Drop downs

• Mega Drop Down Menus w/ CSS & jQuery

Galleries

• A very nice fading background image, with an overlay of text, and identification number
• A gallery that has a left and right arrow, a large image at the centre with thumbnail images either side that have a swooping animation
• Image fade in fade out
• Sliding box and captions

Navigation

• Jquery Horizontal Slide Navigation
• Automatic infinite carousel

Popup

• jQuery rss popup bubble effect

Well known jQuery plugins

• jParallax

Slider

• Apple website style slider

It’s 27 – a report by Jakob Nielsen has revealed that the average person types in 27 characters into the input field (moved on from 25).

So from now on always design your site to allow for 27 characters in an input field.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020512.html – goto number 5 on the list.

Every time i cropped it would finish 1px by 1px. After scanning the web i found the solution – it was so simple i felt pretty embarrassed after.

Anyhow if you guys are having an issue where your crop tool is 1px by 1px then do the following:

click on crop tool – in the options area you will see a 1px in your width – delete that and you should now be back to normal!

Photoshop crop tool not working

New retweet twitter symbol

I am now part of a group that can see the new retweet symbol – it is currently in Beta – but i expect it to catch on quick!

Here is the message i received

“Hi there, you’re part of a beta group receiving this feature, which means you may start seeing retweets in a new way. People who don’t have this yet will see your retweets prefaced by “RT”.”

1. To get back to your Move tool just press “v” this means you dont have to locate your tools window and then click on the icon.
2. to zoom in use “Ctrl +”
3. To zoom out use “Ctrl -“
4. If you are using a common colour for a design add it your colour swatches
5. To move the psd around hold the space bar down and use your mouse to scroll around

Example of a Buy it now button

It just screams click me! (doesn’t it?)

Let me know what other techniques you guys use and what works best for you..

Google Optimizer

Multivarient testing is something i believe strongly in and google have created a fantastic tool for this.

The tool gives you the ability to portion off areas of your site, and use real time stats with real users to actually prove if something does or doesn’t work. This is great news if you don’t have the resources for user testing.

Google optimizer works by wrapping the section you want to change into some google javascript code. You can then upload your various alterations into the google optimizer admin area. The optimizer will then randomly display your different varients and show you the results of your tests.

In the admin area you have multiple options such as setting defining how long you want the test to run for,  filtering out any options that bring back the poorest results.  The optimizer works with your google adwords and analytics accounts.

There are a couple of draw backs to the software:

• The javascript will fail the xhtml validation test – they are currently working to fix this problem.
• It is a pain to share your information with other users, and it seems the people you invite must have a googlemail or adwords account.

Overall it is a great tool, and i will be using it heavily for any multivarient testing i need to do in the future.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/can-you-say-that-in-english-explaining-ux-research-to-clients/