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My company is smaller. So unfortunately, we don't have the budget to afford a good (or bad) UI designer/developer. So we do programmer's UI. As you can imagine, it gets us by but it's not good at all.
Well what I'm looking for is a good resource that shows or explains how to have good layout and intuitive control placement in an Web app (or even Desktop app). Are there any tutorials or web sites that any of you would suggest?
If you need some help about software UI , Apple wrote this doc', i think it could be a good beginning :
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/XHIGIntro.html%23//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000894-TP6
More generally you can also throw a look at these websites : http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/20-websites-to-help-you-master-user-interface-design/
http://dzineblog.com/2010/03/best-user-interface-design-resources-the-round-up.html
Read up on Information Architecture. This will give you some understand behind the science of UX/UI which will in turn help you design your UI. I am a programmer myself, and have only read a few books but I now understand the impact of design. Especially since to your users, the UI is the application.
For example, there are some defined ways on which a user interacts with a site - browse, search, and interactive. A site should accomodate all because each user has different preferences.
IA Institute Reading List
The Humane Interface - this book can get very detailed talking about how many clicks someone has to do to perform a task, but this makes a huge impact if they have to do it all day long!
When it comes to design and UI then you should take a look at Microsoft's Toolbox site. It helps you learn the design principles and do design practicals using Microsoft Expression Studio (a UI prototyping tool). Check out the site here: Microsoft Design Toolbox
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We're considering a new CMS for our huge 10-20,000 page site. We are not currently using any CMS, but have individual html pages with the content embedded(!).
Our site is mostly 'regular' content types, with a few discussion boards and some document handling. We also have a number of news sections/blogs and some profile directories.
We have few developers with limited coding skills and even fewer coders on the team. We've considered WordPress (which we're already using for a few sites) and also CraftCMS. CraftCMS seems more fitting to our needs because it's flexible and lean; we're impressed with what we've seen so far but are concerned that it's not open-source and that it's so new. WordPress seems cumbersome to the coding developers as much of the system is 'out of the box' and requires loading lots of plugins and things that you don't 'need' for a page.
Are there other similar CMSs that people can recommend for us to consider? Please don't tell me about your favorite CMS; please DO tell me about a CMS that you know of that may fit our needs. Comments on the CMSs mentioned above in the context of our needs are welcomed as well.
Thank you.
CraftCMS is as impressive as it looks, I've built 4 sites so far with it and the more I use it the more I discover thoughtful little details that make development easier. This is particularly true for content rich sites with lots of variables & different article types.
Compared to Wordpress and other similar systems I have used, you will be amazed at how few plugins are required even for complex layouts & implementations.
The newness concern is totally valid too. I waited for almost 3 years before doing any client work for that very reason. Wanted to see if a stable dev community would develop around it and to be sure that it would be financially viable for the developers. The creator recent addressed this issue and open source concerns on Hacker News here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12009552
ExpressionEngine 2 was always the choice for bigger, more robust sites. But when CraftCMS burst into the scene we felt it addressed some of ExpressionEngine's shortcomings. We we waited until Craft 2.0 to switch. Here a few reasons why:
TWIG templates: believe me, you want your templates to be as modular, and as clean, as possible. Twig is incredible powerful and it has great documentation.
Matrix Field: If you not used to, it takes a while to wrap your head around the concept of "Content Blocks". But once you do, tackling complex content is a breeze.
Great community: I know Wordpress has a giant community, but that is actually bad IMO. Of course you want the community to be big, but once it gets to size, it can be hard to know who to ask for help. Craft community is in that sweet spot where you can find (good) help pretty fast. I also find that projects that have a person/company behind the product are great on raining in community issues.
First Party E-Commerce support: about a third of the projects we work on it has some kind of commerce in it. Not having to rely on third-party plugins is refreshing.
We've also checked other offerings, such as Statamic, ExpressionEngine 3, and even some Node based CMS's. But Craft really does mostly a better job then the others.
I hope it helps!
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I just started out trying to put a web site together for my own business. Web design is not my primary job so I basically wanted it to get it up running as fast as possible. I wanted some flexibility with the layout design so I avoided cookie cutter templates.
I started out choosing Wordpress Thesis theme. As the time goes on, I have most of the site content lined up. However, I am struggling to put all the pieces together to make the site design look uniform and professional. I tried CSS a little bit, spending a lot time on aligning web elements, font sizes, color coordination that sort of things and felt it would take me forever to finish the site.
