Posts Tagged ‘Reviews’
Grungy web design look appears to rapidly gain on popularity now, but it is still having its hot opponents which blame for a certain slatternliness of this style. To shatter the myth of grunge style as being sloppy and unappealing, today we’ll have a good look at this design trend. Basically, it is typical for grunge to illustrate the textured and gritty backgrounds, irregular or crooked visual elements, torn edges, faded graphic designs. This stylish design trend gives uneven and less structured forms that are being widely adopted from urban surroundings and industrial scenery mainly to contrast that sleek and glossy web 2.0 style, which maintains very straight lines along with the overall polished and clean cut layouts. Grunge devotees, in their turn, have ventured away from this mainstream opting rather for a bit of a smeared and dirty look.
Now, we’ll dwell solely on the grungy eCommerce designs that have been adding the fuzzy, distorted design elements to give the design its spunk. They use a deliberately untidy and uncoordinated style and do that damn well to showcase exactly what their online shop is all about. Mainly, we can come upon t-shirt stores, music, sport, shoes, and apparel shops – all perfectly utilizing the grunge to give off just the right amount of personality and keep the proper intentions for their eCommerce sites nice, clear, and focused. Let’s now explore how far they can take this awesome style in their designs.
Seventrees.ca
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Momandpopcorn.com
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If dealing with web content built in Flash, we have the ability to control when the content loads and how long will it take to appear. And what we see before the main page of a Flash site launches is a preloader which is a custom-built animation or graphic progress indicator that precisely informs the viewer that content is being loaded into the Flash player. It is usually made truly attractive to engage the site visitors or keep them occupied while Flash animation emerges in the background.
Flash preloaders vastly range in functionality and design. They can brighten up the waiting time treating users with animation, images, or sound effects and grabbing their attention right at the preloading stage. Often, the preloader fits to the overall design of the website and works as a teaser for the upcoming content. Actually, Flash preloaders should be given a lot of consideration, probably as much as to the rest of the site content, since overlooking this element in Flash projects could adversely affect the bounce rates of the website. In fact, searching for Flash preloaders that work effectively and correctly could be quite frustrating. So, hang around to see our today’s roundup for we managed to compose the list of creative preloaders on Flash websites. You can browse through them and get better equipped with fresh ideas when dealing with site preloader on your own.
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Yesmiss.it
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Pienozvaigzdes.lt
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Well, we have spotted these days that circles have a large sphere of influence on web design trends. Graphic symbols definitely add some specificity to every design, but it seems to be all the rage now to throw out exactly circular-logic shapes in design pieces. Quite possible it is connected with the fact that subconsciously circles are associated with the communication. Being rather simple, memorable, and complete, round symbol tunes in for mutual understanding. In this showcase we’ve circled the excellent designs that make use of the round shape in many creative ways, presenting navigation menu, background elements or image galleries. Many designs, as seen in the examples below, have their logo round, usually with a slogan or a name in it. Sometimes circles are used in an effective and eye catching way to convey a particular company concept or idea. There are lots of ways possible. As for TemplateMonster designs, we wish as well share our love for circles showing you the range of templates made by our designers. Those examples are simply incredible and fantastic. So, you can go ahead now and browse this well-rounded list spotting web designs with sexy round details. Let’s get it instantly covered.
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Siteinspire.net
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Patrickmonkel.nl
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Currently the HTML5 technology has come into the extensive spotlight. Being the most discussed web trend these days, this major revision of HTML is aimed at revolutionizing and streamlining the way web developers create websites. Though there are some ongoing specifications of HTML5, this markup language currently offers diverse great features and benefits to develop brilliant forms, new canvas elements, readable codes, and semantically meaningful layouts. Plus, it is now fully possible to get moving with video which is an absolutely significant option.
In fact, there’s already a widespread use of the ultramodern HTML5. Upon our exploration, we’ve found the awesome variety of working sites using HTML5 markup language and so we’re going to list 70 best ones down in this blog entry to provide the examples of how it is possible to use HTML5 today. Make sure, these websites render correctly all the beneficial properties HTML5 embraces. If you wish to join the ranks of the fortunate HTML5 websites owners, TemplateMonster could substantially help you – just browse the wonderful assortment of our HTML5 Templates and find your very own HTML5 design to develop the clean and elegant website.
Alternatively, you can check out other articles in which we compiled 12 excellent HTML5 eBooks for web professionals and 30 brand new HTML5 tutorials of summer 2011. In addition, our friends from DesignFloat have also published a compilation of 50 HTML5 websites showcasing the HTML5 best capabilities.
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Cumbriaglassfusing.co.uk
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Cameronchamberlain.com
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In this round-up we’ve pulled together some of the most ingeniously designed navigation menus that allow for a highly creative way to explore deep into a website’s sections and levels. We’ve compiled navigation menus that do not look or function like common websites. This actually can have more influence on visitors’ affection for the website since they find it interesting and unusual to get around it.
