Six Revisions

I'm a developer (specifically, a web developer), but I try to occasionally stop by some of the larger graphic design sites to get ideas from time to time. Here's a few of my favorites: http://www.smashingmagazine.com http://www.sixrevisions.com http://logopond.com Also, here's a good article with a list of social news sites for designers: http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/12-excellent-social-news-sites-for-…

This article was written by a guy who created his web app without knowing Rails. In a few months, he had learned Rails, and had designed, developed and launched his own app. So don't be discouraged! There's so many wonderful resources out there on UI/app development, but what I got from this article is that these lessons you'll learn best by creating (and using) web apps. Here's the author's Rails article on the same site: http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/why-making-web-apps-with-rails…

ha. I just saw this thread. That's funny .. I just registered 5 minutes ago dashbd.com. Maybe we should exchange notes about what we are doing :). As a side note. I would suggest using tools like : http://www.bustaname.com/ http://www.instantdomainsearch.com/ or a bunch of other that you can find on the list : http://sixrevisions.com/resources/12-excellent-tools-for-picking-a-dom…

[B] - Definitely some good resources I've used in the past (being a developer wanting some inspiration) - one more I'd add to the list is http://sixrevisions.com - I like to pop in there every few weeks to see what's new - they typically have articles similar to Smashing in topic

Pingdom is pretty cool. So is http://aremysitesup.com/ Here are some others too: http://sixrevisions.com/tools/12-excellent-free-tools-for-monitoring-y…

Seems like this David Mark is mad at the world: http://sixrevisions.com/javascript/promising_javascript_frameworks#com… http://sixrevisions.com/javascript/promising_javascript_frameworks#com… http://stackoverflow.com/users/88658/david-mark http://help.wugnet.com/bravenet/webmaster/Great-Examples-code-ftopict3…

These are great points. One thing I might add regarding the design of the website is you might want to mix it up a little from the tutorial you followed to create it. http://sixrevisions.com/tutorials/photoshop-tutorials/how-to-create-an… It jumped out at me as soon as I saw it. Comes off as a little unprofessional.

Check my delicious bookmarks, I have a few stored for precisely this: http://delicious.com/search?context=userposts&p=fonts&lc=1&… IMHO the best in that list is probably: http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/45-beautiful-free-fonts-for-mo…

Hourly rates undervalue consultants. It is a simple price based on quantity that we place on the front of customers, and have nothing to do with value, even more with relationship. There is an awesome book about that. [1] It tells you how to set the right price and the right relationship with a customer. The philosophy is: firstly to show them the value you will provide, secondly to be able to set the right price, and thirdly the fusion of both with the contract. At the end, it is not a question to set an hourly rate and count the hours; it's about how much value you can give them, and set the right price. Then consultants build a contract with rules that reflect that (and protect them). You have a lot of explanation inside with different chapters. It is a must read for me; even just the chapters that explain each ways to set price are a gem. You can easily adapt it to any business. It is also similar to an post on HN some weeks ago. [2] [1] http://www.amazon.com/Value-Based-Fees-Charge-Youre-Worth/dp/047027584… [2] http://sixrevisions.com/business/earn-more-on-projects/

How would people respond if the article were changed to this: 'Dear Writer, You Aren't That Special' "In essence, writing is not a chaotic expression, it’s a measured approach to creation. We cannot create a good writing solution by shuffling elements randomly around a blog until something happens to work." Think about it that way, and the author disproves his own point. Yes, his post is grammatical, and contains thoughts that are communicated, but not very well. The best one can say is that it is passable, and worth the price paid. This is true for design as well; most companies claim to want great design, but are secretly willing to accept the passable, as long as the price is right. It's in vogue to desire developers who have a 'design sensibility,' as if this is the answer, but would it make as much sense to ask for a developer with 'copyrighting sensibility?' After all, design and writing have much more in common than developing and designing. Meanwhile, here is a much more cogent post on the original topic, that counters this argument much more clearly and eloquently...because it was written by a professional writer, not just somebody who has a blog. How Wannabe Designers Burden the Profession http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/wannabe-designers/

The first thing is think about who your audience is and what kind of connection they are trying to make with you when they view your about page. An about page for a startup, a freelancer, a blog, etc will all have different audiences and different goals. If you are a startup, your audience will likely be potential and current customers, journalists with press inquiries, and possibly people looking to fund you. They will want to know why they should use your product, what makes your company/product unique, who are the people behind it, etc. I'm currently redoing my own about page, and have gathered a few helpful links: For startups: http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/08/what-does-your-about-us-page… For freelancers, but contains some great general tips too: http://www.onextrapixel.com/2010/09/06/how-to-write-an-effective-about… Good general tips: http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/about-page-guidelines/

