Twitter needs no introduction. It has become the way to reach audiences for some people and companies and a place to hang out for others. Placing a Twitter feed on one’s website has almost become compulsory. Embedding a feed isn’t all that difficult if you are comfortable with Twitter’s default widget, but making your own will enable you to blend it into your website seamlessly.

Thanks to the skyrocketing popularity of mobile devices, a new generation of designers and CMS developers has found the religion of Structured Content. Once the domain of semantic markup purists and information architects, structured content models are at the heart of most multi-channel and multi-device Web projects.
At Lullabot, we often work with media, publishing and enterprise clients. Those businesses produce so much content and manage so many publishing channels that keeping presentation and design-specific markup out of their content is an absolute requirement. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that editors and writers are content with rigid, predictable designs for the material they publish.
This challenging requirement — providing editors and writers with more control over the presentation of their content — is where many well-intentioned content models break down. In this article, I’ll share five techniques we’ve used on recent projects to solve these problems. These approaches work particularly well in Drupal but can be used any time that editors need more control over design.

Please notice that this article is targeted at newcomers to the industry rather than seasoned designers and developers. The point of the article is to provide a general guide to building meaningful, future-friendly websites today, including strategies, techniques and tools that most Web designers are used to today. — Ed.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… a young designer embarked on an epic journey strewn with perilous layout challenges, constant procrastination, devious jQuery errors and deadly Internet Explorer bugs. It was a rite of passage that all designers must take in order to stand proud with their peers in this wide world we call the Web. Yes, I’m talking about creating your own portfolio website.
I recently redesigned my own portfolio website. It was a challenging but enjoyable experience that I really learned a lot from. My goal was to create a unique online presence that represents my personality and displays my design work in detail, while of course serving as a promotional medium to gain more exposure and business.

Responsive Web design has transformed how websites are designed and built. It has inspired us to think beyond device classifications and to use media queries to adapt a layout to the browser’s viewport size. This, however, deviates from the hierarchical structure of CSS and characterizes elements relative to the viewport, instead of to their container.

Mobile user experience design is maturing. One way to gauge this is to look at the tools at our disposal. Prototyping tools such as Balsamiq, Axure and Fireworks enable us to build wireframes and click-dummies, helping us to explain the targeted user experience. Cross-browser frameworks such as PhoneGap, Zurb Foundation and jQuery Mobile help us to create prototypes using the native languages of the Web: HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

In my career as a user experience professional, part of my purpose has always been to help push our profession forward. And I’ve had the great privilege of being able to do just that in a myriad of ways — by writing books and articles, speaking at conferences all over the world, delivering in-house training workshops at wonderful companies, and simply doing the work for a great many clients.

You know how it goes: you are facing a difficult situation with a client, and you aren’t quite sure how to respond to it to navigate the conversation into a meaningful direction. This is where email templates can come in handy. This article features email templates for communicating with clients, superiors, teammates and the like. You can easily customize them. They balance firmness and tact, professionalism and friendliness.
Please note, though, that these templates are subjective. They’ve been created to the best of my ability, with the help and input of dozens of designers and developers. Once you load the templates into your email program, remember to format them first, OK? Use the “Paste as plain text” command and you’ll be fine.

In the first installment of this two-part series on type classification, we covered the basics of type classification — the various methods people have used, why they are helpful, and a brief survey of type history, classifying and identifying typefaces along the way. Unfortunately, we only got as far as Roman (traditional serif) typefaces and the early-19th century. Now we’re back for part 2!
Part 2 will primarily cover sans typefaces, with a nod to display typefaces and other less common categories, as well as address a few of the questions people have about whether type classification is helpful and necessary.
If you haven’t read part 1, now’s your chance to go over it. It lays important groundwork for this article, covers the categories of serif typefaces, and contains plenty of useful information about the development of serif type. If you already have read it, here is a quick recap to get us started before we move on to the new material.

Three weeks ago we launched a photo contest and asked everyone to submit a creative picture of the object that fuels their creativity and inspiration. For all of you who have participated, thank you so much for taking the time and thought to interpret your object in a creative way. We did not only enjoy the brilliant photography that you sent us, it was also inspiring to read your thoughts on the story behind all these objects.
We received around 350 entries from all over the world and only 70 could make it onto the poster we’ve created exclusively for our dear fans.
As promised, the 10 most creative and original submissions will be awarded with a printed poster. The ones who have been selected will be contacted via email very soon — if not already! If you’ve followed our submission guidelines, your inspiring picture has surely made it to our jury. And if you find your object among the 70 pictures on the poster, you’ll see that your name has been included among the names of all the contributors that made this poster possible. Of course, the owner of each photo owns all the copyrights.

