We’ve seen this concept before in the form of a red laser projected image of a keyboard. What makes the LightTouch different is the full color image thats projected.

Light Blue Optics demoed various usage cases, but when questioned they have not even considered military usage.

So lets dare to imagine and think of a possible use case for the LightTouch on the battlefield.

First we’ll explore a possible current scenario. A squadron leaders calls a halt to his unit calling for a map or recon from the unmanned drone he’s sent in. A soldier will run up with either a paper map or an LCD. We can assume the LCD is heavy and very bulky and presume that the map is made of a paper or plastic that’s seen its share of abuse. So what’s the alternative?

Let’s explore the same scenario assuming the squadron leader was equipt with a LightTouch device. He no longer needs to call for anyone, he simply kneels down, clears the ground of small debris and turns on his LightTouch. He now has the ability to quiqly pull up his map or recon video, make his decisions and move on.

With a multi-touch LightTouch the squadron leader can interact with the map, pinch to zoom, pan the image. Now imagine the recon video where he can halt the drone at a safe location zoom in and pan beyond the optic capabilities built into the drone. He can even reposition and control the drone from the same screen.

This idea is not that far fetched as the reference design already has a 2hr battery, is compact, and can handle uneven surfaces.

LightTouch from Light Blue Optics originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on January 7, 2010.

TinyBox is a lightweight (3.5kb) and standalone modal window script – does not depend on any JavaScript frameworks.

At only 3.5KB it doesn’t include any slideshow capabilities built-in but allows for any AJAX or HTML content. It can also be used for images and auto hiding alerts. The popups fade in/out and dynamically size based on the content if enabled. The styling is completely customizable through the simple CSS.

Click here for the TinyBox demo

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TinyBox – a Lightweight and Standalone Modal Window Script originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 16, 2009.

The iPhone will always be part of a much bigger picture. How well you address human and environmental factors will greatly determine the success of your product. All too often, iPhone developers create products in isolation from their customers. In order to create really appealing applications, developers must stop focusing only on the mechanisms of the apps. Zoom out: understand the person using the application, as well as the complex environmental factors surrounding that person.

To better understand the context of these design challenges, we’ll highlight several levels of human and environmental factors.

Also consider our related articles:

• iPhone design mistakes: Over-Design
• iPhone App Design Trends
• How to Create Your First iPhone Application

Level 1: You Are Here. To Create An App That Customers Love, Zoom Out

Level 1: The app itself.
This is how many developers view their apps. As a developer, you have a vision of what your product should look like and why customers will turn their attention to it. However, if you observe your product so closely, you may put it in the wrong context and design it for the wrong purposes and for the wrong users. This is why you need to zoom out.

Level 2: A person is using this app.
That person has specific goals and challenges. In the section below we’ll start by exploring some of the most prominent — and most ignored — human factors pertaining to the iPhone. We’ll discuss basic physical ergonomics, visual limitations and common design mistakes.

Level 3: That person is using this app in a specific environment.
Step back and you’ll see that the app is a part of a complex social environment. It plays but a relatively small role in communication between people and helping people accomplish bigger goals. This is where the social components comes into play: networking, community, social-driven websites and applications and many other things create the environment — or the context — in which the application will be used.

Level 4: The environment is part of a greater culture.
Your ability to address the unique needs of different cultures will affect the success of your product. Ignoring them is too expensive, especially if your app sells worldwide. Here it is important to understand that the environment is a part of global networking. You need to be aware of cultural differences, traditions and metaphors in order to create an application that will not only gain popularity in certain local circles, but will also have a global success.

Level 2: Understand The Person’s Needs And Limitations

“Measure twice and cut once”: an effective strategy indeed. For you, the iPhone app developer, this means that you have to step back and answer these questions before you start coding:

• Who will be using your application?
• What are the capabilities of that person?
• What are the limitations of that person?

Answering these questions will broaden your perspective and prepare you to address your customer’s needs. A whole Human Factors profession is dedicated to just that.

Basic Physical Ergonomics

Here are a couple of the most important physical-, cognitive- and ergonomic-related truths about the iPhone.

1. Our fingers are not mouse pointers.
Remember this property of our fingertips: their surface area is not equal to one pixel. In many applications, tappable objects are way too small, making the interface frustrating to use. Here’s one example: in iFitness, different muscle groups are indicated with red pins. Tapping a pin brings up the name of that muscle. And if you tap the name, you get a list of exercises that develop that muscle.

The pins are twice as small as those used in the Google Maps app. Tapping the pin you want is very hard, because the surface of your fingertip covers an area of three or more pins. You end up tapping repeatedly on the area, enabling random pins, wishing you could sharpen your finger. After more than a few tries, you get lucky and hit the right one.

Which of these pins will be activated when you tap on it?

