Showing posts with label latest web design trends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label latest web design trends. Show all posts

Friday, May 2, 2014

HTML5 and CSS3 – Lift up your web design to next level

HTML5 and CSS3 are the new techniques which are considered as the future of web development. However, you don’t have to wait to start using them for your web development. Because, even though the specification is still in development, most contemporary browsers and mobile devices already support these techniques.
Gone are the days when adding additional markup just to design a button in a different way or stripe tables. Now, you have to learn how to use HTML5 and CSS3 new markup to create a better structure for your website content and also better interfaces for your forms.

Using HTML5 and CSS3, you can able to embed audio, video and vector graphics into your web pages without using Flash. You can find how web sockets, cross-document messaging, client-side storage, and offline caching can make your modern web development easy, also you can discover how CSS3 makes it into style sections of your web page. You will get a clear idea about both the developing solutions that are backwards compatible and accessible.

HTML5:
HTML5 is the most recent version of Hypertext Markup Language or HTML. This technology is currently supported by only a few numbers of browsers, hoping to see more in usage by the next year. However, the features that are available now are a best possible way to become acquainted with HTML5 and add some fantastic elements to your website.
To avoid many bugs and crashes, refuse to allow Flash on the iOS and also learn how to use the more intricate features of HTML5 to develop apps and iOS-friendly websites. As Google is rolling out an HTML5-friendly version of YouTube, many web and mobile app developers have started to see how important this technique will become in the near future.
Every browser may support various features of HTML5 that makes it mandatory for those interested in programming to figure out which features they require and which will be supported by various different browsers.

Features of HTML5:
Any HTML5 syntax needs a doctype that must be specified, so that the browser can provide the web page in standards mode. One important thing is that the doctype declaration has also been made simpler from previous HTML. Hence, it is now just: <!DOCTYPE html>
HTML5 provides an outstanding support to both audio and visual. As soon as all browsers support HTML5, you can be able to easily add audio and video to your website without the need of other plugins.
Using HTML5, you can easily edit the content of your website. Use the attribute “contenteditable” to effortlessly change your content on your website. To do this, just add contenteditable=“true” to any element.
You can use the canvas element to bypass Photoshop in order to make your 2D images and directly add them in your code.
The application cache allows you to easily navigate web applications, even though you are offline.

Why use HTML5?
HTML5 gives you more flexibility when creating your website.
As HTML5 generally implements Web sockets. Hence, it will load much faster than its older version.
Using HTML5, you can create universal applications for all mobile devices. Therefore, mobile phone applications will become much more accessible if they are written in HTML5.
Audio, video and images are all effortlessly written perfectly into the code. This eliminates the need for any other third-party software like Flash.
HTML5 is growing more rapidly and this will be resulted in a number of features that will leave traditional websites looking outdated.
As HTML5 is generally built on HTML4, the old markup can able to stay in place as you develop the new features.
Both HTML5 and CSS3 together will provide some great designer credibility.

CSS 3:
CSS3 or Cascading Style Sheet 3 is a style sheet language that specifies style formatting, such as color, font, size and layout, for websites. This technique is mostly used in HTML pages. However, unlike HTML, CSS mainly focuses on the design and style of a website rather than its content. The main purpose of using CSS is to make changes on every page on a website without rewriting the code.
Even though CSS3 is not supported by all browsers that are available now, it is becoming very popular because it makes website changes so much easier, when compared with its previous version or JavaScript plugins.
CSS3 provides many exciting new features that help you to enhance the appearance of a website. Using CSS3, you can able to improve the functionality and appearance of your website exponentially.

Features of CSS3:
Using CSS3, you can easily create a shadow around an element by using the same code, and also be able to change the color, position, and blur of that shadow.
Rounded corners appear more user-friendly than square boxes. Using CSS3, you can apply this effect to HTML elements.
Just like normal text, you can be able to add a shadow to HTML text that can be highlighted. Using CSS3, you can change the shadow blur, the shadow angle, and the shadow color in CSS.
The property “opacity” can make elements more transparent. You can set the opacity of an image in an image editor and then save it with transparency enabled.
With CSS3, you can create gradients right in the browser as soon as you load the web page.

Why use CSS3?
In fact, there is no high demand of innovation that CSS3 was developed, however, the possibilities that CSS3 could be able to provide for us. Before CSS3 has been introduced, web designers can able to create CSS to meet the expected result using images and markup. But, now, with CSS3, they can be able to create the same effects as layout images and extra markup with less effort and more dynamics. This not only helps in making changes easily, but also decreases the size of a web page with less number of images.

Conclusion:
Hence, the combination of both HTML5 and CSS3 are very powerful and can create incredible, high-quality solutions. So, it is mandatory for you to learn them and start using them from today, otherwise you will fall behind your competitors.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Web Design Trends in the year 2014

As the World Wide Web continues to evolve, new web design trends, techniques and ideas are also surfacing constantly. To ensure that your website is effective and reaching your visitors in the best possible way, it is necessary for you to analyze your website design, content and features frequently. Some new trends were arriving in 2013; however, some among them have been faded out and others are stuck around and still having a strong presence.  While in 2014, these are some of the web design trends that have started to emerge:

Single Page Websites
A single page web design is great for small websites that don’t have too much of the content. It helps you to keep your content easy to navigate while heavily relying on scrolling.  The single page design technique enables you to convey linear and controlled information to your visitors and makes them focus on important details.

