Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free ResourcesDesignbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources

Gorgeous Examples of Parallax Scrolling in Web Navigation

Simon — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:38:39 +0000

For many years, web designers were encouraged to compress information and keep important page elements “above the fold”. However, the emergence of smartphones and tablets has led designers to rethink the way we build webpages. Interestingly, this has led to the re-emergence of an old navigational technique – vertical scrolling – though this time with a new twist. Vertically scrolling was a staple of web “navigation” in the mid-late 1990s, but this was more due to the lack of sophistication in the new field of web design, rather than as a carefully considered design element.

Over the last year, parallax scrolling has been a hot emerging trend in web design. Because it lets page elements scroll at different speeds, the result is an illusion of depth that makes the vertical scrolling experience both stimulating and practical for presenting information. While parallax scrolling isn’t suitable for every site, it’s a technique that can be used to encourage user interaction and exploration. Additionally, the vertical scrolling layout appeals to the user on a 32 inch flat screen monitor just as well as the user on their 320 pixel wide mobile phone.

Here are some examples of how parallax scrolling can be used for effective web navigation:

Bagigia

The Bagigia website shows how Parallax Scrolling can be used not only for effective navigation and encouraging user interaction, but it also demonstrates just how effective it can be for showcasing a physical product. As the user scrolls down, they’re continuously presented with new angles of the Bagigia product and information about product features. As the user continues to scroll, they’re given close-ups of the product, as well as additional detail about the history and design of the product. It allows the user to quickly become intimately familiar the product in a way that pictures or even video simply cannot accomplish.

On a broader level, the Bagigia website is a great example of how parallax scrolling can be used effectively to encourage user engagement – because every scroll produces a new angle and new information, the user is compelled to continue scrolling.
Visit Bagigia

ActivateDrinks

The Activate Drinks website is a great example of how parallax scrolling can be used to create a rich, interactive brand message. Parallax scrolling is not only used here as an effective way to present information, but the colorful bubbles and falling drink bottles also create a level of richness that accentuates the product’s branding.
Visit ActivateDrinks

NewZealand

The NewZealand.com website showcases how parallax scrolling can be especially effective when presenting the user with rich, panoramic photos. As the user scrolls through the site, they not only access new information about things to do and information about booking a trip to New Zealand, but they enjoy rich, full screen photos as well which showcase the many wonders that New Zealand has to offer.
Visit NewZeland

Tokiolab

The Tokiolab website shows how effective parallax can be, even without the use of rich graphics or photos. Using only beautiful typography, tokiolab presents their brand message in a creative, engaging fashion. Parallax scrolling is used here to effectively turn the navigation experience into a slideshow.
Visit Tokiolab

Nike Air Jordan

Parallax scrolling isn’t just a practical way to encourage user interaction or a unique way to present information – it can also be just plain fun, and the Air Jordan 2012 page is a great example of this. This page is also a really great illustration of how parallax’s ability to permit individual elements to scroll at different rates creates a feeling of depth and richness.
Visit Nike Air Jordan

Implementing Parallax Scrolling

While Parallax Scrolling opens up a world of new possibilities for a designer, like all techniques, it can easily be misused. When implemented effectively, parallax scrolling can produce a rich, engaging experience for the user. However, when poorly implemented, parallax scrolling can result in a confusing, unnavigable site. Here are some best practices to keep in mind when implementing parallax scrolling into your design:

Maintain continuity – have a continuous theme running through the layout to tie the design together and visually nudge the visitor along.

Present information in segments – while parallax scrolling encourages the user to continuously scroll, you still want your information presented in slide segments. This makes the information easy to digest, and also prevents overwhelming your visitor.

Be interactive – visitors need a reason to scroll, so make sure to give it to them.

Include call to actions – while the scrolling encourages user interaction, you’ll ultimately want this interaction to lead somewhere productive. Well-implemented parallax scrolling naturally funnels the visitor towards the bottom of a page, so it’s a good idea to take advantage of this phenomenon to encourage the visitor to take further action, whether that’s to buy, sign up to an email list, or simply hit “Like”.