Here are some ways to solve these ergonomic challenges:

1. Make buttons and other tappable objects bigger.
2. If making a button bigger is impossible, then enlarge the clickable area to be bigger then the button itself.
3. Reduce the number of options on each screen, and make the selection process sequential (e.g. Arm Muscles ? Biceps).
4. Implement multi-touch gestures within the interface. For example, selecting a muscle group in iFitness would be made easier by introducing a two-finger zoom feature.

2. We’re not superheroes, unfortunately.
App designers need to take vision limitations into account. Mobile phones tend to be used in places with worse lighting conditions than computers. Think about those people who will be using your app on a bumpy bus or train or walking down a sunny street. Even if the technology is useful and perfectly executed, people will be reluctant to use the app if they find it hard to see what’s going on. Here are a few examples of potentially useful apps that do not account for vision limitations.

TweetDeck

Fish-tycoon

Here are some ways to avoid these mistakes:

1. Choose only the elements that are absolutely necessary. Make them bigger, and get rid of everything else. If needed, create additional screens with fewer options.
2. Remember that pixel dimensions on the iPhone are smaller than those on your computer screen. So, screenshots viewed on your computer’s iPhone emulator look larger than they would on the iPhone itself, even though the resolution is the same.

The author holds an iPhone (163 ppi) in front of Apple Cinema’s 30-inch display (~100 ppi). Your iPhone screen layout may look fine on a computer emulator, but don’t be fooled: it will appear much smaller on the iPhone because of its smaller pixel dimensions.

Level 3: Understand The Challenges Specific To The User’s Environment

Goals and Environment

Your app will usually play a relatively small role in helping the user achieve a bigger goal. The better you understand what goals people have and what they need to achieve them, the better you can design your app to satisfy those needs. Mobile phones are often used in loud, distracting environments. A simple stroll through town brings plenty of noisy distractions (cars, dogs, mail carriers, etc.). Consider the following examples. Which voice memo app would do a better job?

Apple Voice Memos	vs.	iTalk

Although Apple Voice Memos looks nice, iTalk addresses the average user’s goals and environment much better. Think about it: why would someone prefer to record a voice memo over writing a note? The audio format has fewer advantages than simple text. You can’t scan, edit or enhance audio files as easily as you can text. In most scenarios, text is a much more convenient format in which to exchange information.

So, why and, more importantly, when would people use voice memos? When they are not able to type. The most common time is probably while driving.

According to the New York Times‘ summary of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute’s findings, drivers who text have a 23-times greater risk of a collision than drivers who don’t text. Which application would be easier to use in this case? The one with the big shiny mic and the record button that is small and hard to reach (especially for right-handed people)? Or the one with the red record button half the size of the screen? Certainly the latter.

Confirming for the user that the recorder is activated is important, too. Which interface communicates the device’s status more clearly? Where do you tap when you’re done?

Apple Voice Memos	vs.	iTalk

Based on which design works better overall, iTalk wins. Apple Voice Memo looks great when you’re checking it out on a friend’s phone but performs poorly in a real-world context.

Mobile Phones, Networking and Community

The mobile phone is, without a doubt, a social tool. The greater the number of people involved, the more engaging the experience is. Think about it: if you were the only one with a phone, it wouldn’t be very useful. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are driven by the understanding that we are social beings — we want to share! Imagine how dramatically designs that foster greater social interaction could change the mobile world.

With the seemingly endless ways to capture and share information, many people feel overwhelmed with information. To help them cope, designers must exploit the iPhone’s platform to make their applications as efficient as possible. Here are some inspiring examples:

Bump

“Bump makes swapping contact information and photos as simple as bumping two phones together. No typing, no searching a list for the right person, no mistakes.” (iTunes Store description)

Mover

“Ever wished you could send something to the iPhone right next to you? Do it with style with Mover.”

Loopt

“Loopt transforms your mobile phone into a social compass to discover and navigate the world around you. Use Loopt to see who’s around, what to do, and where to go.”

How Loopt works (video):

Level 4: The Environment Is Part Of A Greater Culture.

Your ability to address the unique needs of different cultures will affect the success of your product. Ignoring them is too expensive, especially if your app sells worldwide. Design should adapt to regional challenges. Jacob Nielsen, a leading usability expert, gives us an illustration of this:

“In Sweden, the Automatic Teller Machines have very large buttons. I hadn’t noticed this particular design element on previous visits, which have usually been in warmer months. In 1996 I was in Stockholm in February and immediately realized why the ATM buttons are so big: you can press them wearing thick gloves.”

Such insights are gained only by understanding the product in its real-world context. Here is the graphic designer’s point of view:

“… Understanding the object in context moves graphic design from a purely formal arena to a social and political one.”
—Steven Heller and Karen Pomeroy in “Design Literacy,” Allworth Press, New York, 1997.

