We are always looking for creative and talented artists and designers. Once we find them, we ask them to cooperate with us and release something for free. We provide them with the full freedom to showcase their professionalism and express their creativity. Every release helps to make the Web a nicer place. In fact, the results are quite often pretty impressive. You can find our previous releases in our section Freebies.

Today we are glad to release a icON Stage icon set. The set contains 49 free vector icons including PSD which can be useful for both corporate and personal setting. You can use the set for free — without any restrictions whatsoever.

The icons are available in the .png-format in the resolution 128×128px. 100% pure shape-based layered PSDs are also included in the package. This icon set was designed by Deziner Folio especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Download Icon Set For Free!

You can use the icons for private and commercial projects, blogs and web-sites for free, without any restrictions whatsoever. However, you are not allowed to sell or redistribute the icons without author’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission.

• Large preview (png, 0.2 Mb)
• PNG files + PSD Sources (3.4 Mb)
• Release post at Deziner Folio

Thank you, guys!

You want to showcase your work as well?

We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists. You may not know it yet, but we might feature you in one of our upcoming posts.

If you would like to release a high-quality free font, a Wordpress-theme, some wallpapers or an icon-set please contact us — we would like to support you (both financially and with the broad coverage on Smashing Magazine).

You may be interested in the following freebies as well:

• RSS/Feed Icon Set
• Grunge Photoshop Brushes Set
• Smashy The Alien Icon Set
• Smashing Royal Icon Set

Many e-commerce sites these days tend to be loaded down with too much information on their landing pages. The reasoning for cluttered e-commerce sites is simple: the more information you can cram on the page, the more the user will buy. Unfortunately, web buyers are a finicky bunch.

Jacob Nielson reports that web users are becoming much more impatient while shopping and browsing online. Instead of spending their time going to a site’s homepage and finding the content by categories or other product recommendations, most shopping is done by quick Google searches. If the user can’t find what she’s looking for right away, she’s gone.

It’s crucial to have simple web designs to allow the user to quickly find the information they need, especially if you are selling a product. If the page is cluttered with useless text, widgets or unrelated products, the site becomes meaningless.

However, it’s become a common practice to do just the opposite. e-commerce sites have taken this “scatter shot” approach of trying to slap the potential buyer with as many options as possible. Instead of making the landing page solely about one product, sites usually clutter the page with unnecessary information, ads and related products.

Less Products Mean More Focus

Many web companies forget the cardinal rule of e-commerce: Web shoppers want as little hassle as possible. Instead of hopping in the car and driving to the store to buy a DVD, it’s much easier to go online and snag it from Amazon in a few clicks. The customer is even willing to wait longer and spend more money if the shopping experience is simple and fast.

Apple has mastered the art minimal homepage design. If you go to their homepage, they’ll only show you three things:

• A simple header navigation
• One product in the body of the page
• A few informational links about the featured product with images below the fold

Aside from the standard footer navigation, the homepage consists only of three parts. Here’s what you see if you click on a product link (like the iPhone).

Even on the product page, you immediately see what the page is about: the iPhone. The product itself dominates the bulk of the page, and the surrounding information are apps and features of the new iPhone. But more importantly, notice what’s not on the iPhone page:

• Unrelated products
• Unrelated sidebar ads
• Lots of copy
• Clutter

Apple has effectively shown just enough information in a very pleasing manner. There’s nothing wrong with showing lots of information, as long as it doesn’t feel like a lot of information. You’ll also notice that all of the information, links and pictures are all centered around the iPhone and what it offers. There are no distracting ads or unneeded information about other products.

There are a couple of tried-and-true methods that any designer or web developer can take to ensure that the site layout doesn’t drive customers away with clutter.

1. Only what you need.
   The biggest aspect of simple web design is only showing what’s needed to make the sale, and nothing more. This doesn’t mean that you can’t give the user lots of information. Just make sure they want to see more information. Apple uses “Learn more” links throughout the page to accomplish this.
2. Reduce clicks. The less clicks it takes for a customer to buy a product, the higher returns. Don’t make them jump through hoops to buy your product.
3. The “Grandma” rule. If your grandma (or any elderly person) can figure out how to buy a product for your site, odds are it’s put together pretty well. Unneeded information will turn Grandma away quickly.
4. Reduce the number of columns. Each time you add a column to a page, the content is pushed into a smaller and smaller space. This puts less emphasis on the main product, and more on extra stuff the buyer isn’t really looking for.
5. Give less options. There is an added stress put on web shoppers to make decisions. Ultimately, the buyer wants to think as little as possible when making the purchase. Displaying products in a way that eliminates extra thinking and decisions will streamline the buying process and give the customer more peace of mind.
6. Keep it clean. A clean design keeps visitors happy. By taking the time to ensure that the layout of the site is aesthetically pleasing keeps the customer returning to the site.

Intuitive web design means thinking like a potential customer. Would you shop at your site?

Other Great Examples of Simple e-commerce Design

Bell.ca uses only few colors to indicate the branding and offeres visitors only the main navigation options. Notice how well the design manages to present a number of different options — shop navigation, support as well as personal and business areas. The design isn’t cluttered but clean and simple and provides the visitors with a broad overview of available options without forcing users to actually go through all of them. Also notice how clever the product navigation is designed at the top of the site. There is just nothing users can do incorrectly.

Shoeguru.ca present a very user-centric and product-centric design. The product seems to be on the stage just in front of the visitors. The design presents only the product, and nothing else; even only few navigation options are available.

Etsy is a great example of how to place a lot of information on a page without it being cluttered. Etsy has a wide catalog of products to sell from, yet Etsy’s design has an earthy, relaxing quality. Creating a useful homepage that doesn’t distract is no small feat.

Crupress is an elegant book site without many distractions. The homepage manages to present a lot of text without agitating the user. The header navigation is prominent, but doesn’t demand attention. All the design elements flow together smoothly.

Tokyocube is a fun, trendy little site that sells Japanese products. Instead taking precious space explaining what the site sells, the products are put right in front of you. Also, the heavy use of white space allows the products to almost jump right off the page at you. You can’t help but click on one of the toys to learn more about them.

While Furious Tees is a tad busier in graphics than the previous sites, it helps do two things:

1. Show the playfulness of the site
2. Make it very clear that all shirts are only $19.99

You aren’t lost trying to figure out what Furious Tees is selling, the products are all in front of you. Having all the products on the homepage is especially beneficial for novelty sites that have merchandise people normally wouldn’t be looking for.

But sites with lots of products on the homepage run the risk of becoming cluttered very quickly. Furious Tees doesn’t have this problem. They don’t use any extra sidebars or ads taking attention away from the T-Shirts. The focus is solely on the shirts and the hilarious design.

Basecamp (37 Signals)

Look no further than 37 Signal’s project management tool Basecamp for an incredible example of mixing different types of information to sell a product. Yet there’s just enough information to make an effective sales copy. Every word, every image has to be weighed in a design. If there’s not enough information, the user won’t spend time trying to figure out what the product does. Too much information and the user becomes overwhelmed.

The tasteful use of heading backgrounds and company logos makes every bit of information stand out on it’s own. And they somehow made all of the different types of media blend together, with plenty of space so that the user isn’t bombarded by lots of text or images at one time.

