Tag: web design

How To Make HTML5 Video Backgrounds

For this example I am utilizing a CC0 stock video. That I have trimmed down to a few seconds. When Working with HTML video it is best practice to include mp4, ogg and webM. These three files types encompass all the variation in the browser market, to make sure your video is as cross browser compatible as possible.

HTML Code for Video Background

First start by adding the necessary mark up for the video. The HTML5 video tag creates a block to house the video. In this example we give the video tag an attribute of “autoplay loop” to have the video continuously play. We also give it an id so we can target it specifically. Inside the video tag we have three source tags. Each source tag has a src and a type attribute corresponding to its file format.

<video autoplay loop id="videoBackground">
<source src="_videos/webBackground.mp4" type="video/mp4"> <!--MP4 Video-->
<source src="_videos/webBackground.webm" type="video/webm"> <!--WebM Video-->
<source src="_videos/webBackground.ogg" type="video/ogg"><!--OGG video-->
</video>

CSS Code for Video Background

The following properties ensure the video stays in place and does not move.
#videoBackground{
position: fixed;
right: 0;
top: 0;
left: 0;
right: 0;
}
The next properties ensure the video is always the size of the whole browser.

#videoBackground{
position: fixed;
right: 0;
top: 0;
left: 0;
right: 0;
min-width: 100%;
min-height: 100%;
width: auto;
height: auto;
}
The last property ensures the video is always behind the content.

#videoBackground{
position: fixed;
right: 0;
top: 0;
left: 0;
right: 0;
min-width: 100%;
min-height: 100%;
width: auto;
height: auto;
z-index: -1;
}

If you have any other z index properties on your page this must be the lowest of them.

How to Make Angled HTML Containers With CSS

Angled HTML containers are a great way to add interest and lead the eye on a website. It’s a simple tool to make a website stand out from the crowd. This fast and easy tutorial can be used on any HTML block element. It is done by creating a pseudo container after and behind the original. Then aligning, matching and transforming it to create the illusion of a continuous container.

First select the element you wish to angle. Style it as you wish and set position to relative.

header{
position: relative;
width: 100%;
height: 10em;
background-color: #FF3300;
}

Next target the element and use the pseudo selector “after”. Then add the following styles.

header::after{
position: absolute;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
content: '';
background-color: inherit;
top: 0;
right: 0;
bottom: 0;
left: 0;
z-index: -1;
transform-origin: top left;
transform: skewY(6deg);
}

How the Code Works

This code creates a pseudo element after the header. The content of this pseudo element is empty which is determined by the content property having a value of empty single quotes. The width and height property has it completely fill its parent. The position property along with the top, right, left and bottom, sets its position and prohibits it from moving within inside of its parent. The background inherit makes sure the slant automatically matches its parent’s background color. The z-index places the pseudo element behind the original element. The transform origin and transform sets the placement and quantity of the angle.

Change the “transform-origin” and “transform” property to adjust the effect.

How to Create Page Transitions in Seconds Using CSS

This tutorial will show you how to create interesting CSS transitions on your HTML pages. Once learned these can be applied to any page in seconds to excite your users. To create these page transitions we will utilizing a well known open source CSS library called animate.css

Download Animate.css

To start go download animate.css.
While on the page it is important to notice each animation can be previewed by selecting it on the pull down list. Also notice how the animation is written.  This is how the animation is written as a class.

Creating the Page Transition

Creating the page transition is very simple. Start by linking Animate.css into each of your HTML pages. Next  you just need to add two classes to the HTML tags in each of your pages. First add the class “animated”. This class is required by the library for any element that will be animated.  After this add the name of the animation you want to use for the transition and your done!

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en" class="animated fadeIn">
<head>
 <meta charset="utf-8">
 <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge">
 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
 <title>CSS Page Transitions with Animate CSS Page 1</title>
 <link rel="stylesheet" href="_css/style.css"> <!--For page structure-->
 <link rel="stylesheet" href="_css/animate.css">

</head>
<body>
 <header role="banner" >
 <h1 role="heading">CSS Page Transitions animate.css</h1>
 <nav role="navigation">
 <ul>
 <li role="presentation"><a href="index.html">Page 1</a></li>
 <li role="presentation"><a href="page2.html">Page 2</a></li>
 <li role="presentation"><a href="page3.html">Page 3</a></li>
 </ul>
 </nav>
 </header>
 <main role="main">
 <h2 role="heading">Page 1</h2>
 <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.</p>
 </main>
</body>
</html>

How to: Rotate an image in 3D with CSS animation

HTML Page

Start by creating an image in your html page and giving it a class. For this demo we will use the class “imageSpin”

<!doctype html> 
<html lang="en">
<head>
 <meta charset="utf-8">
 <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge">
 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
 <title>Rotate Image in 3D</title>
 <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
</head>
<body>
<img src="areVisualLogoMark.png" alt="ARE Visual Logo Mark" class="imageSpin">
</body>
</html>

CSS Page

How the Animation will Work

The animation will utilize the CSS “rotateY” property. There will be two keyframes one where the image rotation is set to “0deg” and the other where it is set to “360deg”. The tweening between the “from” and “to” points will create the animation.

