Source: Web Design Fact
Most of time of a pro web designer is spent in multiple graphic design programs and writing front end code. All of this switching from one web application to another can make it hard to remember such things as hot keys and shortcuts for each. That’s why cheat sheets comes into focus. A cheat sheet is simply a printable reference or guide to a particular software application, programming language, framework, etc. Today it’s the time to round up 14 most useful web design cheat sheets.
Here are 14 of our favorite web design cheat sheets.
Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Keyboard Shortcuts
Adobe Photoshop CS3 Keyboard Shortcuts
Photoshop Lasso Tool Cheatsheet
Adobe Pen Tool Cheatsheet
CSS
CSS Cheat Sheet (V2)
Mac OS X CSS Cheat Sheet
CSS Cheat Sheet
XHTML
(X)HTML Elements and Attributes
HTML/XHTML in One Page
JavaScript Frameworks
jQuery 1.3 Cheat Sheet
MooTools 1.2 Cheat Sheet
Prototype 1.6.0.2 Cheat Sheet
Flash
Adobe Flash CS4 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts
Flash CS3 Cheat Sheet
Source: http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/volunteer-work-in-web-design/
Volunteering is an attractive option for every web worker at some point. Whether the motivation is for self-promotion (for example, to broaden one’s network) or purely to help others in difficult times, many of us in the web industry have thought of doing it at least once.
What makes us accept or decline an invitation to volunteer our services? What is there to gain, and what do we risk? What are the criteria for deciding whether a particular non-paying design job is worth our time and effort?
Before determining whether a project is fitting for volunteer work or not, we have to see whether we’d like to be involved in it in the first place. Weighing the pros and cons and understanding the benefits and risks are essential.
Reasons to Volunteer Your Web Design Services
There are plenty of great reasons to volunteer your valuable time and effort to a cause.
Self-Promotion
Self-promotion and publicity is the primary motivation for big and small companies to volunteer for worthy causes. Projecting the image of a company that contributes to the well-being of society is a basic principle of marketing. People will favor your services if they sense that your operating plan isn’t based solely on profit.
By helping groups and organizations in need, you are showing that you would probably also place the needs of paying clients in high regard. Of course, you would demonstrate to existing clients that their satisfaction figures largely in how you measure your success, but how would prospective clients know that?
Most clients out there have certain apprehensions about service providers. Will the quality of service be sufficient for the money being paid? Will the designer rush to finish the project as quickly as possible and then walk away once the check comes?
When potential customers check your portfolio and see that you’ve volunteered for a few projects, they will feel more assured that you will listen to their needs and not the jingle of change in their pocket.
Volunteering also exposes your work to a bigger audience. You instantly become more approachable to ordinary people with modest means but big dreams. Business owners with small budgets might feel reluctant to step onto the Web. But even a low-budget presence on the web would help them, and you could be there to satisfy that need. Seeing how well you have served charitable causes, they will assume that you would be more sympathetic to their aspirations versus a company with a portfolio full of expensive, high-profile projects. And these clients might very well stick with you as they grow and scale their business.
Big companies are also impressed by volunteer projects, especially successfully executed ones. They are always on the lookout for inspirational designers who can fulfill their heavy demands, capture their brand and communicate their message to users.
Volunteering as a means for self-promotion has its negative side too, though. People might assume you’re willing to do a lot of work for free, or at a much lower price than what you’re worth. This can happen if you volunteer too much or don’t set out goals and strategies clearly in your discussions with volunteer-based clients. Explain your approach and methods so that clients don’t lead other companies to believe that they can get a golden ticket to your web design services without spending a dime.
Your volunteer clients should feel moved to explain to others that you kindly offered to support a cause that you care about, but that you are still a professional and expect fair market wages.
A Chance to Hone Your Skills
Working on a website is never a waste of time, because it is a chance to put your skills and inspiration to work. Certainly, anyone can create sample websites in their free time, but the advantage of a volunteer website is that you get real results from your work.
It’s like an academic project: you aren’t paid, but you are graded on it, and there are no better critics than users themselves.
An audience is a huge knowledge base of feedback for your work, and one more project means one more real-time evaluation of your work by real people. You could even implement the newest techniques you’ve learned to see how much they enhance the audience’s experience. Volunteering is also an excellent way for newcomers to the industry to practice their skills and gain experience in client management and self-promotion.