You Only Have a Few Seconds

Every website is going to require a different type of layout, design and copy to sell products. But designers can strive to do more with less by:

• weighing every word
• removing unneeded elements
• using tasteful colors and whitespace
• and limiting the amount of overall information the shopper sees at one time

Remember, online shoppers are a fickle bunch. They don’t “window shop”. They use search engines to limit their searches to a very narrow field. If they don’t like what they see, they leave. Site owners only have a very small window of time to capture the attention of the prospective shopper. A tasteful, clutter-free design that places the focus on the product (and nowhere else) will allow the shopper to find what she wants faster.

Glen Stansberry is a web developer and blogger. You can read more of his articles on smart web development at Web Jackalope.

Free professional WordPress themes always come in handy. Whether you are looking for some design inspiration or professional coding solutions — in both cases you can learn a lot, you can apply them and you can build customized designs upon them without reinventing the wheel all the time.

In this article we present over 30 fresh free high-quality WordPress themes. All themes can be downloaded, customized and used for free — in personal or/and commercial projects. Please read license disclaimers carefully before using the theme in commercial projects — they can change from time to time.

You might also want to take a look at our previous selections:

• 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes
  Together with hundreds of other designs, these themes have been manually selected, installed and tested over the last weeks. They all can be downloaded, customized and used for free in both personal and commercial projects.
• 83 Beautiful WordPress Themes
  An overview of beautiful, but rather unknown themes you might have missed.
• 21 Fresh, Usable and Elegant Themes
  A quite pretty selection of elegant yet well thought-out themes.
• 10 Fresh and Clean Themes
  The beauty of these themes lies in their clean look supported by a legible content presentation.

30 Free Professional Wordpress Themes

1. Colourise
A two-column Wordpress theme with an ultra large header image, a dark backdrop and a fat footer.

2. Twilight Saga WordPress Theme
“There are so many books that hit the shelves these days that covers just start to blend together into one big mottled wallpaper. So it was a mild surprise when I encountered the stark black and minimalist cover designs.”

3. NewsWeek Wordpress Theme
“The theme is originally inspired from Business Weeek website. This is a three column theme having spots for advertise block, a featured video, and other functionalities. I might improve the theme in future but for now, you will have to do with this.”

4. Superfresh
“SuperFresh is a 3-columns theme based on natural green color. It contains 2 widget-ready sidebars, custom templates, with a featured post section on the main page. It’s compatible with WordPress 2.6 and has been tested in Firefox, Internet Explorer 6 & 7, Opera, and Safari.”

5. Our Rights WordPress Theme
Tested with WordPress 2.5, gravatar ready, widget-ready sidebar, valid CSS/XHTML, tested in IE6Win, Firefox 2, Opera 9 and Safari 3.

6. Thunderbolt WordPress Theme
Thunderbolt is a savvy, grid-aligned, magazine-style Wordpress theme with plenty of white space, impressive typography and sensible use of images. The theme has a beautiful custom archives page, showcasing the images attached to each post (to appear properly, the theme relies on the author to add images to each post).

7. WP Imagination

8. Resurrection

9. StudioWordpress Theme

10. Ashford WordPress Theme
“It is a theme for WordPress that makes building, customizing and maintaining a web site as simple as possible. A free WordPress theme that extends WordPress software with premium features making it as simple as possible to manage a web site.”

11. Vikiworks V5 theme

12. Lady In Green

13. The “Charred” WordPress Theme

14. MassivePress WordPress Theme

15. Portfolio Wordpress Theme

16. Outdoorsy Theme

17. Guzel Magazine WordPress Theme

18. Free Premium Themes Check Mate

19. Miniml - Free WordPress Theme

20. Ultimate Baseball Wordpress Theme

21. Arthemia 2.0

22. WP CODA Orange

23. Firebug WordPress Theme

24. Refreshed Wordpress Theme

25. Lightning Wordpress Theme

26. Dirty Girl Theme 1.0
The theme is not available any longer.

27. Elegance WordPress Theme

28. Leon Paternoster » Posts » Introducing the “Into the White” theme for WordPress

Smashing Magazine’s Free Themes

29. Infinity: A Free Wordpress Theme
The theme has 3 fixed columns, thumbnails integration, Flickr, Delicious and Twitter integration as well as an attractive visual design. The theme was designed by Zhang Yichi, the creative mind behind Vikiworks Studio from Shanghai, China.

30. Wordpress.fun
The theme has 2 columns, thumbnails integration, a “featured” post section as well as a nice grungy design. The theme was designed by Maleika Attawel from Germany, purchased by Smashing Magazine and is now released as a gift for our readers.

31. Fervens: A Free Wordpress Theme
The theme has 3 columns of fixed width, comes in 3 flavours and is supposed to be a starting point for your projects. The theme was designed by Elena Gafita especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

32. Notepad Chaos
The theme has 2 columns, a quite vibrant design including “personal” design elements such as handwritten headings, stick-it-notes, clips and pins. The theme was designed by Evan Eckard.

Being a designer in an environment where most people adhere to a strict path of logic can be challenging. There are few logic-centric people who understand the value design has to a product or service. Instead of beating your head against your desk, do something to get the company on common ground.

The Only Orange in the Apple Orchard

Think back to the first time you discovered that not everyone holds the same respect for design as a necessary part of business as you do. You were just making your grand entrance into the professional world and, much like a child discovering their own hands and feet, you were overzealous about the impact design has on every aspect of society and business. Then something happened—a conversation with a supervisor or colleague, or a meeting with a client—that took the wind out of your sails and revealed the biggest challenge any designer can face: convincing the world of your work’s validity.

Especially with the advancements of Apple and Google within the past few years, design is taking a more dominant role in the business process more than ever. Even if your company knows that design is essential to their success, they may not understand why. Though you have a perfect understanding of the importance of your work, do you know how to effectively explain it in a way that will make sense to them?

Method to the Madness

Many business and technology-oriented people see their work as being the polar opposite of design. Business and technology experts make things work, and designers are often seen as just making things look pretty. As many of us know, design is by definition far more than decorating something to make it aesthetically appealing. So how do we convince those left-brained thinkers that there truly is method to our madness?

Build Your Own Bridge Define Yourself

To help others understand the full weight of the importance of design, the first step is to construct a definition that clearly outlines what design truly is within the context of your environment. Design can generally be defined, but the key is to use terminology that will register with your audience.

Let’s start with the official definition of design given by Webster himself: “deliberate, purposive planning” is one of a few given. Steve Jobs once said “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” One Plus One Equals Three has a lengthy list of definitions for further reference.

This could be a good starting place for those approaching technology-centric executives. Explaining that “design is the conscious effort to impose a meaningful order” (Victor Papanek) will display the common ground between business, technology, and design. Demonstrating commonality between practices develops a greater feeling of a more cohesive bond between colleagues.

If attempting to appeal to an advertising or communications executive, emphasizing design as a visual language would be wise. “…Information only has value when it is successfully communicated. If it cannot be accessed or understood it does not have value.” Dirk Knemeyer, Thread Inc.

Define Common Ground

The “Apples” or “Squares” might have a harder time realizing similarities between practices than the “Oranges” or “Circles” might. After establishing camaraderie, it is not enough to only understand how the other half of your team thinks. You must show them that you are capable of thinking in the same manner. It would be easiest to start with the skills you share, regardless of how you apply them.