You are welcome! Here are some sites that aggregate tutorials: * http://www.noupe.com/ * http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ * http://sixrevisions.com/ There are some Xara Xtreme tutorials on their main website. The free Linux version is not near as feature-complete as the Windows version, unfortunately, but you can still do quite a bit. * http://www.xara.com/us/products/xtreme/tutorials-demos/ I do not know of a way to save vector (SVG) images from browsers either, but if raster (PNG) exports would suffice, then check out the Firefox Screengrab! extension, which allows you to easily capture screenshots of whole pages (regardless of scrolling). BTW, here is a fun JavaScript library: * http://raphaeljs.com/ Keyboard input in Photoshop and Illustrator is something that I consider a core feature. How much it is needed really depends on the type of artwork/design that is being done, but every professional user that I have met makes quite extensive use of the keyboard, particularly when placing guides or dealing with vector shapes. (Unfortunately, keyboard input is not as core as it should be... For example, Adobe software does not support keyboard positioning of Bézier curve handles, meaning that the designer needs to create reference objects to snap to in order to have consistent curves.) I find that doing everything in a text editor is great for some projects and not for others. I use Asymptote (within LaTeX documents) for technical drawings, and one of my favourite…

Github built one: https://try.github.io More: http://sixrevisions.com/git/interactive-git-tutorials/

I was recently reading an article about making it easy for users to use a website http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/getting-users-to-sign-u… In my opinion, I agree. User-friendly is key. In my personal experience, users appreciate ease of access, including unsubscribing.

God this brings back memories: http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/popular-search-engines-in-the-90s-t…

There are a few, one by adobe that comes free with the Creative Suite. Some are integrated in Photoshop with a clever UI: http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/the-ultimate-guide-to-versi…

"Lesson 2: Social Sign-in is Better Than Email Sign-in After dozens of failed A/B tests to improve the conversion rates of our landing page, we came up with the idea to enable social sign-in (i.e., signing up for a Buffer account and logging in using your Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account). After all, Buffer is for posting on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn so it only seemed logical that our potential users would be able to quickly and conveniently sign up using one of their existing accounts." http://sixrevisions.com/user-interface/ux-design-mistakes/

Unfortunately that's not always true, since Helvetica comes in many weights. http://sixrevisions.com/infographics/helvetica-font-weights-as-rock-mu…

You've got a useful product, it's just that I have no clue that it is one. I'd suggest you throw away the video for a list of features, or something that'll highlight how quick and easy it is to use your product. Check out good landing pages of other startups. (They're a dime a dozen, think Shopify, Stripe etc.) Six Revisions has a good article on the basics you'll need for a landing page. (http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/designing-landing-pages/) If you're not much of a designer yourself, you could consider paying a little bit over at 99Designs and getting a landing page out.

It was simple -- apocryphally because Larry or Sergei weren't familiar with HTML -- but I don't see what makes it crude compared to the competition at the time (http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/popular-search-engines-in-the-90s-t…

It bothers me when these articles pretend you cannot let users install fully open source apps on their iPhones: http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/ Your users can't install closed binaries except through the app store, but you're all about open source, right? So make your app using HTML5 like LinkedIn or Facebook, and simply bypass the app store.

Good stuff, sent him an email with suggestions, any more? ----------------------- Hi Tom, I'm a developer and one of my best friends is colorblind, so I'm onboard. Suggestion - your site clearly demonstrates the problem, but it would be helpful to make it the go-to place for solutions too. How about starting a list of colorblind-friendly color schemes, for starters? Something those of us who don't need convincing but do need solutions can pull up whenever we're starting a new project and pick the scheme from? Lots of tools for colorschemes on the web: http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/14-brilliant-tools-for-… https://kuler.adobe.com/ http://colllor.com/ http://colorschemedesigner.com/ http://colorschemetools.net/

Many alternatives: http://sixrevisions.com/javascript/20-fresh-javascript-data-visualizat…

Heh, trademarking a single established word is not even where it stops. T-Mobile owns the color magenta! [1]. So don't just stop at words. Let's do letters, colors, etc. And of course as soon as you trademark a color, it implies that you've trademarked all the individual colors that make it up. Thus a trademark on the color white (#FFFFFF (c) (tm) Igor Partola, all rights reserved) would give you all other colors. [1] http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/color-the-next-limited-resource/ EDIT: Fixed silly color theory mistake. EDIT2: s/copyright/trademark/g

While I don't have any experience on the subject, I did recently see an article about using HTML5 to make an offline compatible iPhone game: http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/ And here's another article from IBM about offline web/mobile apps in a more general sense: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-offlineweb/index.html Hopefully these can help you out in some way!

http://sixrevisions.com/resources/10-puzzle-websites-to-sharpen-your-p… and recently I came across dropbox challenge as well! http://www.dropbox.com/jobs/challenges

I found this short article to be a decent introduction to using grid systems in CSS: http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/the-960-grid-system-made-easy/

http://sixrevisions.com/css/a-comprehensive-guide-to-css-resets/ Good roundup of popular resets.

ugh beat me to it... to me a good infographic is also one that compares something "unknown" to known quantities for the readers In this case it's "well-known" or relevant countries for the Western world, compared to the "unknown" size of Africa. It also sent me hunting for resources on infographics, I found: "The Anatomy of an infographic" (not too much in-depth but a nice starting point) http://spyrestudios.com/the-anatomy-of-an-infographic-5-steps-to-creat… and blogs on infographics: http://www.coolinfographics.com/ and http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/40-useful-and-creative-infogra… which show good examples

There is some research that indicates using less content above the fold entices users to scroll. http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/10-usability-tips-based… (was also on hn, but I can't find the link) Beyond that, it looks clean and simple, but I think they overlooked the perception that a lot of users not keen on design will perceive the site as low budget.