1. Plan Your Route

Planning is one of the most important steps in any web design process. You should be planning out your content and your navigation before you pick up a pixel. Plan how you want your visitors to get from A to B on your website. Make sure they can get there as quickly as possible. Your most important content should be easy to access and at the top level.

2. Be Consistent

Your navigation needs to be consistent throughout your site. This means keeping your main navigation areas in the same place and ensuring that you use the same colors for links across the site. Your main menu should appear in the same place on every page, although you should feel free to have page specific sub-menus for drilling down into different content.

Using a different color(with a lesser saturation) for visited links and adding an icon to external links would make the site more accessible though.

3. Keep Clicks to a Minimum

Your visitor should be able to locate what they want as quickly as possible. This means that you should keep clicks down to a minimum. If a visitor has to spend more than minute searching for content then your navigation isn’t working. You can help to improve this by having a sitemap, pull down menus, anchor text and tables of contents.

4. Make it Easy to Get Home

These days the web design standard is for the logo to be located above “the fold” – i.e. is visible to the landing visitor before they scroll down the screen. This is usually linked to the home page. People browsing the web have come to expect this so you should make your logo clickable. In some cases it may also be appropriate to have a home button on your navigation bar. Should your visitors get lost (which they shouldn’t if you are following these steps) they should always be able to get back to your home page.

5. Be Searchable

Search functionality is such an important aspect of web navigation. A visitor should be able to search your site. This is particularly important if you have a large amount of content and pages. It will help your visitor to pinpoint what they want without having to manually search through your whole site to find it. Google makes it easy to add custom search functionality to your website with Google Custom Search Engine.

Adding the search functionality on 404 pages will be useful for the visitors to browse through other sections of your website.

6. Make the Wording Accurate

It has become trendy, in certain circles, to have navigation buttons that are pretty vague. You may think that this makes you look cool, that you’re breaking the mold, but really it can be annoying and frustrating for your visitors. If you have used wording in your navigation that you think makes you sound cool/clever/cutting-edge, change it. You should not assume that anyone else will have a clue what you are talking about. Not everyone else thinks like you, right? Keep your navigation language specific, direct and to the point.

7. Pagination

Some websites just have the next/previous button which doesn’t give any clue on the number of pages. Pagination simply means dividing the content into discrete pages. Can you imagine a book without pages?

This is useful especially for blogs, e-commerce websites, where the content blocks/product listings are huge in number.

8. Read More links

Visitors hate to read huge blocks of text content. They always prefer to read the excerpt and choose the one they like to read further. It would be a good idea to show excerpts (wherever applicable) with a “read more” button linking to the in-depth article.

9. Include a Site Map

A site map should be a key part of your navigation toolbox. This isn’t so important for small sites, although it can come in useful and is great for SEO, but if you have a huge site with lots of pages and information it is a necessity. When I visit a big institution’s website the first place I go to find what I need is the sitemap. You should make it easy for your visitor to find the link to your sitemap. This is often at the bottom of the page, but if it’s important to your navigation you could include a link in the main navigation bar. Some sites, like Apple, for example, include the whole of their sitemap in their footer.

10. Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are those little links at the top of a page, usually below the navigation bar, that show where you have been and where you are now. They make it easier for a visitor to figure out where they are at that moment, and how they got there. They take the form of Home > Sub-Page > Sub-Page.

11. Keep to the Essentials

Too many links on your navigation can end up causing it to be cluttered and confused. You should keep the top level of navigation for your most important content – i.e. the content that you want your visitors to get to first. Anything else can be dropped down a level or two. This helps to keep your navigation clear and focused. Sub-pages can be contained in dropdown menus and flyouts.
In some cases, it would be more meaningful to add icons.

