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Is it summer where you are? If so get down to the beach, pool or wherever you want to spend your days. Don’t read the following article. Should the weather not enable you to enjoy offline life stick with us and find inspiration in our latest list of 20+ fresh free WordPress themes, created during this summer. Seems there was quite a bit of rain worldwide. All these themes are free, though some have commercial variants available. We stated that where applicable. Enjoy! Proper Lite Creator: Modernthemes Features: Transitional header load, fully responsive, hover effects and translucid descriptions, bottom social icons, retractile right-side menu License: Free for personal or commercial use Planum Free Creator: DinevThemes Features: Full width posts tiles upfront layout, hover descriptions, Jetpack ready License: GPLv2 Cropobox Lite Creator: DinevThemes Features: Responsive, flat minimal design, infinite scroll, grid layout, rounded header image License: GPLv2 Virtue Creator: Kadence Themes Features: Showcase header, secondary product showcase, fully responsive, eCommerce support, latest posts mini grid layout License: Personal use Woodley Creator: wpmultiverse Features: Lightweight, two-column layout, quick setup, minimal style, blogging focused License: GPL Satellite Creator: Automattic Features: Left-side retractile menu and social icons bar, single-column posts layout upfront License: GPLv2 […]

Relaunching a large-scale website is always quite an undertaking, especially if the task involves a huge political entity with content accumulated over a dozen years. In this article, we look behind the scenes of the responsive redesign of Kremlin.ru, Russia’s most prominent government website.

We had an opportunity to talk with Artyom Geller, one of the creative minds responsible for the design and UX of the project. We talked about the design process, the challenges and constraints, creative front-end solutions, as well as unusual budgets and stakeholders. —Ed.

The post From Russia With Love: Behind The Responsive Redesign Of Kremlin.ru appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Each and every web designer out there is in search of inspiration now and then. Creativity does not run without fuel. Fortunately we don’t need to buy creative gas to fill up our tanks. Just floating around the web, looking at what others did can do wonders to your fuel gauge. Suddenly ideas start to bubble up and your creative motor gets running again. To help you spark that process we have collected a series of websites created in warm earth tones. Earth tones are shades of brown, green, blue and other natural colors. Take a walk in the forest and see them live 😉 Using these colors in a web design leads to a subtle, minimalistic, natural, organic look and feel. Enjoy our findings… 1. Groovemade 2. IMM 3. The Barstow 4. Wolf & Son 5. Wild Measure 6. Cantina Valpolicella Negrar 7. Hyperquake 8. Indigy 9. Tradestone Confections 10. Belle Epoque 11. Tilted Square 12. Andy Wolf Eyewear 13. Denise Chandler 14. Vers 15. Grand Hotel a Villa Feltrinelli 16. Brown’s Court Bakery 17. Knuckles Industries 18. The Boerum 19. Serge Thoraval 20. Electric Pulp 21. Lucas ‘NK’ Nikitczuk 22. La Grotte Chauvet Pont d Arc 23. Wootten 24. Petersham Nurseries 25. Dishoom Bombay Café 26. The First Time 27. Space Style Concept […]

It’s been three years since I last upgraded monitors. Those inexpensive Korean 27″ IPS panels, with a resolution of 2560×1440 – also known as 1440p – have served me well. You have no idea how many people I’ve witnessed being Wrong On The Internet on these babies.

I recently got the upgrade itch real bad:

• 4K monitors have stabilized as a category, from super bleeding edge “I’m probably going to regret buying this” early adopter stuff, and beginning to approach mainstream maturity.

• Windows 10, with its promise of better high DPI handling, was released. I know, I know, we’ve been promised reasonable DPI handling in Windows for the last five years, but hope springs eternal. This time will be different!™

• I needed a reason to buy a new high end video card, which I was also itching to upgrade, and simplify from a dual card config back to a (very powerful) single card config.

• I wanted to rid myself of the monitor power bricks and USB powered DVI to DisplayPort converters that those Korean monitors required. I covet simple, modern DisplayPort connectors. I was beginning to feel like a bad person because I had never even owned a display that had a DisplayPort connector. First world problems, man.

• 1440p at 27″ is decent, but it’s also … sort of an awkward no-man’s land. Nowhere near high enough resolution to be retina, but it is high enough that you probably want to scale things a bit. After living with this for a few years, I think it’s better to just suck it up and deal with giant pixels (34″ at 1440p, say), or go with something much more high resolution and trust that everyone is getting their collective act together by now on software support for high DPI.

Given my great experiences with modern high DPI smartphone and tablet displays (are there any other kind these days?), I want those same beautiful high resolution displays on my desktop, too. I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.

I was excited, then, to discover some strong recommendations for the Asus PB279Q.

