But how do you choose the right words? And how do you know if they work? With this practical book, you'll learn how to write strategically for UX, using tools to build foundational pieces for UI text and UX voice strategy.UX content strategist Torrey Podmajersky provides strategies for converting, engaging, supporting, and re-attracting users. You'll use frameworks and patterns for content, methods to measure the content's effectiveness, and processes to create the collaboration necessary for success. You'll also structure your voice throughout so that the brand is easily recognizable to its audience.Learn how UX content works with the software development lifecycleUse a framework to align the UX content with product principlesExplore content-first design to root UX text in conversationLearn how UX text patterns work with different voicesProduce text that's purposeful, concise, conversational, and clear

    This new revised edition confirms Web Style Guide as the go-to authority in a rapidly changing market. As web designers move from building sites from scratch to using content management and aggregation tools, the book’s focus shifts away from code samples and toward best practices, especially those involving mobile experience, social media, and accessibility. An ideal reference for web site designers in corporations, government, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions, the book explains established design principles and covers all aspects of web design—from planning to production to maintenance. The guide also shows how these principles apply in web design projects whose primary concerns are information design, interface design, and efficient search and navigation.

    In this completely updated edition of our best-selling guide to HTML, authors Elizabeth Castro and Bruce Hyslop use crystal-clear instructions and friendly prose to introduce you to all of today's HTML5 and CSS essentials. You'll learn how to design, structure, and format your website. You'll learn about the new elements and form input types in HTML5. You'll create and use images, links, styles, lists, tables, frames, and forms; and you'll add video, audio, and other multimedia to your site. You'll learn how to add visual effects with CSS3. You'll understand web standards and learn from code examples that reflect today's best practices. Finally, you will test and debug your site, and publish it to the web. Throughout the book, the authors will cover all of HTML and offer extensive coverage of HTML5 and CSS techniques.

    This hands-on book takes proficient JavaScript developers through all the steps necessary to create state-of-the-art applications, including structure, templating, frameworks, communicating with the server, and many other issues.Throughout the book, you'll work with real-world example applications to help you grasp the concepts involved. Learn how to create JavaScript applications that offer a more responsive and improved experience.Use the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, and learn how to manage dependencies inside your applicationGet an introduction to templating and data bindingLearn about loading remote data, Ajax, and cross-domain requestsCreate realtime applications with WebSockets and Node.jsAccept dropped files and upload data with progress indicatorsUse major frameworks and libraries, including jQuery, Spine, and BackboneWrite tests and use the console to debug your applicationsGet deployment best practices, such as caching and minification

    Author Steve Souders, in his job as Chief Performance Yahoo!, collected these best practices while optimizing some of the most-visited pages on the Web. Even sites that had already been highly optimized, such as Yahoo! Search and the Yahoo! Front Page, were able to benefit from these surprisingly simple performance guidelines.The rules in High Performance Web Sites explain how you can optimize the performance of the Ajax, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images that you've already built into your site -- adjustments that are critical for any rich web application. Other sources of information pay a lot of attention to tuning web servers, databases, and hardware, but the bulk of display time is taken up on the browser side and by the communication between server and browser. High Performance Web Sites covers every aspect of that process.Each performance rule is supported by specific examples, and code snippets are available on the book's companion web site. The rules include how to: Make Fewer HTTP RequestsUse a Content Delivery NetworkAdd an Expires HeaderGzip ComponentsPut Stylesheets at the TopPut Scripts at the BottomAvoid CSS ExpressionsMake JavaScript and CSS ExternalReduce DNS LookupsMinify JavaScriptAvoid RedirectsRemove Duplicates ScriptsConfigure ETagsMake Ajax CacheableIf you're building pages for high traffic destinations and want to optimize the experience of users visiting your site, this book is indispensable.If everyone would implement just 20% of Steve's guidelines, the Web would be adramatically better place. Between this book and Steve's YSlow extension, there's reallyno excuse for having a sluggish web site anymore.-Joe Hewitt, Developer of Firebug debugger and Mozilla's DOM InspectorSteve Souders has done a fantastic job of distilling a massive, semi-arcane art down to a set of concise, actionable, pragmatic engineering steps that will change the world of web performance.-Eric Lawrence, Developer of the Fiddler Web Debugger, Microsoft Corporation

    But how did they decide on what was good for the rest of us? What did they get right and where have they let us down? And what can we learn from the way these experts think that can help us in how we make decisions in our own lives?In How Design Makes The World, bestselling author and designer Scott Berkun takes readers on a journey exploring how designers of all kinds, from software engineers, to urban planners, have succeeded and failed us. By examining daily experiences like going to work, shopping for food, or even just using social media on their phones, readers will learn to see the world in a new and powerful way. They'll ask better questions of the things they buy, use, and make, and discover how easy it is to use ideas from great designers to improve their everyday lives.