12. Test

At the end of any web design process, you get to the next most important stage – testing. You need to test your navigation to make sure that it is actually a useful navigational tool. Don’t just test it yourself. Ask your friends and family, people unfamiliar with the site to test it for you. That pair of fresh eyes will help to pick up on any problems and inconsistencies. You should also test your navigation to make sure that it works cross-browser. You might find that your navigation bar appears differently in Firefox and Chrome, or that IE doesn’t like those rounded corners you’ve so lovingly added.
Follow these steps and you should be on your way to 100% navigation success!

Related posts:

1. A simple CSS based usability tip for search buttons
2. How to improve the page rank of your twitter profile page
3. IE CSS hack without using any hacks!

PS: The ranking details are provided just to give you an idea on how popular each website is. The information may vary day to day.

Creattica (** Registration Required)
Alexa Rank: 10802
Page Rank: 7
Famous in Countries: USA and India

Thedesigninspiration
Alexa Rank: 12877
Page Rank: 5
Famous in Countries: China, USA, India, Russia and Germany

Cardobserver
Alexa Rank: 76347
Page Rank: 5
Famous in Countries: USA and Canada

Ucreative (** Registration Required)
Alexa Rank: 182634
Page Rank: 5
Famous in Countries: India, USA and Serbia

Cardonizer
Page Rank: 4

PixelCards
Page Rank: 3

Cardspress
Page Rank: 2

Cardnerd
Page Rank: 2

Wslogos
Page Rank: 1

Cardview
Page Rank: 0

Cardgala
Page Rank: 0

Cardflare
Page Rank: 0

Related posts:

1. 22 Sites & Galleries to submit your logos
2. How to improve the page rank of your twitter profile page
3. Making gallery submissions easy for designers

Do you have the habit of hitting the search button multiple times even before it loads the search results? Well… I used to do that and so do many other users. Clicking the search button multiple times results in additional server requests and slows down the page’s loading time.

Why do users click again?

Because they are users! They aren’t developers who understand what happens in the back end.

Its our job as developers/designers to let the user know that the results are being loaded and to ask them to wait until it loads.

How do I do it with just CSS?

Its pretty simple. Click and hold the search button below and see.

I am sure, I don’t have to explain how it works for the experts, but if you are novice continue reading…

The trick is to use CSS sprites and show the animated loader image while the user clicks the button(on focus), indicating that the page is being loaded. You can download the sprite here.

Now, how do I avoid multiple clicks?

Its impossible to disable a button just with CSS, but we can ask the user to wait by replacing the hand/pointer with a “wait” cursor. So this is how the final CSS code looks like.


input.submit{
width:16px;
height:16x;
display:block;
overflow:hidden;
text-indent:-999px; /* To remove any default text on the button*/
line-height:16px; /* required for safari */
background:url(search-sprite.gif) no-repeat 0 0; /* This will display the search icon by default */
cursor:pointer; /* Hand cursor for the normal state */
border:none;
padding:0;
}

input.submit:active{
background-position: 0 -32px; /* And finally, this is the one that shows the loader */
cursor:wait; /* Shows the wait cursor on click */
}


If you really want to disable the button, check out this JQuery solution. And, don’t forget to put in your thoughts and ideas.

Related posts:

1. IE not interpreting text-indent on submit buttons ?
2. 10 CSS properties that ‘were’ impossible to implement in IE6
3. IE CSS hack without using any hacks!

Recently, while working on some client projects, I noticed a few requirements(I know there are many) that were common. I strongly feel, this will be useful for your next web project.

1. Empty form field value on focus/click

The requirement/issue:

This is a very common requirement. You would have noticed form fields that have a value by default which disappears when you click/focus on them. When you click outside, the value appears again.

Solution:
The jQuery emptyonclick Plugin works like a charm. All you need to do is download this plugin to your project directory and include the following code within the head tags.

Now add the class “emptyonclick” to all form fields that you would like to empty onclick.

You can find more about the usage here

2. Truncate lengthy text with either a “more” button or 3 dots at the end

The requirement/issue:

I am sure that most of you would already have faced this issue, especially with lengthy breadcrumbs. You don’t have to run behind and bother a programmer anymore for a solution.