More wisdom from Nielsen:

“A system must match the user’s cultural characteristics. This goes beyond simply avoiding offensive icons; it must accommodate the way business is conducted and the way people communicate in various countries.”

Apple studied American users and addressed their goals. That’s why the iPhone is so popular in US. But it hasn’t succeeded in Japan. The handset is selling so poorly there that they are giving them away for free.

Conclusion: Excellence Comes From Hard Work

Designing a great app isn’t a simple task. Jacob Nielsen recently asserted that “the mobile user experience is still miserable.” Extracting user insights from testing is a challenge. People have difficulty telling you what they want; they usually only know it when they see it. But developers don’t have to tackle user research alone. Interaction designers are trained to find relevant user groups, talk to customers and read between the lines. They understand how real-world context affects an application’s design.

It takes a lot of leg work, but your efforts to understand user needs will be rewarded. The forefront of mobile technology is an exciting place to be.

Related posts

Please consider our related articles:

• iPhone design mistakes: Over-Design
• iPhone App Design Trends
• How to Create Your First iPhone Application

Special thanks to Larissa Itomlenskis.

(al)

© Alexander Komarov for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
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iPhone Apps Design Mistakes: Disregard Of Context originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 15, 2009.

Windows/Mac/Linux: If you’ve been sporting the same desktop wallpaper since the Bush administration, it might be time to mix it up a little. Wally is a lightweight wallpaper changer that pulls images from a wide pool of sources.

For a simple wallpaper refresh, you can simply point Wally at a folder on your computer and set the interval at which you want the wallpaper to refresh. If you don’t have a huge stash of wallpaper, or you’re tired of your collection, you can have Wally pull pictures from remote directories via FTP or from any of ten available sources like Bing, SmugMug, Picasa, Buzznet, Photobucket, Pike, Panoramio, Yahoo!, or Flickr.

You can adjust various settings like auto-rotation based on EXIF data, photo selection only if photos are bigger than the desktop and/or landscape as well as how frequently the wallpaper will change and how pictures will be positioned.

Wally is freeware and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. Have a favorite wallpaper tool or source for great wallpapers? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

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Keep Your Wallpaper Fresh with Cross-Platform Wally [Downloads] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 14, 2009.

p51Labs came up with the Simply-Buttons v2. Buttons auto resize itself to fit text. There are 3 states: Inactive, Active, and Hover. They look and behave the same way in every browser and operating system. However, the caveats are the outlines on the buttons, the text is selectable. And These buttons are not mobile friendly.

With Simply-Buttons Javascript component provided, you can solve the caveats above as well. You can easily modify the buttons look and feel. You can do this by creating your own stylesheet. If you like this, you might be interested in Simple Round CSS Buttons or Colorful and Scalable Buttons or Beautiful Scalable CSS Buttons as well.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.p51labs.com/simply-buttons-v2/
License: License Free

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

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Simply Butons v2 with Javascript Enhancements originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 14, 2009.

High quality free WordPress Themes have become harder and harder to find in the past year, with the influx of premium themes, more and more designers and developers are selling themes (and rightly so, they do amazing work). However, the quality of freely available themes has improved as well; in fact, some themes are very advanced and professional and can serve as a solid foundation for your next designs.

There are a lot of choices out there for someone wanting to choose a WordPress theme for their blog. But, that aside, the quality is certainly there, and we are sure you will be impressed with this WordPress theme compilation.

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• 100 Amazing Free WordPress Themes for 2009
• 100 Excellent Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

AppCloud Theme
A nice e-commerce WordPress theme with a clean and professional look. Built upon 960.gs, with an integrated slideshow, two layouts (horizontal and vertical) for app/gadget images. The theme also includes sections “Featured products” and “Top Selling” and a categorized products view.

Berita (via ThemeCloset)
Berita is a minimalist corporate theme created for companies to prominently display their logo, but the theme could be used for any type of website. It’s a feature-rich theme with a preview slider on the front page and a robust theme administration page.

Magazeen
Magazeen is a two-column theme released specifically for Smashing Magazine readers. The theme has some subtle enhancements that encourage looking at related and new posts, like a related posts drop-down effect for the category link.

Mainstream Theme (via Wootheme)
You have the option of choosing from five different theme colors with Mainstream. Thumbnails are automatically resided and the sidebar is widgetized.

Rusty Grunge
Rusty Grunge is a simple WordPress theme yet still gives you the “destroyed” look. This theme utilizes a fully-widgetized sidebar and has been downloaded over 28,000 times and is featured as a pre-installed theme on Dreamhost’s default installation of WordPress.

Obscure WordPress Theme
A dark magazine WordPress theme suitable for any site niche; also a good fit for a community-based site.

Paper Wall
Smashing Magazine released the illustrated theme Paper Wall last month. The inspiration behind the Paper Wall theme was a designer’s desk, as designers typically put things on paper. It’s a two-column theme with many elements of paper: paper boards, peeling paper and paper “menus”.

