A recent study found that on average, designing a form to have a great user experience almost doubled the rate of successful first-time completions. For example, Ebay made an additional $USD 500 million annually from redesigning just the button on one of their mobile form screens. More conversions, fewer dissatisfied users, better return on investment. Can you afford not to improve your forms' user experiences? This book will walk you through every part of designing a great forms user experience. From the words, to how the form looks, and on to interactivity, you'll learn how to design a web form that works beautifully on mobiles, laptops and desktops. Filled with practical and engaging insights, and plenty of real-world examples, both good and bad. You'll learn answers to common queries like: Where should field labels go? What makes a question easy to understand? How do you design forms to work on small screens? How does touch impact on form design? How long can a form be? What look and feel should the form have: skeumorphic, flat, or something else? What's best practice for error messaging?

Learn to set up, manage, and administer a Drupal web site

Drupal offers unparalleled flexibility for content-managed web sites, and Drupal 7 is the easiest version to use yet. This new edition teaches you the fast, fun, and easy way to get started with Drupal. Even if you have no Drupal experience, you'll quickly learn how to download and install Drupal, set up your first content-managed site, apply templates, use modules, and more.

Drupal gurus Lynn Beighley and Seamus Bellamy show you how to take advantage of what Drupal has to offer, make the most of the new features in Drupal 7, and demystify perplexing Drupal issues.Drupal is a free, open source modular framework and content management system designed for content-managed web sitesShows you how to download Drupal; no programming experience requiredLooks at Drupal 7 and explains new features that make it is easier to use than previous iterations of Drupal for a creating a blog, content site, or eBusiness siteExplains how to organize and create your site's content, apply templates, and get your first site up and runningDetails the ways to use modules and third-party templates

Whether you're looking to implement a flexible content management system, turbocharge a blog with photo galleries, or administer a third-party Drupal site, this book gets you off to a running start

ActionScript 3.0 is a huge upgrade to Flash's programming language. The enhancements to ActionScript's performance, feature set, ease of use, cleanliness, and sophistication are considerable. Essential ActionScript 3.0 focuses on the core language and object-oriented programming, along with the Flash Player API. Essential ActionScript has become the #1 resource for the Flash and ActionScript development community, and the reason is the author, Colin Moock. Many people even refer to it simply as "The Colin Moock book." And for good reason: No one is better at turning ActionScript inside out, learning its nuances and capabilities, and then explaining everything in such an accessible way. Colin Moock is not just a talented programmer and technologist; he's also a gifted teacher. Essential ActionScript 3.0 is a radically overhauled update to Essential ActionScript 2.0. True to its roots, the book once again focuses on the core language and object-oriented programming, but also adds a deep look at the centerpiece of Flash Player's new API: display programming. Enjoy hundreds of brand new pages covering exciting new language features, such as the DOM-based event architecture, E4X, and namespaces--all brimming with real-world sample code. The ActionScript 3.0 revolution is here, and Essential ActionScript 3.0's steady hand is waiting to guide you through it. Adobe Developer Library is a co-publishing partnership between O'Reilly Media and Adobe Systems, Inc. and is designed to produce the number one information resources for developers who use Adobe technologies. Created in 2006, the Adobe Developer Library is the official source for comprehensive learning solutions to help developers create expressive and interactive web applications that can reach virtually anyone on any platform. With top-notch books and innovative online resources covering the latest in rich Internet application development, the Adobe Developer Library offers expert training and in-depth resources, straight from the source.

The long awaited follow-up to our all-time bestseller Thinking with Type is here. Type on Screen is the definitive guide to using classic typographic concepts of form and structure to make dynamic compositions for screen-based applications. Covering a broad range of technologies-from electronic publications and websites to videos and mobile devices-this hands-on primer presents the latest information available to help designers make critical creative decisions, including how to choose typefaces for the screen, how to style beautiful, functional text and navigation, how to apply principles of animation to text and how to generate new forms and experiences with code-based operations. Type on Screen is an essential design tool for anyone seeking clear and focused guidance about typography for the digital age.