The Asus PB279Q is a 27″ panel, same size as my previous cheap Korean IPS monitors, but it is more premium in every regard:

• 3840×2160
• “professional grade” color reproduction
• thinner bezel
• lighter weight
• semi-matte (not super glossy)
• integrated power (no external power brick)
• DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4 support built in

It is also a more premium monitor in price, at around $700, whereas I got my super-cheap no-frills Korean IPS 1440p monitors for roughly half that price. But when I say no-frills, I mean it – these Korean monitors didn’t even have on-screen controls!

4K is a surprisingly big bump in resolution over 1440p — we go from 3.7 to 8.3 megapixels.

But, is it … retina?

It depends how you define that term, and from what distance you’re viewing the screen. Per Is This Retina:

With proper computer desk ergonomics you should be sitting with the top of your monitor at eye level, at about an arm’s length in front of you. I just measured my arm and, fully extended, it’s about 26″. Sitting at my desk, I’m probably about that distance from my monitor or a bit closer, but certainly beyond the 21″ necessary to call this monitor ‘retina’ despite being 163 PPI. It definitely looks that way to my eye.

I have more words to write here, but let’s cut to the chase for the impatient and the TL;DR crowd. This 4K monitor is totally amazing and you should buy one. It feels exactly like going from the non-retina iPad 2 to the retina iPad 3 did, except on the desktop. It makes all the text on your screen look beautiful. There is almost no downside.

There are a few caveats, though:

• You will need a beefy video card to drive a 4K monitor. I personally went all out for the GeForce 980 Ti, because I might want to actually game at this native resolution, and the 980 Ti is the undisputed fastest single video card in the world at the moment. If you’re not a gamer, any midrange video card should do fine.

• Display scaling is definitely still a problem at times with a 4K monitor. You will run into apps that don’t respect DPI settings and end up magnifying-glass tiny. Scott Hanselman provided many examples in January 2014, and although stuff has improved since then with Windows 10, it’s far from perfect.

  Browsers scale great, and the OS does too, but if you use any desktop apps built by careless developers, you’ll run into this. The only good long term solution is to spread the gospel of 4K and shame them into submission with me. Preach it, brothers and sisters!

• Enable DisplayPort 1.2 in the monitor settings so you can turn on 60Hz. Trust me, you do not want to experience a 30Hz LCD display. It is unspeakably bad, enough to put one off computer screens forever. For people who tell you they can’t see the difference between 30fps and 60fps, just switch their monitors to 30hz and watch them squirm in pain.

  Viewing those comparison videos, I begin to understand why gamers want 90Hz, 120Hz or even 144Hz monitors. 60fps / 60 Hz should be the absolute minimum, no matter what resolution you’re running. Luckily DisplayPort 1.2 enables 60 Hz at 4K, but only just. You’ll need DisplayPort 1.3+ to do better than that.

• Disable the crappy built in monitor speakers. Headphones or bust, baby!

• Turn down the brightness from the standard factory default of retina scorching 100% to something saner like 50%. Why do manufacturers do this? Is it because they hate eyeballs? While you’re there, you might mess around with some basic display calibration, too.

This Asus PB279Q 4K monitor is the best thing I’ve upgraded on my computer in years. Well, actually, thing(s) I’ve upgraded, because I am not f**ing around over here.

I’m a long time proponent of the triple monitor lifestyle, and the only thing better than a 4K display is three 4K displays! That’s 11,520×2,160 pixels to you, or 6,480×3,840 if rotated.

(Good luck attempting to game on this configuration with all three monitors active, though. You’re gonna need it. Some newer games are too demanding to run on “High” settings on a single 4K monitor, even with the mighty Nvidia 980 Ti.)

I’ve also been experimenting with better LCD monitor arms that properly support my preferred triple monitor configurations. Here’s a picture from the back, where all the action is:

These are the Flo Monitor Supports, and they free up a ton of desk space in a triple monitor configuration while also looking quite snazzy. I’m fond of putting my keyboard just under the center monitor, which isn’t possible with any monitor stand.

With these Flo arms you can “scale up” your configuration from dual to triple or even quad (!) monitor later.

4K monitors are here, they’re not that expensive, the desktop operating systems and video hardware are in place to properly support them, and in the appropriate size (27″) we can finally have an amazing retina display experience at typical desktop viewing distances. Choose the Asus PB279Q 4K monitor, or whatever 4K monitor you prefer, but take the plunge.

In 2007, I asked Where Are The High Resolution Displays, and now, 8 years later, they’ve finally, finally arrived on my desktop. Praise the lord and pass the pixels!

Oh, and gird your loins for 8K one day. It, too, is coming.