The post Gorgeous Examples of Parallax Scrolling in Web Navigation appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

20 Sets Of Free High Resolution Sunburst Brushes For Photoshop

Designbeep Staff — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:59:39 +0000

Photoshop is the leading and amazing designing software for all web designers,graphic designers and of course for photographers.Whether you create a web design or a digital art,Photoshop offers very useful and effective tools to make the design process simpler.
The toolbox of Photoshop is really huge.And one of the most essential tool in this toolbox is the brush tool.Brush tool is the core component of Photoshop and it helps you create or add very realistic effects with only a few clicks.If you use the right brush for your design,you can totally change the overall look of your design or photo and make it appealing.
Today,many websites offer free Photoshop brushes and every week we bring together specific brushes for you.

In today’s post we have gathered free sunburst brushes for Photoshop users.Having a huge brush library is really essential for designers so why not check out the below high resolution sunburst brushes.Feel free to download and use.Please check license agreements for commercial use.

You may also take a look at our past brush collections;

Sunburst Brushes 2.0

A solid with a feathered edge sunburst brush collection.
Brush Source

Rising Sun Brushes

The set incldes 18 rising brushes for free.
Brush Source

Curled Sun Stripes Brushes

This set consists of totally 20 sun strpe brushes.
Brush Source

Sunburst Brushes

You can find 24 sunburst brushes.File size is 9.2 MB
Brush Source

SunBursts

The set includes solid bursts which fade out in the edges with 23 brushes.
Brush Source

Vector Line Brushes

The set consists of 16 sunburst style brushes.
Brush Source

Sun Vector Brush

There are 12 sun vector brushes in this set.
Brush Source

High Resolution Sunburst Brushes

These sunburst brushes are 2000px by 2000px.You can find 10 high resolution brushes in the set.
Brush Source

Sunburst Brushes

The set includes 20 free sunbrust brushes for personal use only.Made with Photoshop CS4.
Brush Source

Sunburst Pop Set

A set of sunburst brushes to create beatiful backgrounds.
Brush Source

Funky Sunburst

The set incldes 11 sunburst brushes.
Brush Source

Sunray Brushes

There are 9 sunray brushes and the sizes are from 600px to 1200px
Brush Source

Sunburst Brush

A circular sunburst brush set.
Brush Source

Rising Sun Brushes

The set includes 9 brushes for Photoshop 7 and above.
Brush Source

Vector Beams Brush

2 vector beam brushes in size of 1600px 1200px
Brush Source

Angle Wheels

The set incldes 11 brushes inspired by Japan’s Rising Sun flag.
Brush Source

Rising Sun Brushes

2500px 2500 px rising sun brush.
Brush Source

Rising Sun Brush

This set contains 28 high resolution of 1280×1024 brushes
Brush Source

Bonus:33 Sunburst Photoshop Shapes

33 vector sunburst brushes in set, CSH file.
Brush Source

The post 20 Sets Of Free High Resolution Sunburst Brushes For Photoshop appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

Why is WordPress Development Popular Amongst Small Businesses?

Brijesh Patel — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:37:54 +0000

There is a reason why WordPress is such a popular publishing platform and CMS. The reason is simple; it’s really very very good. The fact that this very simple looking and easy to use platform has been a popular choice for so many years means it must be doing something right. WordPress development is commonly used by many businesses irrespective of their size. Small, medium and enterprise level business are using WordPress for their online presence, as it offers them a tremendous range of benefits. In this article, we will take a look at the various benefits that WordPress brings to the table and which make this a popular choice for small businesses.

