Nothing is worse for a developer or fellow graphic designer than getting a psd with un-named layers, no groups, and a bunch of copied layers.

So I’d like to encourage designers to follow my top 5 favorite Photoshop etiquette tips via PhotoshopEtiquette.com:

1) STORE ALL ASSETS RELATIVE TO PSD – Consolidating all assets in a folder relative to the psd will make it very easy for another designer/developer to pick up where you left off and make sure all the files are included in delivery.

2) NAME LAYERS, AND NAME THEM APPROPRIATELY – It is important to appropriately name all your layers so it isn’t a guessing game when you/or someone else needs to find something. When naming the layers, make them unique and arrange them how it is displayed on the file. Instead of  ’CTA Button’ , try ‘Download Brochure CTA’ and arrange it accordingly from top to bottom.

3) USE FOLDERS – Group all sections by a folder and each module in its own folder. You can also use the folder color so you will always know which main section you are in. For instance on a website I will color coordinate my header, body,footer and background folders so I know which main section I’m in.

4) DELETE UNNECESSARY LAYERS - Once you finalize the design, remove any unnecessary layer files. If you insist on keeping them, save a copy with all the unused layers. In the final design comp, it’s important to keep things simple and keep the file size down.

5) KEEP LOGOS AS VECTOR SMART OBJECTS – Not only should you keep logos in vector form, but I’d recommend any vector object. Also use smart objects to consolidate common elements.

Let us know what your favorite tip is by commenting below!

See more tips at http://photoshopetiquette.com/

The conference was packed with 12 amazing speakers, who’s every word sparked ideas, inspiration, clarity and great amounts of fun. Topics revolved around the new upcoming standards for HTML5, CSS3, usability, content strategy, web design, mobile, interactivity, progressive enhancement, progressive enrichment and more. Furthermore, each of the speakers provided so much more than just a lesson, they planted a seed in each of their listeners to enrich and blow our minds away about how much website design and the Internet has evolved from 20years ago to where it is now, where mobile will (has already) become the dominator of the web.

The 12 great speakers:

Overall the key takeaways throughout the whole conference are the following:

• Web technologies have evolved and we can do more (HTML5/CSS3/Java Libraries/jQuery, etc.)
  • Don’t be afraid to implement those new technologies because your saying “we’re waiting for all browsers to support it”; remember CSS3 was meant to be modular in its development across the browser developers
  • You can take the old and still enrich them with CSS3 easily
  • An approach to your development: Progressive Enhancement (old first, IE’s) or Progressive Enrichment (modern first, FFX, Chrome, etc.)
• Usability is essential make sure to understand the user and make many iterations and changes as needed.
  • Learn to make interactions work, they are important
  • Design your site to instill the user to trust you more and to become open to the complete experience you can provide them
• Mobile is here
  • Design your sites first for mobile
    • Mobile devices will out grow desktops, meaning many users will be accessing the web through their mobile devices more
    • Remember 80% of site content will disappear for mobile devices
• Designing Style
  • A good designer knows his designing style (Unintentional, Self, Genius, Activity-Focused, Experienced-Focused)
  • Make sure your not limiting your design ideology to be Rule based, but rather more Informed based
  • Think flexibility for your design
    • Fluid designs – no more fixed widths
    • Responsive design – design for the corresponding device resolution size
• Content Design Strategy
  • Don’t forget to make a strategy for your content
  • Know each page objective, if it doesn’t have one, you don’t need it
  • Remember consistency of language, tones, and feel of your content to support your sites primary objective
• How the web works now
  • Faster iterations/feedback to user needs means much more and means success for you
  • Your site network depends on your users exponential growth
  • Information wants to be Free
    • Find ways to make your content Free
    • Remember the web is like a copying machine; content is duplicated from every web query to your site

Conclusion

In conclusion, An Event Apart lives up to its name and provided so much more. Each of the speakers has left us with a far more greater outlook and inspiration of how we should approach the standards for HTML5/CSS3, usability, content strategy, web design, mobile, interactivity, progressive enhancement, progressive enrichment and more. Our team also looks forward to our next opportunity to re-attend An Event Apart and look forward to more inspiration from great speakers.

Extra Resources:

• An Event Apart agenda overview – http://aneventapart.com/2010/sandiego/
• An Event Apart Flickr gallery – http://www.flickr.com/groups/aeasandiego10/
• An Event Apart notes (via @cwsites) – http://www.churchandwebdesign.com/category/aea/
• A Feed Apart - http://afeedapart.com/

Here are the reasons why I LOVE minimal design:

It’s Clean & Simple

By keeping the design minimal when it comes to layout,design and color, it makes for a very clean website. Viewers are not distracted by a mosh pit of varying colors, images and ads. There is something about landing on a minimal website that makes me feel less stressed out and calm. I would almost make the comparison that a minimal design is like walking into a clean room, you just feel at ease.

