You might find your friend count decreasing sometime in Facebook, not by a large number though. The people who unfriends you might have gone unnoticed obviously because you dont explore each of your friends updates everyday you log in to facebook. There is a simple way to know who have unfriended you (if someone really has) that works fine with firefox, chrome, opera, safari and internet explorer.

FIREFOX USERS

1. You just have to install an addon called “greasemonkey” dowload it from here.

2. Then go here and simply click the install button. Thats all.

CHROME USERS

1. Go here and click the install button. Thats it.

Like the technique? Comment your thoughts below.

Incoming search terms:

• friend count on facebook (1)

jQuery Cheat Sheet

jQuery has made web designer achieve very easily which they would have to burn mid night oil to do otherwise. It has made web designers develop and design website that creates value to its customer and increase the performance of the website. Here is a cheat sheet which further makes the learner grab the jQuery hows and whys very easily and quickly.

1. Google loves video so start posting videos. YouTube, Vimeo and Ustream are some sites to consider. If you are self hosting or third party hosting videos I would suggest copying them over to one of the main video sites to gain traction. And if you want to make Google really happy, YouTube keeps it in the family.

2. Google loves real time. Are you tweeting yet? This is the best tool to keep a steady stream of real time activity. Start thinking about keywords, topics, article sources to share and start tweeting today. Know that Google pays attention to your credibility and that is measured by RT (retweets) and conversations with other Tweeters indicated by @name. So Tweet in earnest not in vain (promo only).

3. Google loves places. Get a Google places account. They love coupons so they can add value to their searchers. And Tags – yes Google will let you set yourself apart on the map if you pay to Tag – that runs about $25/month.

4. Google likes you to play with their toys. Try using Google Docs it is actually pretty handy for file sharing or getting your info on the go. Google calendar might be a solution or even a cool application on your website.

5. Google likes it when you tend to your website so be sure to install Google analytics and have a webmaster account that you actually look in on from time to time.

6. Google loves to read your mail so make sure you have a Gmail account. I use mine as a receptacle for the dozens of newsletters and blogs I subscribe to.

7. Google loves their maps. Please make sure you have one for your location on your website.

8. Google loves bloggers. Since they have a vested interest in blogspot you might want to consider using blogspot. I am a believer that a blog belongs on your website and so I might give this one up.

9. Google loves fresh content. That is where a blog on your site is helpful. Other ideas are changing up a section on your home page with news about your company or in your industry, getting some PDF files and other shareable downloadable content – Google likes it when you play nice and make things available to their searchers.

10. Google loves fast loading websites so go back and clean up your code, ditch the flash, cut down the amount and size of your photos and check out anything that might be slowing your load times down.

11. Google loves tags. They really like it when you make their job easy so double back and look at your code. Hopefully you are using CSS by now and so make sure your H1 tags are keywords; have a keyword rich and well-written meta description.

12. Google likes real word page names. That means if you have dynamic pages that generate a lot of phooey like ##&^236.html well that doesn’t help Google at all. Make sure page names are words, particularly keywords and oh don’t have all the words run together or use underscores to separate the words, Google is fond of hyphens. Your page name should look like page-name.htm and not page_name.htm or page%$###.htm.

13. Google likes links. Lots and lots of links. But they must be good links and they must be text base links. Reputable directories are a good start. Getting other relevant sites to use your keywords and link to your site is worth a pot of gold or maybe two pots if it is a well established website.

14. Google loves well trafficked sites. Get visitors coming and keep them there because Google pays attention to how long their searchers actually stay on your site and how many pages they explore.

15. Google loves commitments. If you have a domain name expiring soon go ahead and renew for generations to come. Ok, well at least for a couple of years.

16. Google likes deep thinkers and many pages. I realize that the more pages you have the more money you might have to spend and certainly more time thinking about what you are going to put on those pages but think hard. Come up with a site plan that makes sense and gives your visitors information in a logical arrangement.

