Designworks Blog Marketing, design, branding and web.

14Sep/09

5 of Our Favorite Website UI Plug-Ins

We’ve compiled a list of our favorite 5 most commonly used website user interface plug-ins.  These plug-ins offer easy solutions to enable more user-friendly functionality on your website.

jQuery Accordion

The jQuery Accordion is a great way to organize content on a webpage; especially if you have a lot of content that needs to fit within a limited space.  Once you’ve installed the jQuery Javascript library, setting up the accordion is a breeze.

jQuery Accordion

jQuery Accordion

View more at: http://jqueryui.com/demos/accordion/

jQuery Tabs

jQuery Tabs are another space-saving UI component built upon the jQuery library. As with the jQuery Accordions, you can use your own CSS to customize the tabs.

jQuery Tabs

jQuery Tabs

View the demos at: http://jqueryui.com/demos/tabs/

Lightwindow

Lightwindow from www.stickmanlabs.com is an extremely versatile modal window plug-in.  In addition to standard modal window features such as galleries and custom HTML, Lightwindow allows you to directly load a Flash SWF overlay on top of your current page.  This saves a lot of coding time because you don’t need to write all the object/embed code and you don’t need to create an extra HTML page to in order to contain the SWF. Lightwindow is also a great way to add content to a page when the content is too big to fit within your page template.

See more at: http://www.stickmanlabs.com/lightwindow/

Galleria

Galleria is a jQuery-based Javascript gallery that makes it easy to add an image gallery to your website. It provides a number of customization options and there is a lightweight (minified) version in order to keep page load times to a minimum.

Galleria - Javascript Image Gallery

Galleria - Javascript Image Gallery

Check it out at: http://devkick.com/lab/galleria/

AddThis

AddThis is an extremely easy way to add social bookmarking capabilities to your website.  Simply go to the AddThis website, choose the button you want to use and output the code.  Once you copy the code into your website you’re in business.

AddThis Social Bookmarking Plug-in

AddThis Social Bookmarking Plug-in

Get started with AddThis at: http://www.addthis.com

Filed under: Web Design 1 Comment
1Sep/09

Social Media…More Intuition and Less Analysis

"… we should all use more intuition and less analysis to trade successfully through this period; thinking from the outside in; being absolutely clear what the value proposition is in the eyes of the customer/consumer, and adapting our business to fit." Economic Update August 2009, Roger Martin-Fagg.

"To use more intuition and less analysis" is a dangerous proposition to be posted in my first blog. At Designworks, we advise our clients to install analytical tools on their website so data can be gathered consistently and analyzed for further customization of its marketing communications programs.

However, as I observed the phenomena of the social media explosion and been amazed by its fluidity, I realized that I have been too fixated on being analytical and that my intuition has been put to the side. With social media, it is a good thing for information and opinions to be put out by individuals without extensive iteration and deliberation of results/consequence.

As an old school designer and marketer, I believed design is a discipline. No creative goes out to clients without internal reviews. Letting our staff express their ideas on the Designworks blog is a big step for me as a principal. But my intuition tells me our collective thoughts will reflect our brand with broader authenticity.

Embrace the online reality. Speak your mind and let the crowd make its own choice.

Filed under: Social media No Comments

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