From a usability standpoint, keeping things simple is the key to a great user experience. Keeping the navigation items to a minimum makes it easy for the viewer to get from point-a to point-b without confusion or difficulty. Also keeping the number of objects on a single page to a minimum will reduce distraction and will lead to a better user experience as well.

Focus on Typography and Imagery

When the number of objects are reduced to a minimum, designers will have to put their designer hats on and really focus on strong typography use and powerful imagery. This is a great focus point because most often we will see websites using the standard Arial size 10-16px and it isn’t very interesting to look at. It is when copy is reduced to a minimum, typography becomes the main focal point. I think typography is often overlooked in design today.

It is also interesting how minimalism really makes powerful imagery pop off the screen. When surrounding content is at a bare minimum and you have a bold 960px+ splash image on your screen, you immediately become captivated and drawn to the image.

Great for Small Sites

One of the benefits of a minimal website is that it is fairly quick to produce, especially if the website has little content. Even if the website has little content, the way the content is arranged and designed can make it seem like a well thought out website.

Those are just some of my many reasons why I love minimal design. Below are some examples of great minimal design. What do you think?

R/GA - http://www.rga.com/

Pline Studios of Architecture - http://www.plinestudios.com/

Miguel Mera – http://www.miguelmera.com/

VonChurch - http://www.vonchurch.com/

Chicago L-Shirts - http://www.chicagolshirts.com/

Partners SMR - http://www.partnerssmr.com/

Why do you enjoy minimal design? Let us know by commenting below!

Insert Block

Insert block installation is simple just install and enable.  In order for you to use it within your content, you’ll have to make sure it is included as part of your Input Formats for your code filters.  Once you get that all setup, your in business.  When inserting a block on page you’ll need to follow this simple syntax:

[block:name of module=delta of block]

Example:

[block:block=49] 
This will insert the content of block 49 onto my page content.

or

[block:google_cse=0]
This will insert the Google CSE block onto my page content.

Definitions

• Name of module – Depending on the block your using it may be based on a module that created it, for example the Google CSE module creates a block for Google CSE and its name of module will be “google_cse”.
• Delta of block – The “delta of block” essentially is block number, this can be found if you hover over the configure link:

  http://www.sitename.com/admin/build/block/configure/block/49

Module Link: http://drupal.org/project/insert_block

Insert View

Just like insert block simple to install and enable; don’t forget to include it in the Input Formats so that it can be used in your content.  The syntax for inserting views into your content is similar:

[view:name of view]

[view:name of view=name of display]

[view:name of view=name of display=x=arg] x – is the list of items; arg – is an argument for the view

Example:

[view:news_list]
This will insert the view news_list into the content, it will choose the default display to list the content.

[view:news_list=block_1]
This will insert the view news_list into the content, but will use the block_1 display of  the content.

[view:news_list=block_1=4=2009]
This will insert the view news_list into the content, but will use the block_1 display of  the content, but will show only 4 items and will only show content related to year 2009.

Definitions

• Name of view – this is the name of the view you want to use or view name
• Name of display – there are multiple choices for display for one view, so you can specify a specific display for that view
• X - you can specify a number of items the view should show
• Arg – you can specify arguments for the view if it needs to display certain items; you can add multiple  arguments as long it is support by the view (see module page for further detail on arguments)

Module Link: http://drupal.org/project/insert_view

Conclusion

So, there you have it two simple and quick modules that will help make inserting blocks and views into your content easily.  Both modules will definitely provide more flexibility for you and options to place your content.

Also, if you find any similar module or know of a better module that will do the same or provides better features, I’d like to hear about it.  Please share in the comments. And a “Thank you” in advance.

• Do my users use HTML5 & CSS3 supported browsers?
• Will this HTML5/CSS3 feature work on this browser?
• I need information regarding the support of major browsers overall.

The solution for these major issues is FindMeByIP.com.

What is FindMeByIP.com?

This free web app was built and constructed by Deep Blue Sky.  The purpose of the project was to find out what are the varying support and features of the many different browsers; specifically in regards to HTML5 & CSS3.  The tool will analyze and provide you the information regarding the browsers’ support.

