All of the tutorials on Html5CanvasTutorials are organized by chapters and sections and are accompanied by live demos and working code. You can use this site to learn about HTML5 Canvas for the first time, as an HTML5 Canvas reference, or as inspiration for your HTML5 Canvas projects.

The Tutorials tab contains basic and advanced HTML5 Canvas tutorials for the 2d context and Three.js tutorials for WebGL (3d context). The Labs tab contains cool HTML5 Canvas experiments and the Showcase tab contains HTML5 applications and demos from the community.

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CSS3 features like transitions, animations and transforms can add extra spice to your designs.

In this article you will see how you can build an awesome CSS3 animated dropdown menu with some of these cool features.

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Before we actually dig into details, let establish a common understating of what usability is. Usability is mostly defined as ‘ease of use’, but this is over-simplification of the art and science of Usability. In a broader sense, usability is “effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which a specified set of users can achieve a specified set of tasks in a particular environment.” – ISO 9241 Standard

Usability is ultimately concerned with the following factors:

• Effectiveness: Effectiveness is the completeness and accuracy with which users achieve specified goals. It is determined by looking at whether the user’s goals are met successfully and whether all work is correct.
• Efficiency: Efficiency can be described as the speed (with accuracy) in which users can complete the tasks for which they use the product. Efficiency metrics include the number of clicks or keystrokes required or the total ‘time on task’.
• Engaging: An interface is engaging if it is pleasant and satisfying to use. The visual design, graphic images, colors, use of any multimedia elements, language, font size and style, links, buttons all affect the relationship between the user and the application.
• Error Tolerant: An ideal system has no errors; and there is no ideal system. Errors are expected. An error tolerant program is designed in a way that it prevents errors in the first place and helps the user in recovering from any errors that do occur.
• Easy to Learn: Last but not the least; a ‘useable’ system is easy to learn. It allows its users to get familiar with different functions and perform them without much effort or the need of training.

Usability Guidelines

1. Design Process

• Set Primary Goals: Clearly define the primary goals of the website before starting the design process. Goals of a website may be education, information, entertainment, trade etc. Goals also determine the audience, content, look and feel and functionality.
• Set Performance Goals: Set performance goals that include the overall performance of the website in different scenarios. For example, the website will be displayed correctly in Internet Explorer 8.0 and above with screen resolution 1024×768.
• Set Preference Goals: Preference goals address end user’s satisfaction. Set preference goals such as allowing the user to view the website with small, medium and large font size.
• Create & Evaluate Prototypes: Create and evaluate prototypes in iterations. The iterative process ensures that all goals are met.

2. Design Considerations

• Establish Level of Importance: Establish a high-to-low level of importance for each category and carry this approach throughout the design. Important categories should appear higher on the page so users can locate them quickly. This is applicable to links, buttons, form fields etc.
• Reduce User’s Input: Automate as much of the site’s function as possible. Eliminate the need for users to perform tasks like performing mental calculations, making estimations, recalling account numbers and passwords, etc. This helps the user concentrate on main tasks.
• Be Consistent: Maintain consistency in page titles, font size, style, color, header, graphics, buttons, positioning, forms etc. A consistent website allows the users to get familiar with the environment and learn to retrieve information and perform tasks in less time.
• Provide Feedback: Provide appropriate feedback to inform users while they interact with the website. For example, intimate the users after they have successfully submitted any information.
• Include Logos: Differentiate your website from others by placing a logo in a consistent place on every page. This is useful when the user is browsing several websites at the same time.
• Limit Maximum Page Size: Keep Web page size at or below 30,000 bytes, which is maximum allowable time. Users do not wait long for a page to open in their browser and move on to other website.
• Limit Use of Frames: Do not use frames in websites, unless there is a strong reason to do so. Frames can be confusing and may behave unexpectedly in different context.

3. Content Organization

• Provide Useful Content: Provide useful and usable content that supports the Web site goal on each page. The content should be arranged logically and must be free from errors and ambiguity. Avoid irrelevant details.
• Use Short Sentence/Paragraph Length: Write sentences with 20 or fewer words and paragraphs with fewer than five sentences. Use lists to break up long sentences or display important points. This improves readability.
• Provide Printing Option: Many users want to keep printed copies of website for reference or taking notes. Provide printable version of all pages, files and documents on the website.