Solution:

Truncate is an awesome jQuery plugin that helps you achieve this in seconds. Download the plugin and include the following code within the head tags

Replace the .classname with the class name of your HTML element that contains the text. Also, the number 60 in the code above is the maximum number of characters you would like to allow before truncating. Replace that with your value.

Adding a “more” link at the end of the text is another cool usage. You can find more about the usage here.

3. Adding classes to the first and last list items

The requirement/issue:

I don’t think there will be a HTML/CSS developer who haven’t abused wordpress for not adding first and last classes for their lists

Just imagine a menu that needs a different background for the first and last list item. You’ll find this handy when creating themes for a CMS like wordpress where you have no control over the HTML code.

Solution:

After spending a few minutes on google, I found this snippet

This can also be achieved using the :first-child and :last-child CSS pseudo-classes.

Related posts:

1. 10 CSS properties that ‘were’ impossible to implement in IE6
2. IE CSS hack without using any hacks!
3. IE not interpreting text-indent on submit buttons ?

Requirements
1. Firefox Sorry IE users!
2. InFormEnter AddOn for firefox
3. Details about your logo/website (will explain this below)
4. Image of your logo in various dimensions (will explain this as well)

I assume that you’ve already read my post – 22 Sites & Galleries to submit your logos. In this post I’ll walk you through my logo design submission process, which can be made use for CSS gallery submissions as well.

Step 1: Bookmarking the gallery forms

The first step is to bookmark all the submission forms of famous galleries. I know it’s not that easy, but trust me it will make things easy. Open a blank firefox window and then open all the logo gallery submission forms mentioned here in separate tabs. Once you’ve opened all, go to Bookmarks Menu > Bookmark All Tabs (or Shift + Cmd/Ctrl + D)

This would open a pop-up, wherein you can add a name for the bookmark folder. Choose ‘Bookmarks Toolbar’ from the dropdown and click the “Add Bookmarks button”.

Awesome! You’ve created a ‘Bookmark folder’ for your logo submission which you can now access from your Bookmarks toolbar.

Whenever you come across a new submission form you can add them to this folder.

Step 2: Prepare a list of all possible form fields

The next task is to make a list of all possible submission form fields. I’ve created one for logo design submission. If you’re the creator of the logo, the first 8 items remain same for all your logo submissions. We’ll see how to make use of this list in the next step.
————————————-
First Name
Last Name
Full Name
Email Id
Twitter Id
Designer Website Title
Designer Website URL
Designer Bio

Title/Name of the logo
Logo Punchline/tagline
Logo URL (if your logo is already online)
Description of logo
————————————-

Step 3: Using InFormEnter to fill the forms

I hope you’ve already installed this addon. If not do it right now, it’s really worth! Now you should see a blue arrow icon on the bottom right of your Firefox status bar. Click the icon and select “InFormEnter Options”.

So you have the pop-up ready to enter the list of form fields mentioned above. See the image below to know how I created the list for the “Beetle Nut” logo

Step 4: Prepare your images for submission

This is critical since the image dimensions accepted by each gallery varies. Here goes a list of sizes accepted by most logo galleries.
————————————-
284×130
300×180
320×260
325×260
394×197
400×400
500×247
500×300
550×338
620×340
640×360
880×440
————————————-
I usually create a folder for each logo, re-size the logos and name them based on these dimensions. But make sure the file size is low. See the images below.

This makes the form submission process easy!

Step 5: Start Submitting… Enjoy!

Once InFormEnter is activated you would notice a blue icon near each form field. Now all you need to do is click the icon and select the entry! As simple as that!

Do you already follow a better procedure? If so please share it here.

Related posts:

1. 22 Sites & Galleries to submit your logos
2. Twibies.com – The ultimate twitter resource for designers
3. Dark Elegance: A Free Drupal Theme

I’ve compiled a list of websites that accept logo submissions, along with the link to their submission forms. The ranking and other details of each site has been included as well, for your ease.

