Instead, we’re gonna promote these user-interface elements that will come super handy next time you work on some wireframes or prototypes. Pre-made menus, buttons, carousels for your websites and iPhone and smartphone-specific items, generously shared by Yahoo!, in their Developer Network section. Among the files, they’ve even included the most common grids for you, designers.
You can download the editable PDF files, the PNG and more formats here. Store them preciously.
Save more sweat, browse the Design Pattern Library before trying to reinvent the UI wheel. What’s a pattern?
Patterns are optimal solutions to common problems. As common problems are tossed around a community and are resolved, common solutions often spontaneously emerge. Eventually, the best of these rise above the din and self-identify and become refined until they reach the status of a Design Pattern.
Drag-and-drop modules, navigation tabs, object ratings, vote-to-promote, many designers already did the head-scratching, and best practices are shared from A to Z.
I’m sure many of you know cases of true “web2.0″ examples. Places where people share information and knowledge with the whole world.
Well for me they are like the first settlers, communities that are setting the example of what the Web will, in my opinion, eventually become: mankind’s collective super-computer network with every built-in software you might need, storing every piece of data you enter. All we’ll need is a screen, a keyboard, some pointer device and Internet connection. Take Google Docs for example - a perfectly acceptable “office tools” suite, fully functional and free.
And of course, it can only happen with the People’s goodwill. With the sharing of information. Share, share, share. If you have it in digital, tag it and share it.
Those of us who are fortunate enough to have an Internet connection now have so much information on our hands, we don’t know how to handle it. And many don’t realize it yet. Although it is right there, at your reach, as a sign of the spirit of generosity and constructiveness the web is meant to represent.
Special thanks for MIT, for releasing OCW (MIT OpenCouseWare). Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT with no registration required. Information from over 1.800 courses available for me and you. Dig in and take all the knowledge you can.
Remember my desperate cry for help to get an invite for FFFFOUND? Well, I never got one but it doesn’t really matter. Now I can play with We Heart It.
It’s pretty much the same concept, a social bookmarking tool for images and videos, except that it’s open to everyone. Great inspiration igniter for designers.
But can the 2 sites co-exist or will only one survive the design bookmarking war? Will the invite-only kill FFFFOUND or will it do the opposite, re-enforce the quality of the shared items while We Heart It becomes too mass-market to be considered by the design industry people?
Early in 2007 was when I first got contaminated with “Contagious“. It was their annual report “Most Contagious 2006’s” fault, as I was very well impressed by its content. “Contagious” is a mixed media (web + paper + DVD) publication that (like ourselves at The Trendwatch) is keeping a eye out for what shakes the web, what stands out and sets the trends.
As John Harlow / Naked Communications puts it,
“Contagious is a magazine which embodies its subject in the same way that Vogue does the fashion world; agenda-setting, aspirational and accessible. It, like its readers, is full of ideas.”
You won’t miss out on anything that stood out from the crowd in 2007. You can download the fresh “Most Contagious 2007” 33 page PDF report right here.
Since we’re talking about outstanding online publishing, here’s something for our readers who are more into unleashed creativity and graphic design. Another PDF format magazine that I enjoy a lot… and I hope you will too. It’s called “Truth” and you can download the 108 page PDF #4 edition for free right here. Check out the early issues too, they’re available for download!
One week into 2008, we thought that it would be interesting to make a 100% subjective list of the 10 things that shaped our digital landscape for 2007. So the team at Trendwatch Daily went post-fishing last weekend to celebrate our 6-month anniversary and this is what we came back with, in chronological order.
Stresstetainment
A new form of stress born from the over-exposure to too many sources of entertainment at once.
Design Class #1: The Homepage
It’s very often the 1st impression that users get from your site, so you’d better get it right the first time!
Up for grabs in 2008: the coming 2008 dot-com crash, Wall Street gets frustrated with Google, Nintendo banks on fitness, smartphones become mainstream, online social networks grab more ads $ and integrate hi-def video.
It’s Friday, it’s the day when we, at the Trendwatch, share a bunch of links with you. We’ve been pretty pretty busy finalizing the Winter 2008 issue of the keynote, which left us with very little time to surf the web to harvest the best and/or most relevant sites and articles around.
So there will be only one, but its quality will, I promise, counterbalance the lack of quantity.
How many times a week are you stuck with a big (and of course legal) file that you need to share with your co-workers, friends or Mum? That video of your nephew trying to strangle the family cat, too heavy for emailing? The zip file compressing your own band’s tracks to a size that is still not suitable to send to (those so 2006) record labels? Well, maybe you should meet Senduit, the most amazing one-trick site I’ve ever had to visit. The picture up there sums it all pretty well. Locate the file on your hard drive, choose the file-sharing expiration date, and you’re all set. Or almost. All you have to do now is wait for the file to be completely uploaded and copy-paste in an email the short link that will be given to you.
Cleverly made by the guys behind Tumblr (it’s like a blog for lazy guys like me), there is no ad, no waiting time, and its quiet design makes the Apple website look cluttered.
In this new series, Bookmark Essentials, we’ll share with you the lesser known sites that proved themselves so valuable that they now stand in the prime real estate of our browser’s bookmark bar. You will thank me many times for the number one, especially if you’re a frequent flier, like I’ve been repeatedly blessing my friend and coworker Edgard who first introduced me to Seat Guru.
Open the site in a secondary window when you buy a plane ticket online, select your airline and the plane model mentioned during the booking process, and look for the green spots on the aircraft chart, representing the best seats. Avoid the red ones that indicate poor seats with limited recline, proximity of the lavatories, minimal leg room, blocked window, restricted underseat storage…
Fear no more the Request Seat button.
TRENDWATCH DAILY (BETA):
A daily serving of new media strategies, marketing concepts and designs that caught our attention.
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