This is the story of what we learned during a redesign for our most demanding client — ourselves! In this article, I will explain, from our own experience of refreshing our agency website, why we abandoned a separate mobile website and will review our process of creating a new responsive design.
At Cyber-Duck, we have been designing both responsive websites and adaptive mobile websites for several years now. Both options, of course, have their pros and cons. With a separate mobile website, you have the opportunity to tailor content and even interactions to the context of your users, whereas a responsive website means better content parity for users and a single website to maintain.

You’ve just created the best user experience ever. You had the idea. You sketched it out. You started to build it. Except you’re already in trouble, because you’ve forgotten something: the copy. Specifically, the microcopy.
Microcopy is the text we don’t talk about very often. It’s the label on a form field, a tiny piece of instructional text, or the words on a button. It’s the little text that can make or break your user experience.

Today we are pleased to feature a set of 200 useful and beautiful foodie icons. This freebie was created by the team behind Freepik, and at the time of writing it’s the largest set of food icons available on the web in one pack.

With the Leap Motion controller being released on July 22nd and the Google Glass Explorer program already live, it is obvious that our reliance on the mouse or even the monitor to interact with the Web will eventually become obsolete.
The above statement seems like a given, considering that technology moves at such a rapid pace. Yet in 40 years of personal computing, our methods of controlling our machines haven’t evolved beyond using a mouse, keyboard and perhaps a stylus. Only in the last six years have we seen mainstream adoption of touchscreens.
Given that emerging control devices such as the Leap Controller are enabling us to interact with near pixel-perfect accuracy in 3-D space, our computers will be less like dynamic pages of a magazine and more like windows to another world.

The other day, I finally accomplished one of my long-standing goals: to go from one of those “Wouldn’t it be cool…” ideas to a working, live app in less than 1 hour. 45 minutes, actually.
It all started with a design meet-up in San Francisco. I can honestly say this was the best meet-up I’ve ever been to: Even though it was announced only two days in advance, more than 200 people RSVPed, and a good number of them showed up. It was a great chance to put faces to familiar names, as well as to make new friends.
But I got to talking with so many people that I didn’t have a chance to get contact info for everybody. So, the next day, I asked the organizers about it and they suggested that everyone who attended leave a link to their Twitter account in a shared Google Doc.

We are talking and reading a lot about responsive Web design (RWD) these days, but very little attention is given to Web applications. Admittedly, RWD still has to be ironed out. But many of us believe it to be a strong concept, and it is here to stay. So, why don’t we extend this topic to HTML5-powered applications? Because responsive Web applications (RWAs) are both a huge opportunity and a big challenge, I wanted to dive in.
Building a RWA is more feasible than you might think. In this article, we will explore ideas and solutions. In the first part, we will set up some important concepts. We will build on these in the second part to actually develop a RWA, and then explore how scalable and portable this approach is.

Update (13.06.2013): The SmashingConf 2013 is sold out just 48h after the ticket sales launch. However, some workshop tickets are still available. We can’t wait to welcome you, dear attendees, in September in Freiburg! In fact, we’ve got quite a few surprises waiting for you; please stay tuned. You won’t be disappointed.
Guess what? The Smashing Conference is coming! 2 single-track conference days, 3 full-day workshops, 16 excellent speakers, and only 300 available seats. We’d be honoured to welcome you in our home town Freiburg, on September 9–11th 2013, at the foot of the legendary, beautiful Black Forest in Southern Germany.

When a team builds a complex application, there is often a common breakdown of roles. Specifically on the back end, there are database engineers, application engineers and operations engineers, or something close to this. In recent years, more and more application logic is being deferred to the client side. For some reason, though, operations folks aren’t going with it.
I recently wrote an article on “Deploying JavaScript Applications.” It was largely well received, and I was happy with the content, but one negative comment stuck out to me. I probably didn’t have the reaction that the commenter was intending, but it pointed out something to me nonetheless.