17. Google likes directions. Give your visitors an HTML site map and make sure you submit an XML site map directly to Google.

18. Google likes breadcrumbs. These are the little text navigations at the top of a page that indicate where you are on the site in the scheme of things. It might look something like: home > food > meat > organic. Your web programmer can set that up for you if you don’t know how to program.

19. Google really likes alt tags. They still can’t read photos so remember to give your images alt tags and use keywords. Rather than using a generic word like image.jpg try using a keyword for instance organic-meat.jpg. Yes the hyphens work well here as well.

20. Google likes to know you are real – install hcards or at least make sure you have address and phone numbers visible on your site.

The point is that search engine optimization is undergoing radical changes and shifts and I have no idea where PPC is going to wind up in the scheme of things – neither do the experts at this point, they are all in wait and see mode from what I can tell. So follow these basic rules:

Infographic via: Wordstream

Whether you’re in the process of building a new website or redesigning an existing site, it’s vital to build it with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind.

The king of search engines, as everyone knows, is Google, making up over 65.3% of all search traffic (in October 2011).

Google’s goal is simple: to give their users the most relevant, high-quality search engine results as accurately and quickly as possible. So in early-2011 Google introduced an update to their search engine algorithm, dubbed Panda, as part of the company’s continual pursuit of that goal.

For those of you who are unaware, the Google Panda update reportedly affected the rankings of almost 12% of all search results — more than any other update before.

Since then, Google has rolled out several other updates to Panda, dramatically changing how thousands of websites are ranked.

Those that were considered to be high-quality sites saw their rankings improve, while those of supposed low-quality essentially vanished from ranking at the top.

So now, the obvious question is this: How can we make websites that are seen as high-quality in the eyes of Google Panda?

Design for Engagement and User Experience

To put it simply, Googlebot is starting to view websites more and more like humans. Thus the design of a site is going to start playing a much larger role in how it’s ranked more than ever before.

The Panda update is looking closer at several metrics to see how engaging and user-friendly a web page is. Some metrics that help quantify engagement and user experience quality are:

• Amount of time spent on the website
• Bounce rate
• Number of web pages per visit
• Page response times
• Conversion rates

These metrics give you a clue as to how good a website is in keeping visitors engaged. For example, a website with a high number of web pages per visit could mean that the visitor thinks the website is interesting and engaging.

Well-designed sites are typically more visually pleasing, easier to understand and often fare well in the metrics mentioned above than those with poor designs.

Thus, your goal is to craft a website with a great user experience that captivates your audience. In addition, make sure that the website is optimized for speed, as this also affects the user experience and the site’s usability. Remember that usability and SEO go hand in hand.

Spelling and Grammar are Important

This might sound obvious but you will be very surprised at how many websites suffer from poor spelling and/or grammar. Google does evaluate content quality of websites. In fact, Matt Cutts, a highly-regarded individual in the SEO community and member of the Search Quality group at Google, addressed this in a YouTube video.

Cutts said, “We noticed a while ago that, if you look at the PageRank of a page — how reputable we think a particular page or site is — the ability to spell correlates relatively well with that. So, the reputable sites tend to spell better and the sites that are lower PageRank, or very low PageRank, tend not to spell as well.”

Focus on Content Quality

Google likes content. This is not a newfound idea, but it is one that is often neglected. You have to be dedicated to developing high-quality, original content.

Try to become an authority in your industry by writing content that visitors would want to bookmark, share or recommend.

Google specifically states what they look for in a high-quality site by providing youquestions to ask yourself. Here are just a few questions they suggest you ask when you produce content:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?

As you can see, a large emphasis in quality is being placed on the creation of content. This must be at the forefront of any design or website management duties.

Avoid Too Many Ads

Again, this goes back to designing with humans in mind. Having too many advertisements can make Google think the site exists just to serve ads rather than provide authoritative information.

