Leading experts in web design reveal the secrets that make their lives easier and their work so sought-after. Every web designer has a secret or two. Hard-won workflows, hidden hacks, and insider knowledge that are the mark of true experience and the stuff that separates great web design training from good.

1. Web Design & Development Community and
Resources Will Enhance Your Web Skills?
Leading experts in web design reveal the secrets that make their lives easier and their
work so sought-after. Every web designer has a secret or two. Hard-won workflows,
hidden hacks, and insider knowledge that are the mark of true experience and the stuff
that separates great web design training from good.
We believe that aesthetics is only the surface – flat is a whole new approach to building
websites. We believe that flat web design is about showing less on the screen, but doing
more with it. Form follows function. It is about boiling the aesthetics down to its
essentials and focusing on the message. Flat seeks to support the content from behind by
removing background distractions and amplifying the voice of the content. Flat is all
about content and making the most of the medium.
However, at the same time, we are
a bit concerned and, truth be told,
responsible that there aren’t
enough resources for young
designers to master flat design,
understand what is it about, and
build better websites. Of course,
one might argue that there is
plenty of articles, inspiration, and
tutorials out there. But we tend to
disagree. How many of these
inspiration showcases talk about
the influences behind flat web
design and analyze the origins of it?
How many of these tutorials talk
about the concept and goal behind
a website and why designers build
what they build? How many of
them can show you the whole process behind building a contemporary flat responsive
website starting with a blank sheet of paper and ending up with a usable result? We think
not so many.
Copyright © 2013 Team Mango Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.

2. Every web designer should stretch their creative ideas to the hilt and must have the
capability to think out-of-the-box so as to bring out something stunning! This process
requires thorough upgradation which comes from learning. Adopting the newer styles
and techniques in web design would add to your creative prowess. Herein, we discuss
some of the most unique ways that would help you enhance your web design skills
Unique Points to Enhance Your Web Design Skills
1. Read More and Get Inspired
Web designers have online pallets and Photoshop brushes in their arsenal but, without
the knowledge of the latest trends and styles that are ruling the industry, you cannot
expect to take an upper hand in the race. There are tons of web design blogs in the web
that offer rich info on various aspects of web design.
2. Make Yourself Known to Various
Web Design Communities:
It is imperative to join the web
designing community in order to
enhance or polish your skills. By
joining the web design communities
online, you get the opportunity to
interact with different designers,
both experienced and novice and
discuss on the critical segments of
web design. This will eventually
help you improve your skill-sets and
grab all the basic web designing tips.
3. Work on SEO Techniques:
It’s been couple of years that SEO friendly web design has ushered into the scene and
today, the designers cannot afford to ignore the SEO aspects. For SEO compliant web
designing service, you need to do away with certain stuffs, such as Flash animations,
Frames and Java-scripts. Enlighten yourself on these techniques and you surely stand out
in the competition.
4. Read More About Typography:
Typography is something that will uphold your creativity and when you have the perfect
background style lending support to your typographic elements, you become indomitable.
Again, you need to learn a lot to get a hang of the ruling background trends. Learn
intuitive methods of playing with several background themes and typographic elements.
Copyright © 2013 Team Mango Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.

3. Top Web Design Secrets to Boost Your Skills!
 Apply global changes
Here's a coding tip from musician, producer and web dev Elliott Fienberg that can help
speed things up at the early stages of your design work. Use the wildcard CSS rule - using
an asterisk as the selector - and you can globally apply changes to an entire page. For
example, to change all the fonts on a page to sans-serif, you just need: *{font-family:arial,
helvetica, sans-serif;}
This is a great designer's trick to have in your pocket while you're going through the
design process. Of course, it's not such a great idea to leave it in your live code, so use this
trick carefully and sparingly!
 Set garish outlines
File this in the "simple acts of genius" folder - a tip from Christopher Murphy of Web
Standardistas that makes cross-platform design so much easier. "When working with
media queries, set an outline in a garish colour," says Murphy. "For example: {outline:10px
solid green/red/yellow/blue;}. This enables you to instantly see which exact rules are
being applied to what you're currently looking at."
 Check your character count
"45-75 characters per line is generally accepted as safe for comfortable reading," says Trent
Walton, founder and designer with Paravel. "There's a quick trick to ensure your
responsive or fluid design supports this. Place a line of dummy text on your page with an
asterisk at character 45 and an asterisk at character 75. Now test the site to make sure it
resizes within these parameters."
Copyright © 2013 Team Mango Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.

4.  Use FitVids for video embedding
HTML5 has simplified video embedding, but designers still have two problems. The first is
getting video to resize responsively, the second is to ensure resizing degrades gracefully
for Flash when HTML5 embedding isn't supported. Enter FitVids, a jQuery plugin that
takes care of all that for you.
 Export images as 8bit PNG
Martin Beeby makes an old-school suggestion for handling PNG image files. "If you're
exporting an image from Photoshop to PNG, and it doesn't need to be transparent, try
exporting it as an 8bit PNG," he explains. "In most cases the image quality won't be
affected but you will massively reduce the file size."
 Use a 12-column grid
Another tip from Rhys Little: "Typically it is a good idea to use a grid with columns nicely
divisible by 2, 3 and 4. Therefore, a 12 column grid is one of the most popular and
versatile grids to use." Check out 960grid for more web design-friendly grid templates for
a host of apps.
 Typography
"Use icon fonts as often as possible," advises Trent Walton. Icon fonts? Yep, font sets full
of icons - quicker and more reliable than embedding a bitmap any day. Take a look at
Shift Icons to get you started. With icons at $1.99 per set, you can use them as web fonts,
directly embedded in a page.
 Font Squirrel for free web fonts
Free web fonts have really come of age. With Font Squirrel, Google Web Fonts and the
@font-face attribute of CSS3, there's no need to put up with the typography troubles the
last generation of web designers struggled so much with.
Copyright © 2013 Team Mango Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.