It's well known that identifying and fixing problems in design is easier and cheaper if it can be done earlier in the process of design and build. That's because as the fidelity of the project we're working on increases, the effort involved in making changes increases. If we can test out early ideas to see if they work, in small chunks, then we can identify whether those ideas are going to work. To do this, we need to build prototypes. With easy-to-follow, practical advice, this book will show you how to use a number of different prototyping techniques to improve UX. It covers: The prototyping process Paper prototyping Interactive wireframing tools, such as Balsamiq and Axure Dedicated prototyping tools, including Marvel, Invision, and Adobe XD HTML prototypes How to use prototypes in your project workflow

This updated, expanded and oversized inspirational resource for artists and designers working with colour presents more than 1,100 colour palettes, with light, bright, dark and muted varieties for each one, making it the most expansive palette selection tool available. Color Index XL provides aspiring designers, artists, and creative individuals who use colour in their work with an indispensable, one-stop method for reviewing and selecting current, up-to-date colour palettes for their projects. This book serves as the perfect resource for teachers, students, and professionals of all kinds in the art and design space who want to stay up-to-date on the ever-evolving trends in colour.

Implement the powerful multimedia and interactive capabilities offered by HTML5, including style control tools, illustration tools, video, audio, and rich media solutions. Understand how HTML5 is changing the web development game with this project-based book that shows you-not just tells you-what HTML5 can do for your websites. Reinforce your practical understanding of the new standard with demo applications and tutorials, so that execution is one short step away. HTML5 is the future of the web. Literally every web designer and developer needs to know how to use this language to create the types of web sites consumers now expect. This new edition of the bestseller teaches you to enhance your web designs with rich media solutions and interactivity, using detailed descriptions and hands-on projects for every step along the way. The second edition contains completely updated information, including more on mobility and video standards, plus new projects. The companion website, visualizetheweb.com, is packed full of extra information, online code libraries, and a user forum, offering even more opportunity to learn new skills, practice your coding and interact with other users. * NEW content added, detailing Web API, Mobile/Tablet Controls, CSS3 for Mobile Devices, Creating SVG Illustrations, and Emerging Standards * Updated information on how to use HTML5 within a variety of browsers including Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Firefox * As in the first edition, concepts are thoroughly explained and then brought to life via hands-on projects in each section

Thoroughly revised and updated with examples rewritten to conform to HTML5, CSS3, and contemporary web development practices, this easy-to-understand, step-by-step tutorial helps you quickly master the basics of HTML and CSS before moving on to more advanced topics such as graphics, video, and interactivity with JavaScript and jQuery. In just one hour a day, you'll learn the skills you need to design, create, and maintain a professional-looking website. No previous experience required. By following each short, one-hour lesson in this book, anyone can learn the basics of web development. Learn at your own pace. You can work through each lesson sequentially to make sure you thoroughly understand all the concepts and methodologies, or you can focus on specific lessons to learn the techniques that interest you most. Test your knowledge. Each lesson ends with a Workshop section filled with questions, answers, and exercises for further study. Learn how to... Fully implement the HTML5 and CSS3 standards Work with text and create links Add images and graphics to your page Use CSS to style a site and position elements on a page Structure a page with HTML5 Use responsive web design to make your pages look good on different-sized screens Use JavaScript to add dynamic elements and interactivity on your pages Leverage jQuery to add JavaScript features to your pages Design for the mobile web Get your site online and let people know it's there Optimize your site for search engines Contents at a Glance PART I: Getting Started 1 What Is Web Publishing 2 Getting Your Tools in Order 3 Introducing HTML and CSS PART II: Creating Web Pages 4 Learning the Basics of HTML 5 Organizing Information with Lists 6 Working with Links PART III: Doing More with HTML and CSS 7 Formatting Text with HTML and CSS 8 Using CSS to Style a Site 9 Using Images on Your Web Pages 10 Building Tables 11 Using CSS to Position Elements on a Page 12 Designing Forms 13 Structuring a Page with HTML5 14 Integrating Multimedia: Video and Sound 15 Advanced CSS: Page Layout in CSS 16 Using Responsive Web Design PART IV: Using JavaScript and jQuery 17 Introducing JavaScript 18 Using jQuery 19 Using JavaScript in Your Pages 20 Working with Frames and Linked Windows PART V: Designing for Everyone 21 Designing for the Mobile Web 22 Designing for User Experience PART VI: Going Live on the Web 23 How to Publish Your Site 24 Taking Advantage of the Server 25 Search Engines and SEO