Gallery WordPress Theme
a beautiful, free, gallery-style Thematic child theme for WordPress, designed by Christopher Wallace especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. It is extremely flexible and can be used as a starting point for design galleries and portfolios.

Cool Retro
A nice, clean illustrated WordPress theme with a retro-look and nice typography.

Life Collage
Life Collage is a child theme of the Hybrid theme framework. It’s about getting back to the roots of blogging. About sharing our lives. And, about having a little fun while we do it.

Shalom Typo
This theme was designed for the typographic template contest at Smashing Magazine by the German designer David Hellmann. This WordPress theme is based upon this layout. A clean and nice typographic WordPress-theme.

Jungleland Theme (via Theme Lab)
The stylish browns give an earthy feel to this blog making it a good choice for those blogs focused on the environment and nature. It features a photo gallery and a sidebar menu

Monkeypr Theme (via Queness)
Monkeypr is a nicely designed and fun WordPress theme.

Folio Elements Theme (via Press 75)
With its black background, Folio Elements theme will surely make your images and photographs noticed. There is no sidebar, no widgets, no list of categories, no place to comment and nowhere to search. However, if you are looking for a basic carousel-type theme with absolutely no basics, bells or whistles, then Folio Elements might be the one for you.

SimpleCart(js)
SimpleCart(js) is another child of the Thematic WordPress framework. The theme requires WP E-Commerce and is a flexible way to showcase products with the grid framework. The theme features a rich wood background and simple white content area.

Glassic
A simple clean WordPress theme with the focus on typography and simplicity. Released by Abdullah Ibrahim exclusively for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Zinepress Theme (via Well Medicatedi)
Zinepress is a two column magazine style theme. There is a nice sidebar with enough space for ads and for your widgets. It is hand coded and has valid XHTML STrict 1.0 and CSS Level 2.1. The developer has successfully tested this them with IE 6.0+, Firefox 2+, Opera 9+, Safari 3+, and Chrome 0.2+. Suggested WordPress version is 2.7 or higher.

Futurosity Aperio Prototype
Futurosity Aperio is a clean straight-forward blog theme built on Sandbox

Futurosity Vero (via Theme Meme)
Built on Sandbox and Blueprint CSS framework, the Futurosity Vero is a minimalist theme. Near the top of your home page, your most recent and featured post will be displayed.

PolaroidPress (via Tutorial9)
PolaroidPress, as you might guess from the name, plays on the usage of “polaroids” in the theme that display your random images. It’s a simple two-column theme with an airy feel.

H5
The H5 theme is more of a proof-of-concept theme to show designers how to show theme designers how to design with HTML5 and CSS 2.1. It’s a bare-bones theme that’s perfect as a building block for creating your next WordPress theme.

Inuit (via CSS Reflex)
Inuit makes use of a lot of whitespace and preview images for each post on the homepage. The theme also comes integrated with Twitter and Flickr.

Wu Wei
Clean, modern and minimal. The theme was based on the Taoist concept of wu wei: knowing when to act, and knowing when not to act. The theme is built on the principles of the grid system.

Modfolio
Modfolio is a child theme of Modularity, a theme framework for WordPress. Modfolio is another portfolio theme with an extremely dark layout. The theme has 10 potential homepage layout combinations with different colors and element positions.

Cardeo Minimal
A minimal three-column theme with plenty of white space and gray text.

Album Theme (by Brian Gardner)
Album theme is one of the many beautiful templates offered by StudioPress. Some included features are SEO optimized, widget ready, automatically sizes images for thumbnails, and ad ready. This theme is not free, but they do include the PSD file.

Album Theme (by Allan Cole)
Auto-focus is a blog theme designed for photographers to showcase their work.

Mystique (by Digital Nature)
This sleek one column theme has a flexible-width, threaded comments, and an adjustable header.

Manifest
Manifest is a straight-forward one column blog. It has no widgets or sidebar, but gives you a nice clean approach that focuses on your content.

Debug Theme (by Joost de Valk)
When your WordPress installs fail and you need more information, the debug theme is perfect. On the home page, it displays the important URL’s, editor, memory setting, etc. On sub pages it shows the page type, all the query vars that are set and the SQL query for that particular page.

Calmdream WordPress Theme
A very clean and simple layout for magazine layouts.

Portfolio Theme (via WPESP)
Portfolio is a two column blog theme which can be described as a minimalist. This modifiable design will make your own portfolio look great!

Blog Theme
The Carrington Blog-style theme is filled with advanced features like widgetized sidebars, AJAX loading of content, stylish galleries, customizable headers and colors.

Mobile Theme (via Carrington Themesl)
The Carrington Mobile has a beautiful design supporting advanced touch browsers )Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Pre)./p>

Pyrmont V2 Theme (via WP)
Pyrmont V2 is a two-column theme with a black background that could very well make your photographs and designs stand out.