The most obvious might be that of problem solving. Design is often much like a puzzle, placing the pieces carefully and strategically. Business requires constant analytical and strategic thinking such as in the realm of project management. Providing analogies between your work and theirs will better help them understand just how similar it is.

Another way to drive your message home is to prove it to them. Give them a mock-up to look at of something in two versions: one well designed and the other ignoring general best practice knowledge. It doesn’t have to be aesthetically unappealing; you could very well use the same graphics and typeface but just rearrange the layout. Let them choose which one appeals to them better. Of course this will only work if they have good taste, but we’ll assume for now that they do.

Establish Validation

As Roger Martin said in his STEP article, “Design and Business: Why Can’t We Be Friends?”, take inattention to validity as a design challenge. Since designers are essentially half-breeds with skills spanning multiple practices, it might very well be easier for us to jump on the left-brain-ship rather than expecting our colleagues to even meet us halfway. To paraphrase Joe Duffy, we must start working to convince the business world of the importance of design in our everyday lives instead of designing for designers.

So, how do those Apples think anyway? This will of course depend on your particular environment, just as your definition of design, but take a look around. What are the expectations of the programmers? Most likely they are encouraged to pursue certifications or further education of some sort. Do other people in your company participate in local professional social scenes? If you haven’t found one of your own, some AIGA chapters offer social outings as well as other events.

Keep in mind that certifications aren’t just for programmers. W3C Schools offers both an HTML Developer and ASP Certifications. Microsoft also offers a Web Developer certification. To avoid being stoned on the spot, I will reiterate that we are trying to bridge the gap and get closer to being on the same page as our colleagues. This might sometimes require keeping our opinions regarding Microsoft to ourselves and acknowledging that they are for whatever reason the most successful technology company in the world and having their name on your resume will attain a certain amount of respect. To redeem myself, there is also the Adobe Certified Expert.

For the Apples of the Audience

Still trying to narrow in on the impact design has on your business? There are a number of resources out there to help you understand what design should mean to you. Garr Reynolds has a detailed article on this matter, elaborating on Bill Bernbach’s quote “The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is the artistry.” The Design Management Institute also offers a Design Value for Business Executives seminar.

Reap What You Sow

Some would see the approach of taking the first step towards commonality as a burden, or something that shouldn’t be their responsibility. People often think people should just know how to do their job. But, we all know that’s not the case. So, don’t view your efforts as being for anyone but yourself. You’re trying to make your job easier all while improving the communication within the company. Improving the environment you work in is just as much for yourself as for the company itself. The Golden Rule has never rang so true, because showing respect for your colleagues of all shapes and sizes and colors—apples and oranges, circles and squares alike—will in turn give your colleagues more reason to respect you.

Recap and Further Reading

A company is only as successful as its interpersonal relationships. Relating to those who don’t take you or your work seriously can seem impossible. With some it actually could be. However, any business owner or manager has one primary goal: to succeed. Instead of letting people wonder why you’re even on the payroll, show them that you share the same goal and your work is actually half the battle of selling the company, its service, or its product.

You can find more information in the following articles:

• The Role Of Design In Business
• The Importance of Design in Business
• Why Design Matters
• 7 Ways to Overcome Creative Barriers
• Tips For In-House Design Teams
• Design Is…

About The Author

Ann Edwards is a graphics and software consultant who has often been accused of taking her web standards and design practices all too seriously.

By Vailancio Rodrigues and Smashing Editorial Team

Photos taken with a camera do not represent a single moment of time. Due to technological constraints these shots stand for some scene over a brief period of time. This time frame depends on the camera’s shutter speed. In motion blur, any object moving with respect to the camera will look blurred or smeared along the direction of relative motion.

Motion blur is frequently used to show a sense of speed. You can artificially achieve this effect in a usual scene using cameras with a slow shutter speed. Also Adobe Photoshop can be used for this purpose, though sometimes images may look unnatural and unprofessional. You may want to take a look at resources provided in the end of the article — they show how one can add the motion blur effect in photos.

This article presents 45 beautiful examples of motion blur in photography. This showcase isn’t supposed to be the ultimate and complete selection of motion blur images — it is supposed to provide you with some inspiration of what can be done with motion blur. All pictures are linked to the author’s pages. You may want to explore further works of the photographers we’ve featured below.

Related posts:

• Beautiful Black and White Photography
• 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures
• (Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos
• Let There Be Light: Light Painting and Sculptures

Beauty of Motion Blur

Last Click

The picture presented below is not motion blur, yet it somehow fits to the post. The picture is titled “Meaning of Life”.

Further Resources

Area for further articles and related resources.

• How to create a fast car in Adobe Photoshop using Motion Blur
• How to Capture Motion Blur in Photography
  The natural way to create motion blur using cameras
• How to create Motion Blur
  An Adobe Photoshop tutorial.
• Top Best 55 Photoshop Tutorials For Professional Photographers
• Adobe Photoshop Tutorials - Best Of
• 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures
• How to Capture Motion Blur in Photography
• Glow Flickr Pool
• Blurred Flickr Pool
• Motion Blur Flickr Pool

Related articles

You may also want to take a look at the related articles which we have published earlier:

• Beautiful Black and White Photography
• 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures
• (Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos
• Let There Be Light: Light Painting and Sculptures

In 2004, Dave Shea took the CSS rollover where it had never gone before. Now he takes it further still—with a little help from jQuery. Say hello to hover animations that respond to a user's behavior in ways standards-based sites never could before.

 

Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us!

The rise of the social web demands that we rethink our traditional role as builders of digital monuments, and turn our attention to the close observation of the spaces that our users are producing around us. It's time for a new metaphor. Consider cartography.

 

Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us!

What is <hr />? Basically, it is an old HTML-tag which has been used since the very beginning of the Web. hr stands for the horizontal rule and represents exactly what you would expect — a horizontal line or a horizontal divider. By default, web browsers render hr as a simple horizontal line. In terms of semantics the tag is supposed to clearly separate content blocks. This is often used in design of footers, but also makes sense in other situations — for instance, if you want to separate two blog posts or make the divisions within the content structure sharper.

However, the design of horizontal lines is quite simple and not really appealing by default. HTML offers designers four styling attributes: align, noshade, width and size. This is the reason why designers often use CSS to make hr’s look a little bit more attractive. Alternatively, one can replace hr’s completely with an image using the background-property in CSS.

Some designers consider horizontal rule to be unnecessary — after all, you can simple assign some border styling to the container which contains the block. However, hr’s offer more possibilities as you can do whatever you want with a single, standalone HTML-tag. And here is where our contest comes into play.

Similar to our blog header contest we’d like to create a smashing gallery of freely available <hr /> graphics which every designer could use without any restrictions whatsoever. To achieve this we need the help of our creative readers. Which is why we decided to announce the <hr /> contest.

Is there a reward?

Of course. We’ll select 15 most beautiful dividers, present them in a post and ask our readers to rate them in a poll. The winner will get a Wacom Intuos3 9X12 USB Tablet — Metallic Gray. It is worth to participate, since we’ll also mention your name and your URL in the article which will contain the smashing examples of contest entries.

What is required?

In order to participate, your design should

• be unusual, creative and attractive,
• be designed for the contest and shouldn’t be in use already
• be recognizable as a divider or a line and has to serve its function — separate content blocks from each other,
• be in the format PNG, JPG, GIF (if possible, please provide us with the source file as well — such as PSD, EPS, AI etc.)
• no Flash or Gif-animations, please.