One advantage of using CSS3 is that you can apply colors and backgrounds to any element in a web document, create your own gradients, and even apply multiple backgrounds to the same element. This practical guide shows you many ways to use colors, backgrounds, and gradients to achieve some pretty awesome effects. Short and sweet, this book is an excerpt from the upcoming fourth edition of CSS: The Definitive Guide. When you purchase either the print or the ebook edition of Colors, Backgrounds, and Gradients, you'll receive a discount on the entire Definitive Guide once it's released. Why wait? Learn how to bring life to your web pages now. Define foreground colors for a border or element with the color property Combine foreground and background colors to create interesting effects Position and repeat one or more images in an element's background Fix an image to a screen's viewing area, rather than to the element that contains it Use color stops to define vertical, horizontal, and diagonal linear gradients Create spotlight effects, circular shadows, and other effects with radial gradients

As a web designer, you have tough choices to make when it comes to weighing aesthetics and performance. Content, layout, images, and interactivity are necessary components to engage your audience, but each have an enormous impact on page load time.

This practical book helps you approach a new project with page speed in mind, and shows you how to test and benchmark which design choices are most important. You'll also learn how to design semantic HTML and CSS that are easily repurposed and edited later, saving not just page load time but also your own time during development.

Written by Etsy's performance engineering manager, this book covers: Why designing for performance is imperativeThe basics of page speed: requests and how browsers render contentOptimizing images, HTML and CSS for performanceImplementing responsive web design with an eye on performanceTools for measuring and iterating on your design choices and their performance

If you have Adobe Photoshop experience and basic HTML and CSS skills, this book will help you learn how to design for performance.

Dreamweaver CC is a powerful tool for designing all kinds of websites, from those with simple, static pages to interactive, media-driven sites for desktop, laptop, and mobile devices. But the program still doesn't include a printed guide to its amazing capabilities. That's where this Missing Manual comes in. With hands-on tutorials and coverage of every feature, you'll learn to build, deploy, and manage sites whether you're an experienced designer or just getting started. The important stuff you need to know: Dive into page design. Quickly learn the basics of working with text, images, links, and tables. Edit pages in Live view. Dynamically add elements to live pages and immediately see the results. Design once, and for all. Build fluid-grid sites that adapt themselves to desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Troubleshoot your HTML. Use the new Element Quick View to reveal the hierarchy of page elements. Style with ease. Tap Dreamweaver's enhanced CSS Designer to copy and paste styles. Enhance Dreamweaver. Get new program features with add-ons that integrate directly with Dreamweaver. Bring your pages to life. Use jQuery UI to add interactive page elements like tabbed content panels. Create universal pages. Avoid browser incompatibility with workarounds.

Is Responsive Web Design (RWD) slowing your site down? It doesn't have to. With this concise book, you'll learn practical techniques for improving performance with RWD, including a default set of guidelines you can use as an easy starting point. Web performance researcher and evangelist Guy Podjarny walks you through several existing solutions for dealing with RWD performance problems, and offers advice for choosing optimizations that will be most useful for your needs. RWD performance problems stem from excessive downloads of resources, including images, JavaScript and CSS, and HTML--downloads designed to let your web application adapt to different screen sizes. Podjarny presents a series of increasingly larger-scope solutions to each issue, including client-side techniques and RESS (Responsive + Server Side Components). Address performance issues by starting with Podjarny's default guidelines Use a JavaScript image loader and an image transcoding service to create Responsive Images Reduce JavaScript and CSS downloads with asynchronous scripts, conditional loading, and multi-viewport CSS Prioritize resources to avoid excess content in RWD and defer the load of any content that's not critical Explore server-side Adaptive Delivery and RESS solutions as an alternative to "pure" RWD Guy Podjarny, or Guypo for short, is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Akamai's Web Experience business unit.

