What an incredible deal we have for you this week! Have you heard of the new Startup Design Framework, or Flat UI Pro, or even The Bricks UI? Of course you have, they are all design products from the guys over at DesignModo.com! Well, they have been kind enough to allow us to offer our readers a phenomenal 25% discount on all products from their shop (of course this does include the Startup Design Framework). All you have to do is use the coupon code speckyboy at the checkout.

Product Overview: Startup Design Framework

Built by the guys over at DesignModo.com, the Startup Design Framework contains a multitude of components and complex blocks that can easily be integrated into almost any design. All of the components have been designed and built in the same style making them very easy to integrate into your projects, allowing you to create hundreds of solutions for your future projects.

Check out this product overview video:

The package includes 25 ready-to-use start-up design samples. By choosing one of the 25 configurations the creation process is simple and easy.

You decide whether to use the UI Kit blocks or samples. The samples can be used as a real-world guide for using the components. And the biggest advantage when using the Startup Design Framework is that all of the blocks within the samples are markup-ready (Less/HTML/CSS).

Grab this deal now:

This year has brought powerful new UI concepts, open source projects, and new hacks/tricks for web designers and developers. Those who are interested in what makes good web design have probably noticed the steady improvements. Looking back even one decade to 2003 you’ll find the Internet and the WWW have come a long way.

In this article I want to reflect back back over 2013 at some of the more popular web design trends. Some have been going on for years, but I noticed a peak this year with more designers accepting and even improving upon these techniques.

Dynamic Web Forms

This has been one of my favorite topics worth discussing because of the incredible advancements with jQuery plugins. I like to demo many JS libraries, yet jQuery is still my personal choice for any new project.

I recently found a very handy resource which collects jQuery form plugins to improve user experience. There are other plugins on there too, but the growing category has me giddy every time I visit. You’ll find things like floating labels, input validation, custom radio buttons, checkboxes, even select dropdown menus. There has never been more opportunity to scrap the generic inputs and create your own beautiful interactive web form.

Single-Page Layouts

Websites that don’t have a lot of contextual information will often structure around a single page. This trend has been going on for years, but it has also been evolving to encapsulate newer design trends.

Fixed navigation menus that scroll along with the visitor have grown to be commonplace. This allows the designer to split content into section on the page, where the navigation is more like a scrolling bar to quickly jump around these sections. Parallax single-page websites utilize this same feature with dynamic background elements.

Designers or creative artists with an online portfolio sometimes gravitate towards these layouts. You can present your work and some details about yourself, greatly reducing HTTP requests over long periods of time. Just contemplate all the ideas surrounding single page websites and you’ll find yourself brainstorming other potential avenues for a success interface.

Animated Page Elements

I would argue this is still an emerging trend with some curious developers leading the way. Notably I find page animations in many ThemeForest WordPress Portfolio themes. Check out Bluap to understand what I’m talking about.

These page animations can be made with CSS3 keyframes, along with JavaScript for element detection in the browser window. This trend is entirely aesthetic because it doesn’t create any new content or add to the UI except for neat visuals. Plus not everyone can support this feature on older computers or mobile devices.

More detailed page animations can be often found in mobile Android/iOS app websites. Since these are usually single-paged layouts the goal is to captivate visitors into downloading a copy. I have a feeling we will see more of these animated effects in the future.

Infinite Scrolling

This was a tough cookie to crack when I first got into it. There are some free open source plugins to get started even in CMS projects like WordPress. But customizing the loader, the animation, how many items are loaded, and the experience for visitors without JavaScript will take some time.

That said, I feel Internet users are slowly growing accustomed to this infinite scroll technique. The Reddit Enhancement Suite has an option to automatically use infinite scrolling at the bottom of every page. This is also true on Tumblr and some eCommerce sites. Ajax for paginated items will be quicker than waiting for each new page to finish loading.

It should be noted that you will want a fallback mechanism in circumstances where this doesn’t load properly. It helps to setup a pagination div with links to each new page, and once that div comes into view trigger an Ajax call(if possible). Infinite pagination can be extended to more formal blogs and even other social networking/social media projects.

Detailed Typography

Although this trend has been growing for a few years I’m still blown away to see all the websites utilizing custom font families. The CSS3 @font-face declaration can provide access to any web-safe fonts you have stored on the server.

Google also provides an exceptional font service through Google Web Fonts. The team is infrequently updating with new stuff while keeping all the older fonts, too. The best part of using Google is that their hosting never costs you a dime no matter how much traffic you pull. Premium font services like Typekit have a much more inclusive library to choose from – but this comes with a price tag.

