Slick AJAX loading One Page portfolio for French art director, 'Flavien Guilbaud'.
by Rob Hope via One Page Love
Monday, June 1, 2015
Always & Forever Computer Entertainment
Mysterious and intriguing (click the logo) launching soon page for 'Always & Forever Computer Entertainment'.
by Rob Hope via One Page Love
Hinge Ltd
Responsive One Pager with a yellow scheme for Southampton-based digital agency, 'Hinge Ltd'.
by Rob Hope via One Page Love
3 Prototyping Tools Compared: Invision, Marvel & Justinmind
Here's an interesting image. This is Wilbur Wright flying a glider he and his brother built in 1902. The inset image shows one of their less successful glider tests. This was dangerous and dicey stuff.
Though for the Wrights, 'manned powered flight' was always the ultimate dream, this glider phase was absolutely critical to their success. Sketches and calculations alone were never going to solve all their design challenges. They needed to build - and crash - REAL prototypes to learn what they needed to know.
Web and app development is a similar prospect. Our creations are now complex systems reacting to events in real-time, and customizing themselves for each user and each device individually. We are no longer book-like pages – like the Wrights, to need to test prototypes.
Fortunately there are lots of options out there, so today I’m here to test out 3 prototyping saviors that are sure to help you make the transition from an idea to a reality. Best of all these all offer free options. Continue reading to find out which tool is the right fit for you.
The Applications
The three prototyping applications we will be looking at are:
For each of these three tools we will be breaking things down into:
- Registration Process
- Getting Started
- The Interface
- The Tools
- Features
Justinmind
First up we have the interactive wireframe creator Justinmind. This tool boasts that it is in the business of changing the way you prototype by making the process faster and communicating your ideas easier. Off the bat Justinmind sets an inviting tone - the scrolling, container-less, animated slideshow that takes up most of the home screen gives you an idea of the interface and how it works which really had me wondering if it was actually going to be that easy. Of course the only way I could decide that was to create an account.
Registration
By clicking the black CTA calling for you to “Get Started Free” you are taken to a very simple registration form. On the registration page they let you know immediately that “no credit card is required”. This put my mind at ease that this wasn’t just going to be a 14 or 30 day trial before asking for some type of payment, you know unless I wanted to upgrade. Please note that there is a “pro” version of this tool if you really need the extras.
After quickly registering, a literal 10 seconds on my part, I was informed that I was all set to go and prompted to download and install the editor.
While some people may be turned off by the prospect of having to download and install a program, I am actually all for it. This guarantees that I can get to work without having to worry about whether I have a connection or not.
The only thing I would say negatively about the installer is that you aren’t informed of the installation process or what platforms are compatible until after you click the “download and install button”. It would have been nice if the compatibility information was shown before you start downloading.
Note: With the download you will receive a 30 day trial of the Pro version before being switched to the “Forever Free” version.
Getting Started
For the record, it only took me two minutes to install the Justinmind Prototyper once it downloaded. Like most programs of this nature you’re given three choices, new, open and learn. Upon clicking to create a new prototype you are prompted to select one out of ten available device options which includes Google Glasses. How many prototype tools do you know have that option?
Depending on the device you pick you are given certain preference options you can tweak based on your project needs.
The Interface
On first glance the interface looks polished and professional. For free software, you really do seem to get all the bells and whistles for your prototyping needs. Admittedly the interface might seem intimidating but if you’re familiar with Adobe products and used to similar interfaces and setups it isn’t that much different.
Make no mistake, Justinmind is not an Adobe clone and it may not be a quick pickup as far as learning it in a matter of five minutes. Just in case you do need a little assistance Justinmind offers an efficient and easy 30 second tutorial to get you acquainted with the prototyper.
The Tools
As far as the interface is concerned while it is elaborate it is user-friendly and setup in a logical manner allowing you to get things done with little to no confusion. The left side of the screen will be your best friend while you prototype. Here you will find widgets that will help you setup your prototype and flesh it out.
Basics
Most people are used to using rectangles and squares when creating their wireframes but with the basic tools you are able to flesh out your prototypes more than you initially would have. In the basics box you will find that you can add everything from geometric shapes, tables, images, texts and more. These are all nice additions and from the looks of it the available basics can undertake multiple uses as item stand-ins.
Web
The web widgets are excellent and fulfill most if not all of your needs when it comes to prototyping websites. Here you will find buttons, file upload options and various lists and checkboxes. Not only that but there are two sub-categories to prototype navigation and html.
Parallax
One interesting and appreciated widget tool is the parallax section. Now, to be honest I don’t use a prototype tool during the rare occasions I do prototype so I don’t know how common it is for a wireframing tool to offer parallax prototyping. Either way it is certainly a cool tool to have especially if you are working on a design that requires parallax and you want to give the client an idea of how everything will work. There are 12 different parallax movements for you to use.
Note: That depending on the device you are prototyping your widget tools will change in accordance to your device. The only thing that will not change is the basics. For example here is the widget options for prototyping for Android:
Features
Justinmind has a lot of features and tools to your disposal which you can look at here. But what is really important for the free user to determine if Justinmind’s Prototyper is for them is seeing the difference between the Pro and Free versions:
The Bottom Line
Justinmind Prototyper is a great program for those trying to get some sophisticated prototyping results. The interface is nice and there are some great tools for users to work with.