Today we’ll discuss how to improve the paint performance of your websites and Web apps. This is an area that we Web developers have only recently started looking at more closely, and it’s important because it could have an impact on your user engagement and user experience.

Frame Rate Applies To The Web, Too
Frame rate is the rate at which a device produces consecutive images to the screen. A low frames per second (FPS) means that individual frames can be made out by the eye. A high FPS gives users a more responsive feel. You’re probably used to this concept from the world of gaming, but it applies to the Web, too.
Long image decoding, unnecessary image resizing, heavy animation and data processing can all lead to dropped frames, which reduces the frame rate, resulting in janky pages. We’ll explain what exactly we mean by “jank” shortly.

This week at Smashing Magazine, we’ve decided to reflect on and analyze performance, navigation, code base, style guides, content, customer support, our tools and our internal processes — basically everything. That’s why Smashing Magazine will be unusually quiet for the rest of this week.
We’ll be using this week to reflect each and every crack in Smashing Magazine that has been nagging at us. No distractions, (almost) no emails, tweets or Facebook updates, no Skype calls — just 60 hours of focused, uninterrupted work.
While we’re (kind of) away this week, we’d be more than happy to leave you with a 15% discount on all of our lovely Smashing products — whether it’s a Smashing Book, an eBook, the entire Smashing Library, or even a Smashing Workshop. If you’ve ever thought about picking one of these up, now is the time to do it. We’d like to express a sincere thank you for all of your support, and for following us throughout the years!

Adaptive images are the current hot topic in conversations about adaptive and responsive Web design. Why? Because no one likes any of the solutions thus far. New elements and attributes are being discussed as a solution for what is, for most of us, a big headache: to provide every user with one image optimized for their display size and resolution, without wasting time, memory or bandwidth with a client-side solution.
We have foreground and background images. We have large and small displays. We have regular and high-resolution displays. We have high-bandwidth and low-bandwidth connections. We have portrait and landscape orientations.
Some people waste bandwidth (and memory) by sending high-resolution images to all devices. Others send regular-resolution images to all devices, with the images looking less crisp on high-resolution displays.
What we really want to do is find the holy grail: the one solution that sends the image with the most appropriate size and resolution based on the browser and device making the request that can also be made accessible.
The “clown car” technique is the closest thing we’ve got to a holy grail: leveraging well-supported media queries, the SVG format and the <object> element to serve responsive images with a single request. The solution isn’t perfect yet, but it’s getting close.

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one—desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd.
This creativity mission has been going on for over five years now, and we are very thankful to all the designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month. This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for June 2013. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!

Whether you offer free or premium themes, testing should be a major part of your development process. By planning in advance, you can foster a development environment that deters some bugs by design and that helps you prevent others. The aim of this article is to share some of the tricks I use personally during and after development to achieve a bug-free product.
This article is split into three distinct sections:
Setting up,
Development phase,
Final testing.
This should give you a good overview of what you can do over the course of the development cycle. I invite everyone to chime in with their own tips in the comments. I’d be interested to hear your tips on testing WordPress themes!

Responsive Web design has been around for some years now, and it was a hot topic in 2012. Many well-known people such as Brad Frost and Luke Wroblewski have a lot of experience with it and have helped us make huge improvements in the field. But there’s still a whole lot to do.
In this article, we will look at what is currently possible, what will be possible in the future using what are not yet standardized properties (such as CSS Level 4 and HTML5 APIS), and what still needs to be improved. This article is not exhaustive, and we won’t go deep into each technique, but you’ll have enough links and knowledge to explore further by yourself.

Once again, it’s time to join in on a Smashing Magazine photography contest. You might remember or took part in our popular Coffee Mug Contest in 2011, which drew over 470 entries. This time, we are not interested in the vessel that holds your daily intake of caffeine, but rather in the object that fuels your creativity and inspiration.

I recently travelled 2517 miles to try to solve 50 problems in 50 days using design — a journey that would challenge me to fundamentally rethink my understanding of the user-experience design process.
I set myself a challenge. I wanted to test the limits of design’s ability to solve problems — big and small. To do this, I left the comfort of my computer chair and set out into the unknown. Each day, I had 24 hours to observe a problem, attempt to solve it and then communicate the solution.
On my own shoestring budget, from grimy backstreet hostels to bustling cities, I travelled Europe attempting to solve a different social problem that I observed every day. The project itself was an incredible experience. Some days, my solutions were OK, some days I failed, and some days the solutions were great. The point, however, was not to succeed, but to get up every day and try again — even when I had failed the day before.
The adventure taught me an unbelievable amount about design’s power to solve problems and about my own capacities as a designer. Importantly, it honed my ability to think through and tackle problems rapidly.