Putting these custom fonts aside, modern laptops and PCs have been prepackaged with a load of great fonts. As more computer users upgrade to better systems we can expect this trend to improve. Try playing with an online webapp such as CSS Font Stack to organize different styles for your website based around the Operating System defaults.

Vector Icons

My first thought with icons always comes back to CSS3 web fonts. Font Awesome is a tremendously popular library which includes hundreds of unique icons. These can be displayed as feature icons, or even as glyphs on buttons for a user interface. You may also enjoy the selection on Flaticon.

But vector icons are extending far beyond this general font-based solution. Take a look at this photo icon and this currency icon, both styled as iOS 7 apps. These are built using pure CSS code and may be resized at will. There are plenty of other examples out there much like these buttons – I can only imagine how quickly this trend will grow in time.

One other point to make about vector icons is the use of SVG file types. These are natural vectors that do not contain pixels, but mathematical coordinates explaining how to draw the image for any resolution. You can read more at this article which delves deeper into scalable SVG images. Many of these ideas are still new but definitely cultivating support.

Going into 2014

Each year I think of all the growing trends I’ve seen in typical websites. I don’t think of these trends as predictions, but more like patterns I have noticed over time. Web designers are very creative and the most talented artists will push boundaries to see what can be achieved. Here are some alternative trends gaining attention that may span over into 2014.

Customized Digital Media

Back when I first got into building websites MP3 players were created using Adobe Flash. JavaScript was actually less supported because many browsers left it disabled, and there were no powerful open source libraries(ex: MediaElement.js).

Video players like you would find on YouTube were also created in Adobe Flash + ActionScript. Thankfully years of progress have offered a better solution integrating HTML5 video with JavaScript/Flash fallbacks. The MediaElement.js script can be styled to mirror the classic YouTube video player, among many other skins.

This player will be constructed with HTML5/CSS3/JS in supporting browsers. Since HTML5 isn’t supported everywhere, older browsers fallback to a Flash/Silverlight alternative which can also be styled in a similar fashion. Overall support varies, but as time goes on I hope these new media solutions will become a standard solution for audio/video playback.

Interactive Webapps

Web 2.0 started this trend of accepting data from users en-masse. Databases and server farms have kept up with capacity so we can see these websites becoming more prominent. I could imagine a phase in the near future where basic HTML5/CSS3/JS web applications are built to serve various occupations.

Web enthusiasts are often the first to attempt these mini webapps. I think of projects like InstantName or GenerateWP. But imagine these applications branching into real estate, stocks & bonds, cooking, manufacturing, etc. If these ideas catch on we may see a rise in designers building HTML5 websites to look like native Android or iOS applications.

Lively Page Backgrounds

How cool would it be to generate on-the-fly CSS3 patterns for a repeating background? What about parallax-style elements built using dynamic vectors or PNG images? We can already find plenty of websites using fullscreen images or videos – and this may be only the start of something much greater.

If designers are truly curious over unique backgrounds we may stumble onto a vast new realm of possibilities. Global support is always going to be a problem, but the more centralized W3C standards become the easier it will be to experiment.

Closing

Keep yourself busy practicing your ideas and even learning some new ones. If you just keep practicing then you will inevitably run into challenges, solve them, and grow as a designer. 2013 has been a shocking and joyous year for design enthusiasts. I hope to see even more creative energy as we push onward into 2014.

Today, for all the web designers out there we bring you a huge collection of the best and most popular web and mobile GUI kits and templates from last year. The kits do come in many different styles, but as you would expect the flat design trend (2013 really was the year of flat!) and the new iOS7 style from Apple are heavily represented. For the most part the kits are primarily available in PSD and AI formats, but we also have some templates in SVG, Fireworks, Graffle and Sketch formats.

Here they are:

GUI Web Templates

Flat Blog UI Kit (PSD Format)

Flat Blog UI Kit

With the number of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets ever on the rise, having a desktop-only website can be really harmful for your blog or magazine website. Not only does it deprive you of potential mobile visitors, it also shuts down numerous monetization channels that you can easily make use of. Obviously, in an age where mobile operating systems are more talked about than their desktop counterparts, ignoring your mobile visitors is one risk that you just cannot take.

That said, it is obviously an icing on the cake if your blog or magazine has its own mobile app. In this article, I shall be discussing the benefits of having a native mobile app, as well as taking a closer look at one service that lets you get a mobile app for your website in the easiest manner possible.