But don’t overdo it. While taking on extra work for practice is usually worthwhile, remember two things:
- Don’t overload your schedule and push back paid projects. Be realistic with your schedule. Paying clients have strict deadlines to meet. This doesn’t mean you should put volunteer work at the bottom of the list. Rather, work out flexible dates for deliverables so that you can keep pace with paid work.
- Don’t test out too many new ideas on a single project. Radical solutions (such as bleeding-edge layouts and scripts) could end up doing more harm than good for a website. Your goal should be the level of quality you would deliver if you were getting paid for the project.
Boosting Your Portfolio
One of my happier moments is adding a newly completed project to my portfolio. Your portfolio is the demonstration of your skill to the industry at large. Volunteering is a good way to add to a portfolio, prove your worth, get a feel for the profession and attract clients. Everyone has to start somewhere, and supporting a worthy cause is certainly a good place to begin. You expose a defined audience to your work, you get experience in real-world conditions, and you offer much-needed aid. Awesome all around.
Believe it or not, there’s a risk here, too. Setting a limit on how much work you do for free is crucial. If you’re too soft with people and want to constantly volunteer your services, you might get caught in a financial bind. While your good intentions are admirable, they won’t make ends meet.
For this reason, try to volunteer with people you know well (family and close friends) or recognized charitable groups. Both are more likely to understand your goals and understand that you won’t be doing this free forever.
Spread your wings and take on paid projects as soon as you feel you can handle their requirements (i.e. the strict deadlines, complicated requests, etc.). Filling your portfolio with good deeds is nice, but making a living from it is even nicer.
Picking Out Volunteer Projects
Let’s say you’ve decided that you can volunteer on a few projects. The next step is to figure out whether a particular project qualifies for volunteer work. Three important questions will help you make a decision.
What Is the Main Goal of the Website?
A website for an organization that supports a social cause is worthy of a designer’s efforts, especially if the organization relies entirely on public donations for survival. Still, fund-raising structure isn’t the only element to look for; many websites simply aim to inform the public about a cause.
Some worthy causes are disaster relief awareness, programs for people with special needs, animal shelters, online education for children, and cultural and scientific endeavors. Organizations whose websites have benefited from volunteer help include Med25 International, a health care organization that provides medical aid to countries in need, Hope Help and Relief Haiti by Jacob Cass, and CNIS, which does vital obstetrics work in Africa.
A charitable organization exists for every worthy cause, so find something that suits your interests and ideals. Being able to relate to the cause you are supporting will boost your creativity and your desire for quality results.
What Is the Nature of the Organization?
In general, aim to volunteer at non-profit organizations. The ones that need your assistance the most are small, local or newly formed groups. You can usually get to know the team well and see whether its motivations are transparent and clear.
You might also want to volunteer for small business ventures that were hit hard by the recent economic downturn. This could be your favorite mom-and-pop store when you were growing up and that have personal sentimental value to you, local businesses that are vital to your neighborhood and community, and so forth. Before you lend a hand, make sure the owners have invested enough time, love and effort to save their business and that they are genuinely in need of aid. If you do help out, they may call on you when business get better, or at least promote you to their colleagues.
Will Others Be Volunteering as Well?
Before you commit to volunteering on a project, find out whether other web workers will be working on the project, too. You don’t want to reach the middle of a project before finding out that everyone else is getting paid except you.
Avoid organizations that are otherwise willing to pay for services but consider your contribution of low value or that take your kindness and time for granted.
Does Volunteer Work Harm the Web Design Industry?
Volunteering–done in a misguided way–could seriously harm the industry if professional web designers are working on for-profit websites that would otherwise pay for services. This would drive the price of web design work down and make the field unviable for professionals. That is why it is very important to be selective towards picking the right organizations to work with.
However, making a career solely from volunteer work is not viable either (one can do only so many projects for free before going hungry), so the industry is in no real danger of being flooded by free designs.
The important thing is to stick to the basic guidelines discussed above: know the nature of the project; favor non-profit organizations; don’t overdo it just to bulk up your portfolio; and make sure the client understands that, as much as you support the cause, your work is still costing you effort and time: two resources you normally get paid for.
Bottom line: Web designers must avoid creating misconceptions about the value of our work. To keep the industry healthy, we must establish clear boundaries between projects that can be considered for volunteer work and projects that should be paid work.