While the purpose of navigation is to endow some structure and to develop precise and easy hover, here are in fact no set rules – such intuitive navigations just float freely within the content effectively guiding every visitor around the website. It typically has a positive impact on the outcome of each particular design. Coming with spectacular and super creative hovering, the following navigations provide a unique searching experience and surely add some visual appeal to the web page layout. So then, if you’ve already got excited, let the showcase commence now to see how designers have accomplished many different types of bold and attention-grabbing menus. Take a look and tell us what you think.
Conceptm.nl
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Jonesingfor.com
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Hand-drawing is one of the most popular styles adopted and incorporated into website designs. Deploying some sketchy elements is virtually the best way to convey and reflect individual tone. Such doodles, being used elsewhere as accenting notes, give a design a super unique, down to earth, and organic look. By now the hand-drawn elements are showing up on more and more web designs, so in this showcase we have collected 45 awesome website and template designs which follow a cool creative hand drawn style within their layout.
One of the most evident benefits of using hand drawn style is that it serves to impart information on a very emotional, more personal and informal tone. In such way users are able to grasp the idea behind the offerings and find their way around the site more easily. They feel a refreshing break from the colorful elements which are designed in curved and fuzzy lines to tweak the basic features of a site and give it a human touch. Hand drawn or sketched elements can make a web design inviting, and add even an overall fun factor to a design.
Additionally, hand drawn designs provide an excellent support for the content of the website which, being presented often in relatively clean and simple format, is being dominated by a hand drawn illustrated image or series of hand drawn-elements throughout the background. So, apart from employing all that for a design role, designers are using their hand drawn sketches and doodles to frame the content. One thing is for certain – the hand-drawn elements will make your site look more friendly, however it’s very important to find the balance and be sure that they fit the theme and subject of your site. There is one important issue – sketchy design does not go well with a respectable corporate web project, where the design should look more professional, strict and sleek. Use a hand drawn style for a personal site, design related blogs, portfolios, and showcase sites, for tourism agencies, music bands, dressmakers, interior designers or for web stores selling something crafty and sketchy. Enough of that – right now surf through these creative web designs.
Robbinwaldemar.com
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Lowmorale.co.uk
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So you’ve bought a domain but you’re still developing the site, or you’re doing some maintenance work or design changes to your website to be back with something beautiful – ‘Coming Soon’ page comes in really handy when you don’t want to spend much time on a temporary page but really should be working on the website itself. Such page serves one very important purpose – to let audience know that you’re working on something, but it’s not quite ready yet.
Nowadays internet users are smart enough to judge an upcoming site by looking at its ‘Coming Soon’ page. Designers therefore engage them using their pages to make a powerful impact, provide more relevant and interesting stuff about what’s coming. Mainly to let the visitors know they’ll be missing out on the next big thing if they don’t sign up. After all, ‘Coming Soon’ pages are in fact teasers for what is due to come once a fabulous thing has been finished, plus it is a wonderful way to mark the presence early in the web creating a buzz about you before your fantastic new website even launched.
Rules for ‘Coming Soon’
Here are some tips and key aspects you might want to consider putting on your ‘Coming Soon’ page to design a good one:
- Give a brief company introduction or short overview of what’s coming, that’ll provide an essential insight on what the site-to-be is all about.
- Start developing your high-quality logo, brand, and attractive color scheme from the day one to embed them into the minds of your viewers before the final website is live.
- It would be better to offer some development news to keep your visitors updated about your upcoming project.
- Give your coming soon page a deadline to let the users know when you plan to update your website. Besides, you may display a cool countdown timer on your custom ‘Coming Soon’ page in case you know a specific date of the launch.
- Offer buttons and links to your social media profiles for following you up, plus you may as well provide the recent tweets or comments about your new website to generate hype.
- You may as well insert testimonials if you, for example, have some from beta testing of your website.
- Provide newsletter/mailing list sign-up form to let your visitors subscribe to your website and get notified when your site will be up and running.
- Include contact information mentioning your email and phone.
- Consider as well offering an RSS feed for your page, so when it is updated people subscribed to it will know.
- It would not be out of place to mention copyright notice and the usual legal stuff.
- Do not devoid your page of any funny content – share some unique and exciting stuff (vector graphics, gradient backgrounds, funny tag lines and fancy fonts) to give visitors a reason to pass on the link.
- Don’t forget about SEO – you could use keywords and proper meta tags to advance your search engine rankings.
Remember that through adhering to these guidelines and setting the definite expectations for the ‘Coming Soon’ page, it will help reduce the visitors’ frustration, confusion, and annoyance. To conclude, the main focus when designing your teaser ‘Coming Soon’ page is to engage your audience and force them to talk about you before you even launch!
Right now, let’s take a look at some cool and well-designed ‘Coming Soon’ pages.
