Supercolortuts

Mobile Friendly Website and the Big Debate

Simmon Pierre — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:30:05 +0000

It is a common practice among designers to focus on designing and developing a desktop version of a website and putting their best foot forward while doing so, caring a little for its mobile version. They still treat mobile version of a website as something of a luxury that a website can enjoy only once the desktop version is up and running. Though responsive design is on the rage, most designers still start the day with the desktop version and when they are done with it, they start cutting down on the excess in an effort to create the mobile version. As obvious, these mobile sites are basically water-down version of the full size desktop website and therefore, these mobile websites fail to meet the expectation of the users.

However, for good or bad, things are changing. We are at the threshold of witnessing a rare trend where designers are starting with less and then enriching the experience, adding more elements and surprises as the design starts adopting bigger and more sophisticated devices. This idea may sound highly interesting and encouraging but this trend has its share of advantages and disadvantages. Wondering what are they. Well, here they go.

Don’t Call it a Trend Mate, You are disrespecting Mobile Web Design

People still tend to believe that mobile website design is a niche industry and therefore, it should not be treated at par with the regular things like developing a website for desktops that as they say have a universal appeal.

But wait. Mobile web is not the future and it is definitely not the new kid on the block. It is the present. Okay seems like you are in no mood to accept this. Then allow me explain you a few things.

- 25% of people in the United States along use their mobile to browse the web and they do not use any desktop devices for the same.

- Until now 10.9 billion times mobile apps have been downloaded and the number is on the rise.

- There are more than 1.3 billion mobile users and the figure is going to have a shot in the arm soon.

It appears that almost two third of the mobile phones that are being sold recently have the basic facilities to access the internet.

So that clearly means that a significant percentage of your targeted audience will browse mobile version of their website and chances are that they may never ever visit the desktop version of your website.

People are no longer tied to the desktop. They now virtually have the power of the web right in their hands in the form of Smartphone and the good thing about this Smartphone is that they can carry it anywhere they want. It is a global trend and there is not much you can do about it. All you have to do is to develop your skills so that you can face the challenges of coming decades.

Why you need to focus on Building Mobile Friendly Website First

Well, when we say that 25% of users use mobile devices to browse the web, we are invariably accepting the fact that there are as much as 75% of users left who trust their good old desktops to browse the web. So, that means, it makes perfect sense to have both the versions unless you do not mind losing out these precious 2/3 section of your targeted audience. So, putting the desktop version of the website to rest does not make any sense here.

Web designers are aware of this fact, but still they are rooting for ‘mobile first’ approach. Probably they have drawn inspiration from minimalist web design trend.

Mobile First or Mobile Friendly

Well, there is a huge difference between these two approaches ‘mobile first’ and ‘mobile friendly’. In ‘mobile friendly’ approach, fluffy designing elements are trimmed down and content is scaled down to a great extent to make it easier for the website to render precisely in small devices. So, you may agree or not, but you do make compromises on a wide range of factors while you try to design a mobile friendly site by taking out elements from the main desktop version.

But this is not the case with ‘Mobile First’ approach. Here designers start with designing mobile version first. This is a unique designing approach where the designer develops a website with bare essentials. A super simple yet sophisticated design tailored for mobile devices that do not have huge processing power and do not offer any kind of support to the plugins. The outcome would be impressive and cool. And as the demand arises, you would be adding more elements in it to make it appear more interesting, engaging and appealing. It will cater to those devices that have immense processing power and have fewer restrictions.

And the Big Downside

I know you feel energetic to follow the trend of Mobile First. But my friend, it is not that easy. There are some fundamental differences between the concept of ‘Mobile First’ and ‘mobile friendly’ or ‘responsive web design’. In minimalist approach, you would not necessarily have to constrain your creative impulse. What you rather have to do is to get rid of those elements that do not serve any useful purpose. And when you are designing something for all the available devices, you have got some cool tools to play with. In short, ‘responsive web design’ does not make your toolbox smaller, rather it makes it larger.

