Web Applications - Six Revisions

Designing Web Apps for the iPad

August 12th, 2010 by Stephen Vescio | 31 Comments

What’s stopping you from creating a functional app/website for the iPad? My answer was the Objective-C coding language, time constraints and having to deal with the infamous Apple App Store.

But if you’re a web designer, like me, and you think that designing for the iPad is outside the realm of possibility — think again.

Love it or hate it, the iPad is an incredible medium. There is no denying that the touch form factor will have an incredible impact on how designers approach user interaction. So get ahead of the game and start experimenting with iPad web apps now.

10 Great Tips for Using Twitter as a Designer

January 27th, 2010 by Shannon Noack | 42 Comments

Twitter was founded in 2006 by Odeo (a podcasting company). It was first used as an internal service for Odeo employees, and later, it became public and then took off as its own company in 2007.

Five Favorite Web Applications of Designers

October 17th, 2009 by Jacob Gube | 44 Comments

Webapps–compared to their desktop counterparts–have the distinct advantage of being flexible in terms of the environment they have to run in; if you have a web browser and an internet connection, you’re good to go. This allows designers who work in a variety of locations, from office cubicles to the neighborhood coffee shop, to do what they need to do without being bound to a single spot.

Last week, we asked readers what they thought the best web application for designers is, and here we share the top five favorites that gained the most votes. The web applications you’ll see here aren’t all specifically for designers but, as you’ll soon see, it’s not surprising why designers love them.

5. FreshBooks

50 Beautiful & Unique Twitter Profile Designs

September 24th, 2009 by John Urban | 75 Comments

As Twitter becomes the latest online craze, we look at some impressive Twitter profile designs that stand out from the micro-blogging site’s millions of users.

1. @pairadocsdesign

A variety of styles including the Polaroid and the name badge means that there is a design style you are inevitably going to like on this page.

Website Features That You Can Easily Offload

September 22nd, 2009 by Jacob Gube | 24 Comments

The amount of site features that you have can take a dire toll on your web server, making your site sluggish and more vulnerable to becoming offline because system resources have been expended.

To alleviate the work that your web server is doing, it’s a good idea to offload certain site features to share the burden. In this article, you’ll read about six site features you can easily offload, and the web services that you can use for them.

1. RSS feeds

Serving and managing your RSS feeds yourself can be a big burden on your server especially when you have many subscribers requesting your feed. What’s more is that there are aggregators such as AllTop and Technorati that automatically request your feeds at regular intervals for their own use, further adding to the strain on your server. You can easily offload your feeds using one of the following services.

FeedBurner is a feature-packed RSS feed manager. It has various options that will enable you to monitor, manage, analyze, and monetize your RSS feed. Recently bought by Google, it experienced a few issues during the transition but it’s now back to its full capacity, and then some.

Website Features That You Can Easily Offload

12 Excellent Tools for Picking a Domain Name

March 12th, 2009 by Jacob Gube | 83 Comments

Selecting the perfect domain name for your website is the most important, and oftentimes hardest, step in establishing a web presence. There are plenty of tools out there that can help you ease the burden of checking available domains and suggesting similar names that are related to your searches.

In this article, you’ll read about 12 neat web tools that will lend you a hand in finding and choosing domain names. You’ll find a variety of search and suggestion tools that have an assortment of features so that, hopefully, you’ll discover a few favorites.

1. Domainr

10 Features That Will Make Twitter Better

March 1st, 2009 by Jacob Gube | 241 Comments

Twitter’s popularity has skyrocketed in the recent months. Usage statistics states that most people who use Twitter interact with the application via the web rather than a third-party client such as TweetDeck or twitterfeed.

Twitter’s web interface is simple and intuitive but lacks a few features that can make it much better. In this article, you’ll read about 10 excellent user interface features that can enhance the Twitter web experience.