CSS floats and clears define web layout today. Based on principles derived from centuries of print design, they’ve worked well enough — even if, strictly speaking, floats weren’t meant for that purpose. Neither were tables, but that didn’t stop us in the 1990s.

Nevertheless, the future of web layout is bright, thanks to flexbox. The CSS layout mechanism lets us arrange elements in a truly web-like way. Some elements can be fixed, while others scroll. The order in which they appear can be independent of the source order. And everything can fit a range of screen sizes, from widescreen TVs to smartphones — and even devices as yet unimagined. Browser support is fantastic (except you-know-who). Yep, it’s a great time to jump into flexbox if you haven’t done so yet.

The post Laying Out A Flexible Future For Web Design With Flexbox appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Web designers and developers have to keep themselves up to date and have their finger on the pulse of the time. You can do so by reading the best blogs about web design. I want to present some blogs to you today that were trendsetters in 2014 and before and will be in 2015. They provide the latest information on everything about design as well as tips, tricks, and the best tutorials. We focused on high content quality and attached great importance on usability to make it beneficial for novices as well as professionals. Since self-praise is no recommendation, we don’t mention Noupe in this list, but of course you should take it into account 😉 The Best Web Design Blogs in 2015 I focused on the most popular blogs, which have a high Alexa rank and thousands of followers in the social media. Naturally, I also considered how often content is updated. High-quality posts and variety were important factors to me. The more people can benefit from the content, the better. Today’s article lists only international blogs in English. 1. Smashing Magazine Alexa rank: 2,256 Social media: Twitter – 902,000 followers; Facebook – 246,000 likes Post frequency: 3-5 articles […]

Every year there are around 100 web conferences in the UK, and there are new ones emerging all the time. With a conference catering for every design and development niche, you are rarely more than an hour away from your nearest event.

If you’re interested in JavaScript, then Full Frontal is a must. If you like to geek out on typography, then you should hit up Ampersand. If you’re bored of the traditional format, then why not go camping in Wales or hack from a boat on the Thames?

The post Web Design Conferences Are Booming: But What’s Next? appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Should you be among those who’d like to get started with blogging, and really mean it, you’ll certainly be happy to get one tip or another first-hand from experts. Naturally, we know that, and so we have searched the web for interesting ebooks that cover blogging and content marketing. We have found a few good ones for you, which are the result of years of trial and error turned into experience. Take these first-hand tips and knowledge and avoid the mistakes that others have already made for you. The following mix of ebooks focuses on the most important aspects of blogging and content marketing. You can find pure blogging ebooks, books on advice, those which have to do with earning money as a blogger as well as those on the organization of a blog and much more. The vast majority of ebooks is entirely free, a few require your email address to subscribe to a newsletter in return. Where you have to give your email address or register in any way is noted. Our Point 8 offers 15 books, that’s how I got 23 ebooks in total with ten sub-points. 1. How to Start a Blog How to Start a […]

How’d you like to convert your photos into crisp, unique 3D versions of themselves with just a few simple clicks? It’s certainly possible, thanks to the amazing Photoshop Extension ALCE. Advanced Local Contrast Enhancer sports an easy interface that lets you adjust the radius of your image without hurting the image quality in crucial areas such as shadows and highlights. Loaded with case studies and tutorials, you won’t be at a loss at all for learning how to quickly master this amazing tool. And it is exactly this top-notch Photoshop extension that can be snatched in our Deal of the Week. Sure, you could achieve all the effects with Photoshop alone but with ALCE you’ll have an optimization expert at your side, performing the necessary steps for you. And even as an expert you’d probably not be as fast to perform as ALCE does. Highlights: This incredible Photoshop Extension easily adds a crisp, unique 3D style to your images. Using a simplistic interface, there’s no need to work with multiple options on your photo as you tweak just one simple parameter: the Radius. Thanks to ALCE’s algorithm, you’ll get contrast boosting, while still protecting your image quality from clipping important tonal […]

The web is slow, yet there are a few simple strategies to make websites faster. One of them is inlining critical CSS into the of your pages, yet how exactly do you do it if your site contains hundreds of pages, or even worse, hundreds of different templates? You can’t do it manually. Dean Hume explains an easy way to get it done. If you’re a seasoned web developer, you might find the article obvious and self-explanatory, but it’s a good piece to show to your clients and junior developers for sure. — Ed.

Delivering a fast, smooth web experience is an important part of building websites today. Most of the time, we develop websites without understanding what the browser is actually doing under the hood. How exactly does the browser render our web pages from the HTML, CSS and JavaScript that we create? How can we use this knowledge to speed up the rendering of our web pages?

The post Understanding Critical CSS appeared first on Smashing Magazine.