Destyle Theme
Destyle is a magazine-style WordPress theme. This is another theme packed with useful features such as: multi-level superfish dropdown menu, ad management, predefined CSS styles, customa page templates, Twitter and Flick badges on sidebar and automatic image resizing.

ImpreZZ
A dark, three-column theme that gives the second column a third dimension.

Would you like to see more similar lists on SM?

Your opinion is very important to us. There are literally hundreds of similar lists on various design blogs. We are trying to do our best to present you only the best of the best, collecting useful links over months. Would you like to see more similar lists in the future? Or should we drop lists altogether and focus on more original content?

Would you like to see more similar lists on SM in the future?(polls)

© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 30 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: themes, wordpress

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40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 12, 2009.

There are people all over the internet that are willing to give away their work for promotional purposes or because they want to spread their design talent to other people.

For this reason we are lucky enough to have a wide variety of free PSD website templates for your use and enjoyment. I have collected some of the best ones I found from around the web to bring to you, already split up into layers in Photoshop. Enjoy!

1) Design Studio PSD Template

2) Orange PSD Template

3) SanduneBiz PSD Template

4)Cambridge PSD Template

5) Crisp Presentation PSD Template

6) Citrus Square Burst PSD Template

7) Audryhipburn PSD Template

8 ) MyTwoCents Property PSD Template

9) Old Victorian PSD Template

10) Bright Colors Radio PSD Template

11) Blackboard PSD Template

12) Colorful Video PSD Template

13) Shape PSD Template

14) DelliStore PSD Template

15) Midnight Sun PSD Template

16) Environmental PSD Template

17) Smashing Multimedia PSD Template

18 ) Slideshow PSD Template

19) Fresh PSD Template

20) 5 Webdesigns PSD Template

21) 3 Free PSD Template

22) Organic Conference PSD Template

23) Summer of Love PSD Template

24) Herbal Treats PSD Template

25) Solitude PSD Template

About the Author
Tyler Denis is a part-time freelance designer from Ashland, New Hampshire. He is also the creator/writer of the design blog Denis Designs/blog, a website dedicated to bringing quality tutorials and inspiration. You can follow him on Twitter or at his personal site, Denis Designs.

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

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25 Slick PSD Website Templates Free for Download originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 12, 2009.

The need to update websites faster to keep content fresh has been ever growing. Ever since the first business owner wanted their Web designer to update their website faster, content management systems have played an important role on the Web. Why does this matter to you? How do you know if your company is ready?

In this article, we will look at how to tell if your organization needs a content management system. We will also give you information on the abilities of content management systems to help you better understand what they can do. While content management systems may seem complex, their entire purpose is to streamline your workflow and make your life easier.

A content management system allows you to create, manage, store and edit massive amounts of content without any HTML programming skill. Because you are able to edit your content from any computer with an Internet connection, you no longer have to rely on third-party developers or companies to keep your website up to date. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Every company would like to reduce costs and increase productivity.

Also consider our previous articles:

• 10 Things To Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS
  Goes over what features to look for when choosing a content management system.
• 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites
  Explains the mistakes we all make when running our websites. The nature of those mistakes varies depending on the size of your company. As your organization grows, the mistakes change. This post addresses common mistakes of large organizations.
• Developers Toolbox
  Offers tools and resources to help you achieve your goals at a more hands-on level.

1. What Is A Content Management System?

If you have never heard the term before, a content management system (CMS) is a Web-based solution that makes it easy for a company to manage website updates internally. For many companies, updating a website is not something to look forward to because it can be a lengthy and, over time, expensive process. Most companies search for easier means of accomplishing their goals. The solution that many large and small companies have found is a CMS. The easy-to-use application allows your company to control its online identity with little to no knowledge of Web design.

Do I Need a Content Management System?

While you know your business better than anyone else, if you answer Yes to any of the following questions, your company would likely benefit from using a CMS-based website.

• Does your company update its website content frequently?
• Does your website contain over 10 pages?
• Do you constantly outsource simple website updates to third parties?

Although building your website with a CMS may not save you money up front, if you need to be able to manage your own content in a timely manner, you will certainly be cutting costs in future. You will increase your organization’s speed while reducing its effort. With a CMS accessible from any computer with an Internet connection, you will speed up the process of approving, publishing, and updating.

Some CMS’ have in-page buttons to speed up the process of editing content, while preventing users from accessing the admin interface.

Because a CMS has built-in organizational features, content is easier to find and nearly impossible to lose (unless you delete it by accident). You no longer have to spend a lot of time on simple tasks or duplicating your efforts. All of your content is created, managed, published and edited from a single location with very simple, easy-to-use tools. Because using these tools requires very little training, you can start managing your content almost immediately.