PS: The ranking details are provided just to give you an idea on how popular each website is. The information may vary from day to day.

Only three in the list requires registration to submit your logos

Logo From Dreams
Alexa Rank: 147286
Page Rank: 5
Famous in Countries: China, India, USA and Spain

Graphic Design Blog
Alexa Rank: 36183
Page Rank: 5
Famous in Countries: Pakistan, USA, India and Germany

The Design Inspiration
Alexa Rank: 17800
Page Rank: 5
Famous in Countries: USA, China and India

Logo Moose
Alexa Rank: 61436
Page Rank: 4
Famous in Countries: Pakistan, India, Indonesia, USA and UK

Logo Faves
Alexa Rank: 58238
Page Rank: 4
Famous in Countries: USA, India and Germany

Logo Critiques If you are actively looking for critiques, submit your logo here.
Alexa Rank: 312761
Page Rank: 4
Famous in Countries: USA and India

Type Based Exclusively for typographic logos.
Alexa Rank: 1526872
Page Rank: 4

Logofi
Alexa Rank: 240770
Page Rank: 4
Famous in Countries: Pakistan, Germany, Turkey, USA and India

Logo Fury
Alexa Rank: 166771
Page Rank: 3
Famous in Countries: USA, India, UK, Italy and Australia

Logo Galleria
Alexa Rank: 403497
Page Rank: 3
Famous in Countries: India, Indonesia and USA

Logo Gallery
Alexa Rank: 594609
Page Rank: 3
Famous in Countries: India, Malaysia and Indonesia

Logo Gallery Design
Alexa Rank: 1929224
Page Rank: 3
Famous in Countries: India

Logo Gala
Alexa Rank: 222652
Page Rank: 3
Famous in Countries: India, USA, Israel, Pakistan and Croatia

Logo Talkz
Alexa Rank: 754413
Page Rank: 3
Famous in Countries: Romania, USA and India

Czech Logos
Alexa Rank: 4,669,960
Page Rank: 3

Logoed All you need to do is submit an email to the admin
Alexa Rank: 1049291
Page Rank: 2

The Logo Mix
Alexa Rank: 1325361
Page Rank: 1
Famous in Countries: Germany

Logo Nest
Alexa Rank: 840171
Page Rank: 0
Famous in Countries: Canada, India, USA and UK

Registration required for the following sites

Creaticca
Alexa Rank: 11958
Page Rank: 6
Famous in Countries: USA, India, Germany and Pakistan

Logospire
Alexa Rank: 125330
Page Rank: 5
Famous in Countries: Turkey, USA, Belgium, Germany and India

Logo Pond
Alexa Rank: 11244
Page Rank: 3
Famous in Countries: USA, China, Germany and India

Before submitting to these websites just make sure that your logo is perfect!

Related posts:

1. How to improve the page rank of your twitter profile page
2. Twibies.com – The ultimate twitter resource for designers

Before reading further, I would suggest you to check the PR of your twitter profile page. Also try checking the PR’s of the giants. I’m glad to see Google Page Rank impacting the public social media profiles of services like twitter.

So what is Google looking for? Check out this quote from Marketing Professor.

What is Google Looking For?

* Credible inbound links from sources with credible inbound links
* Quality thematic content in their Twitter stream (jumping from dog training to affiliate marketing, to dieting in your twitter stream may get different results than sticking to one theme or topic of discussion… key phrases).
* Outbound links to credible sources.

It wouldn’t surprise me if they are also looking at social measures (retweets, locations, and @ replies).

The tips mentioned below are based on my experience, I would love to hear your suggestions (especially from SEO experts).

1. Quality of your tweets

Sharing quality links is of course the first and foremost thing. If you don’t share your followers wont care! If you want to gain the attention of bloggers, try your best to tweet things that are relevant to your area of expertise. If someone is following a designer on twitter, that obviously means they are expecting him/her to share design related stuff. TwitterGrader is a nice tool to evaluate your performance in the twittersphere.