If you want to learn how to composite photos together to produce a realistic scene in Photoshop, matte paintings are a great place to start. Matte paintings often involve the combination of several photos to produce an environment that could not or does not exist in real life. This means that in order to produce a photo realistic scene, you’ll need to know how to cleanly extract specific pieces of photography and how to place those elements to produce the exact look you are going for.
In this Tuts+ Premium tutorial by Bobby Myers, we will show you how to combine photo manipulation and digital painting techniques to create a desert oasis in Photoshop. This tutorial is available exclusively to Tuts+ Premium Members and includes both written and video content. If you are looking to take your matte painting and photo manipulation skills to the next level then Log in or Join Now to get started!

We are excited to announce a fantastic new workshop led by Instructor Martin Perhiniak: Photoshop and Lightroom for Photographers
Are you an aspiring photographer with the desire to take your skills to the next level? Learn everything you need to know about Adobe’s two most important applications for photographers: Photoshop and Lightroom.
Develop a professional workflow, learn invaluable editing techniques, and master all the tools of your craft in our newest Workshop.
Early Bird tickets are now available for only $49, but places are strictly limited so act fast to make sure you don’t miss out!

This tutorial is the first part of a new short series called ” The Comprehensive Guide to Color in Photoshop.” In this tutorial, we will discuss how to set up your Swatches panel, how to work with the Preset Manager, how to choose and save new Swatches and how to export them from Photoshop. Let’s get started!

Envato (the people behind Psdtuts+) have recently launched a new service, currently in beta, called Microlancer. It’s a place where people can sell their creative services, or get creative work done.
The difference between Microlancer and other freelance job sites is that every Microlancer service is sold at a fixed price chosen by the service provider, which must fall within a reasonable range for the value of the service. In other words, no $5 jobs! Services are also generally smaller jobs that take less than a day to complete. The end goal is that selling or buying design services on Microlancer feels a little like selling or buying items in an online store: fast, easy, and affordable.

Children have quite an imagination. When you were young, you probably dreamed of having a cute cuddly best friend. Boy or girl, there is a good chance that you had a stuffed animal at some point in your life. What if those stuffed animals were real, however? In this article, we will take a look at the work of Cindy de Sousa. Cindy’s illustrations are filled with bright-eyed, cuddly creatures that most children would love to call their best friend.

Steampunk is popular style of artwork. Artists create modern objects from materials found during an earlier time. In this Tuts+ Premium tutorial by Benjamin Mounsey, we will show you how to create a steampunk illustration of farm equipment assembled from an earlier post-apocalyptic period of war. This tutorial is available exclusively to Tuts+ Premium Members and includes both written and video content. If you are looking to take your digital illustration skills to the next level then Log in or Join Now to get started!

This Month’s Challenge and Review
This month we asked for your help in choosing the theme and you picked, Recreate A Famous Movie Poster. For this challenge, use Photoshop combined with any additional application or technique of your choice to produce your artwork. Remember, the deadline for this challenge is Tuesday, July 2, 2013 at 11:59 PM EST.
Artist James White will also be joining the Google Hangout Review for this month’s challenge. Welcome him with us and stay tuned after the challenge for the official Google Hangout link to enjoy the design review live!

Making selections is an essential skill for any Photoshop user. In this tutorial, we are going to show you 10 ways to modify a selection in Photoshop. By watching this video, you will be able to understand the connection between all the selection features Photoshop offers including; Feather, Contract, Expand, Border, Smooth, Refine Edge, Quick Mask, Color Range, Transform Selection and many more. Let’s get started!

Adobe Photoshop is a fantastic tool for editing photos but unfortunately, it lacks the options that photographers need to manage and edit large numbers of photographs. In this tutorial, we will show you how to use Photoshop and Lightroom to seamlessly edit your photos. We will begin by making some adjustments to a RAW photo in Lightroom. Then, we will show you how to export that photo to Photoshop to make additional changes. Finally, we will then explain how those edits will be made available to you in Lightroom automatically. Let’s get started!