If you have identified your business goals and recognized that your website will play a role in them, you should begin the process of implementing your own CMS. There is no set list of requirements for a content management system because each organization has unique needs. Keep your requirements to a minimum, but be sure to allow for the future growth and demands of your company. Enlisting the help of a Web design and development company to assess your needs is a good idea.

2. Essentials Of A CMS

Three key elements that every CMS has, one way or another, are templates, content and meta data. Understanding how these three elements interact with the other CMS features is important: the template is the graphic wrapper of your website; without the actual content, you would have no need for a website; and the often over-looked meta data helps with search engine optimization.

An example of a CMS theme that has the same look and feel on every page.

Templates control how your content looks on the page and are extremely helpful when you have to produce a lot of pages (10+). The template is a graphic wrapper that usually looks the same on every page of the website, regardless of the content. It makes your website’s look and feel consistent. When you want to change the template (say, the color or an image), you have to make the change only once and it will be reflected on every page of your website. Popular CMS’ such as WordPress and ExpressionEngine have many free or premium templates available online that can reduce the cost of and help you customize your system.

This is the typical layout of a WYSIWYG editor, which has features that are standard in word processors today, such as bolding, italicizing and justifying paragraphs.

Content is created, managed and edited independent of all other CMS elements. Content could be anything from the text on your “About” page to the photo on your company press release. All content is normally managed through a WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get) that has integrated photo uploading tools. This helps you create new pages on your website, manage and edit existing pages and assign pages to multiple areas without having to copy them.

Facebook does an excellent job of pulling an external page’s title and description meta data when you post a link to it on a fan page or wall.

Meta data plays a key part in search engine optimization (SEO). The great thing about a CMS is that it makes it nearly impossible for you to forget to add this information, thus helping your website’s search and index ranking on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Meta data contains such information as category, author, publishing date, title, brief description and keywords.

One great use of meta data is for automatically adding a title and description to links posted on social media websites such as Facebook. This not only saves you from having to retype this information but keeps your content relevant as well. This information can also be pulled by search engines and any other website where your website is listed, so make sure to put some thought into writing it.

3. CMS Features And Functions

Content management systems come with many standard features to help you create, manage and edit your content. In addition to standard features, additional features can be added to the flexible system framework. These additional features are often referred to as add-on modules or plug-ins. Because a CMS is very flexible, you can use it for a simple website with little content or expand the features to support a complex website with a lot of content. Here is a nice list of high-profile companies that use a CMS for their websites, which will give you a good idea of how far you can expand these systems.

Standard Features

These features are what make your content management system so extensive and highly flexible. They allow you to publish, edit and organize content and manage members, and they contain a variety of built-in security features.

With these straightforward tools, you can see how easy creating and managing your content is.

Publishing is made easy with the in-depth features of a CMS. Without any knowledge of HTML programming, users can create, manage and schedule content with ease. These powerful tools help free up time within an organization by streamlining the whole process. A user can create content, set the category (i.e. the section in which it will be published) and then set it as a draft for later review.

Once the content is reviewed, it can be scheduled to be published, say, seven days from then. Once you have reached that step, the rest of the process is automated. You can write and complete a week’s worth of articles ahead of time and take a vacation without having to worry about publishing new content, because it will publish itself (if you have done your part).

Typography often causes headaches for writers, especially if the writers are not HTML savvy, but the task is made easier with built-in text editors. With most CMS’, your text can be automatically formatted to produce XHTML-valid typography. This saves you the hassle of hand-coding every piece of content and leaves the “fun” bits to the system itself. If you paste disallowed characters, such as curly quotes, bullets or accents, from text editors like Microsoft Word, they will automatically be converted into an HTML-valid equivalent.

Another great feature that many CMS’ include is automatic linking. This feature saves you from having to manually link URLs that you add to your content. All of these features are useful because they make your workflow more efficient when you create a lot of content. And if you prefer to enter your own HTML code every time because you don’t trust the automated process, you have that option as well.

Organization is a key part of maintaining a website. With a CMS, all of the content is stored in one place, only once, and is accessible from any location with an Internet connection. Content can be saved in a number of states, such as draft, published and archived. So you can keep unfinished and finished content in separate places, with different attributes. This is especially handy if you like to write content ahead of time and want to be able to easily find it when it comes time to publish.

• Draft: this is work in progress and is not visible to the public.
• Published: content that is visible to the public.
• Archived: previously published content that is tucked away in a safe place, away from the main navigation. Typically used with blogs.

Member management helps you control all aspects of your website’s users. As an administrator, you have full control over how many people can access your website and how much control they have themselves. This can be extremely useful for a large company, where many people (author, editor, publisher, etc.) are responsible for creating and maintaining content. You control how many hands are in the cookie jar at each stage of the creation process.

