iconSweets was great, but too limited, so we designed more! iconSweets2 contains a huge set of minimal icons perfect for any project. Huge iconic @font-face Our Deluxe set now contains all icons from our set to be used in your projects. Perfect for retina devices and flexibility. iconSweets This is…

Lisp or Scheme

People like micro-optimizations. They are easy to understand, easy to apply...and useless. But some time ago, while reviewing pull requests for Twig , I read an interesting discussion about theperformance of the ternaryoperator in PHP (thanks to @nikic for the investigation). Do you know which…

Let’s say you were tasked with creating a UI in which users can rate three candy bars from their most to least favorite. A grid of radio buttons isn’t a terrible way to go about this. The good news is that radio buttons have natural exclusivity in the name-group they are in, and we can use that to…

I recently said this when asked about new tools (e.g. Edge) for building CSS animations: Empty divs used for nothing but styling were non-semantic and a bad idea before CSS animations and they are a bad idea now. I stand by that. I feel like we’ve come a long way as an industry getting everyone on…

The problem with shit work is that no one likes doing it, but an awful lot ofpeople say they do. Shit work Take a look at Twitter Lists. The idea behind Twitter Lists was that userswould carefully cultivate lists on Twitter of different accounts they’refollowing (or not following). These could be…

Are you sick of reading reviews for the same old Markdown text editor under different titles? Me too. Don’t worry, Mou is genuinely different. Join us as we take a look at how Mou takes a unique approach to Markdown editing and how it may be exactly what you’ve been looking for. In Search of…

Could become an iTunes killer. http://t.co/PXHJ51NE #osx #beta

I first came across the phrase social graph in 2007, in an essay by Brad Fitzpatrick , though I'd be curious to know if it goes back further. The idea of representing relationships between people as networks is old, but this was the first time I had thought about treating the connections between all…

Consumer Reports announced today that they approve of the iPhone 4S , after famously refusing to recommend the iPhone 4 because of that antenna issue that turned out to affect almost none of the millions of people who bought it. But the iPhone 4S was defeated by three Android phones in CR’s scoring…

by Mandy Brown October 04, 2011 Published in Content Strategy ∙ I once worked in a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan. Like in all large buildings, regular fire drills were routine. Every other month, the PA system would pop and emit a hiss of static, after which the bored, tired voice of someone in…

by Nathan Peretic July 05, 2011 Published in Business, Project Management, Workflow & Tools ∙ Proposals are difficult. They take too long. They’re usually an exercise in unrequited love. Is it any surprise creative professionals cringe when it’s time to put one together? Proposals are, however,…

by Elizabeth McGuane / Randall Snare August 23, 2011 Published in Writing ∙ Storytelling is a buzzword with lots of different interpretations. Either the internet is killing stories, or it’s the best thing to happen to them since the printing press. Stories have been around as long as we have,…

by Lara Swanson August 23, 2011 Published in JavaScript, Usability, User Research ∙ Data is an invaluable tool for web designers who are making decisions about the user experience. A/B tests, or split tests, are one of the easiest ways to measure the effect of different design, content, or…

by Denise Jacobs September 20, 2011 Published in Creativity ∙ Imagine you are standing on a bridge casting a net. Above the bridge is your conscious mind, where thoughts come and go like travelers visiting a fair. Below the bridge is your subconscious—the ever-flowing stream of random thoughts, with…

by Jeff Gothelf September 20, 2011 Published in Graphic Design ∙ Designers are makers who craft solutions to problems that plague customers, clients, and at times, society as a whole. The specialized tools and jargon (leading? kerning? cognitive load?) often understood only by other practitioners…

Bill Gates in his office soon after the release of Windows 1.0 in 1985. Photo credit: Esparta As I paged through the slides of the ' Turning Mediocre Products Into Awesome Products ' talk we gave back in September, I couldn't help but wonder: what makes certain innovators succeed while others who…

When it comes to centering things in web design, the more information you have about the element being centered and its parent element, the easier it is. So what if you don’t know anything? It’s still kinda doable. If you know the height and width of both the element to be centered and its parent…

by Neil Jenkins November 01, 2011 Published in HTML, JavaScript, Interaction Design ∙ An expanding text area is a multi-line text input field that expands in height to fit its contents. This UI element is commonly found in both desktop and mobile applications, such as the SMS composition field on…

by Harry Brignull November 01, 2011 Published in Interaction Design, Usability ∙ We might not like to admit it but deception is deeply entwined with life on this planet. Insects evolved to use it, animals employ it in their behavior, and of course, we humans use it to manipulate, control, and profit…

The canonical example is GarageBand: an 8-track recording system and playable virtual instruments, all on an iPad, for £2.99? Unbelievable.

Every time we give our Design Drives Action talk , we ask the following question: If you remove the sign up button from the homepage on the following site, will signups increase or decrease? The site in question is one of our clients actually. It's funny to see how often people get the question…