CSS Editors to Speed Up your Work

September 7th, 2009

I continue to share useful tools with you and today I’m going to give you the list of good CSS editors.
Of course there are HTML editors with CSS support and most CSS professionals don’t use any editors except Notepad, but I’m sure many of you would appreciate a more sophisticated development environment for CSS coding these CSS editors offer. Besides, if you are new to CSS, you can learn by analyzing the style sheets and using live-editing, thus getting to understand how the design is actually built up.
The idea of a CSS editor lies in combining the HTML-source code with editing features of CSS-stylesheets and the website layout within a comfortable interface. Many CSS editors also offer some additional tools and features for debugging and testing, validation and preview in different browsers and many more.

Well, here is my list of good CSS editors you might find handy:

* Free CSS Toolbox

Among the features this editor offers are error check, cross-browser compatibility check, W3C CSS validator and many more.

* Xyle

Modifying the CSS-code with this advanced editor for Mac users you’ll see the changes immediately in the browser window. Among key features are the ability to filter large CSS files using smart groups, automatic formatting and selector matching

* Simple CSS

If you are a CSS beginner you’ll like this free editor. True to its name it is really very simple.

*  JustStyle CSS Editor

This powerful and easy to use editor is highly interactive and platform independent. With this editor you are able to edit the whole CSS file or select the fragments of it and edit them separately.

* CSSEdit

CSSEdit offers real-time styling of style sheets for Mac users. The editor features W3C standards validator, live-preview, integration in web-browsers, project management and others.

* Rapid CSS Editor

This editor for Windows users offers integration with W3C CSS and HTML validators,  CSS checker and validator, syntax highlighting for CSS and HTML documents, CSS code compressor, save and open files directly from FTP, fully customizable interface and many other useful features.

Well, if you have anything to share about the above mentioned CSS editors or if you’d like to give us a hint about the editor that wasn’t named in the list, do not hesitate and let us know in the comments below.

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7 Characteristics of a Good Website

September 2nd, 2009

Designing and developing a website is a complicated process which requires taking into consideration huge number of elements and details. There are though few key features which every successful website possesses. Check if your website design has these features:

* Enjoyable Visual Design
As they say – fine dress helps to impress. The first impression is always the strongest one; if your website is poorly designed your visitor will most likely leave it in seconds. The question of what is an enjoyable visual design has of course a subjective answer. There is a number of good articles describing the web design trends of the year, I suggest you to read them. I would add for myself that you should know when enough is enough. Trends are good but overusing them is not good at all.

* Plain Navigation
Every good website is user friendly. You should always remember that you design for people, and people should be able to find where to click. The navigation is to be obvious and easy.

* Quality Content
Content is king. Always remember that when creating a website. People visit your web page to find information, so give it to them. A good visual design without a meaningful content won’t make you successful.

* Web Optimized Pictures
All the images you use when designing for web should be compressed to 72dpi. If you use Photoshop for designing just use a “Save for Web” feature that will compress your images automatically.

* Contact Information
Your website visitors should be able to easily get in touch with you to give you their feedback and suggestions. Thus do not hide your contacts from them. Make a simple contact page and include it to your main navigation.

* Search Feature
As said above – you design for people and people should be able to easily find what they are looking for at your website. No one likes browsing through hundreds of pages in search of a thing.

* Cross Browser Compatibility
If you use only Firefox it doesn’t mean that everyone out there uses it either. Do remember that your visitors might use other browsers and never forget to check your websites for cross browser compatibility.

Would you suggest more features every good website should posses?

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Useful Tools for Freelance Designers

August 13th, 2009

Every freelance designer knows how hard it is sometimes to get everything done when you are a freelancer. You have to manage every single thing from emails to SEO all by yourself. You have to deal with clients, promote your own portfolio website, read the latest industry news as you have to keep up with the technologies and be aware of the latest events, you have to deal with many issues connected to running a business as finances, bills etc. All these things take time, attention and effort. So, how and when do you do actual designing and development? Here is a short list of useful tools and resources that will help you cut down the time and effort spent on things that have nothing to do with actual design and development.

Finances

Invoices Made Easy Very good and easy to use tool for sending invoices and accepting online payments.

Bill My Clients Lets you send invoices both via email and regular mail.

Less Accounting Created especially for freelancers this tool will help you easily manage your invoices and accounts.

