AddyOsmani.com | Where User Interface Ideas Grows

In today’s post, I thought it might be nice to hand-pick some of my favourite sites for design inspiration. Many of these sites take web design to the next-level featuring unique graphics concepts, excellent typography and a clean layout that’s memorable. Learning from other designers is an excellent way for you to charge up your creative batteries and I hope this post gives you a few ideas to help with your own projects!

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I’ve been using jQuery in my web apps for over three years now and a lot of the time – I use it in projects for my clients too. It’s an incredibly versatile way of using JavaScript and today I thought I’d share some tips that helped me do things a little better.

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Hey guys. Today I thought I’d share a recommended list of the best jQuery Plugins that I’ve found useful over the past year.  Some of them you may already be aware of whilst others could be a helpful surprise!. See below for the complete list.

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1. Tweet about things you’re passionate about in life and use #hash tags to tag them. Content that’s high in quality and very easy to find is a sure fire way to get more people following what you have to say. You can include as many #hash tags as you like (eg. Chuck Norris is allowed to talk about #FightClub – btw, that was an awesome #movie)
2. Explain to your followers what it means to “ReTweet” and try encouraging them to retweet your tweets and links often. The benefits of ReTweeting are that it pushes your username into lots of different tweet streams meaning you get more clicks coming straight back to your profile. You can track your ReTweets with a service like retweetist and your links with TweetMeme.
3. Make sure you’ve got a complete biography filled out. Some of the people that come to your profile won’t know who you are and if you can tell a little about yourself in just a few lines, it’ll encourage them to add you.
4. Share links to your Twitter account as often as possible – I personally have a link to my Twitter on my Google profile, all of my blogs, my Facebook Fan page, LinkedIn, my email signature and everywhere else that I’ve got some sort of online presence. The more opportunities to give people to add you, the greater chance you have of brining more followers in.
5. Use TwitterCounter.com to get statistics on how many people have been following you and how many you can expect to add you over the next few days. It’s a great resource and so is Qwitter – which informs you as soon as someone has unfollowed you. If you’ve recently started talking about a particular topic these tools can give you an ideal about how popular that are.
6. Reply to your followers – they’re interested in what you have to say. If your followers want to get involved in the discussion, encourage it by talking back to them. This will get you brownie points with potential new followers who want to also get in on the conversation and you could find them adding you.
7. Don’t be shy to get involved in Trending Topics (through #hash tags). Lots of users keep an eye on the tweets that mention them and it’s a great opportunity to reach out to Tweeters who discuss a variety of topics you’re into. Sure you can sometimes run into obscure topics, but at other times there are also some pretty interesting ones to go for.
8. Bring your account into the Real World – If you’ve got a business card, an article, a letterhead or any other type of print medium going out to people, make sure you mention your Twitter account in there. If you’re at a talk, presenting at a conference or even just going to a business meeting, you can always find a way to get more followers just by mentioning the address to your profile.
9. Get your friends to recommend you and take part in Follow Friday – Follow Friday (much like Music Monday) has become a tradition on Twitter and it’s a great opportunity for you to give a nod to tweeters you’d like to recommend. The best part of this is that in a lot of cases, they’ll recommend you back just for mentioning them!
10. Treat your Twitter Profile like you would any other website or blog – The main source of traffic to most of my blogs is in fact..Twitter.  Every time I make a new blog post, I post a Bitly link in a tweet and tell people why they should check it out. There’s a huge amount of wealth you can gain by treating twitter like you would your own website and it deserves to have attention paid to the amount of traffic it gets. If you’re used to using AdWords for your site..why not point a few keywords or Ads toward your Twitter account too? It wouldn’t help to have a few more people add you, would it?

Hi guys. I’m making some more of my custom components available for download today. The Apple iTunes CoverFlow effect is one the nicest forms of visualizing albums and images that I’ve seen over the past few years and I’ve always wondered..could the effect be done using JavaScript and no Flash whatsoever?. The answer is yes and I’d like to share with you my new Pure JavaScript CoverFlow component (which doesn’t rely on jQuery, YUI or any other frameworks to work! .  Click here to read more »

When you think about animation on the internet, chances are some of the first tools that come to mind are Flash, Microsoft’s Silverlight and maybe even Animated GIFs. It has only been in the past couple of years that JavaScript and the frameworks built around it have really matured into languages that neatly support basic animation primes like chained time delays, basic motion and simple special effects – so it’s never been a better time to start experimenting with what they can do!.

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