Author: EST Chamber

Because mobile devices have smaller screens and less processing power, a site designed for desktops is bound to take ages to load. Considering that most visitors don’t have the patience to endure prolonged loading times and there’s plenty other similar websites out there, having a non-friendly mobile site presents the risk of losing new customers to your competitors.

The good news is that creating a mobile-friendly version for your website is quite an easy and straightforward process. Following are some tips that can help you make your site more accessible to visitors browsing via their smartphones or tablets.

Plan the layout carefully

By far the best solution for a mobile version of your site is to choose a simple design that makes navigation seamless for your visitors. Don’t forget to add thumb friendly buttons and call to actions that automatically load your phone number when tapped.

Keep the landing pages simple

Although the advancements in the industry are impressive, mobile devices still lack the processing power of a desktop computer. Therefore, they’re unable to render more sophisticated designs, such as flash for instance. In general, it’s best to avoid using flash altogether and only integrate images in situations where they’re truly relevant. Otherwise, you’ll just increase the site’s loading time and risk losing numerous potential customers.

Sketching and Drawing

Some of your best design ideas are probably thought of while on-the-go, right? This is why it’s great to have a sketching and/or drawing app handy so that you can draw up a quick sketch or more detailed if you prefer. If you use public transportation to get to work, this is one of the best ways to pass the time – by doodling or drawing.

ArtStudio for iPad

With ArtStudio for iPad you can draw, paint, and even edit your photos – all while on-the-go. It uses advanced mathematics to attain the highest level of quality. ArtStudio is great for beginners and pros, and includes drawing lessons with step-by-step instructions.

Sketch Club

Sketch Club combines standard digital painting and drawing tools, vector art, old school pixel art, and new procedural tools. It even supports VGA and HDMI output so that you can display your design ideas on an external monitor or projector to clients.

Inspire Pro

Inspire Pro is an advanced painting app with numerous features. Its key feature is the ability to simulate wet oil paint on a canvas. This is great for giving your web designs a unique look. It also has some of the best color blending capabilities that you’ll find on an iPad app.

Browsing from one page to the other of a website can really be confusing and frustrating. So much so, that many users simply give up. As a web designer and developer it is essential to plan your navigational menu, taking the user’s’ point of view into serious consideration.

A simple menu is not always enough for a user-friendly interface, and it may need specific requirements for it to be more streamlined.

Each individual type of website needs specific navigational requirements, depending on what type of users, services and products it is trying to target and market. Here are a few stereotype websites and the best changes that you should implement in order to keep your readers interested and motivated to stay on your website.

How to Find all that Content on News Websites?

News websites are a head-scratcher as they have a huge amount of content to place, which can easily lead to confusion as to what news is relative to which category and so on. The navigational menu is an absolute priority; otherwise the news items are lost on the readers.

A simple navigational menu on the top bar with a home button and several categories is simply not feasible, as readers would not be able to explore many other important facets of the website. People using news websites are looking for content and information, thus they need a more extensive navigational system within which to browse and find the news item, they are interested in.

Find Inspiration from Websites Showcasing new Designs

If you are lacking in inspiration and need to get your creative spark back, then browsing through websites that showcase designs by different web designers can help you get your magic touch back. This process of stimulating your capacities does not intend to be a copying exercise, simply a way to incorporate and develop new design ideas.

There are many websites that provide extensive design galleries through which you can browse and find inspiration from; however, not all specialize in showcasing creative designs, specifically for this purpose.

Some Excellent Sources of Inspiration

Web Creme:

Web Creme is one of those websites that focus specifically on the designing of websites, and if this is what you are looking for then you will find your part of action with Web Creme. When browsing through this website you will find a large number of websites that are showcased every day, which concentrate on the quality of their design more than any other element.

The websites that are on the show here, are real websites designed by genuine professionals, they are not websites designed following other models or using theories of conception.

Advanced Horizontal Flash Menu for Joomla 1.5 – 2.5 with Administration Control Panel for multiple flash menus customization.

Advanced Horizontal Flash Menu Features:

– Unlimited numbers of Flash Menus on website
– Advanced Horizontal Flash Menu has transparent background
– Tooltip on mouse over the flash menu item
– Use custom URL or select Article as Flash Menu item
– Special glow and shadow effect on mouse over
– Icon Size 256×256, 128×128, 64×64,48×48 or 32×32
– Icon file format PNG, GIF, JPG (transparent PNG recommended)

When you install com_AdvancedHorizontalFlashMenu, demo menu Flash Menu is installed by default.

You can either edit default flash menu, or you can create new ones by following steps below:

To create new flash menu:

1. Navigate to Components –> Advanced Horizontal Flash Menu

2. In Advanced Horizontal Flash Menu Control Panel click on New icon (upper right)

3. Enter new menu name (without spaces) and click on Create icon (upper right).

(New Menu is created in Control Panel and new module is automatically installed with the name of that menu.)