Scrolling
Today, website visitors are used to scroll down a website to read more information that leads to more possibilities for the layout of your site. A lengthy homepage with many web design elements can help convey more information to the visitor; however, longer pages can also overwhelm visitors if they are cluttered with website content. In 2014, keep an eye out for lengthy and considerately designed web pages, and also consider about how you might engage your visitors by encouraging them to scroll.

Flat UI
Flat user-interface or flat UI is an up-and-coming concept in web design, which is being implemented on so many websites. This is a technique that focuses on website content and provides a fundamental design with less distracting elements. Flat UI takes a much more basic approach, mostly with a less image-intensive web design. Less number of images and simpler web design elements enable faster load times and thus help those who will load the website on a slower internet connection.

Fixed Header Bar
Previously, menu bars are placed in the header of a website, mostly near the logo. As the users scroll down, the navigation would disappear with the header. So, if the users want to navigate further on the website, they have to scroll back to the top of the web page. To avoid this, many websites have now fixed the header bar at the top of the browser window, allowing it to follow users as they scroll down the web page. This allows users to easily access the menu, and thus improves navigation and serves as a subtle prompt for the users to drive deeper into the website.

Large type
If your web page consists of too much of the text, then your visitor might choose not to take the time to read it. Large type can help you to make headings that draw the attention of the readers and make them to read the rest of the content. Generally, the average reader decides within a few seconds whether your website is worth exploring. So, these large headings can help you to grab the attention of the readers and pull them into other content on your website.

HTML 5 Animations / CSS 3 / JavaScript / Flash / Silverlight
For so many years, Adobe’s Flash plug-in is dominated video, games, and other animations on the World Wide Web. However, recently, Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in helps to cover much of the same ground similar to Flash. Both Microsoft’s Silverlight and Flash are rapidly fading due to the emergence of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, which help bring a website to life and create an excellent and unique browser experience.

Parallax Scrolling
Parallax Scrolling is a special scrolling technique that helps in animating both background and foreground images as you scroll. This not only creates depth but also the web page to life. As you scroll through the web page, both text and other graphics will become animated, and they also move on the web page to help create scenery and change content.

Large Backgrounds
In the past, having large background images on a web page is hideous as it takes too much time for loading. Also, it makes a website look horrific, distracting and annoying. But, nowadays, large background images are no longer an issue of loading time. But, the question here is whether the background image fits with the website. With the perfect web design and image, the web designers can easily connect large background images into the rest of the web design, helps in enhancing the user experience.

Video Backgrounds
In previous days, the browser limitations and the low internet speed connections prevent video backgrounds from being easily implemented within a website. However, the newly introduced browsers can able to seamlessly play video that can ingeniously augment a website’s design. This is because video backgrounds are generally designed to support the website design and content.

Responsive Web Design
The best way to implement a mobile website is a responsive web design. It helps you to avoid having a completely separate set of content and a new web design. Using responsive web design, you can utilize existing content that perfectly responds to the resolution of any devices, such as mobile, tablet or desktop, whichever your visitor is using. Within a responsive design, you can accentuate website content important to mobile users, such as time, location, or phone number.  The responsive web design has been very helpful to maintain mobile websites effortlessly; Instead of just having to persistently change a second set of website content, the responsive web design will integrate with your already existing content to provide a flawless browsing experience for your mobile visitors.

High-Resolution Screens
Due to the adaptation of Apple’s Retina screens within the iPhone, iPad and MacBook products, we have seen the requirement to have high resolution graphics integrated into websites. Hence, high-resolution screens are doing a great job of reducing pixilation and making websites look exceptional.

Third-Party Services
Third-party services are available in handy, helps in showing video on a website, implementing a newsletter system, or collecting stats on visitors to a website. Using third-party services, you can get your website access to fantastic and robust software that can satisfy many expectations.

Software as a Service (SaaS)
Software as a service or SaaS allows you to integrate with a service that is already being developed for solving a problem. These services are free for a certain amount of usage and then they charge for additional usage or for more features. Examples for Software as a service are MailChimp, Post Kudos, etc.

Open Source Software
Open source software helps you to build and implement so many features faster than ever, as it is developed by a large community to solve most common problems. Today, many websites are relying on content management system for adding, updating, and maintaining the content on the website. These content management systems are often open source platforms that have a community frequently adding new features, fixing errors and creating additional plug-ins to enhance the system.

Conclusion
The above mentioned web design trends are booming in this current year 2014. It is nonetheless agreeable that many of these web design trends are going to set solid foundations for the future. Also, there is no doubt that there will be even bigger and industry-changing web design trends will take off in the next coming years.