Web Design

Delivering informative structure is the primary task an interactive user interface should be able to cope with. The more intuitive layout structure is designed, the better users can understand the content.

Whatever content you have to present, you can present them in a more interactive & more responsive ways. In this article we’d like to present 10 smart javascript techniques for showing and hiding content using different JS libraries.

1. Simple Toggle with CSS & jQuery

A simple toggle tutorial with an explanation of how to switch the “open” and “close” graphic state. The markup is pretty straight forward, where the h2 tag is a link that “trigger” the toggle effect. Below the h2, we will have our container where we hold the content.

Toggle Header

Content Header

2. jquery-fade-infade-out

A nice fade in fade out effect you can add to your website. The effect fades an element to 30% on arrival of the website, then when you hover over it, it fades to 100%. The effect can be assigned to basically anything in a website wether it be an image, text, a link or even a div.

$(document).ready(function(){
$(“ELEMENT HERE”).fadeTo(“slow”, 0.3);
$(“ELEMENT HERE”).hover(function(){
$(this).fadeTo(“slow”, 1.0);
},function(){
$(this).fadeTo(“slow”, 0.3);
});
});
3. How to Mimic the iGoogle Interface

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a customizable interface with widgets. Each widget can be collapsed, removed and edited. The widgets can be sorted into the three seperate columns by the user (using a drag and drop technique). The finished product will be a sleek and unobtrusively coded iGoogle-like interface which has a ton of potential applications using jQuery’s UI library and specifically the “sortable” and “draggable” modules.

4. Show/hide a nice Login Panel using Mootools 1.2

In this tutorial, we will see how to create a show/hide login/signup panel for your website using Mootools 1.2

5. jQuery pageSlide

jQuery pageSlide is a plugin for jQuery that slides the viewable webpage off-screen, revealing and populating a secondary interaction pane. It may be used in a similar manner to Lightbox, where screen real estate and centralization of the user experience are a concern.

The primary window is reserved for content; secondary interactions do not require additional space on the page — the area they need is created and removed on demand.
Because the user can see the original window, they have a greater likelihood of retaining focus, and can easily return to the previous task.
6. Liquid expandable section with rounded corners using CSS

This tutorial explains how to design a nice liquid expandable section with rounded corners (top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right) using some lines of CSS, HTML and JavaScript code.

7. How to Make a Smooth Animated Menu with jQuery

This menu has a smooth animation using “easing” effect. There are two actions in the code used here. When the mouse moves over a menu item, that item starts an animation where it expands to 150px tall over 0.6 seconds. The easing applied through the plugin is ‘easeOutBounce’ which causes the box to “bounce” a little as it reaches the end of the animation (”out”). When the mouse is moved off the animation to the starting size is triggered.

8. Lazy Load

Lazy loader is a jQuery plugin written in JavaScript. It delays loading of images in (long) web pages. Images outside of view port (visible part of web page) wont be loaded before user scrolls to them. Using lazy load on long web pages containing many large images makes the page load faster. Browser will be in ready state after loading visible images. In some cases it can also help to reduce server load.

9. MOOSLIDE – AJAX CONTENT SLIDE

MooSlide’s functional solution is to present any contentis. It is a small and slim ajax based extension or replacement of the common “lightbox” that can be found on nearly every page. It is based on the mootools framework.

10. The Sexy Curls jQuery Plugin

Sexy Curls jQuery plugin is an open source solution which lets you share in the beauty of the page fold feature with ease. It uses the jQuery UI & its resizable package.

WordPress awesomeness lies in its fact that it can be customized to power any type of site you like! But what happens when you combine the power of javascript with WordPress, the possibilities are infinite. This article will share 10 great practices, examples & Plugins for using the most popular Javascript frameworks out there to spice up your WordPress theme.

