Issue #69 | Tuesday, October 9th 2012 | 120,888 subscribers | Previous issues
Dear Friends,
Innovating, experimenting and challenging the status quo of design and technology leads us to come up with something original. That's how the omnipresent parallax effect came into being in Web design. In fact, from the artistic point of view, single page parallax websites allow designers to squeeze in subtle details, dynamics and surprising perspective changes—all uncommon for most (non-Flash) websites. The Paris 3D Saga website is a good example of the visual effects and transitions that parallax websites can have.
The parallax effect can be useful when used properly, e.g. when wanting to showcase a product in 3D view on mobile. But since every other site uses some sort of parallax trickery for its layout, using the effect isn't really exciting anymore. Most of them are so heavy that they could be called "monolithic"; visible from space, as dense as singularities. When a page takes minutes to load, and hence needs a loading or a splash page to keep users entertained, then something is terribly, terribly wrong with the design. Well, unless you can deliver the next-gen 10G connection to your users—too bad it doesn't exist.
It's time to stop building monstrous heavy parallax one-pagers. How about building a quick, heavily-optimized responsive website instead? Your users would surely appreciate it.
Stay curious and keep experimenting!
Yours truly,
The Smashing Editorial Team
Table of Contents
01. Tilt-Controlled Images With Lenticular.js
02. PHP The Right Way
03. UI Inspiration For Android Designers
04. Free eBook Platform For Indie Authors
05. The Easy Way To Crop Images Online
06. Free Interface Sketch Templates For Mobile
07. Split, Merge And Mix PDF Documents Online
08. Coverjunkie: Pictures Of The Past
09. Smashing Highlights (From Archives)
10. New on Smashing Job Board
11. Recent Articles on Smashing Magazine
1. Tilt-Controlled Images With Lenticular.js
When designing for mobile, we often tend to forget about the capabilities that mobile devices often have — gyroscope and accelerometer are just a couple of them. But what can we do with them in our "regular" Web projects? Well, if you are designing an online shop with nifty product preview options, you might make use of tilting to display the 3D view of the item. Right... but now how would you build it?
Tom Giannattasio's Lenticular.js is a JavaScript library that provides exactly this kind of functionality. It allows you to add tilt-controlled images to your mobile devices and tablets and provides a good ol' parallax effect fallback on images for desktop browsers. Essentially, you create a library of images from your product, define them in a Lenticular object and then manipulate them using the functions that the library provides. Lenticular.js is still a bit buggy, but extended support on devices is in the works. It's available on GitHub as well. (vf)
2. PHP The Right Way
If you are developing for the Web, the chances are high that you have to deal with PHP on a regular basis. However, once you've stumbled upon a problem that you have to solve, finding a good solution among thousands and thousands of (partly outdated) PHP tutorials out there can be quite a nightmare — especially if you are relatively new to PHP. Where would you go to learn about the current best practices in PHP?
Perhaps PHP The Right Way. The site is an easy-to-read, quick reference for the best practices in PHP, accepted coding standards, and links to authoritative tutorials around the Web. Josh Lockhart has worked together with a dozen of well-respected members of the PHP community to create a useful, up-to-date resource for everybody to use. You might also want to bookmark JavaScript or jQuery resources in case you work on JavaScript more often — and you might consider contributing to JS The Right Way. (vf)
3. UI Inspiration For Android Designers
Being a relatively young and extremely versatile mobile platform, Android poses many design challenges. Popular UI patterns on Android are often the common consideration in mobile projects. Because the Android platform is so fragmented, having a reference for the various emerging design patterns can be very helpful.
Of course, you can find common Android design patterns in the official Android Design Guidelines, but if you are looking for something more specific, check out Android Niceties. The website features a growing showcase of screenshots from beautiful Android apps and an insight into Android UI conventions. Android UX creates a library of the common Android design patterns as well. (vf)
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4. Free eBook Platform For Indie Authors
It takes a lot of time and effort to write a book and it can be very troublesome to find a publisher for it. No less painful is the moment when the publisher takes a cut from the profit. A London-based startup discovered this very problem and created Payhip, an online platform that allows you to quickly upload and sell your eBooks directly to your fans and followers. The service costs you absolutely nothing and your profit remains 100% yours. According to the creators, credit card details of the customers.
So how does it work? In order to setup your eBook page, simply upload your eBook file and add a name, description, price and thumbnail image. Your earnings can start from the moment when you share the link to this page. The service also includes a preview feature which allows you to upload a short preview as a teaser. At the moment customers can pay only via PayPal. Plans exist to add a few pro features that users can pay for if they want to, but the selling of the eBooks will remain free of cost. (ea)
5. The Easy Way To Crop Images Online
Making a website look interesting and vibrant can hinge on nothing more than a well-chosen graphic that enhances the content. This makes image cropping such a delicate and sometimes time-consuming exercise. But what if you don't have your desktop tools at hand? Developers from imagga have developed a tool to simplify the process.