Money Well Spent

WordPress web development is a popular choice for small businesses because it’s a cost effective way of getting their online presence up and running. The fact that WordPress is open source means you don’t have to buy the right to use this platform. What’s more, its popularity has led to the emergence of many firms offering WordPress development services, and there is tremendous competition between all of them. One of the many ways that they try to differentiate themselves from their competition is by offering really affordable service. The fact that the cost of developing a website with WordPress is considerably lower as compared to websites developed on other platforms makes this a really good bargain for small businesses.

Quick Development

Small businesses don’t like to and cannot afford to wait around endlessly for their websites to be delivered. They want a quick turnaround time that allows them to start getting the returns on their investment quickly. This is something that is possible if they pick WordPress web development. Most developers who are experienced in the use of WordPress have the ability to identify the right theme and all the necessary plugins that meet the client requirements perfectly. This allows them to build a WordPress website in double quick time, which means the website can be deployed quickly and can start achieving its objectives speedily as well.

SEO Friendliness

Small businesses typically pin all their marketing hopes on search engines from where they hope to attract organic traffic to their sites. This is only possible if the website is SEO friendly and that’s where WordPress scores over many of its competitors. It offers website developers the opportunity to choose from a range of SEO plugins, which when integrated with the website, make it SEO friendly. Today, there is a need for webmasters to ensure quality SEO, which passes Google’s Panda and Penguin scrutiny. WordPress is one of the few open source platforms that ensure a website is built keeping the very best SEO web practices in mind.

Availability of Diverse Themes

A great website is a result of choosing the right kind of themes that perfectly suit the needs and requirements of the businesses who own the website. This is yet another area where WordPress scores over other platforms and why it’s such a big hit amongst small businesses. The fact that they have the option of choosing from the numerous WordPress themes means they can pick something that best suits their objectives. This leads to the creation of a successful online presence. If the businesses do not get a readymade theme that confirms to their website’s purpose, they can even take the help of WordPress theme development services offered by various companies to create a custom WordPress theme developed as per their requirements. Again, this is something that is not expensive, if you are to compare the cost of creating custom WordPress themes to custom themes on some other platforms. So all in all it becomes a win-win situation for small businesses.

Easy to Use

If you take a look at WordPress from the admin perspective, you will find this is a platform that simplifies website management like no other platform. Making changes to the website content like modification, update etc. is a relatively simple exercise and one doesn’t need any technical knowledge to accomplish this quickly and efficiently. As a website owner, you also get access to plenty of other WordPress features that you can use to administer your website in a way that will help your business interest’s best.

Good Security

A small business might use its website as a one-stop-resource for its target audience to get access to its products and services. In such cases, it might ask its potential customers to share some sensitive information on the website. For this reason, it will need its website to be secure against unauthorized third party access. WordPress offers plenty of plugins of diverse nature that help improve the security of the website and protect its data from unauthorized access. Small businesses can ensure the highest levels of security standards for their sites, thus ensuring that their WordPress site data is protected at all times.

End Words

If you are a small business, you will be looking for a cost effective website that still meets the industry benchmarks of functionality. This is only possible if you pick WordPress development. With the use of this platform you will get the benefit of an affordable online presence that also has tremendous functional efficiency.
But, for the website to ensure that it brings to the small business all the benefits of WordPress, it is essential that it is developed by people who have a tremendous practical knowledge of WordPress and how it’s potential can be leveraged to the maximum. You will need to pick the right company offering WordPress development services, and who has a successful track record in this regard. You must ensure your project is handled by somebody who has tremendous WordPress expertise and experience. If you pick the wrong company with very little experience in WordPress, chances are that your website will be very ordinary, delivering very little or no value to your business growth.
Let’s end this article by saying WordPress is one of the best open source platforms out there and businesses especially with smaller footprints will benefit a great deal if they pick this platform for their online presence.

The post Why is WordPress Development Popular Amongst Small Businesses? appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

Weekly Fresh Resources for Designers and Developers [May 20th,2013]

Designbeep Staff — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:25:14 +0000

We follow many designers and developers and of course websites that share or release resources to help design community.We write down them all every day and at the beginning of each week we bring them together and share with you.Most of the tools,plugins,freebies etc. are mostly latest releases or the ones you might not have seen yet.We hope you find them useful for your existing or upcoming design projects.