Design has become the key link between users and today's complex and rapidly evolving digital experiences, and designers are starting to be included in strategic conversations about the products and services that enterprises ultimately deliver. This has led to companies building in-house digital/experience design teams at unprecedented rates, but many of them don't understand how to get the most out of their investment. This practical guide provides guidelines for creating and leading design teams within your organization, and explores ways to use design as part of broader strategic planning. You'll discover: Why design's role has evolved in the digital age How to infuse design into every product and service experience The 12 qualities of effective design organizations How to structure your design team through a Centralized Partnership Design team roles and evolution The process of recruiting and hiring designers How to manage your design team and promote professional growth

The book helps readers develop fundamental skills in the field of biomedical illustrations with a training approach based on step-by-step tutorials with a practical approach. Medical/scientific illustration mainly belongs to professionals in the art field or scientists trying to create artistic visualization. There is not a merging between the two, even if the demand is high. This leads to accurate scientific images with no appeal (or trivial mistakes), or appealing images with huge scientific mistakes. This gives the fundamentals to the scientist so they can apply CG techniques that give a more scientific approach creating mistake-free images. Key Features This book provides a reference where none exist. Without overwhelming the reader with software details it teaches basic principles to give readers to fundamentals to create. Demonstrates professional artistic tools used by scientists to create better images for their work. Coverage of lighting and rendering geared specifically for scientific work that is toturoal based with a practical approach. Included are chapter tutorials, key terms and end of chapter references for Art and Scientific References for each chapter.

Want to create animated graphics for iPhone, iPad, and the Web, using familiar Adobe features? You've come to the right guide. Adobe Edge Animate: The Missing Manual shows you how to build HTML5 graphics with Adobe visual tools. No programming experience? No problem. Adobe Edge Animate writes all the code for you. With this book, you'll be designing great-looking web elements in no time. The important stuff you need to know: Get to know the workspace. Learn how Adobe Edge Animate performs its magic. Create and import graphics. Make drawings with Animate's tools, or use art you've designed in other programs. Work with text. Build menus, label buttons, provide instructions, and perform other tasks. Jump into animation. Master Animate's elements, properties, and timeline panels. Make it interactive. Use triggers and actions to give users control over their web experience. Dig into JavaScript. Customize your projects by tweaking your code.

With the recipes in this book, you'll take full advantage of the vast collection of community-contributed modules that make the Drupal web framework useful and unique. Learn how to combine modules in interesting ways (with minimal code-wrangling) to develop a variety of community-driven websites. Each chapter describes a case study and outlines specific requirements for one of several projects included in the book -- a wiki, publishing workflow site, photo gallery, product review site, online store, user group site, and more. The second edition of this popular book is one of the few resources to cover Drupal 7, the latest version of the open source content management system. Newcomers will find a thorough introduction to the framework, while experienced Drupal developers will learn best practices for building powerful websites. * Get an overview of Drupal concepts and key modules, with a bird's-eye view of each module's specialty * Explore various solutions that meet the requirements for each project described, with details about which modules are selected and why * Learn how to configure modules, with step-by-step recipes for building the precise functionality the project requires * Get information on additional modules that will make your project even more powerful * Be able to access the modules described in the book, along with other resources

Itching to build interesting projects with Drupal, but confused by the way it handles design challenges? This concise guide helps small teams and solo website designers understand how Drupal works by demonstrating the ways it outputs content. You'll learn how to manage Drupal's output, design around it, and then turn your design into a theme.