Avoid Duplicate Content

Avoid having the same content being displayed on any pages. Each web page should have their own unique content specifically tied to what that page is about.

A web page should also have its own unique meta description and meta title attributes. For more information on this topic, read 5 Common SEO Mistakes with Web Page Titles.

Less is More

Over time, if a website is not regularly tended to, it can begin to have hundreds of pages that, many times, even the website manager is unaware of.

Google states that having a lot of poor quality pages on your site can bring down your rankings, even if you have plenty of high quality pages.

In these cases, it is best to consolidate to create a cleaner experience for the end user.

Ensure High-Quality Code

It is important to run your website through code quality assurance processes. Good markup hints that the quality of the website is also good. At the simplest level, you can just use the W3C Markup Validation Service to ensure your HTML complies with W3C standards.

Conclusion

As the Web continues to evolve and become more humanized, it’s imperative that you take these tips into account when dealing with your current or new website. Search engine algorithms will only become better with their ability to distinguish what makes the end user happy. And if they are happy, you will be happy too!

Source : sixrevisions

The use of CMS (Content Management System) has increased rapidly in the recent years. People no longer prefer coding and designing websites from scratch. Though there are professionals, designers or website/software developments firms or even freelancers who tend to go right through the basics of creating PSD files from one side and starting backend programming simultaneously, the market of CMSs has made the web design and development very swift and inexpensive.

Having seen and experienced the flexbility and ease the CMSs like Drupal and WordPress provides, I believe if someone gets into the habit of using these, he/she will definitely find a hard time getting out of it and the  best part of these content management systems is even average internet users who have very little technical knowledge can have the ability to run and manage websites using it.

Because of this CMS revolution, a major segment of the web development industry — dedicated to developing simple to complex CMSs for a broad set of users and premium themes for popular publishing platforms — has blossomed.There are quite a few benefits to developing a site powered by a CMS. Chief among them is that the website owner is able to add and manage their website’s content, thus keeping visitors interested and search engines tuned in. And for the web professional, he has much less responsibility in maintaining the website.

But is empowering the business owner with a CMS always the way to go?Sometimes leaving tasks such as website maintenance and system upgrades to a professional leads to better results for the owner.

To explore the question of whether or not we should always deploy content management systems for our clients, let us first go through some types of clients who would not fully benefit from them.

Owners Who Don’t Want to Be Empowered

When I entered the Web industry, I assumed that every business owner would absolutely want a CMS to manage their content. But then I had a string of clients who made it clear that they wanted absolutely no involvement in technical matters or that they would just rather a professional maintain their website after launch. This is when I decided to cater my services to this category of clients.

Some clients simply don’t want to be empowered for various reasons; whether it’s because they’re not the best of friends with technology or they just don’t want to add to their existing workload and responsibilities.

By hiring a professional, clients that fall in this category feel more confident in the changes being made to their website and they have one less thing to worry about.

Many of my clients have told me that it’s like hiring an accountant to manage their finances or a secretary to manage the office; the work is done more efficiently, and the owner has more time to focus on their field of expertise.

Owners of Websites with a Shelf Life

Some websites have an expiration date. These usually support an event, such as a conference, a cultural event or a promotion of a special deal on a product. The website promotes the event ahead of time, stays up during the event and a little while afterwards.

Owners Who Rely on a Web Professional’s Expertise

We have all come across websites maintained by people who don’t follow any design or usability principles. And preventing a hapless owner from ruining their own website is difficult, which is why we so often see links in multiple colors, excessive use of bold and underlined text, mixed font families, body text the size of headings, images squeezed in here and there, navigation menus that pop out of their containers — the list goes on.

The truth is, when we let non-technical website owners maintain their own Web property, we can’t expect them to adhere to the rules of aesthetics and usability, simply because it’s not their job to know these rules.

