A little seen effect in modern web design is the parallax effect or parallax scrolling. Parallax involves layered images that move at different speeds from background to foreground, creating depth and if designed cleverly enough, the illusion of 3D space. The effect can be achieved with plain old CSS and HTML, as well as with jquery powered javascript application jparallax.

One of the most well known individual examples of CSS within the web design community of CSS-based parallax is on Clearleft’s landing page for their Silver Back App. The vines at the top of the page are set as parallax layers.

The images look great as a set of layered static images but there is no mouse interactivity, and the effect can only been seen “in action” while the browser window is being re-sized. Designer Paul Annett says using parallax in such a subtle way where not everybody sees it is “like a hidden Easter egg for those who do.” You can view a full explanation of the css that Paul used for the effect on his article here.

Every creative professional needs an online portfolio. This used to mean having your own website, which for some people was a lot of work. Today, there’s no excuse. There are many online portfolios available for free that give illustrators, web designers, photographers, developers, and animators an easy solution to getting their work online. This article introduces several great creative online portfolio solutions.

Behance

Behance is one of the top online portfolio options for creatives. It offers support for images, audio, video, flash as well as embedded content from Vimeo, Youtube, Flickr and more. Social sharing is supported with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Behance portfolios are organized by project, which requires a description of the project itself and related content. Available template options are a blank canvas, image grid and a featured frame layout specifically for video and motion projects.

Web based email services are increasingly more and more popular. Yahoo! currently losing market share to Google’s Gmail service. This can be partially attributed to the rise of Android devices, but mostly because Gmail is simply a powerful, reliable and easy to use webmail service.

For years, Gmail users have seen an ever-expanding list of features for their web-based email service. These include labels, and most recently, the Priority Inbox feature for prioritizing emails. But there are other ways to expand your Gmail service with browser plugins that give power users even more options for the world’s biggest web based email service. Plugins such as Boomerang, Rapportive and Wisestamp have changed the way people use Gmail.

These plugins allow functionality as scheduled emails, socially integrated signatures, and contact relation management. Modern web browsers such as Firefox and Chrome support these extensions (sorry, IE users, you lose again!) and we are beginning to see integration with other webmail services as well as mail clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird.

Rapportive: A Social CRM Tool for Your Email

 

Replace Google Ads with relevant information you’re actually going to read? Yes, please! Rapportive is a plugin that extends Gmail’s contact system with direct links about the people you’re contacting. It essentially replaces the Sponsored Links found on the right side of the Gmail interface with a short informational bio about your contact.

The bio show your contact’s recent tweets, links to social profiles (Linkedin, Facebook), and allows for notes on the person. Other than simply replacing the right side ads, Rapportive also helps you expand your network. For example: You have a contact who you email regularly but are not connected to on the social web.

Rapportive searches the web for that person’s information, and now you not only have links to connect with them on Linkedin and Facebook, but you can see their latest tweets.

All without doing any searching or going through any lists. It’s automatic, it’s useful, and it works. While Rapportive is a third party plugin that does a Gmail user’s login credentials stay within GMail, Rapportive doesn’t store or have access to your password. Rapportive is currently available for the Firefox, Safari and Chrome browsers. Click here to Download Rapportive.

Note: This article was a collaborative effort between Jessica Kupferman of Pretty and Outgoing and myself. Thanks, Jessica!

We are all very fortunate to be living in a time that allows us all to witness huge breakthroughs in technology and ways we access the web. From the iPad, to the social media boom, to greater mobile and video functionality, our world is a world of web accessibility.

We wanted to survey some professionals in our field – web and graphic and motion designers, to find out their thoughts on how these changes in both technology and the economy have affected the work we do, our outlook, and what’s to come. With changes coming at us all so rapidly, we thought it would be prudent to take a “state of the union” of sorts: if for no other reason than to check current trends and thoughts of our colleagues.

1. What trends and advancements in technology do you see as the most exciting and how will those affect your work?

Almost every designer that took the survey had mobile as part of their answer to this question.  As mobile access becomes more popular, general consensus is that the web designer’s job will indeed become different and much more exciting.

“I’d say for web development it would be the rise of mobile as a real player. As phones & other mobile devices advance, clean, usable sites across platforms will be more in demand.” – Mike Conaty

“Mobile… I think we’re going to continue to see development in a broad variety of mobile devices. Once more organizations realize that content is being accessed and consumed in so many different ways, I believe there will be a push to deliver content based more on context than it is now.” – Michael Guill

Many designers also mentioned new and different types of web accessibility, such as the iPad, replacing desktops and even laptops. With breakthroughs in the ways consumers view the internet, not only will the technology change, but the sites and their accessibility will have to change as well.

“Computer as [an] appliance [is] finally here (and getting pretty cheap) – lots more people access services without all the hassles of a personal computer (use smart-phones, set-top-boxes, tablets etc. etc.)” – Martin Luff

In this article, we’ll be looking at ways that designer toys and their related characters are being promoted using the internet, social media, and content-sharing tools.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with what designer toys are, they are basically sculptural art pieces that are sold in limited editions. The designer toy world is an almost entirely character-based industry, and the web is used as the prominent source of marketing.

Click here to read the article at sixrevisions.com