Creating the Animation

Start by creating the keyframe animation and naming it. For this demo I will be calling the demo spin.

@keyframes spin {
}

Now create the starting “from” value and the “to” value.

@keyframes spin {
 from{
 transform: rotateY(0deg);
 }
 to{
 transform: rotateY(360deg);
 }
}

Now we have to call the animation. To do this we select it by calling the class we gave our image. Next we need to set the “animation-name” that we defined earlier. After that we set the “animation-timing-function”, this is the CSS equivalent of easing. For this demo I am going to use “linear” value so the speed of the animation is consistent for the whole duration. Next we will define the “animation-iteration-count.” This is how many times the animation will repeat. For this demo we will set it to “infinite” so it will keep repeating. The last property we will set is “animation-duration” this is how long the animation will take to complete. For this we will use 5 seconds.

Adding browser specificity

CSS animations are still not completely universal. This step may not be needed but generally it is good practice. To make sure our animation renders correctly across browsers we want to add properties specific for each browser. To do this add the following code.

@keyframes spin {
 from{
 transform: rotateY(0deg);
 moz-transform: rotateY(0deg); //Firefox
 ms-transform: rotateY(0deg); //Microsoft Browsers
 }
 to{
 transform: rotateY(360deg);
 moz-transform: rotateY(360deg); //Firefox
 ms-transform: rotateY(360deg); //Microsoft Browsers
 }
}
@-webkit-keyframes spin{
 from{-webkit-transform: rotateY(0deg);}
 to{-webkit-transform: rotateY(360deg);}
}
.imageSpin{
 animation-name: spin;
 animation-timing-function: linear;
 animation-iteration-count: infinite;
 animation-duration: 5s;
 -webkit-animation-name: spin;
 -webkit-animation-timing-function: linear;
 -webkit-animation-iteration-count: infinite;
 -webkit-animation-duration: 5s;
}

Download Demo

Best Free Stock: Images, Vectors, Patterns, Textures and Videos

In marketing and design good quality stock can mean the difference between success and failure. With this said stock is expensive! However it does not need to be. There are countless sources for free stock available. With the sea of free resources it is hard to sort out the garbage. Furthermore keeping track of licenses is a lot of work and if you make a mistake this could bring you legal problems. I have decided to do this work for you. I have compiled a list of my best free open source stock: images, vector graphics, patterns,textures and video. Please share you favorite sources for free open sources stock in the comments.

Free Open Source Stock Images

Unsplash

Unsplash Pro

Unsplash is a curated free stock image site created by Crew. Every 10 days they hand select 10 images to be added to Unsplash. All the images are breath taking high quality. Unsplash offers a basic search and the ability to create an account and get email notifications of new images. Lastly Unsplash offers APIs to easily and dynamically incorporate Unsplash into your web and software projects.

Unsplash Cons

Unsplash is one of the smaller options out there. With only adding 10 new images every 10 days there are less photos then many of their competitors. Also Unsplash search options are limited.

Unsplash License

All images at Unsplash are distributed under the Creative Commons Zero license(CC0). Their images can be used for personal or commercial use without attribution. Photos can be used, edited and redistributed at will.

Pixabay

Pixabay Pros

Pixabay offers free stock: photos, illustrations, vector graphics, and videos. They offer the ability to search based on these types along with: orientation, category, size and color.

Pixabay Cons

To download full resolution photos you must create an account. The account is free and can be created by signing up with Facebook, Google+ or a Microsoft account. Also the items on Pixabay are of assorted quality expect to find non professional work.

Pixabay License

On Pixabay: You can copy, modify, distribute, and use the images, even for commercial purposes, all without asking for permission or giving credits to the artist. However, depicted content may still be protected by trademarks, publicity or privacy rights.

Pexels

Pexels Pros

Pexels offers free high quality open source stock images. The Pexels website contains a really handy search with the ability to search by: keyword, tag, subject matter and colors. Pexels also does a very good job at making suggested searches. This is wonderful when looking for inspiration. If you have an account with Pexels they offer the ability to favorite images. This is great for re finding photos later.

Pexels Cons

The Pexels website contains a lot of ads and other forms of spam. For the quality of the service it is worth dealing with.

Pexels License

All images at Pexels are distributed under the Creative Commons Zero license(CC0). Their images can be used for personal or commercial use without attribution. Photos can be used, edited and redistributed at will. Their only restriction is any identifiable people in photographs can not be represented in a bad light without their permission.