4. Title & Headlines

• Provide Page Titles: Put a descriptive and different title on each page. Title should be meaning and descriptive of the type of information the page. Meaningful title helps the user in creating and sorting bookmarks. Similarly, appropriate titles improve Page Rank on search engines.
• Use Proper Headlines: Use meaningful and descriptive headlines. A good headline is brief and clearly suggests the following text. It helps the reader quickly scan the page and understand the main theme. Headings can be used to classify information under different categories or break up long texts into small bits.

5. Page Length

• Determine Page Length: Decide length of page according to the information it contains. It is better to have short pages for home pages, navigation pages and pages that need to be quickly browsed. Use long pages for printable/downloadable versions or when you want to maintain, fewer web page files.
• Determine Scrolling vs. Paging Needs: If reading speed is important and response time is reasonably fast, use paging (linking) rather than scrolling. In this way, users will be able to move from page to page by following quick links without always scrolling to important information.

4. Page Layout

• Align Page Elements: Align text, elements, graphics etc consistently to improve readability and ‘look and feel’ of web pages.
• Reduce Unused Space: Reduce the amount of unused space on pages used for scanning and searching. On pages that are primarily links or categories, like a home page, the greater the density, the faster the scanning. “Density” is defined as the percent of the screen filled with categories and text. Density has no impact on user accuracy or preference. On content/text pages, using some white space to separate paragraphs and ideas is important.
• Format for Efficient Viewing: Determine actual utility of a web page before designing. Pages based on content do not need graphics. Similarly, pages based on graphics should not be filled with text.

5. Font Formatting

• Use Readable Font Size: Use at least 10-point familiar font style. Do not use fancy fonts unless there is a strong reason to do so. Use serif or sans serif font to achieve the best possible reading speed. Do not mix serif and sans serif fonts within the text, because it may decrease reading speed. Recommended fonts are: Times Roman, Georgia serif fonts, Helvetica, or Verdana sans serif.

6. Reading and Scanning

• Enhance Scanning: Users tend to scan, stopping only when they find something interesting. Enhance scanning by providing clear links, headings, short phrases and sentences, and short paragraphs.

7. Links

• Show Links Clearly: Hyperlinks should be clearly distinguishable from normal text. Preferably, use blue underlined text for all unused links. Do not require users to move the mouse over text to discover hyperlink. Avoid graphic link. If a graphic link is used, make sure that it is easily recognized. Usually, “click here” is used for graphic links. However, some automatic screen readers may have problems deciphering what “click here” refers to.
• Indicate Internal/External Links: Clearly indicate when a link will move users to (a) the same page, (b) a different page in the same Web site or, (c) a page on a different Web site.
• Use Descriptive Link Label: Link should be self-explanatory. User should be able to instantly guess what information in liked to the hyperlink. For example, use About Greepit instead of Company Information.
• Repeat Text Links: Ensure that the most important information can be accessed from more than one related text link. Some users find important links easily when they have a certain label, while others may recognize the link best with an alternative name.
• Present Tab Effectively: Place tabs (used for links) at the top of the page and ensure that they look like click-able.
• Show Used Links: Visited links should be clearly distinguished otherwise users repeatedly bounce among a set of pages not knowing that they are going back to the same page again and again. Make links that have not been clicked blue, and clicked links purple or red.

8. Graphics

• Use Graphics Sparingly: Excessive use of graphic increases download time of the web page. A graphic can be used only if it enhances content or leads to a better understanding of the information being presented. When using graphics, try to use small and few graphics in order to reduce download time.
• Avoid Graphics on Search Pages: Avoid use of graphics on pages that are primarily used for searching. In general, graphics do not have either a positive or a negative impact on the success of users when searching, but they take time to design, implement, and maintain and may slow downloading.

9. Search

• Provide Search Engine: Carefully consider whether there is any advantage to including a search engine. Search engines are helpful on some sites, but do not add value on others. Web sites that can benefit most from search engines are those that are large and complex.