In the second of three volumes on Drupal design, award-winning designer Dani Nordin takes you beyond basic site planning and teaches you key strategies for working with themes, layouts, and wireframes. Discover how to use Drupal to make your vision a reality, instead of getting distracted by the system's project and code management details. Learn strategies for sketching, wireframing, and designing effective layouts Break down a Drupal layout to understand its basic components Understand Drupal's theme layer, and what to look for in a base theme Work with the 960 grid system to facilitate efficient wireframing and theming Manage Drupal markup, including the code generated by the powerful Views module Use LessCSS to organize CSS and help you theme your site more efficiently

This book introduces standard and new HTML5 elements and attributes and CSS3 properties commonly used in Web design as well as design guidelines for their effective use. Its approach of explaining every line of code in the examples it uses to show the usage of the HTML elements and CSS properties introduced makes it an invaluable Web design resource for beginners as well as intermediates looking to fill in gaps in their knowledge. In addition, the inclusion of user-centered design process stages and how they are best managed in website development makes the book unique in its area. Also, the book's approach of including challenges after each topic to help refresh readers' knowledge, as well as make them think, ensures that there are ample activities to keep learners motivated and engaged. Key Features Comprehensively covers standard and new HTML5 elements and attributes and CSS3 properties. Includes a lot of challenges/exercises; one after each HTML element or CSS property introduced and demonstrated with examples. Example codes can be copied and pasted as-is to implement and experiment with. For every HTML element or CSS property introduced, guidelines are provided, where relevant, on how to best use them in a design to enhance usability and accessibility. Includes comprehensive explanation of flexible box and grid layout models and how to use them to create responsive and adaptive Web design. Covers the importance of visual aesthetics in design, including design elements and principles and examples of how they can be applied in Web design to produce good user experience. Includes comprehensive guidelines on how to design for standard and mobile screens, including discussion of touch gesture interaction design and standard gestures and the functions for which they are most commonly used. Introduces the stages of user-centered design process, including Web accessibility and user-experience testing, and managerial aspects of Web development, including intellectual property. Provides a brief introduction on how to make HTML and CSS codes more compact and more efficient and how to combine them with other languages commonly used in Web design and development, such as JavaScript, AJAX, and PHP.

A two-book set for web designers and front-end developers

This two-book set combines the titles "HTML & CSS: Designing and Building Web Sites" and "JavaScript & jQuery: Interactive Front-End Development." Together these two books form an ideal platform for anyone who wants to master HTML and CSS before stepping up to JavaScript and jQuery.

"HTML & CSS" covers structure, text, links, images, tables, forms, useful options, adding style with CSS, fonts, colors, thinking in boxes, styling lists and tables, layouts, grids, and even SEO, Google analytics, ftp, and HTML5. "JavaScript & jQuery" offers an excellent combined introduction to these two technologies using a clear and simple visual approach using diagrams, infographics, and photographs.A handy two-book set that uniquely combines related technologiesHighly visual format and accessible language makes these books highly effective learning toolsPerfect for beginning web designers and front-end developers

The geometric foundations, forms and patterns in today's architecture, design and decorative arts have been deeply influenced by past cultures. From humankind's first path-like doodles on cave walls through to the higher abstractions developed to make accurate measurements and predictions, the three-dimensional forms we design and build are dependent upon available materials, human needs and the limitations of our imaginations. This unique sourcebook presents a history of the intimate relationship between geometry, mathematics and manmade design throughout human history, from the Neolithic period through the Indian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Chinese, Greek, Celtic, Islamic and Renaissance cultures, to the present and the possible future. Presenting key principles that can be applied across all design disciplines, Roger Burrows reveals fresh insights and ideas about how geometry as a visual language has evolved to meet our needs, initiated new technologies and changed the way we think about the world around us. With a wealth of original artworks by the author to explain his ideas, this book will be an essential reference resource for inspiration and information for students and design professionals.

Performance is critical to the success of any web site, and yet today's web applications push browsers to their limits with increasing amounts of rich content and heavy use of Ajax. In this book, Steve Souders, web performance evangelist at Google and former Chief Performance Yahoo , provides valuable techniques to help you optimize your site's performance.

Souders' previous book, the bestselling "High Performance Web Sites," shocked the web development world by revealing that 80% of the time it takes for a web page to load is on the client side. In Even Faster Web Sites, Souders and eight expert contributors provide best practices and pragmatic advice for improving your site's performance in three critical categories: JavaScript--Get advice for understanding Ajax performance, writing efficient JavaScript, creating responsive applications, loading scripts without blocking other components, and more.Network--Learn to share resources across multiple domains, reduce image size without loss of quality, and use chunked encoding to render pages faster.Browser--Discover alternatives to iframes, how to simplify CSS selectors, and other techniques.