1. Implement a Nice & Clean jQuery Sliding Panel in WordPress 2.7+

Learn how to implement a Nice & CleanSliding Panel in WordPress 2.7+ using jQuery. If user didn’t log in or register yet, we will show the login and register forms in the sliding panel with a short Welcome Message:

10 Impressive Techniques to Spice up your WordPress Theme

2. jBreadCrumb

jBreadCrumb is a jQuery plugin for displaying breadcrumb navigations in a more flexible & smarter way. The length of a breadcrumb menu may be very long, jBreadCrumb is a great solution for this issue. It creates a collapsible interface that smartly decides the display method according to the amount and length of the elements.

10 Impressive Techniques to Spice up your WordPress Theme

Learn how to create this navigation technique, and display it on our posts, pages and categories archives in your WordPress theme. You can also use this great plugin or this interesting one to automatically create breadcrumbs in your blog.

3. Sliding Boxes and Captions with jQuery

The basic idea of the sliding box animations is very simple. There is a div tag (.boxgrid in my css) that essentially acts as a window where two other items of your choosing “peek” through. From this basic idea we can play around with animations of the sliding element to either show or cover up the viewing area, thus creating the sliding effect. I can see this script works great for a CSS gallery, really interesting.

10 Impressive Techniques to Spice up your WordPress Theme

4. How To Create An Amazing jQuery Style Switcher

Add a nice style switcher using jQuery and PHP. The end result will be an unobtrusive & entirely degradable dynamic style switcher which will be quick and easy to implement.

10 Impressive Techniques to Spice up your WordPress Theme

5. Styling Buttons and Toolbars with the jQuery UI CSS Framework

This tutorial demonstrates how to incorporate the power of jQuery UI CSS framework classes in a custom widget to create and style buttons and toolbars.

Creating a basic button is very simple with the jQuery UI CSS framework and styling it is really easy. All you need to do is add the default “clickable” state by assigning the class ui-state-default. We also want these to have rounded corners, so we added the optional ui-corner-all framework class which adds CSS3 corner-radius properties to all corners without the need for any images or extra markup.

10 Impressive Techniques to Spice up your WordPress Theme

6. MooTools Link Nudging

This tutorial demonstrates how to incorporate the power of jQuery UI CSS framework classes in a custom widget to create and style buttons and toolbars.

Link nudging is the process of adjusting the padding on a link slightly to show a simple, tasteful “jump” when you place your mouse over a link. The effect is magnified when mousing on and off a link quickly.

10 Impressive Techniques to Spice up your WordPress Theme

7. jQuery (mb)Menu 1.5

This is a powerful jQuery component to build easily a multilevel tree menu or a contextual menu (right click) in an intuitive way! You can add as many submenus as you want; if your submenu or menu is not declared in the page, the component’ll get it via ajax calling the template page with the id of the menu you need (the value of “menu” attribute) the ajax page should return a well formatted code as the example below for the menu voices code.

There are many tutorials out there for creating a WordPress drop down menues. You might want to check here and there.

10 Impressive Techniques to Spice up your WordPress Theme

8. Fantastic News Ticker Newsvine-like using Mootools

This tutorial explains how to implement a News Ticker, with news vertical scrolling, using mootools. It’s very simple and quick to implement in your blog. I can see this very useful if you are having a news submission are on your website and want to display your user’s contributed links in a nice and fancy way in your sidebar.

10 Impressive Techniques to Spice up your WordPress Theme

9. Snazzy Archives

Snazzy Archives is a visualization plugin for your WordPress site featuring an unique way to display all your posts. You can select different layouts and special effects. Main features of Snazzy Archives are: Unique visual presentation of blog posts, Will work out of the box with all features, Posts are scanned for images and youtube videos and shown together with number of comments, Different editable layouts (HTML and CSS), Special effects using jQuery and more.

10 Impressive Techniques to Spice up your WordPress Theme

10. J Post Slider

Show your post in fancy jQuery box, rotating images, with show-up text box with post description. Mousover stop the animation, and user can click on post link anytime.

