Kick-Ass Squeeze – August 2009

Kick-Ass Websites

Ecosimply -”Is a blog about going green and living in a friendly environmentally way. We’ll give you information that’s relevant and useful, tips that you can actually do something with. Whether it’s a review of new technology, a clever idea to save waste, or just interesting facts, we want this blog to provide inspiration and information that’s easy to understand and practical to apply.”

ColorSuckr – “Create color schemes based on photos for use in your artwork and designs.”

SixCentral – “With SixCentral, you will have the ability to have a single place to organize all of your current and prospective clients. From there, you can create new project proposals and send them to any client in your database. Your clients will have the ability to accept, deny, postpone or comment on your proposal. Everything will be stored at SixCentral — instead of your inbox.”

Hello – “The idea is fairly simple: When you arrive at the conference, simply say which seat you’re sitting in, via Twitter. You can then browse the rest of the audience and see else is sitting around you, what their interest are, and whether you have anything in common. You can also search the audience for specific names or skillset (php, designer, marketer, etc).”

Fuel Your Interface – “You interface designers have your work cut out for you. Bigger and better and uber creative websites are cropping up everywhere these days. It always seems as if one form is niftier than the rest, or the typography on one site puts others to shame. How can you even begin to keep up? Why, Fuel Your Interface, of course! It’s here that we bring you the inspiration for those bigger and better and uber creative sites in the form of articles, interviews and galleries. And those other sites that you drool over? Five bucks says they come here too.”

Fuel Your Illustration – “You’re masters at visualization. Magicians, if you will. Illustration is an art form unlike any others and we recognize that. Fuel Your Illustration is here to pay homage to those folks who take this genre  to the next level. You want the latest news and interviews with the hottest talent. We’ve got that covered. You want inspiration. Consider it our gift to you. How about the coolest apps and other tools to help you bring your illustrations to life? Here they are. Now go and work your magic.”

PhotoTuts – “Phototuts+ is a source of learning on all aspects of photography. We pump out regular tutorials on composition, equipment settings, post-processing, film photography, retouching and much more. If you love photography, you will find a treasure trove of useful advice at Phototuts+.”

Type Daily – “Type Daily is a collection or aggregation of type-related content on the WWW. All content is scooped up via RSS, so this page will always display the latest, freshest content.”

Typedia – “In a nutshell, Typedia is a community website to classify typefaces and educate people about them. Think of it like a mix between IMDb and Wikipedia, but just for type. Anyone can join, add, and edit pages for typefaces or for the people behind the type.”

Web AppStorm – “Hi, and welcome to Web.AppStorm, the newest member of the Envato family of sites. If you are familiar with our sister site, Mac.AppStorm, you can guess what the purpose of this site is. We aim to bring you news, reviews, and resources for all things web related.”

Kick-Ass Links

Envato -This is the site to visit to see what all of the Envato’s sites are currently doing.

All Free Logo – “Free Logo. Company Logo, Corporate Logo, Brand Logo. Download Free Logo, Read Logo Design Articles and Submit Logos.”

Stuff and Nonsense – “Based in North Wales, Stuff and Nonsense is a small web site design studio, led by designer and author Andy Clarke. We have built an enviable reputation because we understand that designing a fantastic web site is only part of the story. We never forget that we are designing fantastic experiences for you and for your customers. Heck, we even wrote a book about it, Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design.”

And All That Malarkey – “And All That Malarkey, a popular blog about web design and more”

TheWebBlend – “The Web Blend keeps you current with a summary of the latest in web related news and trends. We hand select great links on a daily basis from all over the web world and deliver these links directly to you.”

OmniFocus – This app is designed to quickly capture your thoughts and allow you to store, manage, and process them into actionable to-do items. Perfect for the Getting Things Done® system, but flexible enough for any task management style, OmniFocus helps you work smarter by giving you powerful tools for staying on top of all the things you need to do.

Kick-Ass Articles / Tutorials

WordPress hook: Disable posts auto saving – “WordPress have a very useful function that autosaves your posts while you’re typing them in the dashboard. Though, if for some reason you’d like to disable this function, it is very easy to do. Just read on!”

Don’t Delay! Now is the Time to Start Your Web Startup – “I would argue that the web right now however is still wide open. Just look at how Twitter has come out of left field to become a massive internet phenomena in just three short years. There are still many, many untapped opportunities.”