Apart from that,

• every file must be titled with your name. Samples: hr-john-doe.gif or hr-jane-doe.jpg
• each image should have the max. size of 30 Kb/each.

Each participant can send up to 5 different graphics (do not use ZIP, RAR etc.) and you must own the copyright for the designs you submit.

Send your designs via e-mail at sven at smashingmagazine.com with the subject line [Hr Contest Entry]. Please mention your name, your URL and the country you are from. If possible, please also provide us with the brief description of the ideas which have been the driving force behind your designs. Be creative, use unusual techniques, explore your skills, do whatever it takes — we’d like you to get really excited about it.

Deadline?

We’ll consider all designs we’ll receive until the 1st of September 2008. The best entries will be published briefly after the contest has ended.

Examples

To spark your creativity we present some excellent examples of how visually appealing <hr /> graphics may look like. The images are clickable and lead to the sites from which they’ve been taken.

Our examples show that a number of creative approaches are possible. The Web needs a creative library of fresh <hr>-dividers. Vignettes and ornaments may be a nice idea, uneven and handwritten elements are also used sometimes. However, the possibilites offered to designers are rarely used. You can definitely risk some unusual design approaches. What are you capable of?

You can also get some inspiration from our previous showcase Footers In Modern Web Design: Creative Examples and Ideas.

Get creative, folks! And good luck!

Written by Youri Souiah

Game websites are a little bit of a mystery. You won’t find them in the popular CSS-showcases since they are seldom fully CSS-based; however, they also rarely show up in sites that collect best Flash sites. The FWA, for example, has added only a few game sites this year. This is odd, because there are usually roughly hundred quality titles released each month, each with their own website.

During the research I’ve found out that there are a lot of creative game designs. This makes it very strange that amongst all the showcases and studies we see on blogs and in magazines there is rarely one focused on game industry. High time we take a depth look into this area of web-design.

This article is the first of a two-part-series where Smashing Magazine takes a critical look at web design in the video game industry. The first part is an in-depth review of the game-related sites out there. What design elements keep returning? What factors influence these design elements? Are the sites mainly CSS- or Flash-based? The article ends with a showcase of some beautiful examples of game site designs.

Please note: for this article I’ve confined myself to sites of actual games as much as possible and not drawn conclusions from developer or publisher websites. I’ve focused on games recently released or games currently in production and I estimate I’ve seen around 60 sites prior to writing this article.

1. What defines the design of a game site?

Sites for games differ greatly in many aspects. Some are very large in content with huge amounts of lore and story, while others are barely more than a teaser trailer on a graphic background. Before we can look at the different design and communication choices it’s important to understand a few common factors that come into play when a site is built to represent a game.

Diablo 3’s lore is so vast that a single monster entry has more text
than the average game has in total.

Shelf life

How long does a game stay on the shelves of a store before it’s pulled back and replaced by a newer game? This is called the shelf life of a game, a well-known term in the game industry.

A lot of factors decide the shelf life of a game. I’m not going to go into all of them but let’s take the genre of a game as an example. A good comparison of extremes is when you compare an online multiplayer game with an action game. The online multiplayer game is a long-term experience for the players where they lead a character from infancy to higher levels, a process that can take months. The action game on the other hand is a short-term experience: once a player finishes a game, he is much more likely to move on to the next (more or less similar) game instead of replaying the same game again. The action game is also very susceptible to “hype” and graphical achievements.

The online multiplayer game is much less dependent on being “the next big thing” or being “fresh” since its experience is based on a persistent world which the player builds a relationship with. The action game is only good until the next big thing comes around — the one that has better graphics or newer game play mechanisms. The action game will thus probably be on the shelves for a shorter time than the online multiplayer game.

Blizzard’s World of Warcraft site is a huge portal filled with various information about the game.

This means that the action game needs to sell fast to make good use of its shelf life and its “fresh release” status. The site will reflect this. Sites for games like this will be built around impressing you with visuals or experiences so you’ll head to the shop and buy the game.

The online multiplayer game’s website, however, is not as dependent on making quick sales. Sales are great, but they also have another major concern. They have to keep players in the game involved, so they don’t step over to another game in the genre. This means that the website for the online multiplayer game will focus mainly on players already playing their game opposed to seducing potential buyers. This leads to a totally different web site where content is more important than a slick presentation.

A good example of the second is the World of Warcraft site. This site is a huge portal with information on anything you can find and do in the game and also spots a forum. This ensures that gamers will be coming back for pieces of information, strategy or to interact in the community.

What type of gamers are we dealing with?

The target audience is a very strong factor when deciding how a product will be represented. These days gamer are very diverse. The general assumption that gamer are nerds doesn’t hold any longer. Today we have schoolgirls with pink customized handhelds, PC gamer that make it a sport to modify their computer case or kids rocking on plastic guitars. There really is a lot of variety and gamer can’t be put in one big box anymore.

Girls might just beat you at your favorite game these days.

The specifics of a game’s target audience will greatly decide how a site looks, but also what content is offered. Is a game’s target audience interested in killing monsters with big guns without too much complications or are they the type of gamer that are attracted to things like lore, history of a game world and strategic choices?

The first type of gamer will generally be catered to with a short, more experience-driven site. These sites will aim to give the gamer a taste of the action without getting too lengthy in content and try to impress visually.

The second gamer wants story elements, explanation of the game mechanics and media to immerse them in the world of the game. This leads to a larger and more content-driven site which doesn’t necessarily have to look visually impressive.

2. Flash vs. HTML/CSS

Usually the choice between the Flash-layout and HTML/CSS-layout isn’t that complicated. Flash, being a dynamic and highly interactive medium, definitely has its advantages, but in most cases HTML/CSS is easier to build, less expensive and is also easier to maintain. However, when you enter the game industry (or any entertainment industry), you’ll consider this decision from a completely different point of view.

According to the research, roughly 70% of the game sites used Flash. Some of these sites incorporate Flash elements into HTML/CSS-based layout, but the majority is definitely “Full Flash”. In some cases this makes perfectly sense (an experience-driven site definitely needs Flash), but in some other cases Flash is used just for the sake of it.

Full Flash sites

Full Flash, being the the most common site type for game sites, is primarily used for games that have a short shelf life or are intended to offer a short user experience. As stated above, these games want to sell hard and fast, so a Flash site trying to pull a gamer over the edge with strong visuals and animation actually makes sense.

The Bioshock site is an average full Flash game site.

Flash and HTML/CSS combined

A combination of Flash and HTML/CSS appears more often than pure CSS-based designs. The division between the amount of Flash and HTML/CSS varies from site to site — some sites just incorporate a simple animation while others use large trailers and video-clips to attract visitors’ attention.

The “hybrid-approach” has the main benefit that it allows for animation and integrated video, but is much easier to maintain. This type of site has a good balance between being visually impressive according to game industry standards, yet also allowing usual blog activities such as developer blogs, podcasts, news updates, releases of new features etc.

This type of sites is common for game sites that an online multiplayer mode or are intended to be used and developed for a long time. When a developer wants to involve the player into the production process of a game, a hybrid site is often the best option to consider — and Flash can be used to spice things up a little bit and create a rich visual experience.

The Starcraft 2 site is a good example of a Flash and HTML/CSS-hybrid which combines the best of both worlds.