10 Impressive Techniques to Spice up your WordPress Theme

The User experience has dramatically improved over the past few years, resulting in rich and responsive user interface. AJAX, javascript and CSS are widely used to offer users the dynamic interaction that they have come to expect from advanced, sophisticated, professional solutions.

There’s a lot of powerful interactivity you can bring to your site to spice up just about any web page using one of the most powerful and modular javascript libraries—MooTools! It’s important to note that small and useful features can cleverly deal with hiding and showing important information in non-traditional ways.

Today, we will have a look at 20 creative techniques using MooTools javascript framework for rich UI in modern day websites.

1. Show/hide a nice Login Panel using Mootools 1.2

In this tutorial, we will see how to create a show/hide login panel on top of your page using Mootools 1.2.

2. MooGenda

MooGenda is a javascript calendar based on MooTools, that reads events from JSON requests. MooGenda supports double click on event to see the deafult event view, drag and drop event in month view, every change send a request to back end, to store when and what changed in the event.

Check out the demo here

3. Morph Effect on mouseenter/mouseleave with Mootools 1.2

In this tutorial, we will see how to add some amazing effects to an unordered list on mouseover with the Element Method: morph and to make the whole list item region clickable with Mootools 1.2. The goal is to take a boring unordered list and to turn it into something fun to click.

Check out the demo here

4. Create a Simple, Powerful Product Highlighter with MooTools

Create a flexible tool for highlighting your sites products or services using the MooTools javascript framework. Also, learn some of the many reasons why MooTools just might be the right javascript library for all of your future projects!

Check out the demo here

5. Jazz Up Your Forms With MooTools Pt. 1

A MooTools and contact forms with animated field highlighting, displaying/hiding instructions for each input field, live comment previewing and auto-resizing of both the comment preview and it’s corresponding textarea input.

Check out the demo here

6. Mootools CSS Styled Scrollbar

A small piece of javascript that creates a css styled scrollbar from the Mootools (version 1.2b2) Slider class. The example page shows three div elements with a styled horizontal and/or vertical scrollbars.

Check out the demo here

7. Delayed Image Preloading Using Mootools

There are possible scenarios that need image preloading. Most browsers only allow two concurrent requests at the same time to the same domain. When we do the image preloading on domready, it might hold up other resources that need to be loaded. Because we preload images that are not shown when the page loads, we can delay the preloading.

Array.each.delay(3000,this,[
	['foo.gif', 'bar.png','moo.png','tools.png', 'mootools.png'],
	function(src){var img = new Image();img.src = src;}
]);

8. Facebook-Style Modal Box Using MooTools

David Walsh took facebook’s imagery and CSS and combined it with MooTools’ awesome functionality to duplicate the effect of Facebook’s Modal box.

Check out the demo here

9. OmniGrid

The OmniGrid component is inspired by two similar components: FlexGrid jQuery and phatfusion:sortableTable and partly uses their source code.

Check out the demo here

10. MooTools Flashlight Effect

A nice neat effect inspired by the jQuery version found here.

Check out the demo here

11. FormCheck

FormCheck is a class that allows you to perform different tests on form to validate them before submission. FormCheck is lightweight, shiny and fast, supports skins (using CSS), 10 different languages, and shows errors as tips. It support basic validation (required, alpha, digit, alpanu, lenght, confirm…), regex validation (phone, email, url) and a lot of options that allow you to customize this class to fit exactly as you want.

Check out the demo here

12. Fancy Upload

FancyUpload is a file-input replacement which features an unobtrusive, multiple-file selection menu and queued upload with an animated progress bar. It is easy to setup, is server independent, completely styleable via CSS and XHTML and uses MooTools to work in all modern browsers.

Check out the demo here

13. AutoCompleter

This AutoCompleter script for MooTools provides the functionality for text suggestion and completion. It features different data-sources (local, JSON or XML), a variety of user interactions, custom formatting, multiple selection, animations and much more.