Xero This online accounting system gives you an access to all your financial figures like invoices, bank transactions etc. anytime you need them.

PayPal The best and thus the most popular online payments service out there.

Managing your contacts

Being a freelancer you need to organize your customer base, these tools will help you do the task:

Big Contacts Lets you easily organize the information about your clients.

Zoho CRM Another good tool to manage your business activity.

These online communication tools will make it fast and comfortable to solve issues with your clients:

Skype Great choice for online communication, lets you make phone calls and have video chats.

Yugma Online video conferencing tool.

Promotion

I’m sure most of you use Twitter as one of the main promotion tools. If you do you’ll like these services and applications:

Tweet Later This great service lets you to set time when you want your tweet published.

RTweeter Another tool to schedule your tweets.

Tweetdeck is of great help when you have hundreds of followers. The tool lets you filter the users into groups, thus you won’t have to look through all the tweets to find what the user you are interested in is doing.

Well, this is for sure not the full list at all. What tools are you using to simplify and speed up your non designing activities?

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Will Your New Website Be Successful?

July 15th, 2009

So, you have a brand new website designed? Everything is done and ready to be launched but are you sure your new web project is going to be successful, are you sure you’ve done everything right and haven’t missed a thing? Here are things to check before launching a new web page to make sure it has more chances to become successful.

* Domain name
Is your domain name short, unique, easy to remember and does it suggest what your website goal is? These are essential things considering a domain name. Read more on how to name your website.

* Website layout
Every website should have some basic website elements. Header, navigation, body and footer are the common things your visitors expect to find.
I’d suggest you to check if your fonts are readable, color scheme not repellent and navigation simple and intuitive. You can ask a friend to check these aspects for you.

* Content
Content is the key to success. The searchers will find you only if you give them what they are looking for – quality content. So give it to them! Check your website for spelling and grammatical errors. Make sure your texts are easy to understand and have specific appeal to your target audience. Don’t be afraid to give your personal opinion, your readers will only be grateful. Make your website interesting to visit and don’t forget to update regularly.

* SEO
This is the most vital point to consider if you want your new website to get to the top of search engine results. There will be a detailed article on on-site SEO at this blog later, now lets focus on off site things that have to be done:
- Press release
I’d suggest you to write a press release and submit it to a number of press release websites. Give a brief information on your website’s goal and what your visitors will find there. I also suggest you to write press releases each time you have fresh news on your website – new products, projects etc.
- Internet directories
Submit your website to popular directories, this is a good way to build some powerful backlinks.
- Article submission
This is another way to get quality backlinks to your website. Write a number of good and interesting articles, submit them to article submission websites and people will link to them. Make sure the articles you write are related to the subject of your website

Well, this was a simple checklist of things you should consider when launching a website. Now when you have them checked you may change something for batter and launch your website to reach the deserved success. Would you add more points to the list?

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Reach Perfection in the Profession

June 26th, 2009

Being a professional in any field means working hard and constantly enriching your skills and knowledge, a true professional is curious and never satisfied with the achieved heights, he always endeavours at perfection. Here are some humble tips on how to become a better designer and reach success and perfection in your profession.

* Never rely on hypothesis
Do not assume that everything will work the way it should, check everything twice. It may look a bit paranoiac, but checking everything is actually a good custom for a web designer.

* Write down all ideas
Even if they seem useless at the first glance they may turn out to be brilliant later.

* Do not neglect the ready-made solutions
Such tools like Firefox extensions for instance can ease and fasten your work significantly.

* Stay up to date
You should know the recent trends and all the industry news, be in the center of current events. Remember – it is never bad to learn something new.

* Keep it simple
Simplicity is the key. If your design is going to have loads of complex elements try to use a simple color scheme and vice versa.

* Practice makes perfect
Well, I think there is nothing to add to the statement. : ) Do your work and learn from your mistakes and successes.

* Learn to abstract yourself
Everyone has creativity crises every now and then. Change the subject for some time, go to the movies, relax a bit and the muse will come.

Being a designer you should also know some common rules:

* Website goal should be obvious
* Your website should be easy to read and navigate
* Too many different fonts is bad
* Chose the color scheme carefully
* Your website should load fast
* Don’t forget about cross-browser compatibility

Of course all these rules are quite relative and can be and sometimes even should be broken. Just don’t forget to stop ;)

Well, would you add your own web design rules and tips to the list?

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