A good example is the Blizzards highly anticipated real-time strategy game Starcraft 2. The site constantly releases new parts of the story and unveils new units on many customized pages. Such updates would be rather time-consuming on a pure Flash-based site.

Pure CSS-based sites

If you take a look around in the game indutry, you’ll rarely find pure CSS-based design solutions. Game sites that go this route are usually focused on content. Such sites never provide an impressive visual experience, although they tend to use vivid background images and striking imagery. In fact, hese images are used to create an appropriate atmosphere rather than create an interactive user experience.

Apparently, usually it has to to with the fact that the site is heavily dependent on regular updates through a CMS system, because CSS-based sites which have been covered in the research were all updated on a regular basis. A good example is Lionhead’s fable 2 site which is purely CSS-based and has a lot of content including developer profiles and diaries.

YouLionhead’s Fable 2 site: here you’ll find content instead of interactive elements.

3. Trends in game site designs

At the first glance game sites seem to be infected with really bad design decisions. On most sites reallz frustrating design elements such as splash screens appear over and over again. Below you’ll see some of the most common ones.

The Flash experience site

Sites of this kind are designed exactly as you would expect them to be designed. The experience site’s goal is to get you excited about a game by offering you something totally different from your usual browsing experience. For instance, Halo 3 Believe is a good example of an experience site. It uses strong visuals and 3D-animation to create the appropriate atmosphere and the mood. Such sites focus on creating a “stunning” visual experience and often include mini-games which are supposed to draw visitors’ attention to the actual game in an interactive way.

Halo 3 Believe is a typical example of a full Flash experience site made to create a
“buzz” for the title.

Examples of how experience sites may try to break the mold:

• Unique control scheme
• Replica of certain game elements
• Mini-games included in site
• Visual experience with some interactivity

It’s quite unusual that a lot of game sites actually realize that visitors of the site should not be forced into the heavy interactive experience while the page is being loaded. It doesn’t matter how great the experience site is, if a user is simply looking for information related to the game this Flash-experience will only get in his way. Experience sites are often offered separately, as a single page, accessible from the game’s website. Consequently, the choice to launch the experience or not is user’s decision, which is good from the usability point of view.

One frustrating downside of experience sites is the simple fact that most of them require a lot of time to load. Of course, it depends on user’s connection, but file sizes of the Flash files can get pretty large in size to the point that even users with fast broadband connection may need to wait a couple of minutes first. This becomes even more problematic if there are multiple entities in the experience site which are loaded separately, one after each other. Numerous training missions on The Metal Gear Solid 4 site are an excellent example of this problem.

Splash screens

One of the common trends in game industry web-sites are large, vibrant, ugly and obtrusive splash screens. A large number of game sites start with a splash screen which asks the visitors to enter their birthday. Why? Isn’t it more reasonable to as the user to type in his age?

While the age check might be mandatory in some cases or at the very least something that some developers feel is their responsibility, it is remarkable that many sites use dual splash screen: age check being combined with a follow-up language selection screen. Why language selection at all? The game itself is surely not going to be released in 20 languages, so why release the website like this?

Use of intros

You just had an age check splash screen and clicked through the language selection splash screen. What’s next? Right! If you are unlucky you get another splash screen with the game intro — and in many cases the latter can not be skipped! It doesn’t matter whether you are a standards purist or a hardcore Flash developer — we should all be able to agree on this one. This is just ridiculous and disrespectful in regards to users.

Just how bad can the use of splash screens followed by intros be? Have a look at the example below:

Google Ninja Gaiden and enter the game selection page. Pick your game.

Enter your birthdate

Agree that you’d like to continue

Now wait a couple of minutes while the site loads. When it does you’ll get to see the intro which you can not skip.

Using visuals from the game

To strengthen the brand and ties to a game some designs use visual elements which display the elements of the game itself. This is done through use of iconic images or by using vivid imagery which is used in the game. A common example is that you see elements from the game’s user interface re-used in the site. Another example is to use a big imagery of the main character and give it a dominant position in the design layout.

The Rise of the Argonauts site opens its main page with a view of the
characters you’ll end up playing in the game.

Video/trailer on the main page

Video footage of a game in action is important since most gamers are very keen on getting a rich visual experience. Some design agencies make use of it and display only a single video or trailer on the main page. Does this give the user exactly what he needs? Or is it a waste of available space and communication potential?

Dragon Age’s minimalist main page. One can argue if visitors of the site expect to have only a video-footage on the official site’s page.

Developers blogs and podcasts

Games usually have big budgets, large teams and take a long time to develop. For a developer nothing is worse than wasting four or more years at one single game only to see it hit the shelves and find out in the end that nobody actually cares. To avoid such problems game producers try to bind gamers to the game long before it is actually released.

The classic way to do this is through games conventions and advertisements in the game community. Furthermore, design agencies seem to have realized the power of blogging and similar activities recently. Consequence: large game sites often have developer blogs and sometimes even podcasts. Such blogs provide game producers with a medium to communicate their ideas vividly and initiate a dialogue with potential customers, listen to their needs and refine games objectives.

Publisher’s presence in the game’s site

Some game designers have their game’s site incorporated into the site of the publisher or marketer. Sometimes game sites have a tiny header at the top of the site which leads to other games released by the same publisher. Its main downside is that the header adds an extra layer of navigation which users actually don’t need to have. In some cases it is really hard to distinguish between this level of navigation and internal navigation on the actual site which is quite bad from the usability point of view.

Double navigation and two logos are common amongst game sites.

Unconventional navigation and layouts

This is an attribute which is common for most Flash-based design layouts. The movie, entertainment and game industries often strive for sites that push the edge as far as the experience is concerned. It often results in sites that have an unconventional navigation. This approach sometimes leads to creative masterpieces, but more often out of the box-layouts simply confuse the user.

Navigation is hidden in the top left graphic. Have a look at the story section for some really unusual and design choices.

4. Putting it all together

I’ve you have read this far you’ve already concluded that web sites for video games have their absolute highs, but also definite lows. You can find a small recap and some thoughts below.

Strengths of game industry websites

The strength of game industry lays in its creativity and its desire to be inspiring. The average game (usually) has beautiful artwork that can (and usually is) used to create a good-looking website with rich visual experience. Game industry sites are also an excellent place to consider if you are looking for inspiration from websites that break the mold.

The game industry makes uses of blogging to focus users’ attention on the upcoming game. While the amount of Flash found in game sites may put the average standard-aware designers off, sites like Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 prove that HTML/CSS and Flash can go hand in hand to deliver a visually stunning experience that need not hinder the user’s browsing experience.

Weaknesses of game industry websites

The liberal use of Flash combined with a desire to offers users something truly different results in a number of sites with uncommon layout and navigation schemes. If the navigation is intuitive and simple it’s great: then the designers crafted a unique experience that has bound to get a lot of traffic from web enthusiasts and gamers alike. Most of the time, unfortunately, the navigation ends up being hard to grasp and very unintuitive.

The game industry tries extremely hard to create stunning websites, but seems to have forgotten the old saying “less is more”. The price of biting off more than you can chew as far as “out of the box Flash design and development” is concerned is a site that frustrates and ultimately drives users away prematurely. With games there is a relatively small window of opportunity where all eyes are focused on the title. In this time span the design should manage to capture users’ attention. A poorly executed design and navigation concept that pushes users away or leaves a bad impression should be avoided at all costs.