Does anyone have a suggestion of a free tool suitable for beginner's skill level to reduce development time & compatible with Wordpress Thesis theme?
My line of business is selling products. So the site is pretty much like a product catalog with images, contents, news, & blogs.
I read a little on this site about CSS framework, also checked out jQuery-UI. just not sure if they are the right approach for what I want to accomplish.
Any suggestions are very much appreciated!
WebMatrix is a free and lightweight web development tool.
Create, publish, and maintain your website with ease. It is from Microsoft free tools.
you can download from Microsoft official website
http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/
Checkout Artisteer, it does a WYSIWYG theme edition and can render Wordpress themes. 99$ but worth the money.
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For a few days now i am looking for a webdesigners who can make my page look nice. All i can find is people that are making .psd files of websites so i can cut out elements and put them on my page. I don't need that. I want someone, who will visit my page, look through my .css file, remake it, and maybe add few graphic elements on site - like logo and/or some icons.
I would do it by myself, but i am very bad at selecting/coupling colors, so i need someone to do it for me.
So, reasuming: how do i search through google to actually find people that can make my page look good by remaking my .css files?
People still go by the umbrella term Web Designers : http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HireAndPayADesignerAndBeHappy.aspx
I generally search css web designers to narrow it down.
Altho this area may seem gray there are a few professionals involved on different aspects of what you want.
The reason behind the confusion is that the same professional might occupy more than one role.
A Web Designer should be be able to do that. And it is required of one the basic knowledge of CSS/HTML alongside with your description.
A Web Ui Engenier is the specialist on CSS/HTML/JavaScript he wont design the interface per say He is the guy who implements it.
And a Web UX Designer is the person who will design the user interface and experience. How it should behave and the UI engenier will implement it.
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So, the company I'm working at uses Flex and Java for their product.
Currently, I'm just an XML editor, but I would like to get my hands dirty with
some of the technology they use as soon as possible.
I was wondering if anyone who has learned Flex could possibly give me some advice
on the best way to learn Flex as quickly as possible without getting burnt out and maybe
some things you wish you had known prior to learning Flex.
I know with most technologies I've learned there are those things you wished you had known sooner.
I'm currently working my way through the book "Adobe Flex 4 Training from the Source vol 1". So far everything is pretty easy(I'm up to array collections), but I'm not sure how effective following the examples in this book really is.
Thanks in advance.
Along with videos and demos, find a small project which would work well with a Flex UI and start implementing it. New languages and frameworks are hard to understand until you actually have a problem to solve using them. Canned demos and "hello world" style applications are great for an introduction, but (in my experience) don't do a lot to move you forward in your overall competency level.
This series of videos comes courtesy of Adobe:
http://macromediastudiomx.com.br/devnet/flex/videotraining.html
I also found David Tucker's introduction to the Cairngorm framework very helpful
http://www.davidtucker.net/category/cairngorm/
You could join a Flex User's Group.
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I know the huge community of people behind WordPress has pushed it towards full-blown CMS territory over the past couple years, but I'm still unclear as to what extent. Would it be a good option to handle something like a small biz website with simple shopping cart for example?
Yes, you can use a spanner to bang in screws if you need to, but you might be better reconsidering.
WordPress may well be capable of running a small website with a shopping cart, and that's probably useful for people who have grown a blog up and are branching out into sales.
But why would you choose a blogging platform for your CMS when there are perfectly good CMS systems that target that role?
That depends on how small the site is and your intentions; Wordpress is perfectly fine as a cms. If you want a fairly simple site or need to have it moderated by non-techies, its perfect. Wordpress has amassed a huge amount of plugins, taking it from a blog engine to an entire platform. Here's a very rough power vs simplicity scale:
easiest to use
ascii art
microsoft paint
wordpress
joomla
drupal
self written cms
Tapping out your own html in binary on a telegraph key for each HTTP request
most powerful
Its advisable to use the simplest one that will fit your needs for a long time.
Something to consider—something I've come to notice, at least—is the savvy-ness or level of familiarity the client may have with WordPress. Directly related to it's growth is it's saturation. It's likely that whomever is in charge of managing the sites content has spent some time with WordPress and would be more effective continuing with it.
That said, from what little I've read about WordPress 3, one of the biggest hurdles to clear, custom post/content-types, is present in the core. To what extent, I'm not sure. Probably better to leave that in the hands of a diehard WordPress dev.
It's certainly true that there are dedicated CMS that pack more of this, or more of that, but don't discount the value of experience. The right tool for the job needs to be the right tool for the job.