The easy-to-use online auto-cropping tool Cropp.me suggests the right cropping based on the size you need. The tool even comes with predetermined sizes for common online image purposes. You just might save a lot of time. Gone are the times of desktop software to manually crop your images for the correct size! (jc)
6. Free Interface Sketch Templates For Mobile
Whether you are designing a website or an application, having printed templates for quick drawing, sketching or just experimentation is always handy. If you find yourself working on a mobile project, paper templates for the variety of mobile views can be great for quick prototyping of mobile user interfaces.
Interface Sketch is a free collection of simple templates that are designed to help you sketch your ideas on paper. The PDF templates are available in A4 and US Letter format for Web browser, iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 5, Nexus 7 tablet, Android phone, Windows 8 phone and Feature phone. Each template has a variety of different horizontal and vertical views. Now, that's a set worth downloading for your next projects! (vf)
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7. Split, Merge And Mix PDF Documents Online
We have all been there: you've received a large PDF file but you need just a couple of pages; or you'd like to merge the file with other documents to have everything in one place; or you have to send a large PDF file via email, and you just want to split it into smaller parts. The unfortunate thing is that you are on the go, and you don't have your desktop tools with you. Or perhaps they don't do exactly what you are after, anyhow. That's where it would be fantastic to have an online tool taking care of your PDF nightmares quickly.
Sejda is just that: an advanced online PDF manipulation tool. At the moment you can encrypt, merge, rotate, mix and split PDF files by using pages or bookmarks. However, the developers are currently working on cropping, exporting, setting viewing preferences as well as splitting by size and text extract. The downside, of course, is that you have to upload the file to the server, so if it's sensitive data, Sejda isn't an option. However, for regular simple tasks, Sejda will definitely help out quickly and reliably. (vf)
8. Coverjunkie: Pictures Of The Past
National Geographic, Time, Rolling Stone — when we think of those magazines, what do we really remember? Well-researched, serious articles with subjects that are close to our heart? Sure! But what really grabs the busy person on their way to work and stops them dead at the newsstand is the cover. How many articles from these magazines have we forgotten? And yet, how many iconic images do we remember?
Browsing through the classic cover section of Coverjunkie is like time traveling. Here you'll find the images that influenced generations — from National Geographic's blue-eyed, Afghan girl captured during the very intense Cold War era, to Muhammad Ali's Esquire showcase. From the tragic to the frivolous, these pictures evoke memories and feelings. So whether you are searching for inspiration or melancholia, be sure to spend some time on this website and you'll come out ahead in some elated way. (jc)
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9. Smashing Highlights (From Archives)
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Free PNG Credit Card, Debit Card and Payment Icons Set (18 Icons)
The icons are inteded to be used on e-commerce websites where you can show what types of payment the shop accepts. Each icon comes in curved and straight edge variations. As usual, the set is free to use in private and commercial projects — no credit is required.
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Introduction To The Command Line (Linux Commands)
Why would anyone want to bother with these text commands when you can use the mouse instead? The main reason is that they are very useful for controlling remote computers on which a GUI is not available, particularly Web servers, and especially Linux Web servers that have been stripped of all unnecessary graphical software.
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Form-Field Validation UX: The Errors-Only Approach
We thought of a validation technique better suited to complex data. What if we removed all validated fields on the error page that reloads? What if we displayed only those fields that failed validation.
10. New on Smashing Job Board
Here are the job openings published recently at our very own Smashing Job Board:
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Mobile Front-End Developer (JavaScript) at Bluefields (Re-locate to Las Vegas, NV)
Bluefields is a network of sports teams and players, backed by some of the worlds greatest investors and advisors including two of the worlds best startup accelerators 500 Startups and Seedcamp (2012).
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Interactive / UI Designer at Fervor Creative (Scottsdale, AZ)
Fervor Creative is an award-winning boutique design agency that values great ideas and execution and we're excited to bring someone on with a passion for design solutions. Aside from your talent, ideally you are a people-person who can work effectively with a team, while also being self motivated and able to manage deadlines effectively.
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Front-End Developer for successful web start-up at The Beans Group (London)
The Beans Group creates innovative products and campaigns to engage with the youth demographic. Working with the likes of Apple, Red Bull and Microsoft we run the UK's largest student website, studentbeans.com, have recently created the world's first online freshers fair, Freshersfields.com and this October we will launch a unique mobile platform for national and local businesses.
11. Recent Articles on Smashing Magazine
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