The use of multiple splash screens combined with intros is a similar problem which should (and can) be avoided. A website that is created to promote or sell a product should always try to avoid elements that frustrate the user. Just because other sites use this approach it doesn’t mean it makes the consequences less important.

5. Showcase

The sites displayed below have been selected according to their visual appeal and uniqueness. I haven’t considered usability and accessibility since these are aspects of design the game industry generally tends to ignore.

Mirror’s edge
The Mirror’s edge site is actually a promotional site for the E3 expo. It’s a one page site that looks like it uses HTML/CSS but doesn’t. The Flash is unobstrusive, though.

Wrath of the Lich king
The Wrath of the Lich King site is a good example of impressive visuals used in a HTML/CSS and Flash-based site. There is also a non-Flash version available.

Kung Fu Panda
Impressive full Flash site that captures the look and feel of the movie.

Sonic Chronicles
The Sonic Chronicles site has an interesting control scheme that mimics the stylus based controls of the Nintendo DS.

Diablo 3
Diablo 3’s site is a visual masterpiece that breathes life into the story, the world and its denizens. The design of classes and monster pages are breathtaking.

Champions Online
Great example of a site that follows the style of the game. Notice the use of social media icons in the news items.

The Darkness
The Darkness has a unique navigation scheme that is actually rather confusing. What this site actually does extremely well is to set the mood and raise expectations — is it a fair trade-off?

Wakfu
Very clean and appealing site with a minimal use of Flash. So minimal it could have been left out without losing much mood.

Fallout 3
Fallout 3’s retro look is very different from the rest of the crowd, but perfectly illustrates the art direction of the game.

Starcraft 2
Starcraft 2 is a good example of an eccentric video game site with animation and video all over the place. Apart from the fact that the trailer starts to play automatically, the Flash is never obtrusive.

Gaia online
A clean yet characteristic site that combines an online game with a social community.

Infinite undiscovery
A full Flash site with some impressive visuals and interface graphics. The background music also sets the appropriate atmosphere.

Dragon quest monsters
Graphic-heavy Flash site that combines colorful illustrations with a clean interface.

Bully
Bully’s site is great looking and hits the right mood. The creators have. however, made some really strange choices concerning the use of pop-ups.

Rockband
This site uses basically only streaming video. Suprisingly, it works very effective.

The Orange box
The Orange box has a unique design that not only works well, but also instantly sets it apart from every other game site out there.

The Last remnant
Good-looking full Flash site with a traditional navigation set-up for easy browsing.

Zak&Wiki
Zak&Wiki’s site looks as playful as the game characters themselves.

The zelda universe
The Zelda universe is a portal site for all of the Zelda games. The site is featured because it looks very different from the usual offerings.

Mario Kart
The Mario Kart site combines the clean look of the Wii with the colorful characters you’d expect from a Mario game.

6. Help us to shape the follow-up article!

This article is the first part of a two-part-series. The second part will deal with the workflow of designers and developers in the game industry. I’ll be talking to people from the industry and ask them questions on who they work with, what strengths and traits they look for and much more.

For part two I’m going to give you the opportunity to ask questions about working and getting work as a web designer/developer in the game industry. So post your questions in the comments and I’ll try to find answers to most of them.

About the author

Youri Souiah is a Web designer, blogger, import magazine addict, Junko Mizuno fan and hardcore gamer turned casual. Other than blogging on his weblog Designfeedr, he also runs Tutorials we heart — the site that collects the best tutorials from all over the Web.

Over the last years we’ve featured a number of designers and developers who released their work for free — among other things we presented high-quality free fonts, free Wordpress themes, free wallpapers and, of course, free icons. You can find many of them in our section Freebies.

Every release helps to make the Web a nicer place which is why we support designers and challenge them to release something for free in order to be featured on Smashing Magazine. And the results are quite often pretty impressive.

Today we are glad to release Notepad Chaos — a free professional Wordpress-theme. The theme has 2 columns, a quite vibrant design including “personal” design elements such as handwritten headings, stick-it-notes, clips and pins. The theme was designed by Evan Eckard especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Download the theme for free!

You can use the theme for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. However, it’s forbidden to sell or redistribute the theme without both designer’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission — please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish, but if you are planning to release your modification, please ask our permission first.

• Preview (0.4 Mb)
• Download the theme (.zip-package, 0.5 Mb)
• Download PSD-sources (.zip-package, 5 Mb)

Motivation behind the design

Here are some insights about the design process and development from the designer himself.

“I had recently stumbled upon many websites with gorgeous, gigantic, illustrated backgrounds and wanted to try my hand at creating a site that shared that similar element. This theme was an experiment into layering multiple images and having everything line up and flow with the site’s content.

Among other things, the Notepad Chaos theme has handwritten search box and navigation at the top of the layout.

It was quite a challenge to develop the design after creating it, but in the end it helped me gain more experience in CSS and what we designers can do to try and create sites with plenty of visual depth. On the technical side of things, the theme doesn’t use any plugins or extras, and focuses simply on the design.

Sidebar in the Notepad Chaos is designed as a post-it-note and clipped at the top.

The themes uses a custom field called “thumbnail” where the user can add an image to their post. The instructions are within the readme file along with how to set up the menu links.”

Thank you, Evan. We appreciate your work and your good intentions.

Last but not least…

We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists. You may not know it yet, but we might feature you in one of our upcoming posts.

If you would like to release a high-quality free font, a Wordpress-theme, some wallpapers or an icon-set please contact us — we would like to support you (both financially and with the broad coverage on Smashing Magazine).

You may be interested in the following free Wordpress-themes as well:

• Infinity: A Free Wordpress Theme
• Wordpress.Fun: A Free Wordpress Theme
• Fervens: A Free Wordpress Theme
• Dilectio: A Free Wordpress Theme
• Smashing: A Free Wordpress Theme

One month ago we announced the guest author contest, with the main prize being an Apple MacBook Air. We received 252 submissions. The choice was tough and time-consuming as we wanted to have a nice mix of various articles participating in the contest. In the end we have selected 15 articles and published them last week.

We have considered various details to determine the winner of the contest: in particular, we considered the degree of utility, traffic, the quality of comments, the quality of backlinks and the poll results. The final decision was not based upon our personal preferences, but on the decision of our readers and their activities.

Apparently, discussion articles had bad chances to win the main prize. However, we are confident that top-10-articles took more time to compile. We’ll definitely contact some of the authors and ask them to develop their ideas further, for an extensive single post.

Winner

All articles have been heavily commented and rated. Some of them were viewed by over 50,000 readers. Among them is also the winner — R. Christie with his article Top 10 CSS Table Designs. The article was not only extremely popular in various social networks, it also had the best score in the poll and only a couple of negative comments — apparently, it perfectly fits to the concept of our magazine.

Congratulations, R. Christie! We hope you’ll enjoy your new Apple MacBook Air — maybe you’ll use it to write some more smashing articles for our magazine?

All finalists will get small gifts

All authors whose articles were published in our magazine will get a prize. In particular, five authors will receive designer laptop sleeves, the other five will receive web-design-related books and one will get a special prize — Luxeed Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard displayed below.

Here are the finalists in a brief overview:

• Huw Wilkins
• Joel Eby
• Haroon Baig
• Edison Morais
• Hagit Hashimshony
• Andy Brown
• Brian Haught
• Tom Giannattasio
• Hollis Bartlett
• Juul Coolen
• Steven D.
• Jänis Lanka
• Nic Pretorius
• Irina Lyakisheva

All winners have already been notified via e-mail.