Heeled.net
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Pepsay.com
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Chkchkboom.com
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Let’s face this – there are tons and tons of e-commerce platforms currently available on the market. PrestaShop seems to be one of the fastest growing platforms out there, which is why we think you all may want to take a closer look on it. So PrestaShop shopping cart is in the focus of our attention today.
PrestaShop is a professional e-commerce shopping cart software that you can download and use for free. It was founded in 2007 in Paris, France, and now aspires to provide one of the best open source e-Commerce solutions to the greatest number of business owners worldwide. This e-commerce solution was built to take advantage of essential web 2.0 innovations such as dynamic AJAX-powered features and next-generation ergonomy. Despite its technical sophistication and advanced functionality, PrestaShop e-commerce platform is speedy and very lightweight, so it’s easy to download, install, and update. That’s according to the project owners’ information about themselves. As for ourselves – so far we don’t see any reasons to disagree, but more on that later.
Being a total e-commerce package based on PHP and using MySQL data management, PrestaShop comes with a variety of tools necessary for building, launching, and managing a successful online store without paying any licensing fees or registration.
Key features of PrestaShop
front office
- featured products on homepage;
- top sellers on homepage;
- new items on homepage;
- special deals (price reductions, gift vouchers);
- product image zoom;
- order out-of-stock items;
- loyalty system (points);
- customer referral program;
- customer subscription & user accounts;
- unlimited payment methods (there is a default module for this and in addition to it there are several non-free payment or shipping modules available for purchase);
- unlimited languages – 38 translations available so far.
Back Office
- unlimited categories, subcategories and products;
- customers’ product evaluations and comments;
- products and accessories packs;
- quantity discounts;
- wish list;
- customizable products (picture, text, etc.);
- customizable orders statuses & returns management;
- PDF invoices, slips and delivery slips;
- product, catalog statistics, conversion rate per categories;
- carriers, destinations and text settings;
- good use of object oriented PHP;
- tableless design that uses a lot of CSS;
- “block” content that can be edited via the admin by point and click.
For more exhaustive list of current and upcoming features, visit the PrestaShop features page.
The customers could as well personalize their online stores adding a variety of modules such as: special deals (such as price reductions and gift coupons), text-message alerts for new orders and inventory levels, new products, top sellers, as well as SEO, filter, translation, and attribute wizard module, etc. Though pay attention that many of the modules are non-free – and they aren’t cheap in fact. By the way, the authors of PrestaShop have an official marketplace for commercial modules and themes called PrestaStore (kinda like MagentoConnect).
When it comes to pros and cons of using this particular software, this triggers a disputable issue for PrestaShop supporters and opponents. PrestaShop has some cool, highly scalable features and is very lightweight, but still it’s far from being perfect. Those who are considering PrestaShop as their e-commerce platform should be aware of:
PrestaShop advantages:
Sometimes getting the story is just as engaging as covering it. This way probably, featuring lengthy documentaries on the production videos has become a separate genre on its own – called the ‘making-of’. The making-of video is a documentary that features the production process of a film, commercial ad, television program, etc. Ultimately, it may turn out to be more important than the movie or commercial ad itself since the making-of video is often used as a promotional tool.
A so called behind-the-scenes includes everything you want to know about the creation of special effects, various manipulations, and tricks. The making-of videos give you a chance to see firsthand what it takes to create all these offering more insights into the video production. Here you could as well enjoy exclusive on-set video segments captured during shooting from the unique perspective.
Following this introduction, we’ll drop some footage we found floating around. These making-of videos show just what goes on behind the curtain. So, get your take on how it all came together and learn how the awesome special effects are made.
Making of Hancock – Train scene
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Making of Hancock – Final flight
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Making of Hancock – Fight Sequence
AfterEffects FTW, as they say on Digg! 
Now you’ll see just why we love it so much. Every news series has an opening ident, a short visual image employed before television program that works as an introduction to locate the viewer to the news channel. Well, at least that’s the initial idea behind those intros. Because by now they have indeed become one of the most spectacular and confusing animations in the world, just look at all those flying objects of random shapes and you’ll know that now the serve only one purpose – to show other news channels their AfterEffects departments suck. Well, at least that what it seems like after our research.
Alright, to be serious, these intros do more than just listing the slogans, logo and television company name. The audience likes news openings that have sparkling animation, elaborate action sequences, memorable effects, and just an overall vibe that gets them ready to enjoy the program. And that’s what we seem to love about them now.
Today we’re looking at the favorite opening intros for currently airing news series. Classical or cool and trendy, high tech or cartoonish, whatever design and animation style one prefers – these openers look very promising deploying impressive graphics engine and real time physics. Let’s start off viewing the perfect animation for transitioning to the news. With these intros we’re prepping you for smooth and captivating visuals.
BBC News Intro
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Aljazeera News Opener
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