Note:If you think you have something useful for design community feel free to contact us;maybe we can share with our readers next week.

- You can also take a look at our past weekly fresh resources.

jQuery Cool Grid

jQuery Cool Grid is a plugin to calculate the height of items and show as a list.
Source

gpImageRotate

gpImageRotate is a jQuery plugin to create image galleries,portfolio websites and carousels.
Source

jQuery Stage

This is a jQuery plugin to detect information about the stage.
Source

jQuery Freezeheader

Freezeheader is a lightweight jQuery plugin for freezing header row in HTML table
Source

Sco.js

Sco.js is inspired by Twitter Bootstrap js components. Sco.js plugins can be used as replacement for the bootstrap js.Sco.js uses much less HTML markup than bootstrap and provides sane and intuitive defaults for its options so that you can get started in no time.
Source

Yuma

Source

Albert Typeface

Source

Origram

Source

Graham Hand

Source

Viro Media Bundle

Source

Brand Identity Mock-up Template

Source

17+ Elegant Ribbons

Source

Badge Templates

Source

Vintage Retro Labels

Source

Flat Radial Graph

Source

EasyPortfolio – Free PSD HTML5 and CSS3 flat portfolio

Source

Stitches

Source

Branding / Identity Mock-Up

Source

Flat Icons

Source

Flat Icons

Source

Big Flat Icons

Source

Flatilicious – 48 Free Flat Icons

Source

The post Weekly Fresh Resources for Designers and Developers [May 20th,2013] appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

21 Effective Time Tracking Tools For Freelancers

Designbeep Staff — Sat, 18 May 2013 11:49:07 +0000

In today’s post we have gathered time tracking tools for freelancers.You know,being a freelancer may seem an agreeable job for almost everyone but you also have to be serious in your career like others.Working as a freelancer for many clients isn’t something easy.In fact it can be frustrating.Whether you are a content writer or a web designer or a developer you may get dozens of work for you.So sometimes tracking your time or managing your bills manually do not often go so well.That’s why time tracking tools have been created for freelancers.With timetracking tools,you can easily monitor your time and work without any management problems with your clients.Moreover,time tracking tools can be used not only when your are in front of your computer but also with your iPad,mobile phone etc.

Here are 21 time tracking tools for freelancers.What is your favorite tool?

You may also take a look at these useful tools;

OfficeTime

OfficeTime automatically detect how long you’ve been idle and subtract it or assign it to a different project and track visual history or your days in your favorite iCal calendar. OfficeTime features one click Quick Reporting to instantly see where your time has gone.
OfficeTime

Cube

Cube Time & Expense Tracker manages your Projects, Tasks and Clients and is fully integrated with Google’s services, making your time and expense reporting easy, simple and fast.
Cube

Clockodo

With clockodo you can instantly track working times categorized by customers, projects, and occupations.
The times are recorded online on the web, by using the desktop software, or if you are out and about, a smartphone. You can use clockodo on your own, in a small team, or with any number of employees, without the need for expensive hardware or time-consuming software installations.
Clockodo

Klok

With Klok you can avoid the unnecessary step of keeping track yourself. Simple start working on an item by dropping on the “Drop here to work on” area at the top of the screen (or right click a project or task and choose “Work on”). When you start working on something else the timer on the previous task will automatically stop and a new one will start. The time spent on the task will be added to your week view and show up when you view the dashboard or timesheet. You can also stop a timer manually using the stop button at the top of the screen.
Klok

Paymo

Once you sign up for a free or a premium Paymo account, your company information will be accessible via your own company Paymo URL (web address). During the sign-up process, you will be asked to choose a name for your URL.Paymo supports users all over the world. Because of this, the system allows for each account to work in multiple languages and currencies. You can even create invoices with different currencies in the same account!
Paymo