Source: http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-tips/integrate-lightroom-into-photoshop-workflow/

Your initial sketch is one of the most important elements of a digital illustration or painting. Your initial sketch will set the tone of the rest of your artwork so it is important to get it right. Every artist has their own method of producing a sketch. Some artists sketch from memory, some sketch from a reference. In this tutorial, we will show you how to use a grid to help you sketch from a reference image. We will then show you how to turn that sketch into a realistic-looking "Man of Steel" inspired digital painting that conveys the same feel and intensity as the official promotional material of the movie with the addition of some strong lighting and motion effects. Let’s get started!


Source: http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/illustration/man-of-steel-fan-art/

The new version of Photoshop is finally here! Adobe Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud) is now available for download for Creative Cloud Subscribers. The new version includes several new features including Camera Shake Reduction, Camera RAW improvements, Image Upsampling, Properties Panel Improvements, Behance Integration, Sync Settings, and many more useful features. In this article, Martin Perhiniak will explain these new features in a series of video tutorials. Let’s take a look!


Source: http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-tips/photoshop-cc-features/

Infographics are an efficient and fun way to present data. You may notice, however, that infographics are often flat vector illustrations. What if you wanted to create something a bit more photo realistic? In this tutorial, we will show you how to create a soil cake using photographic elements for use in pie charts. Let’s get started!


Source: http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/soil-cake-pie-charts-and-infographics/

Photoshop CS6 has arrived! Discover the hottest new features. Hear what the world's best designers have to say about this new version. 

 

Those looking for the much-heralded Deblur filter will be disappointed: it's far too early for inclusion this time around. In fact, those looking for big splashy show-off features in Photoshop CS6 will also be looking in vain. (Check out reviews of the other apps in Adobe CS6.)

• NEW UPDATE! Jump to our 'designer views' section where you can see the features other designers love in Photoshop CS6

Adobe Photoshop CS6 is largely an under-the-bonnet release, bringing a few new tools and filters but concentrating on greater speed, efficiency and ease of use. But the improvements are great, and this Photoshop CS6 review will reveal all!

Dreamweaver CS6 has added new tools for working with sites that scale from desktop, to tablet, to phone, using some of the latest CSS features. 

 

The web doesn't stay still, and new browsers and new technologies mean changes to your sites. With the explosion in mobile browsing, those changes are now bigger than ever before. Even so, Dreamweaver CS6 is still the familiar app with the same mix of design and code, and support for just about any web authoring technology you can think of.

Adobe Illustrator CS6 is here, and boasts the same appearance updates as the other apps in Adobe's Creative Suite. But there's much more to this update than meets the eye. Discover the improvements to workflow, patterns and more in our in-depth review. 

Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard tool for vector drawing and illustration, used by a wide variety of creative professionals including editorial illustrators, identity designers, textile and pattern designers, UI designers, motion artists and many others. It's always been an incredibly versatile tool, thanks to a broad feature set, and of course the fact that vector graphics are infinitely scaleable and in most cases relatively lightweight.

Over the years the application has been given some quite remarkable features - from the Gradient Mesh in the 1998 release of version 8 to multiple art boards in CS4 and the Perspective Grid in CS5 (which Adobe ported across from FreeHand, the tool it bought from Macromedia and then phased out), it is a behemoth of an application, whether you want to create photorealistic illustrations or slick logos. So, what has Adobe done in Adobe Illustrator CS6? A facelift, some speed improvements, a few tweaks and one major addition that illustrators and designers in particular will love are all on the agenda.

Adobe After Effects has a huge user base in the motion graphics and animation sectors, and Adobe After Effects CS6 enables you to deliver more cinematic visual effects and sophisticated motion graphics than ever before! 

 

 

Adobe After Effects has a huge user base in the motion graphics and animation sectors, so any update to the power of this venerable compositing workhorse will be eagerly scrutinised by those working in broadcast and cross-media applications. Luckily for those artists (and Adobe), After Effects CS6 will do nothing to tarnish its status and appeal.

With the continued growth of digital publishing, Adobe InDesign CS6 is packed with new features that enable you to not only design for print, but for tablet devices, too. But does this new version live up to expectations?