But don’t swing in the other direction either. Don’t go on a rant when taking on volunteer work and brag (or whine) about the money you could have been making by working for a paying project. You are volunteering your services because you want to, and your effort and professionalism should be in the same level as your paid projects.
Last Thoughts
Volunteering is a great way to serve your community, expose your work to a broader audience, build your portfolio, and hone your skills.
Check the parameters of the project before starting, such as the nature of the organization and the people who run it. You should feel comfortable with the team you’ll be collaborating with and the cause you’ll be supporting.
Above all, make sure the project is well conceived and targeted at the right audience: web design is your profession, not your pastime.
Finding Volunteer Work Opportunities
To get involved in volunteering, look online or around your area. If you Google “volunteer web designer“, you’ll get a ton of results from groups looking for help to set up a website, and usually for a good cause.
There are also websites that focus on connecting tech workers with charitable organizations, including Grassroots.org and IT4Communities (based in the UK).
You can also look to local public schools, hospitals, community aid organizations and animal welfare groups.
You might also find web design opportunities with educational institutions that organize seminars for students, cultural events, fund-raising fairs and public awareness lectures.
Here are a few more websites to check out:
Have you ever volunteered for a project? If so, what was your experience? If not, would you be willing to give it a try?
What is RSS?
You probably have seen this three-letter acronym in the course of your internet surfing. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website.
An RSS is a means of publicizing updates about websites. It may or may not include a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so that they could decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source.
What are the benefits of RSS?
RSS gives benefits to both readers (users) and web publishers.
1. It gives you the latest updates.
Whether it is about the weather, new music, software upgrade, local news, or a new posting from a rarely-updates site learn about the latest as soon as it comes out.
2. It saves on surfing time.
Since an RSS feed provides a summary of the related article, it saves the user’s time by helping s/he decide on which items to prioritize when reading or browsing the net.
3. It gives the power of subscription to the user.
Users are given a free-hand on which websites to subscribe in their RSS aggregators which they can change at any time they decide differently.
4. It lessens the clutter in your inbox.
Although your email address will be required to enjoy the services of online RSS aggregators, RSS does not use your email address to send the updates.
5. It is spam free.
Unlike email subscriptions, RSS does not make use of your email address to send updates thus your privacy is kept safe from spam mails.
6. Unsubscribing is hassle-free.
Unlike email subscriptions where the user is asked questions on why s/he is unsubscribing and then the user would be asked to confirm unsubscribing, all you have to do is to delete the RSS feed from your aggregator.
7. It can be used as an advertising or marketing tool.
Users who subscribe or syndicate product websites receive the latest news on products and services without the website sending spam mail. This is advantageous to both the web user and the website owner since advertising becomes targeted; those who are actually interested in their products are kept posted.
What are the drawbacks of RSS?
The disadvantages of RSS use are brought about by its being a new technology and some user-preference concerns.
1. Some users prefer receiving email updates over an RSS feed.
2. Graphics and photos do not appear in all RSS feeds.
For conciseness and ease of publication, RSS feeds do not display the photos from the original site in announcing the update except for some web-based aggregators
3. The identity of the source website can be confusing.
Since RSS feeds do not display the actual URL or name of the website, it can sometimes get confusing on what feed a user is actually reading.
4. Publishers cannot determine how many users are subscribed to their feed and the frequency of their visits. Moreover, they would not know the reasons why users unsubscribe which could be important in improving their advertising.
5. RSS feeds create higher traffic and demands on the server.
Most readers still prefer the whole update over a brief summary of the entry, thus they still access the site.
6. Since it is a new technology, many sites still do not support RSS.
How do I start using RSS?
There are two things needed: an RSS feed and an RSS aggregator or reader. The RSS feed comes from an RSS-supported website. There are also websites that provide a list of RSS feeds of different websites. An RSS aggregator is used to read the RSS feed from the source website. It scans and collects data on latest RSS feeds from the worldwide web.
An aggregator comes in two forms: a downloadable program also known as desktop aggregator and an online or web-based aggregator. Downloadable aggregators may require payment before they can be acquired, while internet-based aggregators are usually free of charge. All you need to do is to register an account then you are ready to use their services. Both versions allow you to customize or choose which RSS feeds to enter. Paid aggregators are usually chosen by more experienced users and they usually allow more freedom in customizing feeds.