But this is not the case with ‘Mobile First’ approach. Here you get struck at the very first stage. You will be struggling with a smaller screen and a bunch of weird issues. You will have to concentrate on how users are going to use the touch screen and the template should have provisions for that like using bigger buttons, fewer use of text links and so on. You could be in this domain for a year or two but you will find it tough to be creative with when the resources are few and far between. If this is not enough, you will find the screen too small to make space for your creation. The problem does not stop here. When you will be asked to design a desktop version from that mobile website, you will again struggle to make the most of the bigger screen and fewer restrictions because you simply do not have the freedom to make deviation from the original mobile friendly version of the website.

Quick Tip – Apply Multiple Photoshop Styles on a Layer in Photoshop

Adrien de Broglio — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:15:26 +0000

In this Quick Tip, we’ll learn how to Apply Multiple Photoshop Styles on one Layer in Photoshop using a keyboard shortcut and a few Photoshop Styles.

I use a lot of layer styles in my projects and most of the time, save those layer styles as a Photoshop style to be able to use it later on other layers. Here’s how to apply a few of your favorites styles on one layer.

Step 1 – Convert Layer Styles into Layers

In this example, I want to apply 3 different Photoshop Styles I’ve created previously on a text layer to create a letter with stripes and a stroke.

To apply those 3 styles on this text layer, all you have to do is press the Shift key on your keyboard and click on the first style you want to apply, then still pressing the Shift key, click on the other Photoshop Styles you want to apply, each time you click on a style, it adds up.

That’s it for this Quick Tip, using it can be useful and time saving if you want to use a few of your favorite styles on one layer. Leave me a comment if you’ve got some requests for the next Quick Tip or need help with this Quick Tip.

Geometric Blurred Color Shapes Wallpaper

Adrien de Broglio — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:00:50 +0000

Here’s a new Wallpaper on Supercolortuts. I was playing around with shapes and colors in Illustrator and created those simple shapes / patterns then added a few blur effects in Photoshop. I thought it would look good on my desktop, so I created this wallpaper. This wallpaper is available with resolutions for Computers, iPad and iPhone.

Resolutions :

- 2880x1800px
- 2560x1440px
- 1920x1200px
- 1680x1050px
- 1440x900px
- 1280x1024px
- 1280x800px
- 1024x768px
- iPhone
- iPhone 5
- iPad

Swatches of the Week #20

Adrien de Broglio — Tue, 14 May 2013 09:30:21 +0000

For Designers or Graphic Enthusiasts colour is everywhere, we use colours every day in our creations. The combination of the colours on a project makes all the difference. Every week we share a combination of colours / swatches that blend well together. Feel free to download the Illustrator and Photoshop Swatches.

Download

Quick Tip – How to Change and Install Custom Splash Screens for the Adobe CS6 Softwares

Adrien de Broglio — Tue, 07 May 2013 10:30:08 +0000

In this new Quick Tip, learn how to Change and Install custom Splash Screens for the Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, InDesign, Fireworks and Flash CS6 Softwares.

Feel free to download the Adobe CS6 Custom Splash Screens Pack, with a flat style and cool colours.

IMPORTANT : Before changing and installing a custom Splash Screen, make sure to save a back up of the original files (original splash screen, .rsrc files).

Download

Adobe Photoshop CS6 Splash Screen

Mac OSX

The Photoshop CS6 Splash Screen is the more complicated Splash Screen from the Adobe suite to change, you’ll need to download a small software called ResKnife to modify the Adobe Photoshop CS6.rsrc file and change the Photoshop Splash Screen.

Start by downloading and installing ResKnife, you can download it with the Sources Files.