10. Navigation

• Keep Navigation Consistent: Use consistent navigation aids such as menus, tab links etc on all pages. Common navigation type ensures that users can locate and remember frequently used links and explore the website easily. Prefer text-based navigation aids to graphic based aids.Group navigation elements in close proximity and place them with the right margin for the web page. Users may need to scroll to navigation elements, if they are placed with left margin.

11. Hardware and Software

• Consider Connection Speed: Design for connection speeds of 56 kilobytes per second (kbps). Remember that actual connection speed is about 38% lower than modem speed capability. This means that users with a 56 kbps connection actually have a connection averaging about 35 kbps.
• Reduce Download Time: Create web pages that load quickly. Slow download times may result from too many graphics, unnecessary use of applets and slow server performance. Average wait-time is 8.6 seconds.
• Consider Monitor Size & Resolution: For best results, design for computers with 17-inch monitors and screen resolutions of 1024×768 pixels.

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The idea is to use Street View images and bind then together to deliver a seamless 360° view and top it up with jQuery to provide navigation. The result like a guided tour at street level with whatever content you want to add to it.

This tutorial explains the use of scrollbars to create an interactive street view with the help of powerful jQuery library.

In its simplest form, all you need is a series of photos (commonly known as video) that shows the movement through the street, and a page listing the hotspots.

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What most marketers and brand promoters miss is the fact that the goal should not be keeping website visitors (prospects) engaged with ‘cool’ graphics; the goal should be getting website visitors to involve, and understand the message, and become a customer. There is no denying that good a copy, decent color scheme and attractive graphics grab the attention of website visitors but what makes them stay or come back to the website is something else. ‘Something else’ – that creates the desire to know more about the brand or own the product.

This post is intended to give you an insight into ‘something else’ that works.

The foremost step is tracking your visitors. Use Google Analytics or whatever tracking tool you prefer to track the number of visitors and the gap between new and returning visitors. Set goal values (for example, 1 new sign up against every 100 new visitors) and set a target for, say, the next quarter. Once you get raw statistics of visitors, you are ready to move on and experiment with your website to achieve your targets.

The next step is starting conversations. Make is super easy for visitors to leave their feedback or comments. Whether you have a blog or a website, you should allow visitors to get involved by participating in a conversation or initiating a new thread. Remove barriers. Website visitors should not be required to create an account to leave comment. Allow them to use their twitter, facebook or Google account to get authenticated and participate in conversations.

Allow your website visitors to use their existing profiles like Google or facebook to join or sign up. If you must register them with you, avoid long registration forms. Ask only for the information that you would really need.

Allow your website visitors to stay up-to-date with your products, offerings or activities. Allow them to subscribe via RSS or follow you on facebook, twitters and other social networks. Also use Google Friend Connect, a very useful but a bit unappreciated tool.

Maintain a consistent and compelling twitter stream or Facebook updates on your facebook fan page to keep your fans, customers and prospects in the loop.

Offer useful content – not just informative articles or breaking news but practical and useful content that your website visitors would love to download or use online. It could be a freebie, online service, royalty free images, printable cards or anything that relates to your business.

Reward your customers or users with a royalty program or other offerings that compel them to use your products/services and recommend them to others.

Use crowd sourcing techniques to engage your website visitors and existing customers to help you decide new offerings or even the redesign of your logo or website. It makes them a part of the team and the sense of a connection with the brand.

Make your website or blog easy to navigate, good on eyes and tasteful to read.

These are just a few ideas. We would like to hear more useful tips from you. Why not leave a comment and share your best tips?

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appendTo helps developers to learn jQuery and JavaScript and level up their jQuery and JavaScript skills with on demand, pragmatic training solution.

Learn at your own pace with on-demand content, you only need 10 minutes to catch a free screencast. Go interactive and write some code, review your progress and decide what to learn next.

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Do you know that a large number of people in your audience would not be able to view your design as you intended. Imagine how a person with vision deficiency (like color blindness) would experience your website. According to an estimate, among adult computer users of the USA alone, 1 user in 4 has vision difficulty, 1 has dexterity problem and 1 in 5 has hearing problem. By ignoring these users, we not only reduce the number of users but also limit the scope of our products.

