Archive for July, 2011
Incredible Illusions of Forced Perspective Photography
Today we are sharing a collection of exceptional Forced Perspective Photography that is a special technique of manipulating human perception with the help of optical illusion. Such illusion makes things appear that they actually are not. To be more precise optical illusion makes smaller things appears larger than their original size, closer things appears farther and so on. In this way, it creates a visual interest that holds the attention of the onlookers.
This post includes some really incredible examples of forced perspective photography. This hand-picked collection embraces images that illustrate how much fun you can have with it. Enjoy!
Five Excellent Free Tools To Create Your Own Map
Traveling can be hectic job if you don’t plan your trip properly and make a digital map of the places you want to visit. This will not only make your trip tiring but you will also have less time to visit different tourist spots. To solve this problem, we have gathered a list of 5 useful tools which can help users create maps of the places they are going to visit and plan their trips.
TravellersPoint
TravellersPoint is an excellent online utility which help travelers plan their trips and create visualizations of places you are planning to visit or have visited in the past. You can easily add details about the points on map, attach photos and much more. Users can even ask other travelers for help regarding the places and stuff they should pack for different places.
QuickMaps
With QuickMaps, users can easily create a map of places they are planning to visits and put different markers on specific places, draw lines, mention details and work they are going for and much more. After creating the map, users can easily post it on their websites or save it so that they can carry it while travelling.
ZeeMaps
ZeeMaps is simple and useful online service which provides users with many useful tools and customizations to help them create interactive maps, add markers, highlight regions which they are planning to visit and much more. After creating the map, it can be published on blogs or websites or saved in JPG or PDF format so that they can be downloaded on different portable devices and computers.
TripGeo Direction Map
With TripGeo Direction Map, users can easily create maps and find directions to different places using Google Maps. It provides users with animated view of the street along with the street name so that its easier for the user to find directions to their destination. Once its done, the map can be embedded or shared with other people.
Planiglobe
Planiglobe help users create digital maps online, define places, add your own location and much more. It provides users with many different options like legends to see the terrain of any location, download printer friendly format of the map and much more.
If you know about any other useful tool to create digital maps online, please share with us.
10 Android Apps Every Traveler Should Use
Time is a very important thing for every traveler whether he is on vacations or a business trip. This is because the more time you spend on looking for directions, the less time you will have to visit other places and meetings. For all those who use Android can now get rid of this problem. We have gathered a list of 10 excellent Android Apps that can help travelers keep track of the places they visited, how much money they spent and lots more.
TripJournal
Trip Journal is another excellent android app which helps users record their trips and share them with their friends. With Trip Journal, users can record the places you visited, take photos and videos, integrate different social networks and much more.
Waze
Waze is a free navigation application which uses real time reports based on the live conditions of the road. With Waze, users can even share road reports on accidents, police traps, or any other hazards along the way, helping to give other users in the area a ‘heads-up’ about what’s to come.
PiggyBack
PiggyBack is a ridesharing application for Android smartphones which helps then share car related expenses with other users in order to save resources and reduce carbon footprints. If you are using Piggyback, you can either pickup other users near you to reduce your costs or you can be a passenger and share ride with some other person.
My Trip Recorder
With My Trip Recorder, travelers can capture different events on the go and share them with your friends. You can make photo, text, and video entries and My Trip Recorder will log them by date and location. You can then upload them to your trip site at mytriprecorder.com and share it with your friends.
Maverick
Maverick is an off road GPS navigation application with offline maps support, compass and track recording. With Maverick app, users can automatically use Bing, Google and many other Maps, and they are cached so that they can be used offline, share your current position, navigate to different places easily and much more.
HotelsNearMe
With HotelsNearMe, travelers can find the best hotel deals around the globe on their android smartphone. You can search from a massive library of around 135,000+ in 101 countries.
Expensify
Expensify is a useful android application for android users which helps travelers manage their expenses and receipts anywhere you go. Travelers can easily import receipts from their credit cards and convert them to PDF so that it can be saved online.
TripIt
With TripIt, users can manage their travel plans, itineraries, track flights and share your travel plans with the rest of your team. You can get instant access to the entire trip planning information you might need while you’re traveling, even when you can’t connect to the Internet.
FlightTrack
With FlightTrack, get real time flight status and map tracking from airlines all over the world. It reminds you about the status of flights and the time when you must be at the airport.
Talk to Me
Talk To Me is an excellent speech recognition application for Android smartphones. You can translate into 7 different languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese. Translation can even be sent via SMS and email as well.