StockSnap.io

StockSnap.io Pros

StockSnap.io is a source for free stock photos created by Snappa. StockSnap.io features a simple and easy to use interface. They offer the option to sign up for their newsletter and create an account to keep track of images you have viewed and downloaded.

StockSnap.io Cons

StockSnap.io lacks a lot of advanced functionalities found on other free stock photo websites.

StockSnap.io License

Photos on StockSnap.io are under the Creative Commons Zero License (CC0). This means they can be copied, modified and distributed without asking permission for both personal and commercial purposes.

Free Open Source Stock Vector Graphics

Pixabay

Pixabay Pros

Pixabay offers free photos, illustrations, vector graphics, and videos. They offer the ability to search based on these types along with: orientation, category, size and color.

Pixabay Cons

To download full resolution photos you must create an account. The account is free and can be created by signing up with Facebook, Google+ or a Microsoft account. Also the items on Pixabay are of assorted quality expect to find non professional work.

Pixabay License

On Pixabay: You can copy, modify, distribute, and use the images, even for commercial purposes, all without asking for permission or giving credits to the artist. However, depicted content may still be protected by trademarks, publicity or privacy rights.

Flaticon

Flaticon Pros

Flaticon is a database of over offer 200k icons. Flaticon adds over 4000 icons every month. Flaticon Icons are available in vector and raster based formats, currently including SVG, EPS, PSD and PNG. Flaticon icons are organized into sets. This makes keeping a consistent style within a project’s iconography easy. Flaticon also provides a tool to generate @font-face so you can easily use Flaticon icons in all of your web projects. Lastly Flaticon has a Mac OSX app and an extension for the Adobe Creative Suite which is compatible with CS6 and CC. This makes it easy to drag and drop high quality icons into all your design projects.

Flaticon Cons

Flaticon requires attribution to the author if you are using a free plan. Free users are also limited with their amount of collections.

Flaticon License

Free users can use Flaticon openly but must credit the author. Subscription users are free to use Flaticon without attribution.

Vecteezy

Vecteezy Pros

Vecteezy offers an array of stock vectors. Vecteezy offers great suggested searches to help find specifically what your looking for easier.

Vecteezy Cons

Only some of Vecteezy vectors are free. Anything labeled premium is not free. Also each free vector has it’s own individual license so be sure to check the individual license to make sure it fits your project.

Vecteezy License

Vecteezy does not have a specific license each upload has it’s own license.

Vectorstash

Vectorstash Pros

Vectorstash offers a variety of unique custom vectors.

Vectorstash Cons

Vectorstash offers a limited number of vectors it currently offers 147. Also the navigation of the site is confusing at times.

Vectorstash License

Vectorstash provides open rights vectors that can be used openly without attribution for personal and commercial use. The only clause to Vectorstash vectors is they can not be sold or redistributed.

Free Open Source Patterns

Subtle Patterns

Subtle Patterns Pros

Subtle Patterns offers free tillable web patterns. All patterns are super lower file size and seamlessly tile out of the box providing an easy way to add depth to your web projects. Subtle Patterns also provide a plugin for Photoshop and Sketch to use their patterns in your web mock ups for $17.99.

Subtle Patterns Cons

The Subtle Patterns plugin is not free. This makes it difficult to incorporate subtle patterns in to your mock ups without paying the $17.99.

Subtle Patterns License

Patterns from Subtle Patterns can be used openly for personal or commercial use, they just ask you credit them with a comment in your code. Example: /* Background pattern from subtlepatterns.com */

Free Open Source Textures

Texturemate

Texturemate Pros

Texturemate offers a huge range of free open source textures. They are easily browsable by category and are great quality.

Texturemate Cons

The navigation of the site is confusing at times.

Texturemate License

Texturemate provides open rights textures that can be used openly without attribution for personal and commercial use. The only clause to Texturemate’s textures is they can not be sold or redistributed.

Free Open Source Stock Videos

Pexels

Pexels Pros

Pexels offers free high quality open source stock videos. The Pexels website contains a really handy search with the ability to search by: keyword, tag, subject matter and colors. Pexels also does a very good job at making suggested searches. This is wonderful when looking for inspiration. If you have an account with Pexels they offer the ability to favorite videos. This is great for re finding videos later.

Pexels Cons

The Pexels website contains a lot of ads and other forms of spam. For the quality of the service it is worth dealing with.

Pexels License

All videos at Pexels are distributed under the Creative Commons Zero license(CC0). Their videos can be used for personal or commercial use without attribution. Videos can be used, edited and redistributed at will. Their only restriction is any identifiable people in videos can not be represented in a bad light without their permission.

Pixabay

Pixabay Pros

Pixabay offers free photos, illustrations, vector graphics, and videos. They offer the ability to search based on these types along with: orientation, category, size and color.