The launch of any new iteration of the Creative Suite is hyped to the extreme by Adobe, which knows that there's an army of fanatics out there eager to lap up every new whizz-bang feature, tweak and addition regardless of how subtle some of them may seem to the slightly more jaded reviewer. Amidst all this hoopla, Photoshop, without exception, takes the lion's share of the limelight, followed by Illustrator and After Effects, leaving InDesign languishing in fourth place in the attention and column inches stakes.

Although Adobe InDesign CS6 perhaps isn't the most glamourous or exciting of the apps within the CS6 roster, for designers and creative professionals alike - who use it extensively on a daily basis - any new additions are certainly worth taking note of. The question is, though, after such a major overhaul with CS5, and then subsequently 5.5, what substantial additions can this new version offer that would warrant the cash outlay to upgrade?

Fans of Flash should be happy with the updates made in Adobe Flash CS6. The app includes a host of new and improved features, as Adobe's animation workhorse strives to stay up-to-date with emerging web technologies. Our review tells all!

Welcome to the new version of Adobe Flash Pro, Flash Pro CS6, or 12 if you want to keep count. Over the last 24 months web development has seen a change in focus. Where rich content was the bastion of Flash and Flex, now HTML5 and various JavaScript libraries have taken on some of that responsibility. However, Flash has always had the luxury of being ahead of the curve when it comes to new features and new areas to expand and extend in to.

Premiere Pro has been Adobe's stalwart desktop video editing tool for many years, often outperforming rivals at the consumer end, but it struggled to impact on the broadcast market. Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 is taking on the big guns, though! 

 

Until recently Adobe Premiere Pro has failed to make much of an impression on a broadcast market dominated by Avid and Apple. That all changed with the introduction of the Mercury Playback Engine, and Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 takes the app to the next level.

This was further refined in CS5.5 to allow users to open projects faster, get real-time feedback for more GPU-accelerated features, and work more smoothly at 4k and higher resolutions. Premiere Pro, on the Mac at least, saw another leap in sales as people switched to Adobe and Avid in droves after Apple 'reengineered' Version X of Final Cut Pro FCP and completely changed the interface

Adobe has announced Creative Cloud availability from the 23rd May, and here's the nitty-gritty detail on what you get, and what it'll cost ...

The Adobe Creative Cloud was announced on the 23rd April, providing creatives with a new way of accessing Adobe CS6, as well as a host ofother great Adobe tools (such as Typekit). Adobe has announced Creative Cloud availability from the 23rd May, and here's the nitty-gritty detail on what you get, and what it'll cost ...

What is Adobe Creative Cloud?

On the one hand, the Adobe Creative Cloud embraces digital downloads and it represents a major shift in the way Adobe will provide its creative software in the future.

Rather than sticking to boxed products and an inadequate upgrade cycle, Adobe CS6 and its related creative tools will be part of an Internet-based creative hub. Adobe wants you to purchase a yearly subscription to access/download the Creative Suite software.

How will this work? Despite the 'Cloud' moniker, Adobe's Creative Suite isn't becoming a cluster of online applications. Instead, a typical subscription will give you on demand access to the Adobe CS6 Master Collection, which will include all the tools you know and love - Photoshop CS6, InDesign CS6, Illustrator CS6, After Effects CS6 and so on.

Here's a full run-down.

What you get with your Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

Lightroom and Adobe Touch apps

As you can see from the screenshot above, a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud also includes a bunch of extra apps, tools and services. These include Lightroom 4, Adobe Edge and Adobe Muse, plus the new Adobe Touch apps:

Adobe Photoshop Touch

Core Photoshop tools optimised for tablet devices

Adobe Debut

Present your Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign files on your tablet

Adobe Proto

Easily create website wireframes and prototypes

Adobe Collage

Combine different files to make an idea-driven mood board

Adobe Ideas

Sketch out concepts with vectors, layers and colour schemes

Adobe Kuler

An app-based extension of the Kuler colour theme generator

Installation and the Cloud

Particular attention has been paid to the easy installation of apps, which isn't something Adobe is particularly well known for. Having registered for Adobe's Creative Cloud, you are presented with an apps screen. Simply select an app, and then hit download - it's that simple.