For further explanation about the web app, read these Deep Blue Sky blog post:

• Quickly find your clients’ IP address and HTML5 and CSS3 browser support
• FindMeByIP.com – our latest afternoon project

Benefits

• Confirming browser support check for HTML5/CSS3
• Get data that compares HTML5 & CSS3 support against major browsers
• Great information to determine cross-browser support for re-design projects
• IP Address, Geo Location information, etc.
• The app is continuously improving and releasing quality features
• Oh yeah, it is FREE

So how do I use it?

Step 1: Go to FindMeByIP.com

Once you enter the site, you’ve already gotten your browser analyzed by the web app and it will show you right there and then a breakdown of its support and features for HTML5 & CSS3.

Step 2: Look at 6 Sections of Information

So the page you have just loaded is now populated with rich information about the browser.  Each section provides a list of features and indicates whether a feature is supported for the browser.

There are 5 sections of information on the page:

• Browser – Quick detail of the browser and OS
  
• CSS3 – A list of CSS3 features and whether the browser supports it
• HTML5 – A list of HTML5 features and whether the browser supports it
  
• Forms 2.0 – A list of Forms 2.0 features and whether the browser supports it
  
• CSS3 Selectors – A list of the CSS3 Selectors and whether the browser supports it
  
• IP Address & GeoLocation – Extra information about visiting user IP and location
  

Step 3: Check out the Web Design Checklist

First, you will need to click on the “Web Design” link at the top of the page.
This checklist is a compilation of all data the web app tool has accumulated about each browser.  The results are broken down into 5 sections:

• CSS3 Properties
• CSS3 Selectors
• Web Applications
• Embedded Content
• Web Forms 2.0

Each section provides a table which is divided by MAC or Windows OS followed by each major browser that are supported for the OS: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer (6-8), Opera, and Safari. The table will provide information that will help determine which features go across each of the browsers.  This will in turn help clarify your doubts about which HTML5 & CSS3 features you are going to implement and if it will work across these major browsers.

Step 4: (Optional) Sign up for the reporting

You will first need to sign-up for an account.

Benefits:

• By having this account it will provide you the added service of filtering data for your users.
• The service will first provide you a unique url address based on your account username: FindMeByIP.com/youracctname.
• You provide this link to your users, which will send their browser information to you about their browser and creates a report for you.  The report is essentially the 6 Sections of Information (from Step 2).
• You also have an option to add a tag to better filter the users by adding a tag to the url: FindMeByIP.com/youracctname/yourtag.
• Also FREE

Conclusion

Your doubts are now at ease.  This is a must have tool that will be essential due to its rich information that you will need to make sure your site runs great when you implement HTML5 & CSS3 features on your site.

Extra Resources

SEO Experts; your robots revealed!

An example of the Drupal Views UI. It contains several sections and each has many options that makes the Views very powerful, but id does leave your wondering.

To make your life easier here are several resources that will answer many of your initial thoughts and questions about Drupal Views:

Resource 1: Drupal.org

Project Views -
This is the official project page for the Views module on the Drupal site. Should provide the general idea behind Views and basics. It also provides links for module documentation, which will be pretty helpful when your first starting out.
http://drupal.org/project/views

Working with Views -
Also on the Drupal site is a documentation/tutorial section on the views module. This contains very good basic introductory content about how to use views and setting up your very first view. It also provides some advanced ideas to use Views. I would suggest this as one of the very first sources to read up on.
http://drupal.org/node/109604

Resource 2: GotDrupal.com

How to: Using Drupal View’s Relationships -
After understanding the basics behind the Views, you get to the section of Relationships. This option seems to carry more logical thinking behind how your content works or relays on one another. Using Views to show the type of content that relays on each other this will definitely help. This source is a video, which will show you an example of how to implement Relationships into your View.
http://gotdrupal.com/videos/drupal-views-relationships

How to: Using Drupal View’s Arguments -
Just like Relationships, this is also a video, but it will cover the Arguments option of a View. Arguments take a step higher in filtering your content through the use of URL path arguments, such as /list-content/index/g, if you put this in the URL, it should filter the content through the view all index content corresponding to “g”.
http://gotdrupal.com/videos/drupal-views-arguments

Resource 3: Acquia.com

Views Askew: Using the Many Forms of Drupal Views -
This video will provide a full example and breakdown of the types of Views you can build, using the basic Views options. The video will also bring up other extra resources to better customize and further advance the options for your Views.
http://acquia.com/resources/webinars/views-askew

Resource 4: DrupaLove.com

Advanced Views Examples: Arguments and Relationships — Michelle Lauer — DrupalCamp Montreal 2009 -
This is a video that provides an intermediate level of understanding in creating a basic Views that utilize the Relationship and Argument options. The video goes through a great example of how both work together to provide a more powerful and richer function of Views.
http://www.drupalove.com/drupal-video/advanced-views-examples-arguments-and-relationships-michelle-lauer-drupalcamp-montreal-

If you find any other sources that have great content, tutorials, documentation and/or video for Drupal Views or Drupal in general I’d like to hear about it. Please leave a comment with your thoughts and suggestions. Thank you in advance.