Bloggers often post round ups about the best Tweeters in a certain niche and following are a few examples of such posts.

25 SEO Gurus you should follow on Twitter

40 Web Developers to Follow on Twitter

11 Epic WordPress Plugin Developers to Follow on Twitter

I would also recommend you to use hash tags as widely as possible.

2. Adding a Follow Me button in your website

I am sure, most of you would have already done this. But if you haven’t, include a follow me button in your blog/website and also show your recent twitter updates. So that makes one profile link, for google spiders to crawl through

3. Create an attractive twitter theme

Though it sounds less useful, it matters a lot. Your twitter has to be unique as to stand out from the crowd. Try to make your twitter theme as creative as possible. This lets bloggers include you in their round ups on the best twitter themes. Don’t forget to choose an attractive display image for your profile as well.

There are a few twitter background galleries out there and I am sure there will be more. I have included the links to their submission pages below.

Twitter Backgrounds Gallery

All you need to do here is follow them on twitter and post a tweet.

Tweet Backs

Follow the same process here.

And the one below can be considered as a milliondollarwall for tweeters.

The Tweet Wall

Know what? I’ve worked on this project Posting your profile is absolutely free.

4. Post your profile on other Social Networking sites

Add your twitter updates and profile links on social networking sites like facebook, linkedin, myspace, friendfeed etc. You may go through the following posts for more details on how to display your twitter status.

How To Add Twitter to Facebook

How to Add Twitter to LinkedIn

How to Add Twitter to a MySpace Page

5. Submit your profile on Twitter Directories

Here goes a comprehensive list of twitter directories, which includes the Page Rank and Alexa Rank of each directory.

21 Twitter Directories and Follower Finders to Expand Your Twittersphere

A few other suggestions(thought it doesn’t affect your PR directly) would be to add your twitter profile url in your email signature and to attend TweetUps on a regular basis (a kind of offline promotion). For those who don’t know what a TweetUp is – Its just a gathering of people who use Twitter.

So what is your twitter profile PR? Do you have a suggestion? Please make use of the comment form

Related posts:

1. 12 Beautiful Twitter Themes
2. Page Peel – A Free Social Media Iconset
3. Another 15 Beautiful Twitter Themes

This post is about 10 commonly used css properties that were impossible to implement in IE6. While redesigning ProductiveDreams, I came across a few css compatibility issues with IE6 and had to spend hours searching the solution for each issue.

So I just thought of putting them together to save your time. These css hacks (I would rather call them ‘solutions’ since, not all of them are purely css based) solves the major compatibility issues in IE6.

1. Rounded or Curved Corners

As you would know, all modern browsers support border radius. Curved corner is something that was merely impossible to achieve in IE6. Recently I came across an htc file (especially for IE) developed by Remiz from HTMLRemix.com, which solves this issue.

The first thing to do while using htc is to add the correct MIME type for htc behavior on your server. This is REALLY important before you proceed. The following are steps:

1. Go to your cpanel and click the MIME Types link
2. Under MIME Type, add text/x-component
3. Under Extensions, add htc
4. Restart Apache Web server

For more details on how to add MIME type visit Microsoft Support

All you need to do is download the htc from HTMLremix or Alternate Link and include the following code in your CSS.


.div_class_name{
behavior:url(border-radius.htc);
}


Jquery Alternative: jQuery Corner a jQuery plugin that creates crossbrowser compatible rounded corners!

2. The popular PNG transparency issue

Every designer would have faced this issue, obviously! Though there are a number of javascript based solutions, I couldn’t find anything that supports background position. As far as I know all JS based solutions end up with the same result. This is something that worked flawlessly for me. All other solutions are based on this filter.

Preview


.class_name{
_background:none;
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader (src='image_name.png', sizingMethod='scale');
}


HTC Alternative:If the solution above doesn’t work for you, you may try this htc alternate.