Today’s post is all about designing accessible websites/ web applications. Accessibility is the measure of ease with which users with physical disabilities, say visual impairment, can use a product efficiently and perform the required tasks satisfactorily. In other words, accessibility means that every user in his own context can operate a system and get required output without any constraints.

Here, it is very important to understand that many end-users may be using the product in a context that is very different from the context in which it is designed. For example,

• The user may not be able to see, hear, move, or may not be able to process some types of information easily or at all.
• The user may have difficulty reading or comprehending text.
• The user may be colorblind.
• The user may not have or be unable to use a keyboard or mouse.

These and many other contexts should be taken care of when designing or developing a system. The following is a set of basic rules of accessibility that you should understand and comply with when designing websites or web applications.

Use Colors Wisely

Do not rely on color alone to communicate a message. Ensure that text and graphics are understandable when viewed without color. If designers depend on color to convey information, colorblind users and users with devices that have non-color or non-visual displays cannot receive the information. Also ensure that foreground and background color combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewed on monochrome display or by someone with visual impairments.

Text Equivalents

Provide alternative text – For each image or image link, provide alternative text using appropriate attributes like alt and longdesc. Screen readers and talking browsers use alternative to describe an image to the users who cannot access the image, such as the blind users. Use short and clear alternative text for images that carry important information.

Provide multimedia synchronization – For any time-based multimedia presentation (e.g., a movie or animation), synchronize equivalent alternatives (e.g., captions or auditory descriptions of the visual track) with the presentation.

Consider Flickering

Avoid unnecessary graphic effects. Design pages that do not cause the screen to flicker with a frequency greater than 2 Hz and lower than 55 Hz. People with photosensitive epilepsy may face problem due to flickering or flashing between 4 to 59 flashes per second (Hertz) range with peak sensitivity at 20 flashes per second. When a page includes moving content, provide a mechanism within to control moving/flashing objects.

Design Device Independent Pages

Design for device independence by using features that enable activation of page elements by a variety of input devices. Users should be able to interact with the Web site using a preferred input (or output) device. The input device may be a mouse, keyboard, voice etc.

Design Accessible Forms

Electronic forms contain a number of elements that require user interaction such as input fields, push button, radio button, check box, CAPTCHA etc. Design electronic forms in a way that people using assistive technology can access the information, field elements, and functionality required for completion and submission of the form.

Handle Time Outs

Accessibility problems can occur if your Web page times-out while a user is completing a form. Pages designed to comply with security requirements or reduce load on server may cause accessibility problem. These types of pages disappear or expire if a response is not received within a specified amount of time. Remember, that not all users are able to read or understand the page with equal efficiency. Always notify the user if a process is about to time-out. Also provide a prompt asking whether additional time is required.

Provide Options to Skip Navigation Links

Navigation links are usually placed at the top, bottom, or side of every new page. This creates difficulty for persons using a screen reader because screen readers move through pages by reading from top to bottom. The use of repetitive navigation links forces persons with visual impairments to re-read these links when moving to every new page. To counter this problem, Provide “skip navigation” tools that enable a user to move to the main content of a Web page without having to hear unnecessary information first.

Use Markup and Style Sheets Properly

Create web pages that can be read without style sheets. For example, when an HTML document is rendered without associated style sheets, it must still be possible to read the document. Use style sheets to control layout and presentation instead of elements and attributes.

Provide Text-Only Page

Provide a text-only page with complete information and functionalities as alternative to primary page. Remember, text-only page should be the last resort. Also make sure that the text-only page is updated whenever the primary page changes.

Scripts and Plugins

Text Equivalents – Ensure that plugins, scripts and other objects on a web page are accessible to users who need assistive technologies like page readers. Design web pages in a way that these are useable when scripts, applets or other objects are not supported. If this is not possible, at least provide text equivalents of these objects.

Alternatives –  When a web page requires that a plug-in or other application be present on the client system to interpret page content, the page must provide a link to a plug-in or applet that can be interpreted through assistive technologies.

Tables

Identify Headers: In data tables, identify row and column headers. For example, use TD to identify data cells and TH to identify headers.