8 ways to guarantee steady, incoming traffic – “In June, traffic on the weekend dropped about 22% (per day) in comparison to the average weekday, whilst we managed to decrease that to about 14% in July. That means we’ve already gotten a 36% improvement in just one month! Here’s how we did it…”

Coding A HTML 5 Layout From Scratch – “HTML5 and CSS3 have just arrived (kinda), and with them a whole new battle for the ‘best markup’ trophy has begun. Truth to be told, all these technologies are mere tools waiting for a skilled developer to work on the right project. As developers we shouldn’t get into pointless discussions of which markup is the best. They all lead to nowhere. Rather, we must get a brand new ideology and modify our coding habits to keep the web accessible.”

9 Must Read Sources On Pricing Your App – “Price points can make or break a great application. This applies for web apps, iPhone apps, Mac apps, PC Apps etc. etc. If you don’t know where to price your app according to how much time you put into it, how much its actually worth or how much it is compared to your competitors you are flying blind. Here are 10 posts to read that will help you price your app.”

Building Better Template Documentation – “So, having seen lots of great documentation files, I thought I would put together a basic HTML/CSS documentation template for our authors to start with.”

20 Tips on How to Write for the Web – “These are some of the more common mistakes that I’ve seen in web copy and some tricks that I use every day to write effectively, from e-mails to site pages.”

10 Drupal Modules You May Not Know About – “One of the great things about Drupal is its huge community of developers. Drupal.org hosts many, many modules to extend and enhance your website or application. Most people know about popular modules such as CCK, Views2, Panels, and XML Sitemap. But there are some really great modules that fly under the radar as well.”

65+ Illustrator Tutorials, Tips and Resources – “So with this weeks Theme Thursday focused on Illustrator and Vectors, i scoured the web and the result was more than 65 of the the best tutorials, practices, tips and resources to help make you an Illustrator heavyweight.”

Top 5 Web Statistic Systems – “Every webmaster wants to know how many hits his website is getting, whether it be daily, monthly or just sporadically; but with so many stat tools availble, which one is the best to use? In this article, we’ll review some of the top systems available.”

5 CSS3 Design Enhancements That You Can Use Today – “Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the language of Web design, and the next generation of CSS design properties are just chomping at the bit to be released. Are you eager to start using them, but don’t know where to start?”

How to Create Your First iPhone Application – “This how-to guide is supposed to walk you through the steps to make your idea for an iPhone app a reality. This post presents various ideas, techniques, tips, and resources that may come in handy if you are planning on creating your first iPhone application.”

Design pricing formula – “Pricing is a task a lot of designers struggle with. I receive questions on a weekly basis to prove it. As much as I want to, I can’t tell you what you should be charging. This design pricing formula explains why.”

10 Important Traits of a Great Blog Design – “Your blog’s design can be the distinguishing factor that separates you from the vast sea of other weblogs out there. First impressions count and making sure that you have all the elements of a great blog design can ensure that readers will enjoy the content that you present. In this article, you will read about the ten essential characteristics of a solid weblog design.”

30+ PHP Best Practices for Beginners – “PHP is the most widely-used language for programming on the web. Here are thirty best practices for beginners wanting to gain a firmer grasp of the fundamentals.”

6 Ways To Improve Your Web Typography – “Typography on the web is anything but simple, and for many, it is a troubling mystery. Today, we’re going to review six ways that web designers and developers can improve the typography of the sites they create.”

The Brads – Alignment in Design – “The alignment of elements in a web page is a very important aspect of a good web design. In this info-comic, The Brads illustrate important concepts and best practices for alignment.”

Illustrator type technique using shapes – “One of the questions I often get from readers is if I could write a tutorial on how to create a certain logo. It’s something that I think is not very good material for a tutorial because it’s so very specific. The hard part is not the execution in Illustrator, it’s the design itself, the creative process. Then again I think certain parts are explanatory e.g. a logo made of letters you draw yourself using circles, simple shapes and lines of equal thickness. The technique I have in mind is something that only works for logo’s that contain only a few characters, ideally not more than 5. It also stands or falls with the characters at hand e.g. if o’s and other circular shapes are involved, than it can get interesting to try this technique out…”

The Startup Spirit – “There is no set time within which this must happen. Some companies go through longer startup phases than others, while a few actually mature very fast. Still, there is one thing that you can carry on with you even after your company has become a well established business: The Startup Spirit.”