    It features a novel way of teaching interactive designers how to create and improve their designs to incorporate the highest degree of fun. As the book shows, designing for fun is all about making interactive products like games highly entertaining, engaging, and addictive. The book's unique approach of providing a highly visual storyboard approach combined with a narrative on the art and practice of designing for fun is sure to be a hit with game and interactive designers.At first glance A Theory of Fun for Game Design is a book that will truly inspire and challenge game designers to think in new ways; however, its universal message will influence designers from all walks of life. This book captures the real essence of what drives us to seek out products and experiences that are truly fun and entertaining. The author masterfully presents his engaging theory by showing readers how many designs are lacking because they are predictable and not engaging enough. He then explains how great designers use different types of elements in new ways to make designs more fun and compelling. Anyone who is interested in design will enjoy how the book works on two levels--as a quick inspiration guide to game design, or as an informative discussion that details the insightful thinking from a great mind in the game industry.

    Designers are no different, but there are not many resources available that concentrate on these necessary soft-skills. This book provides practical and actionable insights to help your team give and receive constructive criticism. For managers, this book discusses proven tools to set a foundation for your team to stay focused on overall goals, and how to handle negative critiques. As an added bonus, the book also includes a Critique Cheat Sheet so you can quickly reference strategies and tools from top industry experts.

    Now that we live among digital, always-networked products, apps, and places, context is more complicated than ever—starting with "where" and "who" we are.This practical, insightful book provides a powerful toolset to help information architects, UX professionals, and web and app designers understand and solve the many challenges of contextual ambiguity in the products and services they create. You’ll discover not only how to design for a given context, but also how design participates in making context.Learn how people perceive context when touching and navigating digital environmentsSee how labels, relationships, and rules work as building blocks for contextFind out how to make better sense of cross-channel, multi-device products or servicesDiscover how language creates infrastructure in organizations, software, and the Internet of ThingsLearn models for figuring out the contextual angles of any user experience

    This easy-to-follow guide is illustrated with lots of examples, and leads readers through the process of creating great websites from start to finish using HTML5 and CSS3.It also features details on all the new HTML5 and CSS3 elements and features information on the current level of browser support advice for creating great experiences for all users thanks to progressive enhancement.

    JavaScript Allongé is for:-- Programmers learning JavaScript who want a thorough grounding in its fundamentals rather than a cursory treatment of its syntax.-- Programmers already using JavaScript who want to go back and take a deep dive into programming with functions and combinators.-- Any programmer curious about programming with functions.JavaScript Allongé's primary focus is functions as first-class values and topics built on those fundamentals such as objects, prototypes, "classes," combinators, method decorators, and fluent APIs.

    Build hands-on expertise through a series of lessons, exercises, and suggested practices—and help maximize your performance on the job.Provides in-depth, hands-on training you take at your own pace Focuses on job-role-specific expertise for using HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3 to begin building modern web and Windows 8 apps Features pragmatic lessons, exercises, and practices Creates a foundation of skills which, along with on-the-job experience, can be measured by Microsoft Certification exams such as 70-480 Coverage includes: creating HTML5 documents; implementing styles with CSS3; JavaScript in depth; using Microsoft developer tools; AJAX; multimedia support; drawing with Canvas and SVG; drag and drop functionality; location-aware apps; web storage; offline apps; writing your first simple Windows 8 apps; and other key topics

    The goal of the book is to share the techniques of the best companies. This book is aimed primarily at Product Managers working on technology-powered products. That includes the hundreds of "tech companies" like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and the like, as well as the thousands of companies moving to leverage technology (financial companies, media companies, retailers, manufacturers, nearly every industry). Inspired covers companies from early stage start-ups to large, established companies. The products might be consumer products or devices, business services for small businesses to enterprises, internal tools, and developer platforms.Inspired is secondarily aimed at the designers, engineers, user researchers and data scientists that work closely with the product managers on product teams at these same companies.

    Thankfully we now have the place to go.Jon Hicks' 'The Icon Handbook' will become the go-to book for the modern designer; for uncovering the thought processes, the skills and the reference for designing your own icons.This book is aimed at designers who already have basic vector and bitmap drawing skills. It could be that you want to create a simple, unique favicon, or perhaps you've been asked to work on a mobile app that requires them. It starts at the basics and takes you right the way through to being able to create stunning iconography.

    Significant numbers of poorly designed programs have been created by less-experienced developers, resulting in applications that are inefficient and hard to maintain and extend. Increasingly, software system professionals are discovering just how difficult it is to work with these inherited, non-optimal applications. For several years, expert-level object programmers have employed a growing collection of techniques to improve the structural integrity and performance of such existing software programs. Referred to as refactoring, these practices have remained in the domain of experts because no attempt has been made to transcribe the lore into a form that all developers could use... until now. In Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Software, renowned object technology mentor Martin Fowler breaks new ground, demystifying these master practices and demonstrating how software practitioners can realize the significant benefits of this new process.