1. Choose an RSS aggregator to use. For beginners, web-based aggregators are recommended since they are usually user-friendly
2. Scan the homepage of your target website for the RSS or XML button. It contains the RSS code you need to enter in the aggregator. Copy this code. Syndic8 provides a directory of websites that support RSS.
3. Paste the code (which contains the URL of the website) in your aggregator. There is a space provided for pasting the code.
After you have done these three easy steps, you can start reading the RSS feeds coming from the website. New postings appear as they are published real time at the source website.
RSS and Internet Marketing
The original idea of RSS came from Netscape, where their intention is to provide a means for users to customize their personal homepage to contain links to websites that interest them, similar to bookmarking websites.
The application of RSS to internet marketing was an unforeseen development to RSS technology developers. Since users are given the freedom to add RSS feeds to their aggregators, those who are interested in particular products and services available in the internet can now be notified real time. Marketing becomes more specific to interested people and not a hit-and-miss operation.
Those who intend to use RSS for marketing their products and services should consider linking up with email account providers, (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, Google mail); networking websites (e.g. Friendster, Multiply, My Space, Hi5); websites of newspapers and television network websites (e.g. New York Times, CNN) for medium to big-scale companies. Small-time industries can also look into networking websites as well as personal blog websites (e.g. Blogspot) and websites of clubs and organizations that would probably make use of their products or services e.g. a fishing supplies store can look for the website of their local fishing club for possible RSS marketing.
Clearly, RSS is an innovation in information management in the worldwide web as well as online marketing. We can expect better RSS technology in the not-so-distant future as its popularity increases among users and website owners alike.
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A web site can certainly be labeled as the representation of a company or an person on the internet. It’s through a website that people will get the 1st impression about a firm. And when individuals visit your web site, they come with certain expectations – conscious expectations (information they are looking for) and sub-conscious expectations (visual appeal, easy navigation etc). So, follow this advice and these guidelines, which help you meet such expectations:
1. Understand your audience
There are 2 elements which are influenced by this guideline- the design (including the layout, graphics, colors etc) as well as the content (articles along with other written material). By way of example, if you are designing a website for kids, you might consider selecting cartoons and a colorful impression instead of a more peaceful look which is better fit for business web sites. Similarly, the style, tone and examples used in your content are going to be dependent on the kind of audience too.
2. Navigation
Alright, so you have done the audience evaluation and possess all the right content and images etc on your web site; however, if individuals (your website visitors) cannot reach that information easily, it would be of no use at all. Therefore, it is crucial that your website is easy to navigate through. No page should be over three clicks away. Also, there should be a frequent pattern that you should follow for navigation across your web site. An additional beneficial practice is to have a navigation bar on the top (and bottom) or on the sides of your web pages.
3. Response time
In today’s fast paced world, people don’t want to wait for anything and it might be unreasonable to expect them to wait for your website to load. For this reason, it is necessary that your web pages load swiftly otherwise your visitors may go away even before your website loads. An excellent web designer will ensure that the images and multi-media are lightweight so that the web site loads quickly. Nevertheless, with quicker internet connections, this element of website design has assumed a lesser significance than what it used to be in earlier times; but still, this can be a very important aspect.
4. Cross web browser compatibility
As technologies advance and technology companies wrestle for supremacy, new software products (and updates) are being launched constantly. And web browsers haven’t been left out in this race for power. Which means you will find a whole lot of web browsers that are available and are being employed across the globe by various groups of people; and, though most web browsers comply with W3C norms, they still do their own thing. So, your web site could look and work differently in different web browsers. Hence, cross browser compatibility is a crucial aspect of web site designing. A sensible way to ensure that most of your stuff works across web browsers would be to verify your web site using the W3C mark-up validation service.
5. Uniformity
Your website design ought to be uniform in every respect – layout of various web pages, the color combinations, images, navigation, language etc. The majority of people will take the cue from what they see on your main page. Inconsistent web site design will confuse your audience and might lead them away from your web site.
If you follow these 5 basic tips / guidelines, you may never go wrong with your web design. So, take advantage of these guidelines.
Source: http://www.artipot.com/articles/531534/5-web-design-tips-and-guidelines-that-you-should-know.htm
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