1. Akismet – This is the very first plug-in that I activate (it actually comes with WordPress). If you don’t activate this plugin, you will generally start seeing spam comments within a couple months after launch. It also seems like spam comments grow almost exponentially if you don’t handle spam bots correctly. I cannot stress the use of this plug-in enough. All you have to do is activate it and then plugin your WordPress API (which you receive after registering at WordPress.com )
2. All-In-One-Seo Plugin -This plug-in allows you to set a meta title, description and keyword for each individual post. This is great if you want to fully optimize your wordpress blog/page.
3. WordPress Stats – A great back-end plugin that will allow you to track visitor count, top posts, top searches and more. It is a great plugin that is accessible right from your wordpress dashboard.
4. Sexy Bookmarks or Digg Digg - These are two different social media sharing plugins. Sexy Bookmarks places a series of social media icons that allow users to share your content. Digg Digg is more of a Mashable style sharing option that doesn’t cover as many platforms; however, it does show how many times the content has been shared and some other useful features.

   

5. Broken Link Checker – This plugin checks your blog/site for broken links. It is nice to be able to check them and fix them right from your wordpress install without having to check Google Webmaster Tools.
6. Disqus Comment System – I really like this comment system because it keeps spam in check and allows users who already have social media accounts (twitter, OpenID, Facebook, etc) to comment without having to create a new user.
7. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin frequently crawls your site and updates the XML sitemap that is sent to Google. It is a great way to get your pages ranked and listed without having to manually build it every couple weeks.

   

8. WP-Greetbox – Greetbox places a small box (depending on how you were referred to the page) that tries to get readers to subscribe (RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Etc). It is a great way to build more readership loyalty.

   

9. WP Super Cache – Also known as Digg Proofing. This plugin will help cache pages and improve your page loading (make it faster). This is essential as google is known to consider page load time when ranking sites.
10. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – YARPP helps lower bounce back rate by providing readers with related content.

Administration Menu

The administration menu provides better manipulation and access to the administrative and configuration settings, rather than using the traditional Drupal administration page.  This module will put at the top of the site template a black menu bar, which will provide a drop-down menu of all the administration options.  Also gives you the option to move the edit tab buttons into the administration bar, which helps centralize all the edit buttons at the top in one region.
http://drupal.org/project/admin_menu

CCK (Content Construction Kit)

The CCK module expands the capabilities and customization for creating custom fields and content types.  This provides a web interface that will help you create custom fields and content types easily without having to go through the effort of coding them out.     
http://drupal.org/project/cck

Clone

The clone module will let you make a copy of existing content on your site.  It will provide you with an exact copy of the content with an exception of the author and title (it will insert “clone of” in the clone copy).  Convenient for duplicating content that have some of the basic information or needs for the new content.  
http://drupal.org/project/node_clone

Views

The views module provides a flexible way of controlling the content on your site.  This helps gather, filter and manipulate similar content.  It helps with querying the vast amount of content on your site and creates data that you need about the content you’ve created or acquired (such as the WebForms data).
http://drupal.org/project/views

WebForms

WebForms module provides a quick and easy implementation to create a form on your site.  The module provides many basic form essential fields: text, text-area, select, etc. and other submission features.  The Webform becomes a content type, so it will also be easy to query the data collected from the forms you make.   
http://drupal.org/project/webform

WYSIWYG Editor

Drupal 6 by default has no WYSIWYG editor and thus when entering the content it will be based on some basic knowledge of html code.  So it is essential that as part of the modules you add to your site, you should add an editor that your comfortable using.  Drupal 6 has many editors that can be used such as the WYSIWYG module, CKEditor, FCKeditor, and TinyMCE.
http://drupal.org/project/wysiwyg
http://drupal.org/project/ckeditor
http://drupal.org/project/fckeditor

So, implementing these modules will help incorporate more features and simplicity of creating content on your Drupal site.  These modules will take your sites capabilities and options to a whole new level and simpler implementation.