Chrometa

Chrometa captures every minute of your time as you work on your PC and/or Mac.It acts as your personal timekeeper by recording how long you are working in an application, specifically noting what file or email you are working on, creating a time entry for you.
Chrometa

Talygen

Talygen is a professional services automation (PSA) tool used to manage projects, customers, sales, time tracking and billing.Talygen is a hosted solution, software as a service (SaaS), Cloud computing or software on-demand, where the software and data are maintained in a secure, remote server and available through a computer’s web browser from anywhere at anytime.
Talygen

Harvest

Time tracking is simple and lightning fast with Harvest. Set up takes seconds, and there’s nothing to install.
Harvest

Toggl

Toggl lives on the desktop just like any other app. Control tracking from the tray icon in Windows, or check status from the dock on a Mac.Whether 3-, 10-, or 15 inch, Toggl adapts perfectly to any screen size.
Toggl

TSheets

TSheets is another great timetracking tool for freelancers. Every TSheets subscription comes with added-value features that help integrate our time tracking system into the daily life of any business, including API developer control, invoicing options, and more.
TSheets

Deskaway

DeskAway is a smart web-based project collaboration software that provides teams a central place to organize, manage & track work.It is 100% Web-based.
Deskaway

Grindstone

Grindstone comes with tools for setting warnings and reminders, calculating charges and rates, displaying custom timers, and creating reports that show your work from a high level or down to the smallest detail. It even has a tool for finding and reclaiming gaps in your time keeping after the fact.
Grindstone

Yast

I think one of the best.It has many many features so just check this link for a complete tour.
Yast

Easy Time Tracking

Easy Time Tracking provides you with an easy and flexible way to keep your time logs updated. On the Time Logs History tab you can sort or filter records by virtually any field. Statistics help you see billable or non-billable time totals for any project, task or client. Each time entry is either billable or not.
Easy Time Tracking

Worksnaps

With Worksnaps Standard, you get everything you need to track time and work activities for your users, create reports and charts, generate simple invoices and connect with multiple third-party services. You get pretty much everything on the feature list.
Worksnaps

Flapps

Flapps is another web-based online software for businesses that need to track time and project expenses and to manage their employees time off.Flapps is simple and quick to use, yet well structured to give you meaningful reports on many aspect of your business.
Flapps

Subernova

Subernova provides a project management tool, an invoicing app and a time tracker that works seamlessly together.Subernova lets you track time, send invoices and estimates, collaborate with others and keeps your business smooth by keeping tabs on late payments, deadlines and more.
Subernova

Daylite

Daylite is a business productivity management software; and Billings, a professional time billing and invoicing application – both catered to single users and small businesses alike.
Daylite

Dovico

Dovico Software provides proven time and cost saving solutions that have been embraced by thousands of the world’s best known companies such as Wawanesa Insurance, National Geographic, McAfee Inc. and Microsoft.
Dovico

actiTIME

actiTIME is a web timesheet software. It allows you to enter time spent on different work assignments, register time offs and sick leaves, and then create detailed reports covering almost any management or accounting needs.
actiTIME is a web-based application that means you will access it via web browser. The application itself can be installed in your office or hosted at our secure data center and provided to you as a service.
actiTIME

The post 21 Effective Time Tracking Tools For Freelancers appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

30 Awesome and Well Thought Crown Logo Designs

Designbeep Staff — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:26:27 +0000

Logo is the vital element for companies and it is in the first place for creating identity or for instant recognition.An effective and well-designed logo can easily attract your customers.For years,many famous companies have been recognized by their logos like Apple,Pepsi,Nike,AT&T,Adidas and so on.

You always have to remember that your company logo will be used everywhere;business cards,your website,banners and of course on your products.So an eye-catching but simle and clever logo design can directly affect your success in business world.

Anyway,today we again have another great logo collection.This week’s logo inspiration comes from crown.Here is the collection of 30 crown logo for your inspiration.

You may also take a look at our past logo colections;