choose – you can always upgrade, downgrade or cancel your plan at any time. Plans range from $20 to $175 per month — depending on the number of projects managed — and there is no long term contract to sign. Here are the detailed pricing options for the Intervals project management service:
Setting Up Your Intervals Account
Setting up your Intervals account is fast and easy. After you have signed up for an account, go to http://yourusername.intervalsonline.com/ and login with your Intervals credentials. Once you are logged in, you will see an auto wizard which will guide you through setting up different parameters about your account.
Setting up the Work types and adding Hourly Rates:
The first step involves adding work types and defining an hourly rate for the work type. You can add the different types of work involved in your project and define an hourly rate to the type of work. Examples: Designing – $60 a hour, writing – $40 an hour and so on.
Setting up Custom Modules
The next step allows you to create modules for your project. Modules are typically used for phases of a project or project features, but they can be whatever works best for your work flow. Modules are essentially loosely defined groupings of tasks and time that enable companies to build robust reports spanning across multiple clients and projects. Attaching tasks and tracked time to a module gives companies more control over their projects and reports.
For example, suppose you are building Ecommerce Web sites for several different clients. You can attach tasks and time to the Ecommerce module as you are working through each project. Having tracked your time in this manner gives your company a report showing how much time it is spending on Ecommerce projects relative to other projects such as blogs, redesigns or CMS web sites. These modules provide a greater level of control when managing multiple projects and can be customized according to your needs.
Setting up Task Status
The next step will allow you to define the different status of tasks. The status of a task is useful when you want to track the progress or completion of a task and want to know which of the tasks are under progress, which of them are finished and which of them needs to be started. Task status’ help companies track the lifecycle of a task as it goes through phases — from open to closed.
The two default status are “Open” and “Closed”, although you can assign more task status if you want. (example – ongoing, aborted, pending and so on).
Choose Task Priorities
The next step will allow you to setup task priorities, indicators of a tasks importance and urgency. You can customize the priority of tasks to match with your project management work flow. When you are creating or managing a task, the chosen priorities will be shown, this will be useful to filter tasks that are urgent or require immediate attention.
This is the last step of the wizard, one you click “Finish” you are taken to your account Intervals account dashboard.
Here is how your dashboard looks:
There are different pages to create Tasks, projects clients, invoices, reports, documents – let’s see some of the features in detail.
The Projects tab
The projects tab allows you to create new projects and manage existing projects. You can enter a custom date range for the project and enter a total budget. Then choose an Alert budget and the system will notify you when you have reached the “Alert budget”, so that you can reinforce funds.
You can also choose a project manager for your project and enter a custom description. The status of any project can be chosen as “active” or “inactive”.
Once the project is saved, the profile will be shown in your account dashboard, as shown below:
Create Clients
The clients page allows you to add new clients and manage existing clients from your account dashboard. You can add description, phone number, website and FAX number of the client and also import the data from a vcard. In addition, clients can each be assigned multiple contacts for keeping in touch with people via email, phone number and social networks. And you determine whether or not each client contact can login and view project updates.
Once you have added information about clients, you can associate them with any of the projects you are managing.
Timesheets, Timers and Adding Time
Intervals features timers that make it easy to track time. Whenever you are working on something simply start a timer. When you are done apply the timer to a project or directly to a task. Tracking time on tasks gives you powerful reporting where you can see the total time and financial value of each task. You can manually add time as well and there is a mobile version that is in beta that helps when you are out of the office or away from your computer. At the end of the week Intervals prompts each user to submit their time for approval and the review and approval process is pretty quick and painless.
There are a lot of other options available which are worth exploring – you can create and manage invoices, track payments and expenses, run and save custom reports, manage tasks through milestones, and more. The documents tab allows you or your team members to upload the necessary support documents required when working through a project. This makes the need for another third party file upload service obsolete and keeps your team out of their inbox for team collaboration, communication and project management.
The Intervals application is very user friendly and customizable, designed for companies who need customizable workflow and powerful filtering to get at the important details of their business. If you are serious about your business and want an efficient project management application, definitely give Intervals a try.
7 Excellent Website To Test And Compare Website Speed
Site owners often need to bookmark a number of site-testing web tools. These tests include site loading time testers, optimization testers, site comparison tools, and performance tools.
If you are looking for these tools, then look no further. Below you will find our list of free online website testing tools. Read about each of the seven entries and determine yourself which one is most useful for you and bookmark-worthy.
WebWait
WebWait is a simple website that tells you the average waiting time each visitor has to face before you site fully loads up. In addition to the average waiting times, median times and the standard deviation values are also provided, making the site a good tool to rely on for speed statistics.
LinkVendor
LinkVendor runs tests on your website and reveals the speed and size of the domain, estimated load time for various bandwidths, number and sizes of all found images, CSS and JavaScript files.
iWebTool’s Website Speed Test
If you own multiple domains or would like to compare load times of different websites, you can use this web tool. “iWebTool’s Website Speed Test” lets you enter up to 10 domains in the same go and execute speed tests on them. For each site you see the size, load time, and average speed per kilobyte.
SelfSEO’s Website Speed Test
SelfSEO’s Website Speed Test is similar to the speed test tool of iWebTool. You can simultaneous test for up to 10 websites and get their size, load time, and average speed per kilobyte.
WhichLoadsFaster
If you want to compare the speed times of two websites, then this is a must-bookmark site for you. You can enter two websites’ URLs in WhichLoadsFaster and the site will provide the individual loading time of each site. A percentage factor shows how fast one website is compared to the other.
Webpage Test
Through “Webpage Test” you can set a number of parameters before you begin testing a URL. The test results are comprehensively broken down into speed tests, JavaScript file sizes, and image file sizes. The site also provides tools to compare the performance of multiple websites.
Web Page Analyzer
Web Page Analyzer lets you run site analyzing tests on a URL or on an (X)HTML code; the site can diagnose the code for you.
