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Conclusion

2011 has seen the rise of the fully integrated shopping experience, including mobile, social and in store digital environments, to better connect users with the brand itself. Mobile channels will continue to be crucial to content engagement, allowing customers to jump the in store queues and compare products instantly with competitors.

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Pros:

1. Free Trial Subscription – You can enjoy free subscription for 7 days and download 5 images per day. This means you can enjoy 35 images absolutely free.
2. Pay per Credit – You can pay for the images depending upon its size. Depositphotos follow credit base currency. So can buy an image in exchange of credits.
3. Various Subscription Plans – There are various subscription plans available ranging from 3 days to 12 months.
4. Loads of images – Lots of images are available to choose your favorite one.

Cons:

I searched for keyword ‘color’ on Depositphotos.com and Shutterstock.com and got following result.

Depositphotos.com

Shutterstock.com

Noticed any difference?

Conclusion:

Depositphotos.com is a good place where loads of Royalty free images and vectors are available to choose a best one for yourself at descent price.

Rating:

3.5/5

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Some Tips for Readable Designs

In his study on Color Combinations and Readability, Dr. Richard H. Hall of Missouri S & T indicates that darker text on lighter backgrounds rates higher for readability than do other contrast combinations. Though black text on a white background is traditionally accepted amongst web designers as the ideal for readability, his studies indicate that other high contrast color combinations, such as dark blue on light blue, might work just as well from a readability standpoint. The W3C has published an algorithm that may help web designers determine if the color contrast between text and background is sufficient from a readability standpoint.

Font choice can also have a huge impact on readability. A good monospace font, like Courier, is more easy to read than any highly ligatured fantasy font. Serif fonts, like Times New Roman or Verdana, are also popular choices for readability. All of the aforementioned fonts are commonly available on client machines regardless of OS.

Most modern web browsers will allow users to adjust the text size to a more comfortable level. To take advantage of this feature, web designers should set font-size using relative measures of ems (em) or percentages (%). Absolute measures, such as the commonly used pixel (px), may prevent visitors from resizing text. Your audience may abandon you if you do not make it easier for visitors to resize any small text on your pages to a more comfortable level than it is for them to just hit the back button on their browser and go to another, more user friendly website.

Besides these text-based points, readability is also influenced by the images on a site. Just think of a generic MySpace page with the blinking text, animated graphics and autoplaying music. Though these bells and whistles might have been considered exciting and flashy in the late 90s, most web designers now know better than to use them. However, the reasons that these are terrible design choices still apply. Excessive clutter, whether it’s several images or discrete blocks of text, directly affect the readability of a site. A websurfer’s eye scans rather than actively reads, and any interruptions to this activity may cause them to write you off. Use negative space to your advantage, and you will get a much more professional look and less that of the flashy used-car-salesman of the internet.

The Importance of Readability in Website Design

Perhaps even above beautiful graphics and good placement, readability is one of the most important factors in website design. If you fail to account for readability in your web design, preferring instead exciting fonts or flashy images, you have failed to take into account true aesthetics. If you pay attention to color choice, fonts and clean layouts, you will be that much closer to creating truly beautiful websites.

top image credits: Mike Rohde

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Okay, it was a trick question. Both centers sound beautiful. Personally, I would wait until I had plenty of time, and spend a good couple of hours poking around them both. But you can see my point. Though there are many of us out there who like to poke around the Internet and explore web sites, most people appreciate and return to those web sites they can rely on to help them find information or a product or service quickly, when they have only a few minutes. That’s why so many web designers are turning to a simpler model for their web designs. It’s not just an aesthetic issue — it’s also an ease of use issue.

It’s not simply a matter of having a simple design, though. Web sites seem to work more efficiently for their users if everything is kept simple: thoughts, concepts, words, fonts, colors. It’s partly a matter of branding — and partly a matter of finding your niche. Here are a few basic principles I have found while working with clients who are designing not only web sites, but also the rest of their business marketing materials: brochures, business cards, letterhead, newsletters. For all of the above purposes, the “keep it simple” mantra applies:

• When designing your site, ask yourself what the ONE message is that you want your site to convey. You should be able to summarize your message in a short phrase (preferably a phrase that matches your site’s domain name, making it particularly memorable!). Zen Habits. The Tarot Lady. Knitting Help. Green Life. Sports Writer.

• The logo, theme, and color scheme that is used for one purpose should be carried through to the rest of the business’ marketing materials: web site, newsletter, letterhead, business cards. All should match. That way, customers and clients immediately recognize materials that relate to the business. This seems like an old truism, but it’s one that new business owners often don’t realize. If you are working with a new business owner, take some time to explain this concept. I have found that some people want one look for their web sites and something different for their business cards — and I can’t think of a single instance where that is ever a good idea.

• Just as one shouldn’t change horses in midstream, it’s better not to change your brand frequently. Even if it means taking longer to develop a web site or business cards, it’s worth taking the time to get your brand just right. It should be something simple, recognizable, and timeless — and it should be just right for your niche. If you are not quite sure if your site design is just right, then don’t unveil it yet — take a little longer.

• Choose a font and type size that are clear and readable. The serif versus sans serif debate over font has been raging for years, with no end in sight — choose the one you think is most readable, and, again, stick with it. Don’t change fonts for different sections of your site. (One exception: you may wish to carefully choose your headline font to contrast with your body text font, a device that many designers manage to use effectively.) Likewise, make your typeface large enough to read, but not so large that it takes forever to scroll through the site.