40 Useful CSS Tutorials, Techniques And Resources
We have previously posted many articles on CSS tutorials and resources you can learn CSS from. Today, again we come up with yet another great list of 40 CSS tutorials, techniques and resources that you will enjoy exploring. Every developer knows very well how important it is to learn and use CSS effectively. Therefore, tall the developers keep themselves updated with the latest development and advancement in the technology.
Below is the list of 40 useful CSS tutorials and resources you cannot afford to miss. We hope this broad list will train you something innovative, or moreover jog your memory and help you recall some methods you haven’t used for a while.
In this tutorial we are making something practical, a simple CSS3 animated navigation menu, which degrades gracefully in older browsers and is future-proofed to work with the next generation of browsers.
Sleek Card Pockets using CSS Only
In this CSS3 tutorial, you’ll learn how to create web card pockets using some great new CSS3 techniques.
CSS Absolute Positioning: Create A Fancy Link Block
Absolute position is a feature of the CSS2 specification that is supported by all of web browsers. If you posit an element (an image, a table, or whatever) absolutely on your page, it will appear at the exact pixel you specify. In this tutorial, we will use some tricks to create a fancy link block that make our links more attractive.
Create a Button with Hover and Active States using CSS Sprites
Too many designers neglect the click state (active: property in CSS) in web design, either because they’re unaware of it, underestimate the importance of it or are plain lazy. It’s a simple effect that improves usability by giving the user some feedback as to what they’ve clicked on but can also add depth to a design.
How To Create A Sexy Vertical Sliding Panel Using jQuery And CSS3
In this tutorial will will create a Sexy Vertical Sliding Panel Using jQuery And CSS3.
A one-pixel background image can be a pretty versatile thing. With repeat-x it can be a horizontal line, repeat-y makes a vertical line, and repeat makes it a fill color. Just as a little fun proof of concept, we can use that to create a depth-chart looking unordered list.
Pushing Your Buttons With Practical CSS3
Calls to action are critical for any website, and a compelling, attention-grabbing, clickable button goes a long way toward driving that engagement. In the past, really awesome buttons needed extra markup, sliding doors or other trickery. We’ll show you here how to create nice button styles without any hacks or cheats.
Build Multi-level Multi-column Multi Menus with pure CSS
In this tutorial we will learn how to build multi-level multi-column multi Menus with pure CSS.
Elegant Drop Menu with CSS only
In this tutorial, you will see a simplest way to build a same effect by using CSS only. With some CSS make-up, your menu will be elegant. Not sure which one is easiest, but for sure it’s the simplest menu comes with drop effect: horizontal and vertical navigation.
HOW TO CREATE A BEAUTIFUL DROPDOWN BLOGROLL WITHOUT JAVASCRIPT
In this tutorial author is going to walk you through how he have set up the blogroll in our upcoming redesign. Load up the example page to see how our final product will look.
How to Build a Simple Button with CSS Image Sprites
Let’s take a look at building a simple button using CSS image sprites, starting right at the beginning in Photoshop and finishing with the complete coded example. This one’s a good one for anyone getting started with CSS!
CSS3 Hover Tabs without JavaScript
A quick tip on CSS3 Hover Tabs without JavaScript.
How To Use Pure CSS To Style Web Form Dynamically Plus 12 Awesome JavaScript Plugins
In this article you will learn how to use pure CSS To Style Web Form Dynamically Plus 12 Awesome JavaScript Plugins.
In this tutorial author would like to go over how to create a simple navigation with a horizontal subnav.
In this tutorial you will learn how to create CSS3 Speech Bubble.
How to Create Nice Scalable CSS Based Breadcrumbs
In this tutorial author will teach you how to create nice scalable CSS Based Breadcrumbs. Author is using only one simple graphic. The rest is basic CSS styling with an unordered list as HTML code.
Creating a fluid search box when you only have a single element next to it is trivial. What you do is wrap the input in an element and use padding to create space for the fixed element, then position the fixed element absolutely (or relatively) in the space created by the padding.
Using Rounded Corners with CSS3
As CSS3 gets closer to becoming the new standard for mainstream design, the days of rounded corners through elaborate background images is fading. This means less headache and time spent working out alternatives for each browser.
6 Ways To Improve Your Web Typography
Typography on the web is anything but simple, and for many, it is a troubling mystery. In this tutorial we’re going to review six ways that web designers and developers can improve the typography of the sites they create.
Create a Letterpress Effect with CSS Text-Shadow
The letterpress effect is becoming hugely popular in web design, and with a couple of modern browsers now showing support for the text-shadow CSS3 property it’s now simple and easy to create the effect with pure CSS. No Photoshop trickery here!