Check out the demo here

14. Fantastic News Ticker Newsvine-like using Mootools

This tutorial explains how to implement a Newsvine News Ticker, with news vertical scrolling, using mootools. It’s very simple and quick to implement in your web projects.

Check out the demo here

15. mParallax

mParallax is a MooTools implementation of the popular jQuery plugin: jParallax. “jParallax turns a selected element into a ‘window’, or viewport, and all its children into absolutely positioned layers that can be seen through the viewport. These layers move in response to the mouse, and, depending on their dimensions (and options for layer initialisation), they move by different amounts, in a parallaxy kind of way”. You can create parallax effects while having the option to customize various settings.

Check out the demo here

16. BySlideMenu

BySlideMenu is a plugin for Mootools which allow you to easily create a beautiful accordion menu (sliding menu) on any element you want (ul/li, div, p …) using images and/or text. You have the option to create it vertically or horizontally, the container width/height can be adjusted automatically, Menu can be pinned or not, by mouseover or click and with Overflow support.

Check out the demos here

17. mooCSSChart

Create animated Bar Charts using the MooTools.

Check out the demos here

18. MavSelectBox

MavSelectBox is a simple-to-use form select replacement that allows for better customization. MavSelectBox mimics the GUI interactions of a normal select element as much as possible. Up and down arrows move the selection, tabbing to it and hitting alt+down shows the menu, tabbing to it and simply hitting up or down selects the next available option in that direction, focusing then start typing and the option that matches what you are typing is selected, enter selects, esc closes, and so on.

Check out the demos here

19. A Better Pagination

It is only a little script that can turn your ugly looking numbers into a nice looking Slider using MooTools. The script only contains a little fix for the Slider in mootools-more so the “knob” doesn’t jump around when clicking it and is also packed up a little example in PHP to see how you can integrate this script in your blog easily.

Check out the demos here

20. SlideItMoo

SlideItMoo is a MooTools 1.2 JavaScript plugin for sliding images, browser friendly and nicely degradable. All CSS styling is external. The plugin can slide the images from your photo gallery either by clicking the back – forward buttons or by mouse wheel. It supports continuous sliding when navigating, offers the possibility to set how the slider will slide ( from left or from right ) when used with the auto slide feature on, offers the possibility to give it the item width ( width of the slider’s items ) and let it display the elements according to that width and the visible items parameter.

Check out the demos here

Must Read Mootools Tutorials

30 Days of MooTools Tutorials

These tutorials will assume no previous Mootools or JavaScript experience, but will require basic knowledge of html and CSS.

WordPress has revolutionized the way most of us deal with the web. Some say it is the best content management system around for maintaining your website, and most agree that as time goes on WordPress and all of its plugins is the format of choice when launching your new web project.  Though it started as a blog format with free built in themes it now has evolved into much more.

For your inspiration here are 30 awesome websites that use WordPress with anything but ordinary results.   Here you will find informational/corporate sites, portfolios and ecommerce sites that will hopefully inspire you for your next project.