• Administrator: has complete control over all users and access to all of the website’s administration features.
• Editor: can publish and mange their own content as well as other people’s content, etc.
• Author: can publish and manage their own content.
• Contributor: can write and manage their own content but cannot publish it.
• Subscriber: can read content, view and write comments, receive newsletters and so on, without being able to edit anything.

Build-in security measures give you one less thing to worry about. You no longer have to worry about session management, robots trying multiple passwords to hack your account or losing data when processing forms. Almost every CMS has different session management configurations, so you can set the preferences that fit your security needs.

With the built-in “multiple password denial” feature, you can make sure that multiple users cannot access your system simultaneously with the same log-in credentials. In addition, you can automatically lock out users after several incorrect password attempts and allow forms to be submitted only once. This helps prevent loss of data and attempts to hack your system via password.

Additional Features

You can integrate add-on modules, or plug-ins, into your CMS to add value, improve accessibility and increase functionality. With the right combination of features, you can create a website that fits your business plan and helps your company achieve its goals. While the number of additional features that you can add is endless, we will focus on the major ones here.

GoMediazine is a great example of blog integration.

Company blog functionality helps keep your website fresh and can be a very useful marketing tool. While CMS’ have evolved into complete website solutions, they were originally intended to manage blogs. Most blogs were used as personal diaries or breaking news outlets. Adapted to business use, they can be very useful for letting customers and clients know about what’s new and exciting with your company. If you sell products, you can announce new items or sales. Some businesses, such as GoMedia, use their blog purely as a community-building tool to publish educational information.

The Electrorack website is a great example of seamless e-commerce integration.

E-commerce integration makes the user experience on your website a very comfortable one. Being able to sell products and services from within your website would be ideal for any business. Some companies, including Electrorack, have seamlessly integrated their e-commerce solution into their CMS. The user doesn’t even notice that they are jumping from one platform to another because the look and feel are so consistent.

The DesignByHumans website has a great integrated user-based community.

Discussion forums are a complete community-building solution that helps your website’s visitors exchange ideas. Users can create topics, offer feedback on existing topics and interact with other users. How you use a discussion forum depends entirely on your needs. Design by Humans uses its forum to post company news and to let their artists and customers interact for free.

This website has a photo gallery set up on its system for album postings.

Photo galleries are used by millions of people around the world. Online photo sharing is becoming this era’s scrapbooking. With the increase in social media use, people can easily send everyone they know a link to their latest photo gallery. The Memory Museum can display photos easily through the customized gallery on its photography blog. Businesses can use this feature to showcase recent events or feature products. By organizing and displaying photos from within your CMS, you can have all of your content in one location.

National Geographic has an intuitive integrated video management system to help users view their video content through the Web.

Video management helps you organize, edit and distribute video content. You no longer have to upload videos to YouTube or Vimeo and then manage them separately. You can manage your video content just as you manage your website’s pages. You can upload almost any kind of video and then share your albums and videos on your website and on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and Digg.

CMS’ vary in the video management features they offer. But most let you upload multiple files at once (in batch) and automatically create thumbnails. Once videos are in the system, you can track viewer behavior as well as feature content based on popularity. National Geographic integrates videos into its articles and offers them separately for others to embed on their own websites.

Apple offers extensive multi-language support and uses multiple URL extensions to differentiate content.

Multi-language support lets you offer content in multiple countries within a single CMS, allowing visitors to choose their preferred language. While most small companies do not need this feature, it can be helpful. The support features may not actually translate content (and if they do, they won’t do an accurate job), but they do let you feature content in multiple languages, which is extremely useful for corporate websites that operate globally. Because Apple operates in many countries, it offers its website in many languages.

RSS feeds typically show excerpts of content and images (if any), as shown above.

RSS feeds are a really simple way to syndicate the content on your website. With the explosion of RSS readers, which constantly check a user’s favorite websites for new content, RSS feeds have become essential. It does not matter whether you update your website daily or monthly, your readers will be sure never to miss an update. Millions of websites publish RSS feeds on a regular basis, and yours should not be an exception. With people’s attention spans shrinking along with their free time, letting users choose the content they want to read through an RSS feed is helpful.

A newsletter can be a great way to reach out to users who are interested in your content, especially if yours is designed as well as TV Guide Daily Scoop’s.

Newsletters/mailing lists are an extremely helpful feature, especially if you have a lot of users or want to expand your base. Many mainstream users still do not use an RSS reader, and some of them may prefer to receive your content in their inbox rather than by visiting your website every few days. You can integrate newsletters into your system and set the feature’s functionality. Usually, you will be able to manage subscriptions, create a template, compose the newsletter in a WYSIWYG editor, manage your archive and track open/click results.

Google Analytics shows detailed information on your website’s visitors, at no charge.