If you’re a Drupal user and have found any other modules that have contributed vastly to the extension of your Drupal site, would you be so kind to share your thoughts about it by posting a comment.  Thank you for sharing in advance.

The following is a list of Big Brand names that are using Drupal:

Entertainment / Multimedia

Emmy’s – 2009 – www.emmys.com

Grammy’s – 2009 – www.grammy.com
Distribution: Pressflow

Mattel – 2009 – www.mattel.com

Sony’s My Play – 2007 – www.myplay.com

Warner Brothers Records – 2007 – www.wbr.com

Education

Duke University – 2009 – www.duke.edu

Harvard University: Harvard Science – 2007 – harvardscience.harvard.edu

MIT: Media Lab – 2009 – www.media.mit.edu

Portland State University – 2009 – www.pdx.edu

Strayer University – 2009 – www.strayer.edu

Government

Le portail interminist  eriel jeunesse (French Ministry for Health, Youth and Sport) – 2008 – www.jeunes.gouv.fr

NATO: World Food Programme – 2009 – www.wfp.org

New York Senate – 2009 –  www.nysenate.gov

Portail du Gouvernement (French Government Portal ) – 2009 –  www.gouvernement.fr

U.S. Dept. of Commerce – 2010 – www.commerce.gov

White House – October 2009 – www.whitehouse.gov
Related Article: http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/whitehousegov-goes-drupal

Publishing

BBC Focus – www.bbcfocusmagazine.com
BBC also has several other sites that also utilize Drupal.

CNN Go – 2009 – www.cnngo.com

InfoWorld – 2009 – www.infoworld.com

Look Magazine – 2010 – www.look.co.uk

Linux Journal – 2005 – www.linuxjournal.com

Popular Science – 2008 – www.popsci.com

The Industry Standard – 2008 – www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard

Technology

Intel Atom Developer – 2010 – appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us

Nvidia – 2010 – tegradeveloper.nvidia.com/tegra

Symbian – 2010 – www.symbian.org

Ubuntu – 2007 – www.ubuntu.com

ViaSat –2008 – www.viasat.com

So, there are many big brand names out there that utilize Drupal as their CMS platform of choice for their websites.  Drupal is being used in many industries and in many categories, as you can see from the sites mentioned just how versatile and how dynamically it has been utilized.  Now you can answer those questions and provide some great examples of Drupal in action .

Helpful Resources to find more Drupal sites

• Dries Buytaert – Founder and lead developer for Drupal.
  www.buytaert.net
• Drupal Sites – Provides a list of sites that are using/featuring Drupal.
  www.drupalsites.net
• Drupal – Main Drupal site also features some information on Drupal sites that are launched.
  www.drupal.org

• Drupal 7 is the core and quick summary
• Drupal Gardens purpose and usage
• Live demo on Drupal Gardens (Beta)
• Coming horizon for Drupal Gardens

Acquia Video

Key Take Aways

• Drupal 7 Usability factor makes Drupal Garden easier and better to use
• Drupal Garden is a great tool or outlet for quick site building for MicroSites
  • Perishable Sites
  • Benefit to what type of sites?
    • Artist Sites
    • Campaigns & Promotions
    • Department, Faculty – mini education / information sites
    • Etc.
• Social and Community Benefit
  • Single Sign-on – Drupal Garden Login works throughout all Drupal Garden sites
  • Build Social Community
  • Blogging
• Building & Consistency
  • Used to build quick sites
    
    • Also capability to create multiple microsites
  • Tools that will build the site quickly, consistently, and with ease (no advanced coding knowledge needed)
    • Theme Builder
    • WSYWIG Editor / Edit in place feature
    • Edit in Place
• Hosted Service
  • Consistent Security & up-to-date
  • Theme Library
  • Community Enforced
• Coming Horizon
  • Custom URLs (mysite.com – $11.99 /year) – service to have your own domain name instead of the sub-domain
  • Managing multisites
  • Multisite Search
  • Analytics
  • Export capability to move your site to own Drupal system / host easily

Overall Drupal Gardens will be a great and essential tool for many people who need to quickly build out a site for campaigning, educating, and releasing information.  Drupal Gardens has a great system in place for non-Drupal and Frist-Time site building users.  The amount of time and understanding to build your own site is simple and direct; eliminating the factor of having to really know any site developing knowledge (definitely check out the live demo in the Webinar).  The other aspect of Drupal Gardens is to build your social network and community with ease, allowing Single sign-on throughout Drupal Garden sites and a super charged blogging, allows quick access and action for Drupal Garden users.