3 Easy and Fast CSS Techniques for Faux Image Cropping
These techniques can be very helpful if you need to keep images at a certain size, i.e. thumbnails in the news section or something similar. Being able to use CSS to control which portion of image to display is a great bonus.
How to Create a Fancy Image Gallery with CSS3
Here author have prepared a tutorial about how to use CSS3 to make an image gallery with animation. He recommend to use one of these browsers to see the animations; however, the gallery is going to be usable in browsers without support of the animation.
Creating an Animated CSS3 Horizontal Menu
This tutorial shows us how powerful CSS3 can be and how we can save some JavaScript code to achieve the same result. As you know, right know the transition property is only supported by Safari and Chrome.
How to Create a Cool Anaglyphic Text Effect with CSS
Let’s take a look at how a similar style can be created for sprucing up your web designs, while taking into consideration semantics and avoiding the repetition of any markup.
How To Create Depth And Nice 3D Ribbons Only Using CSS3
In this tutorial you will learn How To Create Depth And Nice 3D Ribbons Only Using CSS3.
How To Create Simple, Stylish and Swappable Image Captions
In this tutorial you will learn How To Create Simple, Stylish and Swappable Image Captions.
Polaroid pictures (or fake ones anyway) can be created using Photoshop or a similar graphics package but author aim to create the same kind of look by using CSS.
In this tutorial author will show you how to slice up the menu design (step by step) and put them together with CSS.
CSS Techniques: Using Sliding Doors with WordPress Navigation
This sliding doors CSS hack allows you to create sophisticated tabs for your navigation bar.
This tutorial is really very helpful, very nice and useful tip on creating Mac’s Dock menu.
In this tutorial author would like to go over how to create a sexy drop down menu that can also degrade gracefully.
Coding Apple’s Navigation Bar Using CSS Sprites
This tutorial is not going to go in depth about all the benefits of sprites, but will show you how to use the technique correctly.
CSS Sprite Navigation Tutorial
This tutorial teaches how to build a css navigation using sprite images. With the mobile web becoming more important than ever before, load time and the size of a web site are some of the biggest factors to consider when developing a site for mobile users.
Breaking Out of the Box With CSS Layouts
It’s true that CSS is heavily reliant upon a grid — everything flows on x and y axes (and can be positioned as such, much like designs built in Photoshop). However, this doesn’t mean that your design has to be boring. If you understand how the grid works, you can fracture or abstract that grid to make your layout more dynamic and interesting.
The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Design and Converting it to HTML and CSS
Minimal and Modern Layout: PSD to XHTML/CSS Conversion
In this web design tutorial, you’ll see a process for converting a Photoshop mockup to working HTML/CSS template. This is Part 2 of a tutorial series that will show you how to create the design, and then convert it to an HTML/CSS template.
Create YouTube-like adaptable view using CSS and jQuery
In this tutorial you will learn how to create YouTube-like adaptable view using CSS and jQuery.
How to distribute elements horizontally using CSS
In this tutorial we will learn how to distribute elements horizontally using CSS.
Sticky (Fixed) SideNav Layout with CSS
In this tutorial author would like to go over how to create a fixed sidenav layout for your blog or website.
Useful CSS Tricks You Should Know
Here are 25 incredibly useful CSS tricks that will help you design great web interfaces. You might be aware of some or all of these techniques, but this can be your handy resource to nifty CSS tricks that you should know.
11 Classic CSS Techniques Made Simple with CSS3
In this tutorial, author will show you eleven different time-consuming effects that can be achieved quite easily with CSS3.
UberTags 1 Year Subscriptions Giveaway
UberTags is running a contest, where 10 winners will get the free 1 year of UberTags service worth $600. Well, you guys know what they are offering? Lets say it once again for n00bs.
What Is UberTags’ Cloud-Based Tag Management System?
Let’s say you manage a website. You want to track how people are getting to your site. So you paste snippets of codes called tags for Google Analytics and/or a number of other analytics services.
You also want to track the success of your marketing. So you add Google Adwords and Bing conversion snippets/tags on just your Thank You page. Maybe you add a few other conversion tags from the hundreds of other places you could advertise.
And you’ve heard that others get good results from retargeting campaigns, so you test a few different retargeting vendors, putting each of their tags on your homepage and Thank You page. Oh, and you don’t want to spend money advertising to existing customers, so you place another retargeting tag on your logged-in pages.
Wanting to provide top-notch support, you place live chat code snippets on all of your support pages so you can chat with visitors. Other tags you might use include popup surveys, widgets, toolbars, hello bars, visitor recording, heat mapping, and ad serving.
All in the course of managing your website, you’ve add dozens of 3rd party tags to various parts of your site.