You also get 20GB of Dropbox-style cloud storage thrown in, giving you the ability to sync content across different devices. Adobe Business Catalyst, meanwhile, will give you an easier way to offer website hosting for clients.

Syncing is full of win

Having seen the service being demonstrated at the official launch, there's a seamless nature to the transferal and placement of files. You can add files to the cloud via a folder that can be access traditionally through Finder and the like, or you can drag files directly into the browser. An icon, which sits in your taskbar, indicates that files are being synced.

The Adobe Creative Cloud subscription also includes access to the web font library Typekit. You essentially get the Portfolio plan (worth $49.99 per year) for free - 500,000 page views/month, full library access, unlimited website usage, unlimited fonts per site and SSL serving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You get free access to Typekit with an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

Lastly, the Digital Publishing Suite Single Edition is a tool for turning graphics/layouts into interactive iPad apps. Handy.

Adobe is keen to point out that its Creative Cloud offers more than digital downloads. "The vision for Adobe Creative Cloud is to turn previously difficult, disparate workflows into one intuitive, natural experience, so our customers can create freely and deliver ideas on any desktop, tablet, or handheld device."

Community in Adobe's Create Cloud

Community is a massive part of Adobe's Creative Cloud, and a lot of work has been put into this part of the service. Subscribers will get access to 20GB of server space, where they can store files. But it doesn't stop there. These files can then be shared with other subscribers - and even people not subscribing - with all Adobe's supported file types being visible in a browser view (so the app doesn't have to be installed by the person viewing the file). You can also see file information, such as which fonts were used in a project, as Adobe exposes meta data to the person viewing a file.

Do you actually need a subscription?

There are pros and cons to the Adobe Creative Cloud approach. If you only use one or two of the Creative Suite applications, you might prefer stumping up a one-off payment. Adobe isn't discontinuing its physical products just yet.

But Adobe is going all-out to make it worth your while to become a subscriber. Both Mac and PC versions are included as part of the basic subscription. You simply download the version that's right for you. With two user licenses per subscription, you can install the tools on up to two machines.

Subscription model

The subscription model also means that Adobe can keep pace with changing technology, add new features and deliver upgrades between traditional boxed copy upgrade cycles. Subscribers will get updates and add-ons as soon as Adobe is ready to roll them out.

Adobe says that it aims "to provide you with maximum flexibility, lower cost of entry, and most importantly the ability for Adobe to deliver cutting-edge innovation on an ongoing basis, to keep you ahead of the changing technology and device landscape."

OK. But how much will it cost?

Adobe Creative Cloud: pricing and availability info

An annual subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud will cost £38.11 and $49.99.

Adobe Creative Suite 6 products and Adobe Creative Cloud will be available by 23rd May. Adobe Creative Cloud membership will be available to customers in 36 countries and in multiple languages. Pricing for Creative Cloud membership for individuals in the UK is £38.11 ex VAT per month, based on annual membership and £57.17 ex VAT per month for month-to-month membership. A special introductory offer of £22.23 ex VAT per month for CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS5.5 individual customers is also available. Customers paying in the US pay $49.99 each month, on a one year contract (with a special $29.99 offer for CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS5.5 individual customers). Finally, if you're paying in Euros then it's 49.99, and 29.99 with the special offer. For more info on the product, and pricing, visit the official Adobe Creative Cloud page.

This is not a normal Smashing Magazine post. I’m not going to teach you something new or inspire you with examples of great work. Instead, I want to encourage you to complete a Web design challenge. I believe this will help to address a weakness that exists in many of our design processes.
If you complete this challenge, it will make it easier for clients to sign off on your designs, and it will improve the quality of your work.
So, what are we waiting for? Let’s get started.


Source: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/09/21/are-you-ready-for-a-web-design-challenge/

Texture is becoming integral to design. It’s gone beyond being a trend — it’s now a simple and effective way to add depth to a website. Wielding the power of texture is a great responsibility. It increases the effectiveness of websites and is a quality tool in the arsenal of designers. It can guide the user’s eye and emphasize the importance of key elements.
However, texture has long been synonymous with “dirty” or “grungy” design. Its overuse can be seen throughout the world of music group websites and has left a bad taste in the mouths of designers. Due to its frequent misuse, its benefits have long been overlooked. Texture can bring a website together, but should not be the main focus.


Source: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/03/whys-hows-textures-web-design/