10 front-end techniques to improve your site usability
Usability is a very important part of website building. Sadly, this is often neglected by designers and developers. In this article, you’ll find 10 great techniques that you should definitely implement into your website.
YouTube-like adaptable view using jQuery and CSS
Youtube have several very cool functions for users, and that one which allow you to switch from normal view to wide view is definitely a must. In this detailed titorial, Janko will show you how to implement a similar functionnality in your website.
Turn forms into a powerful wizards using jQuery
Forms are extremely important on the internet, because it is the way visitors can interact with the site owner. But forms are also, most of the time, very boring for visitors.
Using this nice tutorial written by Janko, you’ll learn how to turn a boring a long form into an user-friendly wizard.
Add Icons to External Links with Mootools and CSS
A trend going on around on websites are putting icons on links that point to web pages externally. A very simple tip to implement, but a real usability enhancement for your visitors.
Flexible Client Side Table Sorting With jQuery
Last week I shown you how to create advanced HTML tables using PHP and MooTools. This tutorial, which uses jQuery, will show you how to easily create sortable HTML tables.
Learn how to AJAXify Comment Forms
I have never been a fan of video tutorials, but I’m very happy to cam across this one some time ago. In this screencast, Jeffrey Way from Nettuts will show you how to "Ajaxify" your blog comments form. Recommended to any WordPress blogger!
Create astonishing iCal-like calendars using jQuery
Do you, like many other people, love Apple’s cool and functionnal design? If you answered "yes" to the previous question, there’s no doubt that you will enjoy this tutorial about creating an "iCal-like" calendar for your website.
Nicer dates/times with the CuteTime jQuery Plugin
Don’t you really like the "posted X minutes ago" date formats as seen on Twitter? Although I’d rather use some server-side scripting to format the dates, this jQuery plugn is pretty cool and extremely easy to implement on your website.
Build a Simple Password Strength Checker
Despite all hacking attempts and well known security problems, most random internet users are still using passwords as such as secret or admin. So, what about helping your users by telling them if their password is strong enought?
Favorite Rating with jQuery and Ajax.
A very cool way to interact with your visitors is to implement this "I love this" code, which make your visitors able to let you know that they liked a post of your blog with a single click.
Advanced CSS Printing — Using CSS Page Breaks
Although printing webpages is bad for the environment, many internet users have the nasty habbit to print pages to read them later. Also, sometimes, printing a page is very useful, for example you may want to print your invoice after ordering a product online.
Printing is often neglected by designers and developers, and this is a bad thing. Using CSS you can definitely make your website printer-friendly. Just read this excellent tutorial from David Walsh to find out.