Step 1

Next make sure to make a Back Up of the Adobe Photoshop CS6.rsrc file, after that open it in ResKnife, this file is located here:
/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS6/Adobe Photoshop CS6.app/Contents/Resources/Adobe Photoshop CS6.rsrc

Step 2

The Splash Screen document is named SplashBackground.png (ID #414) or SplashExtendedBackground.png (ID #415) depending on the version of Photoshop you’re using.

Select the line that corresponds to your Photoshop version, (ID #414 for the basic version and ID #415 for the Extended version) and double click on it.

Step 3

A new dialog box will open, go to Edit – Select All (cmd+A) and press delete, this will erase the informations of the original Splash Screen image, keep this empty dialog box opened, we’ll need it after.

Step 4

Go to your custom Photoshop Splash Screen file, change the extension of this .png file to .rsrc, open this new .rsrc in ResKnife, double click on the first line, a new dialog box will open, go to Edit – Select All (cmd+A), then Edit – Copy (cmd+C).

Step 5

Now go back into the empty dialog box from the original Splash Screen File, go to Edit – Paste (cmd+V). Close this dialog box, make sure to click on “Keep” when closing this dialog box. To finish go to File – Save and open Photoshop to check out your new custom splash screen

Windows

Step 1 – Download ResEdit

Download and Install ResEdit, you can download it with the Sources Files.

Step 2 – PSArt.dll

Before launching or using ResEdit, make sure you make a back up of the original PSArt.dll file. You should find it in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6. We did that in case a problem occurs in the process. Make sure Photoshop is closed.

Step 3 – ResEdit

Open ResEdit and click on Open, a window should open, go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6 and select PSArt.dll.

Step 4 – Replacing File

Rename your custom Splash Screen file SPLASHARTBACKGROUND.png, copy this file. next go to C:\Program Files\TGTSoft\ResEdit\Temp and paste your file in this folder, click yes when it asks if you want to replace the existing file.

Step 5 – Saving

Step 1 – Save a Template Document

Create a new or open an existing document Illustrator that you want to use as a template then load all the presets you want to keep, change the settings and printing options that you want in this template.

Go to File – Save As Template and save the template where you want.

Step 2 – Create a New Document from a Template Document

When you’re creating a new document from a template it creates a new document with the template settings but leaves the original template file untouched.

Go to File – New From Template and select your template document, now you have a new document but with all your favorite settings.

This tip can be time saving if for example you’ve been working on a series of products with the same colour styles and effects. You can easily use a template with all the styles from this series to apply it on new products in the future. Leave us a comment if you’ve got some requests for the next Quick Tip.

Swatches of the Week #18

Adrien de Broglio — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:00:28 +0000

For Designers or Graphic Enthusiasts colour is everywhere, we use colours every day in our creations. The combination of the colours on a project makes all the difference. Every week we share a combination of colours / swatches that blend well together. Feel free to download the Illustrator and Photoshop Swatches.

Download

Quick Tip – Convert Layer Styles into Layers in Photoshop

Adrien de Broglio — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:05:18 +0000

In this Quick Tip, we’ll learn how to Convert Layer Styles into Layers in Photoshop to be able to edit and modify them easily.

Layer Styles are very useful in Photoshop, you can create awesome effects using them but you can’t edit them like other layers, you can just use the options available, here’s a way to convert those Layer Styles into Layers to be able to add Filters or any other tools on these Layer Styles individually.

Step 1 – Convert Layer Styles into Layers

Load any project you want to test this tip in Photoshop, I used a Geometric Print Project i’m working on.

I applied a few Layer Styles on those geometric shapes.

Now we have our Layer Styles let’s convert them into Layers, Right Click on the Layer Styles under your layer into the Layer Panel and select Create Layers.

This will create new Layers from your Layer Styles, a Clipping Mask was created automatically on those new layers, to undo it right click on the clipped layer and select Release Clipping Mask.

That’s it for this Quick Tip, using it can be useful if you want to modify and transform the Layer Styles in a project. Leave me a comment if you’ve got some requests for the next Quick Tip.