The moment the owner takes over their CMS, we should expect that the beautiful and functional website we so painstakingly created will start to look a tiny bit (or a whole lot) less perfect. This isn’t a big problem for every website, but some websites rely a lot on detail and uniformity of content.

Poorly styled text, for example, might not look so bad on a teacher’s blog where visitors mostly seek specific information, but it can be a disaster on the website for a new fashion line where users want to get a feel for the company before browsing the collection.

Owners Who Don’t Want to Be Empowered

When I entered the Web industry, I assumed that every business owner would absolutely want a CMS to manage their content. But then I had a string of clients who made it clear that they wanted absolutely no involvement in technical matters or that they would just rather a professional maintain their website after launch. This is when I decided to cater my services to this category of clients.

Some clients simply don’t want to be empowered for various reasons; whether it’s because they’re not the best of friends with technology or they just don’t want to add to their existing workload and responsibilities.

By hiring a professional, clients that fall in this category feel more confident in the changes being made to their website and they have one less thing to worry about.

Many of my clients have told me that it’s like hiring an accountant to manage their finances or a secretary to manage the office; the work is done more efficiently, and the owner has more time to focus on their field of expertise.

Owners of Websites with a Shelf Life

Some websites have an expiration date. These usually support an event, such as a conference, a cultural event or a promotion of a special deal on a product. The website promotes the event ahead of time, stays up during the event and a little while afterwards.

The single-page promotional site for a 2009 event, HDLive 9 (hdlive09.co.uk) would not fully benefit from a CMS.

Projects like these require heavy maintenance for a short period of time (several months to a year), and doing it efficiently is critical. The event’s organizers will be preoccupied with planning the event and reaching out to participants through newsletters, media, the website, email, etc.

Hiring a web professional, then, is much easier, if not essential. Empowering such a client with a CMS would do them little good.

Owners Who Rely on a Web Professional’s Expertise

We have all come across websites maintained by people who don’t follow any design or usability principles. And preventing a hapless owner from ruining their own website is difficult, which is why we so often see links in multiple colors, excessive use of bold and underlined text, mixed font families, body text the size of headings, images squeezed in here and there, navigation menus that pop out of their containers — the list goes on.

The truth is, when we let non-technical website owners maintain their own Web property, we can’t expect them to adhere to the rules of aesthetics and usability, simply because it’s not their job to know these rules.

The moment the owner takes over their CMS, we should expect that the beautiful and functional website we so painstakingly created will start to look a tiny bit (or a whole lot) less perfect. This isn’t a big problem for every website, but some websites rely a lot on detail and uniformity of content.

Poorly styled text, for example, might not look so bad on a teacher’s blog where visitors mostly seek specific information, but it can be a disaster on the website for a new fashion line where users want to get a feel for the company before browsing the collection.

Empowering owners of websites that fall into the latter category is questionable.

By the way, some Web professionals worry that a deterioration of their work will reflect poorly on them when potential clients visit their portfolio. The potential client might be impressed with a screenshot in the designer’s portfolio, but then be surprised when they click through to the actual website. For this reason, mention whether you or the owner is currently maintaining a particular website, so that potential clients are not caught off guard.

Website Maintenance as a Service

Now that we’ve gone over some examples of business owners that wouldn’t benefit from a CMS-driven website, let’s now talk about what we can do to fulfill their needs.

For site owners that don’t need a CMS but would still like to have a site that’s taken cared of, we can offer them website maintenance as a service.

The following are some benefits that come with offering website maintenance as a service.

Extra Income

Maintenance is a paid task, and you can increase your income a little or a lot, depending on:

• The difficulty of tasks that are requested
• The frequency of updates
• The number of websites you’re maintaining

Keeps Existing Clients Close

Providing website maintenance as a service strengthens your relationships with clients. Not only will you be at the top of their mind by providing long-term quality service, but you’ll also get to follow their business as it evolves. This will make you a prime candidate when they have a new project.

Promoting your services also becomes easier, e.g., when creating a mobile version of the website, or redesigning for a small discount.