Pixabay Cons

To download full resolution videos you must create an account. The account is free and can be created by signing up with Facebook, Google+ or a Microsoft account. Also the items on Pixabay are of assorted quality expect to find non professional work.

Pixabay License

On Pixabay: You can copy, modify, distribute, and use the images, even for commercial purposes, all without asking for permission or giving credits to the artist. However, depicted content may still be protected by trademarks, publicity or privacy rights.

I hope you found this list helpful. I personally have used every site listed on here at least once. Be sure to comment your sources for open source photos, vectors, patterns, textures, videos and anything else you use.

Why and Why Not to Use a CMS With Infographic

Content management systems(CMS) are one of the fastest growing web design trends, with over 40% of websites using some sort of CMS. Of that market share an estimated 59% belongs to WordPress (W3Techs). Some of the biggest names around relay on a CMS. Some notable names using WordPress are: The New Yorker, Best Buy, The Rolling Stones, CNN and more. However with every big success there are a million tragedy websites you will never hear of. Working with a CMS provides a lot of benefits but it also provides a lot weaknesses. Lets discuss some pros and cons of using a CMS opposed to a traditional static website and decide if a CMS is right for your next web design.

Reasons to Use a CMS

Control Website Without Code

Building a website on a CMS provides a graphical user interface (GUI) where anyone can make changes to the website. This is great because it allows you to focus on development. With a little bit of training clients, data entry people, writers and whoever else is needed can apply and edit content to the website. This mean you don’t have to do it! You can further limit who can edit what, so no one messes up your design work. One way to do this I personally like is the White Label CMS plugin

Manage Multiple Contributors

A CMS is also helpful for managing multiple contributors. This is especially helpful when working with writers. Each writer can be set up with an account. This helps know who is doing what. This is also helpful with giving each contributor credit. Once the information is entered to their account it can be set to automatically be shown with an article they publish. Also since that information is dynamically generated when the article is loaded if the author’s information changes it will automatically show the new information on every article they have written.

Scalability

One of the most powerful abilities of working with a CMS is its ability to scale. With their ability of adding categories, tags, change menus, and write custom queries a site architecture can be easily changed. What would take weeks with a static website can be done in the matter of an hour. Also with pages being dynamically generated, new templates can be coded or old ones modified to completely change the aesthetic of existing pages without manually having to change each one.

Social Sharing and Community

Blogs are one of the most shared forms of media on the internet. Blogs are an integral part of any dynamic CMS. CMS websites are especially useful for building a community. They provide a simple platform to post, comment and share.

Reasons Not to Use a CMS

Speed

CMS websites use a template engine to generate dynamic pages on the server using PHP and return a completed web page. This requires dozens of HTTP and often results in rebose markup.

Security

CMS sites require an attached databases. Databases are gateways for hackers. Even more so hackers have taken advantage of the CMS boom and have created tools to find security flaws within them. The most common types of these tools scans pages for security vulnerabilities then uses an injection to get into the site’s database. Once in the database these tools crawl the users stored in the database running them through them a algorithm to determine an admin user. These tools are often able to return an admin user name and password with alarming accuracy.

There is much that can be done to secure CMS sites. CMS sites are not necessarily insecure but it is important to understand they carry extra risk from a static web pages.

Giving up Control

CMS websites create a platform where a website can easily have multiple authors. It creates a platform where a developer can create a website to pass off to a client to manage themselves. These are all great but it requires letting go control of the website to someone who is not a web developer. The planning of the site’s architecture, the design of consistent on brand UI elements, the carefully sculptured SEO content and all the other intensely thought about features of a website will not be continued by someone who is not a web professional. You can limit the privileges of these users, you can teach a client how things should be done, however at the end of the day control is lost.

Creating A Successful Design Portfolio

One of the most important things you will create as a designer is your portfolio. A portfolio shows a potential employer the reasons they should or should not hire you. It is a story of what you know, what you do and how you do it.

Show Only Your Best Designs

Your portfolio should show high quality examples of your best and most recent work. Have a sensible quantity of work. If you have to many and/or outdated projects your portfolio will look disjointed. If you show to little it shows you don’t have any experience.

Show Your Designs In Context

Your portfolio should also show your work in context. If you’re designing a letterhead, don’t just show a Jpeg of the letterhead out of software. Show what it looks like on a desk. This helps give a since of scale and purpose. This also adds legitimacy, making it feel real instead of being seen in the abstract.

How You Design Is Just As Important As Your Design

It’s not enough to just show pictures of your designs explain them. State the problem you where trying to solve. State what your specific role was. Show your process and revisions. These give an employer an idea of you as an employee. It shows why you are a good fit for the position. It shows why they should hire you over someone else. Most likely everyone else applying for the same position won’t have bad designs in his or her portfolios. Who will be hired is less about their work and more about how they think.