• Keep blog posts simple, organized around one clear theme that can be summarized in a short headline. If you have a complicated topic you’d like to explore, break it up into several blog posts.

Finally, I can’t leave you without offering a few examples. Take a look at the following three web sites, which are very clean and simple in their design (I had nothing to do with designing them — these are just a few web sites that I admire). Enjoy!

• The web site of Kilian Muster (http://www.kilianmuster.com/). This web site is very understated. There are not a lot of colors jumping out at you. One blog post is highlighted per day, but it’s easy to find the others if you feel like it.

• The Morning News. (http://www.themorningnews.org/). This is a nice example of a web site that provides plenty of content right on its home page – but yet the home page manages to look simple instead of busy, thanks to a black and white color scheme, a sans serif font (I guess it’s clear where I fall in the great serif/sans serif font debate!), and good clear organization.

• Simple Bits. (http://simplebits.com/). Blog pages tend to be anything but simple — but this one manages to keep its look calm and elegant. And all with a serif font!

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Niche businesses can be challenging, to say the least. And while marketing them online can be just as difficult, by following these few key steps you’ll find people flocking to your site to purchase products or services.

Image credits:
Day to Night – Framed by Schtumple
Web 1.0 Keywords by mary hodder
Chain in gold by tanakawho
Reliable by Eva the Weaver

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• 25+ Tutorials & Resources on jQuery

I have added these textures to my library and thought that you might also like to include in your library too. So have a look at these texture beauties!

1. Raining Light Bokeh Pack

2. Heart Bokeh Textures

3. Dark Symphony Textures

4. Painted Textures Vol. 10

5. Woodwork Texture Pack

6. Colorful Grunge Pack

7. Big Pack of Light Textures

8. Glitter Bokeh Texture Pack

9. The Ice Texture Pack

10. Natural Paper Texture Pack

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So today, we are going to create a very simple Random Color Generator using JavaScript. Some of you guys might think it as very very simple but it’s really fun to create. If you haven’t created yet by yourself then I would suggest trying it. It actually takes 2-3 minutes for creating.

Here we are going to generate Hex Number. For this we will create an Array which will contain numbers ‘0’ to ‘9’ and characters ‘a’ to ‘f’ as the range of the Hex Number is from 0×000000 to 0xFFFFFF. Then we will pick an element from an array randomly and place it in the Hex Number.

Step1:

Create an Array

var hexno=new String;
arr=new Array("0","1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9","a","b","c","d","e","f");

Step 2:

We will select an element randomly from array. Math.random() generates random number from 0 to 1 which will be multiplied by 15 (since our array contains 16 elements with base 0). Math.round() will round the number to its nearest natural number.

var n1=Math.round(Math.random()*15);

var n2=Math.round(Math.random()*15);

var n3=Math.round(Math.random()*15);

var n4=Math.round(Math.random()*15);

var n5=Math.round(Math.random()*15);

var n6=Math.round(Math.random()*15);

Step 3:

Get a corresponding number for all the six elements and put it in the string.

hexno="#"+arr[n1]+""+arr[n2]+""+arr[n3]+""+arr[n4]+""+arr[n5]+""+arr[n6];

Step 4:

Use the string to apply the color.

window.document.bgColor=hexno;

That’s it. Random Color Generator is ready. Try it out.
Final Code:

var hexno=new String;
arr=new Array("0","1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9","a","b","c","d","e","f");

var n1=Math.round(Math.random()*15);
var n2=Math.round(Math.random()*15);
var n3=Math.round(Math.random()*15);
var n4=Math.round(Math.random()*15);
var n5=Math.round(Math.random()*15);
var n6=Math.round(Math.random()*15);

hexno="#"+arr[n1]+""+arr[n2]+""+arr[n3]+""+arr[n4]+""+arr[n5]+""+arr[n6];

document.write("<div id='tag'>");

document.write("<h2>Hex Color</h2>"+"<h3>"+hexno+"</h3>");

document.write("</div>");

window.document.bgColor=hexno;

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1. Horizontal Websites

We’ve already see the advent and popularity of horizontal websites, a new trend as far as the design aspect is concerned. Navigation is from side to side rather than up and down, and this kind of design works well for sites that feature multiple small blocks of content rather than long stretches of text; sites that feature photographs and graphics would prefer to go horizontal because of the convenience this design factor offers.

2. Multi-Column Layouts

We’re also looking at multi-column layouts which allows designers to fit more text into less space; this way, visitors don’t have to scroll up and down to read the entire text because it fits perfectly into one frame that’s been divvied into columns that improve readability and facilitate easy assimilation of the information.

3. Larger Photographs

With the advent of high speed Internet, more and more designers are opting to include large photographs in their pages knowing that the pictures are not going to increase page load times and that they make a positive impact on visitors.

4. Less is More

Designers are also beginning to realize that less is more – no longer do we have annoying design aspects like graphics that are completely unnecessary to the design cluttering up the page and no longer do designers feel the need to use every single design tool at their disposal in the building of a site.

And finally, we’re seeing more utility value in websites with web-masters realizing that unless they’re able to link their content with their design, their site is going to look and feel lopsided. No longer do gray hat SEO techniques of stuffing keywords randomly into long stretches of text do the trick; as search engines become more sophisticated, websites know they cannot cheat them into pushing them to the top of their ranks. So good web design has to incorporate good writing as well if the site wants to be around and do well in the long term.

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