Regular writers are still welcomed!

We’ll contact some participants to agree upon test-articles for Smashing Magazine. We have found a lot of talented writers and we hope to cooperate with them to keep the high quality of the magazine and enrich it with new ideas and concepts. We are always looking for creative writers and we pay well — if you are interested, just drop us a line!

Authors of the articles which haven’t been published in the magazine may be published somewhere else — we won’t use them in any way.

We express sincere gratitude for all participants of the contest! Stay tuned, we are going to smash you with further contests and prizes soon!

By Adam Hay

Some companies have made a living creating a sort of “virtual classroom,” allowing members to learn at their own pace when they have the time using video tutorials. The advantages of the classroom setting stem from a one on one experience and the ability of the instructor to show the ideas and theories rather than simply explain them.

Screencasting, or sharing your virtual desktop via video presentation, has exploded in popularity with the advent of podcasting, and gives you the ability to bring the classroom feel to a media presentation that can be delivered over the Internet. The medium of screencasting is readily available to everyone and with a few tools of the trade you can be ready to produce your own.

Why Should You Screencast?

There are several advantages to screencasting both from the user’s side as well as from the creator’s. From the point of view of the audience, the screencast allows them to learn by example, seeing every step in great detail. Learning by watching the host move through the steps enables them to take note of where everything is in the application or presentation. In most cases the ability to pause or rewind also gives the viewer the power to move at their own pace… something a classroom cannot always offer.

For the creator, screencasting offers the capability to explain in detail what may be more confusing when delivered in audio or the written word. Video allows the screencast producer to complete the flow of thoughts or processes without being forced to chop steps into static images, as in a book or slide show. With the combination of video and audio, the creator can mimic the one on one experience of the classroom and deliver clear, complete instruction.

Althought the advantages may seem plentiful, screencasts do have their downside as well. Watching a video requires a commitment of time, and some potential audience members may not have the time to give. While iPods and other portable media players have made video content more portable, a large portion of the population may still rely on books and the printed word for training on-the-go. Screencasting, although not a new technology is still relatively obscure. Individuals that a screencaster is trying to reach may simply not know that the information is available to them.

The technical difficulties of screen capture and exporting can be numerous, and a poorly constructed offering will almost absolutely result in a reduction in audience and exposure. While video and audio quality may not be as important as content, it can make or break the success of a screencast.

Who Can Make a Screencast?

Anyone with something to teach or present can produce a screencast. Required are a good idea, some screen recording software, a microphone, a site for distribution, and a willingness to share your ideas with the world. In seven easy steps you can begin to produce a screencast and deliver it to the world.

Seven Steps to Screencasting

1. Content is king.
   If you don’t have something to present, you don’t have a screencast! In most cases, a screencast is produced to teach a process or technique, or get a set of ideas across to an audience. If you cannot keep the attention of the audience, the screencast may be rendered useless. When choosing a topic, start with areas that are within your knowledge base, and can be covered in the time allotted to complete the series.
2. Planning.
   A script may or may not be utilized in preparation, but it is good practice to complete a dry run of the presentation before actually hitting the record button. Practice makes perfect, and the more familiar you are with your content, the more polished the final recording will be.
3. Push the red button.
   It’s time to shine, and if your preparation went well, this step should be relatively easy. Remember to move at a pace that is comfortable for your audience and speak clearly so as to avoid any confusion. Audio can be added in post production instead of being recorded during the presentation, but this will require an extra editing step and can break the flow of the delivery if not done correctly.
4. Review the video.
   Be sure that no steps were left out and that the flow of the presentation makes sense and will be easy to follow for your intended audience. If imperfections are found, you may choose to edit or re-record the video altogether.
5. Editing.
   If necessary, edit the video according to your standards. Include any transitions, intros, outros, or other post production items.
6. Produce.
   Export your video with the settings that best fit your intended output, whether that will be streaming from a webpage, downloadable media or delivery on a disc.
7. Distribute the videos.
   There are several options from hosting your own weblog site and leveraging an RSS feed, to using a service such as screencast.com, YouTube or revver.com.

Capturing Your Screen

As is often the case with software, the options are plentiful for capturing video of your computer screen. The feature sets of these software packages for the most part are comparable, but advanced tools and pricing set a few of them apart from the pack. Below are five screen capture software applications that can be used to create a screencast.

Snapz Pro X (Mac)

Snapz Pro X is a robust offering of settings and compressions for screen captures of all sizes. It is fairly easy to use and captures great quality of video and sound. Video from this application is exported in Quicktime (.mov) format only and Snapz Pro X does not allow for video editing. This is a feature-rich application for a reasonable price of about $70.

iShowU (Mac - Tiger or Leopard)

iShowU offers polished recording quality and plenty of settings and export presets for anything from YouTube formatting to 1080p. Like Snapz Pro X, iShowU lacks ability to encode video to different formats. Videos are saved in Quicktime (.mov) format only and editing is not a feature supported by this application. This is a productive little application and priced for the novice at about $20.

Screenflow (Mac)

Compared to other applications, Screenflow has advanced algorithms that only encode areas of change on your screen. It can simultaneously record from iSight or DV camera at the same time as your screen (and your microphone and computer’s audio). You can also capture games and DVD-videos. With ScreenFlow editor you can add zoom and pan effects, trim clips, add drop shadow and reflection, adjust audio levels etc. You can also combine existing media into your screencast. Powerful and very user-friendly, price: $99.99.

Camtasia Studio 5 (Windows)

If you are looking for an all-in-one screen capture and video editing software package, and you’re using Windows, this is the one for you! Camtasia Studio 5 lets you record the screen, format and compress for multiple outputs, edit and enhance the audio and video, and save in several different formats. A host of other features including themes, transitions, and captions make this product stand out among the pack, but at a price of about $299.

CamStudio (Windows)

CamStudio is a quick and lightweight screen capture application that allows for recording of video and sound to either an .avi or Flash based swf file. It features the ability to place banners/text boxes with supporting text. This application records only and does not allow for editing, but is a very functional screen capture option and is free for anyone to use, provided you are using the Windows operating system.

Adobe Captivate 3 (Win)

Adobe Captivate builds and edits interactive software demonstrations, simulations, podcasts, screencasts, games, program demos and lessons. For software demos, it can either record in real time or use a smart event-based screen capture that snaps a sequence of still images and then builds mouse movement simulations to create the appearance of a running program.

You can edit Captivate presentations to add captions, clickable hotspots, text entry boxes, rollovers, videos, etc. It is also possible to edit the content (including mouse pointer path, position, image) and change the timing for each item to appear and disappear. The hotspots can branch to other slides in the presentation, or to outside webpages.

Captivate supports the import of still images, PowerPoint, video, .FLV, and audio tracks onto any Captivate slide. Price: $699.

Wink (Windows)

Wink works a bit differently than the other applications being showcased in this article. Instead of recording a single video file of the motions you perform on the screen, it takes a series of screen image captures and strings them together into a Flash movie file (.swf) upon exporting. This application allows for editing of the screen captures and the audio, whether it is recorded with the presentation, recorded in the editing phase, or imported from an external audio file.