Statistics/tracking is an essential feature for any website. To effectively run and market a website, you need to know as much as possible about your visitors. Analyzing whatever data is available prepares you to achieve company goals, focuses your marketing initiatives and converts visitors into regular users. You will have information on how many people visit your website, where they live, what content they view and much more. Google Analytics is one of the most widely adopted analytics programs that are available for CMS’. Its popularity is partly due to the immense amount of information it provides about your visitors for free.

Where Can I Find A Content Management System?

You know the size of your organization and how much you can spend on a CMS. These factors are good indicators of where to start your search. Actually finding one can be a daunting task, but if you have a clear idea of what you are looking for, you can quickly weed out the options that don’t fit your needs. Finding a solution that helps your business achieve its goals is important. Many businesses, large and small, use all kinds of different CMS’ to manage their content. Start your journey by using the resources listed below.

Further Resources

Check out the following related articles and resources:

• 45 Incredibly Useful Web Design Checklists and Questionnaires
  You are much less likely to overlook important aspects of your website if you follow this checklist, which covers content, usability, accessibility, standards and more.
• 15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website
  Lists some important things to check before taking your website public.
• 10 Designer’s Checkpoints To Be Aware Of
  A list of things every designer should know about their website.
• List of Content Management Systems
  A list of notable content management systems that can be used to organize and facilitate collaborative content creation. Many of them are built on top of other content management frameworks.
• Compare Multiple CMS Solutions (technical)
  This is a community service for anyone looking for a means to manage website content.
• Many useful resources on how to design and develop for these CMS’, including many free templates:
  • Joomla Resources
  • WordPress Resources
  • Expression Engine Resources
  • Drupal Resources
• How To Improve Your Branding With Your Content
  Branding experts speak the truth when they say that a winning brand communicates why you are your prospect’s only solution. If you can’t achieve that, at least convey why you are your prospect’s best solution.

(al)

© Robert Hartland for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 26 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: CMS

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Getting Started With Content Management Systems originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 8, 2009.

Filed under: OS Updates, Hardware, Apple

According to OSXDaily, Apple’s next scheduled update to Snow Leopard, OS X 10.6.2, doesn’t support Intel Atom processors. This is no problem for anyone on Apple hardware, because no Mac product runs an Atom. If you’re on a hacked netbook, though, it looks like this is the end of the line for your OS X updates.

Although it’s not confirmed, rumor has it that next update to Apple’s previous Leopard OS (10.5.9) will also knock out Atom support. Until a workaround pops up from netbook hacker circles, Atom machines running 10.6.1 and 10.5.8 should probably avoid upgrading. Is Apple sending a message to users running its software on third-party machines? It seems likely, but it also doesn’t seem like it will do much to stop determined netbook enthusiasts.

Apple breaks Atom Hackintoshes with upcoming OS X 10.6.2 update originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple – Operating system – Mac OS X – Intel Atom – Download Squad

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Apple breaks Atom Hackintoshes with upcoming OS X 10.6.2 update originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 5, 2009.

We need to be inspired to be in style. All of us are looking to give the website the edge to make it one in a million. We look for the style that allows the website to speak for itself, because a picture is tantamount to a million words. Last but not the least, it is always the first impression that leaves a touch; sometimes it might even metamorph in to first love.

Here we have showing you the top 20 designs that have inspired us; we are sharing the web app designs that have made the difference; we have been eclectic with an esoteric collection.

1) Reinvigorate

A tool to track real time traffic to your web with many features including heat sensing

2) Moodstream

A powerful tool to find you the images, footage or audio you are looking for.

3) Mailchimp

A powerful tools to manage your subscribers list, design HTML email campaigns and track and analyze email campaigns.

4) Blinksale

A very useful and easy to use tool to build and track invoices

5) GoodBarry

A complete tool for ecommerce, email marketing, CRM and analatycs

6) Wufoo

A must have, HTML form builder tool

7) Campaign monitor

Everything a designer needs to manage the subscriber emails

8 ) Kontain

A social media platform to promote your brand

9) Active collab

A powerful project management and collaboration tool

10) Proworkflow

A tool to manage your projects online

11) Aviary

A tool to create logos, webtemplates, filters and more .

12) Basecamp

A webbased project collaboration tool

13) Kuler

Explore, create and share color themes here

14) Emberapp

Best way to share your design inspiration with the world using emberapp

15) Freshbooks

Fastest way to track time and invoice your clients

16) Carbonmade

Easy way to display and manage your portfolio online

17) Notable

Easiest way for teams to provide feedback on websites

18) Evernote

Save your ideas and things you like for free on your desktop

19) Hotelmap

Get connected to each London hotel’s own reservation system

20) Photoshop

A perfect place to save and organize your online photos

Sponsors

Dreamhost: Get $50 Off with Coupon Code: WEBAPPERS

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20 Useful & Nicely Designed Web Applications originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 3, 2009.