The Importance of Having A Mobile App

You might ask: why should one go for a mobile app, and not just a mobile site? After all, won’t using a responsive or adaptive website that caters to mobile users be sufficient? To some extent, yes it will be sufficient. However, a mobile app has added advantages of its own: you can use push notifications to alert your users each time you post new content (this is precisely why I use the GMail app and do not visit the GMail mobile site).

Mobile apps also allow you to offer a smooth and native experience, and you can even allow offline browsing, so that your users stay updated with your content even when their data plans are not unlimited. Plus, by promoting your app on the Apple App Store and/or Google Play, you can easily attract newer audiences. And lastly, you can also enhance your revenue by making use of specialized mobile ad networks, such as AdMob and several others.

Just in case you are still stuck with the old question of whether or not you need a mobile app for your website or business, read this article wherein I had talked about the pros and cons of having your own mobile app.

Sounds Good! How Do I Get One?

There are several ways using which you can get a mobile app for your business/website. If you have the required skills, time and resources, you may consider coding one yourself — in that case the rest of this article is probably not meant for you.

However, not everyone has the required skills, time or resources, and this is where specialized services for mobile app creation come in handy. You can hire a developer who can create a custom mobile app for your website. This will be the costliest option, though, because no decent custom mobile app can be created for less than a few thousands of dollars (not to mention additional fees if you want your app to support multiple mobile platforms).

If budget is something that bothers you, allow me to introduce you to Mobiloud.

Mobiloud: Turning WordPress Websites into Mobile Apps

Developing a mobile app can be a time-consuming and expensive process. Mobiloud intends to change this very notion. Simply put, Mobiloud is a service that lets you transform any RSS-supported website into a native mobile app, thereby letting you offer push notifications and other app-worthy features to your mobile readers, and simultaneously opening up new monetization channels for you!

Based in the UK and managed by 50Pixels, Mobiloud helps publishers, bloggers and content creators build native mobile apps for iOS and Android within minutes (and at extremely budget-friendly rates).

How Does it Work?

The idea is simple: instead of doing things the tougher way, Mobiloud’s apps simply gather content automatically from your website or blog; you can also configure them to show content from your Twitter or Facebook pages. Your readers can easily get push notifications about new articles, share content they like and even comment on your articles. You can monetize your app as well, as per your needs!

While Mobiloud supports virtually any CMS with RSS support, WordPress websites are obviously at the top of the helm, and there is a special plugin for WordPress users.

The best part about Mobiloud is that unlike various other alternatives out there, it offers ‘native’ mobile apps — therefore, your mobile app will work and feel like a real app, not just another blog with content patched on to it. Don’t trust me? Hit the demo!

How Much Does it Cost?

In terms of pricing, the Professional Plan costs $49 per month (billed per annum). It offers you an iPhone/iPad app, along with push notifications, download statistics, monetization and support.

If you need Android apps as well and Google Analytics, you can try the Publisher plan which costs $99 per month (again, billed annually). Just in case that doesn’t impress you, Mobiloud also have custom app programs wherein you can discuss custom page layouts, additional CMS integrations and app graphic design.

Is it Worth it?

TL;DR: Yes!

Some time back, SpeckyBoy launched its own mobile app for iOS devices, built by Mobiloud. Quite obviously, Mobiloud is our preferred and most trusted solution when it comes to creating mobile apps!

However, Mobiloud may not be for everyone. If you do not need a fully branded native mobile app, and are instead just looking to publish a mobile website, investing in Mobiloud’s services might not be apt for your requirements.

On the other hand, if you are looking to create a native mobile app for iOS/Android users right from your WordPress website, you should by all means give Mobiloud a spin. All you need to do is install the plugin, and then design your app within minutes. You can try and test your app in the browser itself, and once you’re all ready to go, Mobiloud will get your app up and running within a few days for a small monthly fee.

Considering the fact that the number of mobile users is ever on the rise, and apps provide a way better user experience as compared to mere mobile-friendly websites, having a mobile app can help any blog or website gain an edge over the competition. In such cases, solutions like Mobiloud become all the more important and useful.

Sometimes, as web and digital designers, we can get trapped in our little world of computers and software, attempting to work out the solution to our clients’ design problems, but failing to make any real breakthroughs. If you often find yourself stuck in a rut of technology, sometimes the best solution is just to get up from your desk and go experience the world outside. But what should a designer pay attention to specifically that will help get them past creative block?

Today, we’ll explore some options and discuss possible solutions.