Pixele

Awesome WordPress Based Sites - Pixele

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Pixele

N Design Studio

Awesome WordPress Based Sites - N-Design Studio

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – N-Design Studio

2am Media

2am Media

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – 2am Media

GOOD

GOOD

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – GOOD

Nathan Sanders

Nathan Sanders

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Nathan Sanders

Mostly Lisa

Mostly Lisa

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Mostly Lisa

Icon Dock

Icon Dock

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Icon Dock

Frisk Design

Frisk Design

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Frisk Design

Hoboken Magazine

Hoboken Magazine

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Hoboken Magazine

Creative Ad Awards

Creative Ad Awards

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Creative Ad Awards

Matt Brett

Matt Brett

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Matt Brett

Lefkada Travel

Lefkada Travel

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Lefkada Travel

The 9513

The 9513

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – The 9513

UMI Hotels

UMI Hotels

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – UMI Hotels

Carsonified

Carsonified

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Carsonified

Productive Dreams

Productive Dreams

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Productive Dreams

Mairie de Flamanville

Mairie de Flamanville

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Mairie de Flamanville

Big Sweater Design

Big Sweater Design

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Big Sweater Design

Chick Speak

Chick Speak

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Chick Speak

Healogix

Healogix

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Healogix

Radu Ceuca

Radu Ceuca

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Radu Ceuca

UGS Mag

UGS Mag

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – UGS Mag

Getting Crazy on the Waltzers

Getting Crazy on the Waltzers

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Getting Crazy on the Waltzers

Delicious:Days

Delicious:Days

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Delicious:Days

Rodney “Dark Child” Jerkins

Rodney "Dark Child" Jerkins

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Rodney "Dark Child" Jerkins

Pop Culture Teens

Pop Culture Teens

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Pop Culture Teens

Kulturebanause

Kulturebanause

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Kulturebanause

Watersports Guru

Watersports Guru

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Watersports Guru

Hotel Hana Maui

Hotel Hana Maui

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – Hotel Hana Maui

WSJ Magazine

WSJ Magazine

Awesome WordPress Based Sites – WSJ Magazine

The gradient mesh is one of the most powerful tools in your Illustrator toolbox, but it’s also one of the trickiest to get the hang of. This year I’m determined to master this amazing tool, so I’ve searched the web far and wide to pull together the best free training materials. This collection of tutorials covers everything from basic gradient mesh tool to some full on photorealistic vector designs. If, like me you have a mission to get to grips with gradient mesh, look no further than this collection of resources.

Gradient mesh capabilities

You only have to glance at amazing artwork such as this motorcycle rendering by Yukio Miyamoto to realise how powerful the gradient mesh tool can be. It allows the most minute control over colour gradients, enabling you to recreate highlights and shadows that help produce photorealistic images.

I like to think of the gradient mesh like the great Nunchaku, it’s a weapon of awesome capabilities that when used to its full potential by masters like Bruce Lee or Michelangelo the turtle looks insanely awesome. However it takes years of practice to become a true ninja. The same goes with the gradient mesh, when in the hands of a veteran, it can be used to create some unbelieveable photorealistic artwork, but it takes time, dedication and mental power to become a true master. Wrap a scarf around your head Karate Kid style and let’s get down to some serious training with these tutorials!

Gradient mesh tutorials

Tips for Working with the Gradient Mesh Tool In Illustrator

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How to Make a Vector Military Cap Icon

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Illustrator Tutorial: Gradient Mesh Flower

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Create a Yummy Ice Cream Icon with Mesh Objects and Blends

View the tutorial

Create realistic illustrations using Illustrator’s Gradient Mesh

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Vectors Imitate Life with Gradient Mesh

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Gradient Mesh Tutorial

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Illustrate a Pair of Sweet Gradient Mesh Cherries

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Gradient Mesh Bell Pepper Tutorial

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Master the gradient mesh tool

View the tutorial

Make a Shiny Gum Ball Machine with Mesh Gradients

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Gradient Mesh Editing Tutorial

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How to Create an Energy Saving Bulb in Illustrator

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Mastering Mesh

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Make an Aurora Borealis Design in Illustrator

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Illustrator Tutorial: Realistic Curtain

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Video Tutorials

Sometimes it’s handy to get that extra level of help from a video screencast. These tutorials help you understand the actual workflow and see the techniques in action.

The Adobe Illustrator Gradient Mesh Tool

View the tutorial

Intro to the Gradient Mesh Tool

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Create an iPod Nano Using Gradient Mesh

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Gradient mesh, freshly brewed coffee

View the tutorial

Reshaping Mesh to fit into complex shapes (pt1)

View the tutorial

Adding color to each mesh node (pt2)

View the tutorial