Here’s The Problem:
Each 3rd party tag slows down your site a bit so before long your site’s a slow as a snail.
Often times you’re waiting forever and a day just to launch a simple code snippet because you’re waiting for IT to add the tag and for the next release cycle.
And then you lose track of which tags are firing on which pages, creating an operational nightmare if you ever need to update a tag or migrate vendors.
UberTags Solves All This.
It’s dead-easy to use.
UberTags loads your tags asynchronously, which improves your page load times. There have been a number of studies showing that small improvements to page load time drive conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
You can launch tags in minutes without waiting for release cycles. It’s all done through a browser. So go ahead and launch that retargeting campaign RIGHT NOW.
You gain a centralized list of all tags used across your site. That makes it easy to test things, migrate vendors, and ensure you’re not loading tags you don’t need.
Using UberTags
All you need to do is add your UberTag across your site. Then, you can manage all your tags and configure them to fire on the right pages via a browser. If you’re so inclined, you can also do fancy things like event-driven calls on AJAX pages or logic-driven tag calls.
UberTags Is Perfect For…
Ecommerce websites
Content websites and blogs
Corporate websites
Web apps
Agencies wishing to better integrate with client websites
Anyone else who wants better control of a website
UberTags Features
See all your tags in one place
Add new tags in minutes
See what tags are firing on a page
Launch tags across multiple websites, sitelets, domains
Loads tags asynchronously, improving load times
Test in lower level environments before pushing tags to production
Expiration dates (with notifications) for a built-in decommissioning strategy
Multiple users per account — keep track of who made what changes
Render tags to specific parts of the page — great for widgets and ad serving tags
Advanced javascript calls for logic-driven calls and AJAX pages
This contest will run from July 25, 2011 to July 30, 2011 extended to August 6, 2011 and we will select the winners randomly by running MySQL query. Winners can be announced any day before August 2, 2011 August 10, 2011 so keep visiting here or subscribe to our rss feed to get the latest updates. To participate in the contest and win an UberTags subscription, All you have to do is :
1. Just leave a comment.
2. Use valid email ID in the email box.
3. Make sure that you are following @SmashingApps and @ubertags on twitter and subscribe our rss feed to track this contest and for future updates.
4. And that’s it!
So, what are you waiting for now? Let’s participate in the contest and good luck!
7 Tools To Find What Error Codes Mean
Anyone who uses any modern gadget (PCs, laptops, smartphones, gaming consoles etc.) faces some errors which need to be resolved. The first step in the resolution of errors is that the nature of the error be found. Usually, error type can be judged from the error code which accompanies the error. Today we’ll be compiling a rather unusual list; this list contains seven tools to find what error code means. This way user can get a rough idea on where to get started for resolving the errors they face. Have a look:
About.com Find By Error Message
A service provided by the popular website About.com, this Find By Error Message page lets users browse common error messages seen on PCs. The list is pretty huge and if you face a problem while using your PC, there is a very likely chance that you can find the error details on this webpage.
BrianDunning.com – Windows Error Codes
The BrianDunning.com error codes websites provides users the ability to browse as well as search for error codes which normally occur on a Windows installation on a PC. Along with that, the webpage lists the top most common and searched error codes in a list and also provides the error code information about MySQL database engine.
ErrorHelp
This website brings an element of sharing error codes. It not only lets users search for common errors from their huge error code database, but also allows them to collaborate with their friends and other people who have received similar errors in the past. They let users bookmark errors on their website so at later stage if the error re-occurs, they can quickly go to the webpage and open the bookmarked error.
ErrMsg
A desktop tool which lets users perform lookups on the errors they encounter. All one needs to do is launch the utility and enter the error code and the tool will return with the basic description of the error. The great thing about this tool that it works for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 so there’s no problem with all the latest error codes.
WELT
Acronym for Windows Error Lookup Tool, WELT is another error lookup tool like ErrMsg. It also takes the error code from the user and provides back the description of the error. Works pretty well with common Windows and system errors. It also lets users save the error message as a note which can then later be used to find out more information about the error.
ErrorKey
After using ErrorKey, I was forced to label it as the Google of all error codes. This websites has a huge collection of error codes and they can be readily searched using the simple user interface (UI). Also, it has the common error search tags/keywords listed on the main page thereby helping users pinpoint some of the common error messages and categories.
Error Goblin
Similar to Error Key but more useful due to its support for Mac OS errors. This websites covers both Windows and Mac error code searches. Moreover, an iPhone app for this web service is also available. Quite handy for Mac users.
7 Library Tools Students Would Find Handy
Internet as we know it has become a major source of information for many students. Getting maximum amount of knowledge on all sort information such as books, journals, electronic articles is now just a few clicks away. Today, we have gathered a list of 7 online library services all students should get their hands on.