Known Issues:
1. Doesn’t support CSS Sprites: If you are using sprites, then just forget this hack. Background positions doesn’t work with PNG hacks .

If you need background-position support for PNG, then go for DD_belated

The best solution is to use a .gif or png-8. Check out the best way to do this without using hacks!

3. Opacity

This is pretty much straight forward and easy to achieve compared to the other hacks.

Preview


.opacity_div {
filter: alpha(opacity = 50);
}


4. Fixed position

All browsers support the css property ‘position:fixed’, but not IE6. I had to find a solution for this since the social icons in this blog are having a fixed position.

Preview


* html .fixed_div{
position: absolute; /* position fixed for IE6 */
top: expression(104+((e=document.documentElement.scrollTop)?e:document.body.scrollTop)+'px');
left: expression(15+((e=document.documentElement.scrollLeft)?e:document.body.scrollLeft)+'px');
}


Just change the top(104) and left(15) values, to position the element.

This method works very well, but you would notice a jerk while scrolling the page. So here goes a fix for that.


* html {
background-image: url(image.jpg);
}


All you need is a 1px x 1px image. This might sound weird but it works!

5. Min-width & Max-width

This is simple as well and was already posted on ProductiveDreams

Preview

Min-width:

.div_class_name{
width: expression(document.body.clientWidth < 1000? "1000px" : "auto");
}

Max-width:

.div_class_name{
width: expression(document.body.clientWidth > 1000? "1000px" : "auto");
}


Jquery Alternative: This is an alternative solution for the hack above. JQminmax is a cool plugin which allows you to set minimum and maximum values for both width and height.

6. Hover for non anchor elements

Unfortunately, IE6 supports :hover, only for anchor tags. That means css based dropdowns would not work in IE6. CSShover.htc is the best solution for this. You may download the htc file from xs4all.nl

Preview


body {
behavior: url("csshover3.htc");
}


As I mentioned previously, don't forget to add the correct MIME type for htc behavior on your server. This is the key.

7. Min-height & Max-height

Preview

Minimum height:

This is not really a hack since it uses valid css.


.div_class_name{
min-height: 140px;
height: auto !important;
height: 140px;
}

Maximum height:

.div_class_name{
height: expression( this.scrollHeight > 199 ? "200px" : "auto" );
}


8. Bicubic scaling for images

One line code that solves the image scaling issue in IE6 and 7. Hats off to Chris Coyier for coming up with this solution.


img {
-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;
}


9. Negative text indent for input buttons

Negative text indent is normally used to hide the text value inside buttons, which lets you use custom background images for them. For some reason, IE doesn't support negative text indent for input buttons. For more details about this issue check out this post

Preview


input.button {
width:114px;
height:37px;
border: none;
background: transparent url(images/button_image.gif) no-repeat center;
overflow: hidden;
text-indent: -999px;
}


10. Text shadow

The shadow filter is one of the useful filters for IE.

Preview


.text_shadow{
filter: Shadow(Color=#999999, Direction=135, Strength=5);
height: 1%;
}


Related posts:

1. IE CSS hack without using any hacks!
2. Min-width issue in IE6
3. IE not interpreting text-indent on submit buttons ?

The problem was to make it compatible on all major browsers, including IE6 !!!!!. I wonder why people still use IE.

As usual, I started searching for the solution on the right top of my Firefox window (yes, google!) and found a few websites which had discussions on the same topic. Most of them had lengthy posts and not the real solution. After going through a couple of sites, I concluded with the following solution. I hope this would help those who come across the same problem.
.div_class_name{
width: expression(document.body.clientWidth < 1002? "1000px" : "auto");
}
Just add the above line in your CSS. Replace 1000px with the min-width value and replace 1002 with a value slightly greater than the min-width. To define the max-width, just replace the "<" with ">".

Known Issues:

• Only works with JavaScript enabled browsers
• Not W3C valid

That's all! I don't want this post to be lengthy like the others I went through

No related posts.