The downside however is that there is a learning curve if you aren’t use to this type of prototyping layout and the tools that come with it. Plus the Free version is very limiting which is a bummer considering it promotes itself as “The Best 100% Free Wireframe Tool for Mobile and Web”.
They say it right in the tab description.
Continue reading %3 Prototyping Tools Compared: Invision, Marvel & Justinmind%
by Gabrielle Gosha via SitePoint
Tobias van Schneider mixtapes
Clean responsive One Pager showcasing a collection of curated mixtapes by Spotify lead designer, Tobias van Schneider.
by Rob Hope via One Page Love
The Best CSS Reset Stylesheets
Resetting your CSS to baseline property values is useful for gaining control, predictability, and uniformity with regards to how browsers render your HTML elements.
To learn about CSS resets in greater detail, see these articles:
If you’re looking for a stylesheet to help you reset your CSS, in my opinion, these are your top options right now:
Reset CSS
Eric Meyer’s Reset CSS — this is the stylesheet that made CSS resets a mainstay. Reset CSS either nullifies a default CSS property by setting it to 0, or it sets the property to a common-sense value (e.g., line-height: 1 on the <body> element). Explicitly declaring certain CSS property values can help reduce inconsistencies in the way our HTML elements are rendered by the browser.
Related: Eric Meyer’s thoughts on CSS3
Note that Reset CSS was last updated in 2011. Many CSS reset stylesheets we’ll be talking about haven’t been updated in a while.
HTML5 Reset Stylesheet
This reset stylesheet by Richard Clark is a modification of Eric Meyer’s Reset CSS. This CSS reset is geared towards modern HTML 5 elements. Other tweaks found in HTML5 Reset Stylesheet are the removal of a :focus pseudo-class reset and the use of attribute selectors to target the <abbr> and <dfn> elements in a way that minimizes the scope of their style rules.
CSS Mini Reset
This is a minimalist CSS reset by Vladimir Carrer. It only has four CSS style rules. It only resets the most frequently-used HTML elements — the ones you’ll actually use in your web development projects. Check out CSS Mini Reset on GitHub.
reset.css (from HTML5 Reset)
This stylesheet is part of the HTML5 Reset boilerplate. Its inception was inspired by three open source projects: Reset CSS, HTML5 Reset Stylesheet, and HTML 5 Boilerplate. This reset stylesheet is robust and opinionated. For example, it has specific style rules for the :before and :after pseudo-classes and it sets the box-sizing property to border-box, which your other options don’t do.
Marx
This CSS reset is a boilerplate stylesheet for small website development projects. For simple websites, such as one-page sites, you most likely don’t need to use a big front-end framework like Bootstrap. In these cases, Marx is an option to consider.
Specialized CSS Resets
These two CSS reset stylesheets are purpose-specific:
Typeset.css
This is a baseline CSS reset just for Web typography. It’s geared towards text-heavy sites and web pages, such as blogs and news sites.
Note that Typeset.css will only work on HTML elements that are the children of an element with a class of typeset. So to implement Typeset.css, you’d need to do something like:
<div class="blog-post typeset">
<h1>Blog Post Title</h1>
<p>My blog post.</p>
</div>
Cleanslate
This CSS reset stylesheet is extremely aggressive. It’s designed for use on content that will be distributed on another website, a scenario where your control over style rules is restricted. Cleanslate uses an !important declaration on all property values to force browsers not to follow normal cascading and CSS specificity rules. This gives you a fighting chance when it comes to overwriting the style rules of the third-party website.
CSS Normalization: A Modern Alternative
Browsers today are pretty good at setting appropriate default styles. Also, they now abide by modern standards and best practices. Default styles are now more predictable and consistent across the board.
So, instead of doing a blanket reset on all the default browser styles, we can instead focus only on specific HTML elements and CSS properties that aren’t being rendered uniformly in different browsers. We keep the other useful browser defaults.
That’s the main idea behind CSS normalization.
In other words, for our unstyled HTML elements, we implicitly let the browser or the normalization stylesheet set the style rules for us. This way, if we forget or don’t assign a style rule to an element, they will still render predictably and consistently across the various browsers.
One benefit of CSS normalization is it keeps our stylesheets DRY. We aren’t resetting an HTML element’s property values to 0, only to overwrite the property declarations farther down the cascade with another style rule.
Related: Should You Reset Your CSS?
Here are the top two CSS normalization stylesheets to check out:
Normalize.css
This popular CSS normalization stylesheet is used in major sites like Twitter and GitHub, and is a dependency in big open source projects like Bootstrap and HTML5 Boilerplate. Normalize.css is the one that started it all.
sanitize.css
This CSS normalization stylesheet is by Jonathan Neal, the co-author of Normalize.css. sanitize.css has style rules that will help you render HTML elements consistently in different browsers. This normalization stylesheet has a Sass version, which many developers will appreciate.
Further Reading
- What Is A CSS Reset? CSS Reset
- What is the difference between Normalize.css and Reset CSS? Stack Overflow
Related Content
- 12 Common CSS Mistakes Web Developers Make
- Resetting Your Styles with CSS Reset
- 100 Useful CSS Tips and Tricks
The post The Best CSS Reset Stylesheets appeared first on Six Revisions.
by Jacob Gube via Six Revisions
Hello I’m V
Unique and impressive One Page experiment by front-end developer, Valentin Marmonier, showcasing his newly learnt WebGL skills. (Audio Warning)
by Rob Hope via One Page Love
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