You are welcome if you want to share more useful tools and websites for students 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 and follow us on Digg as well to get updated.
WorldCat
WorldCat.org lets you search the collections of libraries in your community and thousands more around the world. WorldCat is one of the largest network of library content and services which students can use to complete their projects, essays and other school/university related work.
LOC Catalog
LOC Catalog contains a massive library of books, serials, computer files, manuscripts, cartographic materials, music, sound recordings, and visual materials which can be useful for students. They can search for different books to study for their exams, complete assignments and much more.
Smithsonian Institution of Libraries
SIL was founded in 1846 and manage around 20 branches today which contains hundreds of thousands of books and electronic journals which students can check and take help from.
Libweb
Libweb consists of over 8000 pages in over 146 countries which can be used to search libraries, their location, name and other information and can be used by students to find out about libraries in their areas.
National Library of Medicine
The National Library of Medicine (NLM), on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is the world’s largest medical library and collects materials, provides information and research services in all areas of biomedicine and health care.
Library Elf
Elf is a web-based and email tool for library users to keep track of their library borrowings and helps users keep track of what they have on loan from the library.
IPL2
ipl2 is a public service organization which helps students get answers to different academic questions from other students, volunteer library and information science professionals.
An Artistic Look At The iPhone 5 Speculation [Infographic]
Apple products like Mac, iPhone, iPod, iPad etc always keep their positions in the technology news. Now a days, everyone is looking at the upcoming release of iPhone 5 and many people has different insights about it which they are sharing with the world. These unofficial insights about iPhone 5 are getting it to the higher level of popularity in the form of rumors before it will hit the market. Here, you can find below is an easy to understand example of infographic that covers almost all of the rumors going around about the upcoming iPhone 5 in an artistic form. In this graphic, you can see chances of new features expressed in percentages. Don’t forget to check out our previous post where we published An Extensive Rumor Roundup About iPhone 5 (Infographic).
The credit goes to Infographiclabs who compiled all of these rumors about iPhone 5 in an amazing infographic. We would love to know what you are thinking while viewing this infographic. 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.
40 Examples Of Creatively Integrated Social Media Links In Web Design
Social media is progressing extremely enormously and is becoming a crucial aspect of marketing as more and more business taking advantage of it. Integrating different social media networks with your website not only drives a huge traffic from these sites to your own website but also lets you promote your goods and services on almost at negligible cost. The key is to do it right!
Here we are showcasing a collection of some excellent examples of websites that have very well-integrated social media links to their web designs so that they appear as the integral part of their own web design. We hope that this collection will inspire you a lot to integrate social media links to your website as well.
7 Communication Software That Every Linux User Should Know About
Linux is an excellent open source operating system, but the reason why many people hesitate to try it is because of the limited number applications available. Today, we have gathered a list of useful instant messaging clients which every Linux users should try.
You are welcome if you want to share more communication sofware for linux OS 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 and follow us on Diggas well to get updated.
Kopete Instant Messenger
Kopete is a multi network instant messaging client which supports many services including AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, Novell GroupWise Messenger, and more. Kopete also features tools to enhance your instant messaging experience, such as message encryption, archiving, and many other fun and useful effects.
Empathy
Empathy is a messaging program which supports text, voice, and video chat and file transfers over many different protocols including Google Talk, MSN, IRC, Salut, AIM, Facebook, Yahoo!, Gadu Gadu, Groupwise, ICQ and QQ.
Pidgin
Pidgin is one of my favorite instant messaging clients which allow users to connect to many chat networks including AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk and many more. Other features include file transfers, away messages, buddy icons, custom smilies, and typing notifications. There are numerous plugins available which improves the functionality of the Pidgin.
aMSN
aMSN is an free open source MSN Messenger clone which allow users to connect to MSN and chat with their friends. Other features include Offline Messaging, Voice Clips, display pictures, custom emoticons, multi-language support (around 40 languages currently supported), webcam support, sign in to more than one account at once, full-speed File transfers, group support and much more.
Gwibber
Gwibber is an open source micro-blogging client which helps users connect to all the popular social networking sites including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and many more. Other feature of Gwibber include URL shortener, spell checking support, multicolumn interface to view different streams and much more.
xChat
xChat is an IRC chat software for Linux which allows you to join multiple chat rooms at the same time, talk publicly, private conversations, file transfers and more.
BitlBee
BitlBee is another excellent open source IM client for Linux which enables users to log in to multiple IM protocols including XMPP/Jabber (including Google Talk), MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM and Twitter.