5. The Best Resources for Enhance Your Web Skills
Designers as well as developers have always been a close-knit group (there always seems
to be a problem you need help with, right?), but online interaction and presence amongst
this industry has just recently started growing over the last few years. While social media
and forums became a necessity quickly for many professions—marketers, writers, sales
representatives, etc.
Below are a Few of the Best Forums Specifically for Web Developers
and Designers
Visiting a forum and interacting with others is a great way to hear about new ideas and
share your knowledge. You can make connections with those who understand something
you might not, which could come in handy in the future. It’s easy to do and forums are
often moderated so you know you’re talking to real people with real answers.

Forrst. This isn’t a traditional or overly popular forum, but once you really get to
reading you’re realize there are a lot of quality people participating. The focus is on
design (split up into categories like interaction and visual) and code review, and the
discussions are some of the liveliest I’ve seen.
Copyright © 2013 Team Mango Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.

6. 
Stack Overflow. I think this forum is great because it allows readers to interact
without having to answer or ask a question. In other words, users can vote the
answer that you thought was best to the top, so when you’re reading through the
forum questions you are reading the best answers first. Anybody can ask, anybody
can answer, and anybody can vote. There is also no registration required, which is
quite unique.

Web Developer. This is one of the more popular forums (you’ll surely find it at the
top of your SERP) and therefore has a huge amount of information. You have to
register before you can start posting, but you can be sure that your answer is going to
get a lot of visibility on this site.
Developers to Follow on Social Media

John Resig. John Resig is the creator of jquery, a JavaScript programmer, and author,
so it’s safe to say he knows his stuff. His Twitter is great because he doesn’t over-do it
with posting but he’s consistent enough that you know he’s putting out the most
relevant information. What’s cool about his social accounts is that he often posts
questions and answers and let’s us know where we can find him speaking or
answering questions.

Gina Trapani. Although she might have 300,000 followers on Twitter, she keeps it
together and posts a lot of her own content on the social network. She’s the
cofounder and CTO of Think Up and is definitely one of the more influential women
developers out there today.

Eric A. Meyer. I love this profile because he really answers questions and responds to
those who have comments about HTML or CSS. He’s maybe not one of the top people
in the industry (he didn’t start any major company, although meyerweb.com is
reputable, or create any major program), but he knows his stuff. He’s incredibly
knowledgeable and accessible, and with 22,000 tweets you could say he’s very active.
Copyright © 2013 Team Mango Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.

7. Development and Design Blogs to be Reading
This is one area where developers usually find time, but it’s important to also engage and
interact with different blog posts. Below includes a list of popular company blogs, but also
international and personal blogs:
 Smashing Magazine. One of my favorites and one of the most popular. With a really
easy to read layout and content from some of the top developers in the industry, you
really can’t go wrong.
 Scott Hanselman. This wasn’t a blog that I was overly familiar with, but turns out he
puts out great content. He talks with you as if he knows what you’re going through
and knows what it’s like to be an actual programmer and not just a company who
hired writers to talk about programming.
 OXP (One Xtra Pixel). This blog puts a focus on design as well as development and
reads more like a fun blog than a super information blog. It covers topics ranging
from working from home to more technical subjects, but always with a cool graphic
to match.
Top website Improve Your Web Design and Development Skills
 Code HS
If you have a college computer science major, you can apply here and get paid to help tutor
students all over the world. The goal of Code HS is to spread the knowledge of computer science .
Copyright © 2013 Team Mango Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.

8.  Code School
On this website you can learn to code in the comfort of your browser with video tutorials,
programming challenges, and screencasts.
 Coursera
Yo can take free online classes from 80+ top universities and organizations. Coursera is partnering
with Stanford University, Yale and more prestigious universities. You can find here lots of courses
from a variety.
Copyright © 2013 Team Mango Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.

9.  CSS-Tricks
CSS-Tricks, a web design community curated by Chris Coyier. You’ll find here many useful web
design and web developing articles and tutorials.
 KillerPHP
This website offers video tutorials covering all major aspects of programming in PHP, from
beginner to advanced. They are very well structured and easy to understand.
Copyright © 2013 Team Mango Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.

10.  Lynda
Lynda is a famous online e-courses website. You can easily learn software, creative, and business
skills to achieve your personal and professional goals.
 Net Magazine
This is the world’s best-selling magazine for web designers and developers since 1994. You can
find out what’s new in the web industry and stay up to date!
Copyright © 2013 Team Mango Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.

11.  Open Learn
This website offers free online learning courses from The Open University. Open Learn gives you
free access to course materials and expert opinion on topical issues.

Skill Feed
Skill Feed offers professional training video tutorials on creative and technical skills. You can
explore their library of online classes to see what you can learn.
Copyright © 2013 Team Mango Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.

12.  W3 Schools
This great free website offers many types of coding tutorials and articles, like: HTML CSS
JavaScript jQuery AJAX XML ASP.NET SQL. You’ll surely improve your coding skills by
watching them!

Web Design Tuts+
Web Design Tuts+ is a community for web designers who want to learn design theory, typography,
workflow essentials, complete website design techniques and more.
Copyright © 2013 Team Mango Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.