Speed is essential for today's rich media web sites and Web 2.0 applications. With this book, you'll learn how to shave precious seconds off your sites' load times and make them respond even faster.

This book contains six guest chapters contributed by Dion Almaer, Doug Crockford, Ben Galbraith, Tony Gentilcore, Dylan Schiemann, Stoyan Stefanov, Nicole Sullivan, and Nicholas C. Zakas.

With this book, you can build exciting, scalable web applications quickly and confidently, using Google App Engine - even if you have little or no experience in programming or web development. App Engine is one of the most exciting web technologies to appear in the last year, providing a simple, easy-to-use application framework with basic web tools. While Google's own tutorial assumes significant development experience, "Using Google App Engine" is for anyone who wants to get started with this platform. By the end of the book, you'll know how to build complete, interactive applications and deploy them to 'the cloud,' using the same servers that power Google applications. You will: get an overview of all the technologies necessary to use Google App Engine; learn how to use Python, HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), HTTP, and DataStore, App Engine's database; grasp the technical aspects necessary to create sophisticated, dynamic web applications; and, understand what's required to deploy your applications to Google servers. In addition to being a foundational resource for beginning programmers, "Using Google App Engine" is also an excellent book for experienced programmers who want to acquire working knowledge of web technologies. Building web applications used to be for experts only, but with Google App Engine - and this book - anyone can create a dynamic web presence.

If you're involved in planning IT infrastructure as a network or system architect, system administrator, or developer, this book will help you adapt your skills to work with these highly scalable, highly redundant infrastructure services. While analysts hotly debate the advantages and risks of cloud computing, IT staff and programmers are left to determine whether and how to put their applications into these virtualized services. Cloud Application Architectures provides answers -- and critical guidance -- on issues of cost, availability, performance, scaling, privacy, and security. With Cloud Application Architectures, you will:

Understand the differences between traditional deployment and cloud computing Determine whether moving existing applications to the cloud makes technical and business sense Analyze and compare the long-term costs of cloud services, traditional hosting, and owning dedicated servers Learn how to build a transactional web application for the cloud or migrate one to it Understand how the cloud helps you better prepare for disaster recovery Change your perspective on application scaling

To provide realistic examples of the book's principles in action, the author delves into some of the choices and operations available on Amazon Web Services, and includes high-level summaries of several of the other services available on the market today. Cloud Application Architectures provides best practices that apply to every available cloud service. Learn how to make the transition to the cloud and prepare your web applications to succeed.

Flash CS3, the latest version of the premier tool for creating web animations and interactive web sites, can be intimidating to learn. This entertaining reference tutorial provides a reader-friendly animation primer and a guided tour of all the program's tools and capabilities. Beginners will learn to use the software in no time, and experienced users will quickly take their skills to the next level. The book gives Flash users of all levels hands-on instructions to help them master: Special effects Morphing Adding audio and video Introducing interactivity And much more With Flash CS3: The Missing Manual you'll be able to turn an idea into a Flash animation, tutorial, or movie. This book will help you create online tutorials, training materials and full-blown presentations. It also teaches design principles throughout and helps you avoid elements that can distract or annoy an audience. This is the first new release of Flash since Adobe bought Macromedia, which means that it's the first version that will integrate easily with other Adobe products. It's a whole new ballgame when it comes to Flash, and Flash CS3: The Missing Manual offers you complete and objective coverage. It's the perfect companion to this powerful software.

This book provides an introduction and overview of the rapidly evolving topics of computer graphics and games, presenting the new perspectives employed by researchers and the industry, highlighting the recent empirical findings. Bringing selected papers from the Eurasia Graphics conference series together, the book aims to discuss issues, solutions, challenges, and needs for a better understanding of computer graphics and games. The Games and Simulation section of this book covers the topics of game user experience, game narrative, playability heuristics, human computer interaction and various computer simulations. The Computer Graphics section deals with 3D modelling, procedural content generation, visualization, and interaction techniques.