Use Markup: For data tables with two or more logical levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells. For example, use THEAD, TFOOT, and TBODY to group rows, COL and COLGROUP to group columns, and the “axis”, “scope”, and “headers” attributes, to describe more complex relationships among data.

Identify Frames

For proper navigation through frames, identify each frame with suitable title. For example, use title attribute on Frame elements. If required, describe the purpose of frames and their relation by using longdesc attribute.

Please note that a website or any web based interface that is optimized for accessibility may not comply with some functional requirements and vice versa. Therefore, functional requirements of the product must be kept in mind at every stage of design and development and appropriate guidelines should be followed accordingly.

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Creative Twitter Profiles

For those who may prefer a more personal look and feel when browsing the site, twitter has given you the option to customize your profile. When you design your profile page, everything you see on Twitter will be set in the theme you have chosen.

ArteWebdesign

chriscoyier

nicholaspatten

boagworld

cameronolivier

DesignerDepot

graphicidentity

cheth

marcelsantilli

KrisColvin

Ubikwitusrex

oxygenna

luciana_luz

showcasemark

XquiziteLizard

HungryGirl

nbawiileague

LisaWorsham

Go_Media

Doubleolee

Farrhad

nullvariable

ramesstudios

Alyssa_Milano

binojxavier

andysowards

theleggett

davewilhelm

Twitter Directories

• WeFollow
• Twellow
• TwitterCounter
• TwitterHolic
• Twibs
• Just Tweet It
• Tracking Twitter

Useful Twitter Tools

• Mozilla Firefox Plugin for Twitter
• Greasemonkey Script for Twitter Search in Sidebar
• Twitter Search Operators

Articles for Improving Twitter Search Skills

• 7 “Secret” Ways to Use Twitter Search
• HOW TO: Use Twitter’s Advanced Search Features
• Using Twitter Search for Business
• 15 Fascinating Ways to Track Twitter Trends
• Generating Quality Marketing Leads With Google Alerts and Twitter
• How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business
• Using Twitter Search to Boost Local Business
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• Take Advantage of Twitter Search Operators
• It’s Time to Start Thinking of Twitter as a Search Engine
• How To Use Twitter for Customer Service

Twitter Research and Monitoring Tools

• TwitterGradr — Hubspot’s tool for finding “elite” Tweeters based on location and influence.
• Monitter — Lets you “monitter” the Twitter world for a set of keywords and watch what people are saying in a grid layout.
• TweetStats — Graphs out Twitter habits based on how often, what time of day, and @ replies for you or any user.
• TweetBeep — Great for online reputation management, catching all your @replies and @mentions, finding job/networking opportunities.
• Twitscoop — Full feature Twitter web client with search, trends, and real time buzz.
• What The Hashtag -The user-editable encyclopedia for hashtags found on Twitter, allows print outs of hashtag transcriptions, Greasemonkey script adds, and Firefox add on.  Track popular and trending hashtags.
• Hashtag.org — Tracks the frequency that a hashtag is used on Twitter and provides details about the hashtag

Geolocation Twitter Tools

• GeoFollow — Large location based Twitter Directory, find and follow by city, state, zip or tags.
• Trendsmap — Real-time mapping of Twitter trends across the world.
• LocaFollow — Search by location & follow (allows bulk follow) LocaFollowis powered by Google so  results are shown in the same order that Google shows it. Those Twitter pages that are better SEO optimized will appear on the top.
• TPS — the Tweet Positioning System, is a geo-location filter for conversations and mentions on Twitter.
• GeoTwitTrends — Shows real-time trending topics happening in specific places.
• GeoChirp - Set the location and then search for tweets based on keywords.  All results from that location would be displayed.
• Twittori — Allows you to follow places in a similar way than you are used to following users on Twitter as well as attach your tweets to a specific location.
• TweetMondo - Shows Twitter users that have either registered in Tweetmondo.com or were crawled by their crawler and filtered by location.

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This Halal Search Engine returns only those information / details which are being tagged as “Halal (lawful or legal)” and it uses different techniques to differentiate ‘Halal‘ or “Haram (legally forbidden by Islamic law)” content.

With I’mHalal.com, Muslims from all over the world can search safely without coming across the content that might be considered ‘Haram’ according to the Islamic Law.

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