galileo maeshary

Showing posts with label resources. Show all posts

Collection of Halloween Photoshop Tutorials

Here is a fun collection of Photoshop tutorials to get in the spirit of the holiday, from Tutorial9. Enjoy!

Spooks, Ghouls, and Photoshop Tools: The Ultimate Collection of Halloween Tutorials

CSS Differences in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8

From Smashing Magazine:

CSS Differences in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 « Smashing Magazine

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Get Wireframing: The All-In-One Guide | Hi, I'm Grace Smith

Huge collection of wireframing tools, resources, tips, tutorials, etc. from designer Grace Smith:

Get Wireframing: The All-In-One Guide | Hi, I'm Grace Smith

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14 Most Useful design cheat sheets and coding cheat sheets | delimitdesign.com

From Delimit Design, cheat sheets!

14 Most Useful design cheat sheets and coding cheat sheets | delimitdesign.com

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Blogging resources

I'm playing catch-up this weekend, having not blogged much for a couple of days. This first post is a handful of useful blogging resources.

First, if you're not in the mood for designing your own blog template, a collection of pre-packaged templates:

40 Amazing Blogger Templates for Personal Blogs

But we're all creative folks, right? (well, ok, I haven't worked out my template for this blog yet, but I'll get there...) Starting from the beginning? Here's a guide:

How to Make a Creative Blog Layout

Want to work out that perfect background design? Here's a collection of techniques and tutorials about designing website backgrounds:

Outstanding Website Background Guide: 60+ Impressive Resources « Noupe

Once you've got your blog up and running, here are

15 Basics of Insanely Useful Blogwriting

Enjoy!

Top 100 Graphic Design Blogs

Impressive list of visual design resources, from professional and freelance blogs to design tools and resources.

Top 100 Graphic Design Blogs

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Hand Drawn Sharing Icons

Some very nice hand drawn icon sets: 8 Hand Drawn Icon Sets For Bloggers - slodive

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UX Booth: User Experience Blog & Free Website Usability Testing

UX resource that my friend Foo passed along:

UX Booth: User Experience Blog & Free Website Usability Testing

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Fun with 404

We've all seen them, either by clicking on an old link or mistyping a URL in our browser: the 404 "page not found" error page. The number comes from the http standard response code: Oops. Sorry, can't find that page.

One of my co-workers expressed his opinion that users should never get 404/"page not found" errors, that instead the design of the site should be clever enough to place them where they intended to go, or at least close enough. This is a great strategy, and while it may not always be possible, I've seen it put to good effect. As an examepl, if a user is in the middle of directory of services, and mistypes a service detail page URL, the interface could give them the standard 404 page. But instead, it could take them to a searchable a-z list, thus assuming they were trying to look for a particular service based on what they types. Nice, and definitely a better user experience.

All of that said, you still need a page for users to land on when clever site architecture just can't get the job done. Here are a few ideas and suggestions:

Don't leave the user at a dead end. Give them some way to continue by offering a sitemap, search feature, popular links or some other way to go somewhere else. Make sure the global navigation and footer is available.
If there are any strategies that will help a user be more successful, that help will be appreciated. Keep it simple and brief, though, as users scan more than they read.
Here's even a blog post about monetizing 404 pages.

But why not have some fun? There are some very clever 404 pages out there, here is a collection from All About Technology: 53 Custom Designed "404 Error" Pages Of Big Sites (Shared via AddThis)

Enjoy, and be careful typing those URLs...

Design Pattern Repositories

When designing interactive experiences, there are lots of ways to innovate, but also situations where it doesn't make sense to reinvent the wheel. There are many parts of a larger experience with which users could or should already be familiar, and this is where design pattern libraries can be excellent resources for designers. Here is a list of libraries and resources culled from a LinkedIn group of user experience designers that I thought I'd compile for easier browsing: