There are three different scenarios for UI multiplatform adaptation: retaining brand consistency; aligning with the conventions specific to the platform; and seeking a balance between the two. We decided to analyze these three approaches by looking at the most popular apps out there so that you get some insight into what method might work best for you. When we design apps, we should always remember that we do it for real people to use on real devices in the real world. In fact, it’s not a brand, or a platform, or even your creativity that’s important. The only thing that matters is users.
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We embarked on a special creativity mission seven years ago: to provide you with inspiring and unique desktop wallpapers every month. This post features their artwork for September 2015, and we are very thankful to all artists and designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing to this mission, who challenge their artistic abilities each month anew to keep the steady stream of wallpapers flowing. This post features their artwork for September 2015. Both versions with and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your desktop!
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Welcome back to the Web Development Reading List (WDRL) for this week! Our dear friend Anselm Hannemann is keeping track of everything in the web development reading list so you don’t have to. The reaction on the first post last week was quite overwhelming. Instead of the previously announced biweekly schedule here on Smashing Magazine, Anselm will post it in sync with the original WDRL; so, expect content to appear weekly here from now on.
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Alex Komarov wanted to make dealing with time zone differences less painful. So he started playing around with an iWatch app idea. Yeah, you read that right — 2014 and iWatch, before a watch had ever been announced. When you are trying to bring something new to life, there are risks and uncertainties associated with it. It’s a part of the game. Alex was aware of these risks and decided to take a shot anyway. He doesn’t regret it. History shows that Apple products become more open over time.
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So far, most of the responsive design thinking has revolved around covering the range of experiences from mobile to desktop. Yet little attention has been paid to the opportunities for expanding that range beyond the standard desktop screen, to create an experience optimized for modern large-scale displays. In this article, Christian Holst will explore how e-commerce designers could use responsive upscaling to craft a tailored experience for users with big screens. He’ll cover one core principle, along with 11 ideas for upscaling different parts of the e-commerce experience to deal with the various usability challenges observed during our e-commerce usability studies.
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Looking for a starting point for designing emails? Not sure which font size to use? In this article, Anna Yeaman explores how email designers handle responsive typography within various industries, so she amassed 50 emails across various industries that she thinks do a good job with typography to see if any patterns emerged. This study provides a decent starting point for designing emails. The proportional relationships, the guideline to build out a custom responsive type scale that adjusts across viewports and some basic guidelines such as fluid line heights have proven the most useful.
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Our dear friend Anselm Hannemann is keeping track of everything that’s happening in the industry so you don’t have to. Starting from today, we are happy and honored to feature a bi-monthly web development reading list here on Smashing Magazine. Now it should be a bit easier to stay up to date! Welcome to the one hundredth edition and the first one to appear on Smashing Magazine. Anselm is very happy to keep you up to date with the web development industry. If you have any feedback, please let us know in the comments or write him an email.
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Competition in the App Store is fierce, and if an indie app developer wants to get noticed, having an amazing product is no longer enough. As the number of mobile users grows, new apps pop up daily. To make yours a success, be strategic about how you design the “shop window” for your app — the app’s page. A/B testing and optimization of the icon, screenshots and video preview will give you a better chance of higher conversions, a higher volume of organic downloads and a better return on your investment in user acquisition.
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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. Yep, it’s a great time to jump into flexbox if you haven’t done so yet. But flexbox has a dizzying array of features, and in this article, Ben Gremillion will take a look at how you could create a basic Gmail-like, flexbox-based interface. If you haven’t explored or fully understood flexbox yet, this piece will revisit and explain a few things that might be confusing at first.
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There are around 100 web conferences in the UK every year. The picture across the rest of Europe looks just as abundant, with at least half a dozen conferences in every major city from Berlin to Barcelona. At the same time, smaller towns like Malmö, Faenza and Freiburg have become surprise hubs. Today’s conferences have moved away from the simple dissemination of information to become experiences in their own right. Often the people and location have become more important than the talks themselves. As such, the choices seem endless and picking the right conference can be a challenge — but it hasn’t always been that way.
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