Co-Opting The Outside World

Product and environmental designers often preach that designers need to use the world around them to create their own design solutions to problems. But what about web designers, or brand managers, or creative directors? I think the same principle still applies no matter what kind of design you do. Design, in general, is about going beneath the surface of a problem to find out the best approach. Even if it’s on a computer screen, the user experience of a design is highly customizable and subjective.

Giving The Design To The People

As much as we designers might wish otherwise, we have no control over how people choose to interact with our work. But even though that’s true, sometimes the most interesting and innovative public phenomena can come from it. Sweater bombing, street art, geocaching – all of these are unorthodox uses of things in the world that nonetheless provide a completely new and compelling experience.

Design Leaders And Setting Precedents

People make their own ‘tools’ and solutions based on what’s around them. When you’re walking in the park and you see a tree that someone has used as a resting place for their bike, that’s design in action. Some brilliant ‘designer’ has decided that this tree is the perfect size and shape for a bike rest, and it’s very likely that other cyclists will see that and think ‘hmm, that’s a great idea – I think I’ll park my bike on a tree as well.’ Think about how you can use this same concept in your own design. Is there another ‘use’ for your design that a user might see but you don’t?

[Image Source]

Using Others As Peripheral Vision

The opportunities for improving your designs all around you. If you’re too close to your own work (and who isn’t from time to time?) ask a friend or even a stranger to give you a quick evaluation. Observe how they interact with your design. If they point out something that you missed – say, a more efficient way to contact other users, or a better use for some feature you’ve been working on – don’t take those observations lightly. This is design fitting itself within real people’s lives, and you’d be ill-advised to ignore it.

Tiny Changes

Sometimes, even the smallest adjustments to a design can make the hugest difference in how easy and enjoyable it is for people to use. Putting a call to action button at the top of the screen rather than in the sidebar. Making the navigation icons a contrasting color so they will ‘pop’ more. Increasing the font size just a bit more than what you think most people can see (this is a big one for me). Tiny, seemingly insignificant changes like these can take your design from ignored to overwhelmingly popular in a flash.

Human Influence

Many times, people don’t even realize that they’ve created a design solution with their simple, everyday actions. If people are using your business card to write notes on the back, or to scribble down a relevant email address or extra phone number, this is gold you can mine for your next redesign. How are people reacting to the things you design? Polls and surveys can be immensely helpful here. Once your design goes live, it is part of the world, and people will use it however they see fit to get the most efficient result.

What Do You Think?

How do you create design solutions from the world around you? Is there anything you’ve learned from simple observation of people and their interactions with design? Tell us in the comments below.

Of late, a new writing service has taken the blogosphere by a storm. This one pitches itself as “a better place to read and write”. Yes, I am talking about Medium. As a platform that lets you share your thoughts and words, Medium is rising in popularity with each passing day. In other words, it is redefining blogging!

However, all said and done, Medium just does not seem to resonate with my liking. In this article, I shall talk about my adventures with Medium, and why I just cannot get myself to fall in love with it.

Overview

Allow me to disclaim: this is not a Medium-bashing article. In fact, there are many things about Medium that are outright awesome, and bigger names (including WordPress) can possibly learn a thing or two from them.

To begin with, the front-end editing and overall interface design is revolutionary and impressive beyond imagination. Blogger, WordPress.com and everyone else should pay heed to Medium — everything from the typography, the minimal editor and the look and feel encourages you to write!

Next, the analytics are pretty good too. While I would personally prefer something that has more depth, such as country views, referring keywords and incoming links etc., the stats at Medium in their present shape are good enough. In fact, the concept of Views vs Reads is amazing in its own right: how many times have you bothered to distinguish your blog’s traffic between random visitors and actual readers? Medium does that for you because obviously, not everyone who opens the page actually cares to read the content. There is surely room for improvement in Medium Analytics, but currently it is not a totally dismal picture either.

So if Medium is so good at what it does, why am I not entirely happy? Because what Medium does is not the same as what it is supposed to do.

The Bigger Picture

Note: This section will have a couple of links to my own Medium profile in order to get new readers explain my point properly.

So, since everyone all over the internet is talking about how Medium is redefining blogging, I decided to give it a spin and see if it can be used for my blogging needs.

And so I started writing, and yes, I loved the editor. Minimal, clean, non-infringing, nimble and impressive — if it were for me, I would’ve probably urged every publishing software around the world to employ this very editor.

Writing, editing, adding images, and publishing — the entire process is a breeze. And once published, the article looks pretty good too in terms of typography and appearance.

Beyond that, Medium also gave me all that I sought and expected. For instance, a comment system that ensures there shall be no spam (for people comment via their Twitter profiles):

And tools that encourage readers to share and recommend articles:

All of this, coupled with a no-nonsense interface and reader-friendly layout. For a moment, I felt that I had found the ideal platform to write on.