How to Blog Effectively – “A blog is a great tool with which to express your opinions, build a community, network with others and drive traffic to your website. [...] So, what’s involved in the process of writing an effective blog post?”

Mastering Photoshop With Paths – “Anomalously residing within the pixel-gridded world of Photoshop are a series of tools waiting to break out of the canvas’ inherent squareness. Mastering these tools opens the stage for a higher level of flexibility, full of clean lines and non-destructive editing. Presented here is a guide to help you build proficiency, increase productivity and demystify the elusive world of Paths.”

10 Vital Lessons for Web Start-Ups – “In this post I’ll cover some of the things we’ve learned along the way. Whilst the same lessons won’t apply completely to every situation, they’ll be interesting to anyone thinking about launching a web app.”

5 Advanced Photoshop Techniques for Web Designers – “When I was choosing examples for this article I visited some design galleries and roundup posts and took screenshots of design details that are used (sometimes overused) in web design. I don’t encourage you to follow trends but rather develop your own style. Nevertheless, it is always useful to polish your Photoshop skills a bit more. Let’s get rockin’!”

Creating the “Perfect” Portfolio – “Many articles are floating around that tell web professionals exactly how to build an online presence. Techniques, best practices and all the other “what to do’s” can be great motivation, but that is exactly what this post won’t do. Instead, we’ll go over how to create the “perfect” portfolio, one that suits your individual needs as a web professional and that gets optimal results.”

Definitive Guide to WordPress Page Navigation – “There are many ways to navigate a WordPress-powered site. There are archive links, category links, page links, internal post links, single post links, admin comment links, tag links, and many other types of navigational links. When it comes to navigating sequentially through your site’s chronological archive pages, category archives, and other types of archive pages, WordPress provides several useful template tags designed to dynamically link the pages together. Likewise, for single permalink post-views, WordPress provides a set of template tags that connects the pages together in chronologically sequential fashion.”

Don’t Stick With What You’ve Been Taught; You’re a Creative So Get Creative. – “I believe anyone can be creative, I believe all people have a creative bone in their body but some do not see the need to use it or have the inclination to do so. At the end of the day if it is not in their interest to do so they’re not going to be happy whilst being creative.”

Vital Tips For Effective Logo Design – “In this article, we’ll get down to the nitty gritty of what makes an effective logo design and we’ll also guide you through the principles and best practices of how to create an iconic brand identity.”

66 Vectors for Green Website Design – “Green web design is on the rise and every designer needs the right resources to meet the demand. In June, we released a green website inspiration post entitled 15 Grandiose Green Website Designs and today we want to continue on that theme by showing you 66 awesome eco-friendly vectors from GraphicRiver.net, the latest website from the Envato Network (Tuts Plus, FreelanceSwitch and more). GraphicRiver.net is an online marketplace where designers can buy and sell layered Photoshop files, vectors, icons and more! Prices start at just $1 dollar.”

Advanced Photoshop Techniques for Web Designers – Part 2 – “This is my second article about about advanced Photoshop techniques for web designers. In case you missed my previous article, we have already covered buttons, navigation, shadows and a few other useful techniques. In this article we look at how to create fold and light Effects as well as 3D elements. This is going to be a long tutorial so grab your favorite biscuits and cup of tea and let’s get started!”

@font-face and 15 Free Fonts You Can Use Today – “Fonts are a huge part of design (as we all know). Text on the web needs to be much more dynamic than in any other media. We have solutions like Cufón, sIFR, etc. but perhaps one of the better options is using @font-face in CSS. We’ll take a quick look at using @font-face in CSS and 15 great free fonts you can start using today.”

300+ Resources to Help You Become a Photoshop Expert – “Below are over 300 resources to get you on your way to Photoshop mastery. There’s everything from cheat sheets to brushes to tutorials to action scripts, as well as collections of even more resources and tools. With the resources below, you should be able to do just about anything possible with Photoshop.”

How To Create a Pure CSS Polaroid Photo Gallery – “Magical things can be done by combining various CSS properties, especially when some of the new CSS3 tricks are thrown into the mix. Let’s take a look at building a cool looking stack of Polaroid photos with pure CSS styling.”