The recording and output settings for audio and video are limited and the quality of audio recorded in Wink is subpar when compared to the other applications reviewed in this article. The final output, however, was suprisingly good given the method for constructing the video from static screen captures, and the price is right (free) for those wanting to try their hand at screencasting!

Screencast.com (Jing) (Mac, Windows)

Screencast.com offers a great way to record screencasts and host them all in one package. They offer a free screen capture application called the Jing project. Jing is easy to use and gives you high quality screen captures that can be saved in the Flash (swf) format.

Downloading Jing requires a sign up with screencast.com who also offers hosting plans from about $7 to $25 per month depending on the amount of space you need, with a free trial account to test the features of the service. All movies exported from Jing can be uploaded to either your screencast.com account, an ftp which you set up, or can be saved to your computer’s hard drive. This application does not allow for editing video.

Tricks of the trade

Screencasting, like many other forms of media can be customized as the producer sees fit. Trial and error may be your best ally in figuring out what formula works best. Here are some tips from current screencast producers that may fit into your template of success.

1. Expensive equipment is not always the best equipment. While some studio grade microphones will give you excellent audio quality, a decent headset will give you adequate sound and the freedom to work on the computer as you normally would while performing the presentation.
2. Taking the time to find the suitable settings for your output can be the key to returning your audience. Poor video or audio quality can have a negative effect on the screencast viewing experience.
3. Editing may be an option, but sometimes its better to simply start over and have a nice flow to the production rather than piecing together snippets of good video.
4. Think long-term. Are you still going to have content to share via screencast two months from now? How about two years from now? Once you build an audience, their thirst for your content may not fade.
5. Consider leaving the mistakes in the presentation. Problems may occur in the viewers’ workflow, and watching you solve a similar problem may help in their learning process.

Speak to the World

Once your screencast is ready for an audience, a suitable distribution system is needed to get the content to the people. Using a weblog software such as WordPress allows you to quickly add posts, or customized web pages, and attach your screencast.

Taking things one step further, the weblog automatically produces an RSS feed, which users can subscribe to in a news reader or aggregator such as iTunes, and receive the screencasts each time you add a new one to the weblog. WordPress works in conjunction with a plugin called podPress, which makes it simple to attach your screencast movie to a weblog post.

Alternatively, you may choose to use a service such as YouTube or Revver.com. These websites both allow you to set up a free account, post your video content to their free-of-charge servers and share it with other users who visit the website. These services can be a cost-effective solution as you are not charged for the storage or transfer of your screencasts, and at times have an opportunity to even make money with your videos.

Making Sense Of It All

Screencasting is a media experience that is available to just about anyone, whether there is an interest in viewing them or hosting and producing them. It is an effective way to educate and inform using some simple tools to share what is happening on your computer screen.

It holds many advantages over the traditional methods of teaching and learning, and in many cases is offered free of charge. See the list below for some high quality screencasts that may teach you a thing or two about design and design applications.

• Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast - by Terry White
• Creative Suite Tips and Tricks - by Erik Bernskiold
• CSS-Tricks Screencast - by Chris Coyler
• dekePod- by Deke McClelland
• The InDesigner - by Michael Murphy
• Layers TV: For Everything Adobe - by Layers TV
• lynda.com Video Training - by lynda.com
• One Minute Tip - Photoshop Wednesdays - by John W Chambers
• Photoshop User TV - by The National Association of Photoshop Professionals
• Screencasts Online HD - by screencastsonline.com
• Web Design Conference Podcast - by MOGO media, LLC
• Web Design TV - by Future Publishing

Adobe AIR - a cross-platform runtime environment for rich-internet and desktop applications - is just starting to get popular outside of the early-adopter circles, but there’s already a growing amount of tools and utilities that can help web designers with various design-related and managerial tasks.

If you’re a web designer that’s into experimenting and trying out new applications (they don’t cost a dime), check out these 10 Adobe AIR applications perfect for web designers. Graphics designers, interaction designers, and web developers might also find this collection useful.

Em Calculator

The Em Calculator created by James Whittaker is based on an article on 24 ways entitled Compose to a Vertical Rhythm. It’s a pain-free way of creating CSS code for typography set on a baseline style, allowing the design to maintain its typographic proportions (i.e. size, line height, margin, padding) when the web page is viewed at a different font sizes.

colorPicker

colorPicker is a simple desktop application for determining hexadecimal values of web-safe colors. colorPicker saves colors you’ve used during the session so you can quickly refer back to it. If a web-safe color isn’t quite what you’re looking for, there’s an option for adjusting the selected color’s RGB values.

AIR Icon Generator

The AIR Icon Generator is for designers needing a quick icon/web 2.0 badge created. Using the tool is a easy as pie: enter the text you want to display, choose the icon you want to generate (there’s currently only two styles available) and the color, press "generate icon" and you’re good to go. The output provides four different sizes of the generated icon.

Google Analytics Reporting Suite

The Google Analytics Reporting Suite brings Google’s powerful website analytics tool to the desktop and adds several nifty features such as the ability to save/switch between different profiles (excellent for managing multiple sites/accounts for clients) and tab-based navigation for statistics pages you’ve opened.

Shrink O’Matic

We’ve all had to resize a batch of images at some point - thumbnails for image galleries comes to mind. If you’re looking for a quick-and-easy, free application - check out Shrink O’Matic. Set your desired options/parameters (Output size, Output name, Output format) and then drag your images into the interface (or use the file browser), and you’re done!

WebSnapshot

There are plenty of situations where you need to take a screen shot of a live site; maybe you’re documenting or collecting websites for your portfolio. WebSnapshot is a hassle-free tool to accomplish just that. You have the option to capture thumbnails, full page (entire width and length of the page), and/or the browser contents of live websites. As an alternative, try out WebKut, which has similar functions.

kuler desktop

The kuler desktop brings Adobe’s color theme web application to the desktop. Additionally, kuler desktop allows you to import color themes directly into Adobe software applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Be sure to check out Color Browser to help you organize and save color schemes locally from kuler and COLOURlovers.

pixus

pixus is a pixel-based ruler for objects on your screen/monitor. It has skins for Internet Explorer 6 and Safari so that you can visualize how a design or object looks in a web browser. pixus allows you to save preset dimensions for later use.

Klok

Klok is a nifty, robust project time-tracking tool. Klok comes with pre-defined templates including Web Project geared specifically for web designers and developers.

Snippely

If you’ve worked as a web designer for while, you’ve probably amassed a big list of bookmarks and code snipplets that you frequently use. Snippley is an application for organizing and managing your code snipplets within an intuitive interface and centralized location.

I hope you found this collection of tools helpful. If you did, you may also be interested in reading Web-Based Tools for Optimizing, Formatting and Checking CSS and 20 Useful Tools to Make Web Development More Efficient.

Did I miss your favorite? Have any experiences with these applications? Drop your inputs in the comments.

By Tony White

Some of you may remember the days when 30KB was the recommended maximum size of a web page, a value which included HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images. I find with every new project with even the slightest bit of complexity, it’s not long before that 30 KB ideal is well out of my reach. With the popularity of CSS layouts and JavaScript-enriched web page experiences, it’s not uncommon, particularly for large sites, for the CSS files alone to jump well beyond that 30KB ceiling.

But there are some principles to consider during and after you write your CSS to help keep it tight and optimized. Optimization isn’t just minimizing file size — it’s also about being organized, clutter-free, and efficient. You’ll find that the