I said, for a moment!

Even though Medium offers tools that help readers share articles that they like, and also boosts reading and writing experience by grouping content under categories and collections, the way it implements these collections just threatens to send my readers to others’ content. Call me pompous or selfish, but when it comes to visitors and readers, my logic is simple: if someone has taken time to search for a particular topic and decided to read my writings on that given topic, I would prefer them to read my content and stay for as long as possible — not wander off to someone else’s write-up about self-medication tips. This is how even the biggest magazines and websites operate, don’t they? You don’t win readers and convert visitors into subscribers by referring them to other’s pages as soon as they come to yours!

Just to put things into perspective, on the same page, this is my article:

But wait, right at the end of the article, this is not me:

medium-other.png” />

Similarly, if I include my article(s) in any of the collections, those collections show up on my profile page.

image[5] align=’right’ border=’0′ style=’padding-left:10px;’ alt=” border=0 >

However, quite obviously, those collections are not exclusively mine (I can indeed create a new collection, and I believe that is the right thing to do, but why should I create a “Life Hacks” collection if one already exists?). Put it this way: in the above screenshot, I placed just one article in Life Hacks, and it appeared on my profile page. But when my readers click on this collection, hoping to find my writings in there, they won’t find my solitary article — the newest articles appear on top, and my single piece is nowhere to be seen after a few days. I felt that the best bet was to decide against using collections.

But wait, if I can send readers to others’ content, won’t others send visitors to mine? Probably, but I doubt if it is worth it. More often than not, anything that gets popular on Medium is picked by the editorial staff, and unless my articles make it to the Editor’s Picks section, I will just be giving away readers, and not receiving any.

Unless Medium cures this hole in the bucket, I doubt if I can use it for serious blogging. I would be happy if Medium allowed me to choose which collections appear on my profile, or just showed the articles that I have contributed to a given collection. Plus, and more importantly, when a reader is done reading my article, show them another of my own articles. Or even if you are really keen on showing somebody else’s content, please at least ensure that the particular article shares something in common with mine? What would someone, who has just finished reading my commentary about Middle East and nuclear weapons, do with an article about the need to write down your grocery list?

Conclusion

Make no mistake about it: Medium is indeed good. It has shown us the benefits of simplified writing and reading, and I strongly feel it deserves a lot of praise for that. However, IMHO, Medium is meant for collaborative writing, and not blogging.

We blog because we have something worth saying. Most bloggers seek subscribers, readers and attention. If Medium’s community-centric writing model continues to be mistaken for blogging, Medium might as well unknowingly kill the very reason why folks bother to write a blog. This model can offer exposure, but the attention shifts from the individual blogger to the platform itself.

Lastly, this is where tools such as Roon or Svbtle, though less popular than Medium, stand apart. Not only do they offer a minimal and no-frills writing and reading experience, they also adhere to the true definition of blogging — my readers at Svbtle (last attempt at self-promotion, I promise) can at least stick around and read my work sans repeated “Check this one out as well!” links.

What do you think of Medium? Is it actually blurring the line between collaborative writing and blogging? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Worth Reading

Learn to code JavaScript by playing the multiplayer game… CodeCombat

Meng To writes about Sketch and how it means designing as little as possible

CatsWhoCode have compiled their 10 Favorite PHP Frameworks for 2014

Ian Feather shares ten reasons why lonelyplanet.com switched from an icon font to SVG

20 elite Themeforest authors reveal their 5 favourite web design tools

Jeff Croft explains why he feels web standards killed the HTML

Maël Primet writes about fast interactive prototyping with Sketch and d3.js

Obinwanne Hill writes about how the Restive jQuery plugin and how it makes RWD easier

Shape hover effect tutorial with SVG by Mary Lou

David McKinney shares how he sets up Photoshop for UI design

New Resources & Services

Share-Button jQuery Plugin – A simple, light & flexible sharing button
0

Codebox – A complete and modular IDE, that can run on your desktop (Linux or Mac)
1

iconizr – A PHP command line tool for converting SVG images to a set of CSS icons
2

UYI – A growing library of user interface and interaction design animation patterns
3

Designer Freebies

Fullby – A feature-rich responsive Bootstrap theme for WordPress
4

The White Stripes UI Kit (PSD)
5

Combination UI Pack (PSD)
6

The most popular fonts of 2013 from MyFonts
7

…and finally…

CSS3 Shadows Darth Vader
8

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