Easier Upgrades

As with every technology, websites get rusty over time. A client might want to add features down the line. Adding code and updating site features will be easier if the code and product are your own. If the client has meddled with it, upgrading could entail a lot more work.

Before You Offer Website Maintenance as a Service…

The main disadvantage of maintaining websites is that it can really fill up your schedule. In case you decide to add this to your roster of services, be clear about the following.

What You’re Charging

I suggest that you offer maintenance only to customers who have been pleasant to collaborate with and who don’t give you trouble with payments. You can charge by the hour or by the amount of work done.

Overcharging can scare clients out of requesting changes, so be careful with your pricing. A website maintenance plan is a sensible approach. For example, a customer could prepay for a three-hour maintenance plan, which could be spread out over several updates during the year, equaling three hours of work for you. Or it could be a casual maintenance plan; for example, one new page of text and five new photos per month.

Here’s an idea: You can bundle these website maintenance plans as part of a new project.

What the Deliverables and Terms of Services Are

Draw a line between maintenance and redesign. Be clear on the definition of website maintenance. You could allow for minor new features, such as new icons or a fancier photo-gallery script or a new color for links. But draw the line when a request looks like a big change. You wouldn’t want to end up doing a redesign by making hundreds of gradual little changes.

Expected Delivery Time

Website maintenance work should be scheduled so that you don’t fall behind on other commitments. Ask clients to inform you of requests ahead of time (for example, an email one week in advance).

Also, give yourself enough time to fill the request so that it doesn’t interfere with other projects. My current arrangement with clients is to fill casual requests within five working days and to perform urgent updates within 24 hours. This can vary according to your own capabilities and priorities.

To Empower or Not to Empower?

The answer to that question depends on the type of client and website you’re dealing with. Empowering the owner to maintain their website is great as long as it’s worth the cost of implementing the CMS, and as long as they feel comfortable doing it.

Present the client with both options, and explain the reasons for opting for one choice over the other. Some websites absolutely need to be maintained by the owner, while others are best left to professionals. Some websites can go either way, in which case the client’s preference could be the deciding factor.

Last but not least, if you’re not willing to maintain websites yourself or are not willing to let clients do it, let potential clients know this in advance. And don’t recommend one approach over the other merely because you don’t want to offer both solutions. You shouldn’t feel inadequate for preferring one method to the other. Rather, try to excel in the services you offer, focus on your target market, and keep your clients and the Web happy!

Source : Six Revisions

Google Android news and discussion forums for the Android platform. Talk Android brings you the latest Android news, developer updates and more.

2.http://developer.android.com

The Google Dev Guide provides a practical introduction to developing applications for Android and documentation about major platform features. It explores the concepts behind Android, the framework for constructing an application, and the tools for developing, testing, and publishing software for the platform.

3. http://mobile.tutsplus.com

Mobiletuts+ is all about quality tutorials for mobile developers. In addition to publishing top quality tutorials, articles, and quick tips the site is publishing interviews with successful mobile developers to provide you with the most effective real-world development techniques and strategies.

4.http://androidwizard.net

Android Wizard searches the depths of the internet for the very best Android tutorials. Knowledge should be free and easily accessible to all those that seek it.

5. http://www.helloandroid.com

Android OS news, downloads, tutorials

6.http://androidforums.com

One of the biggest forums for Android developers.

7. http://www.droideo.com

Welcome to Droideo.com – The home of Google Android videos, sign up now and join our community. You can browse the most popular videos from a wide range of Android devices and make friends with fellow Android fans.

8.  http://www.androidguys.com

The site shares the latest news, rumors, and opinions, inviting the tech community to take part.

9. http://www.androidcentral.com/

One of the top destinations for the latest Google Android news, rumors, and information on the mobile platform.

10. http://www.androidtapp.com

Android Tapp is the best resource for Android App Reviews, Android Apps, Android News, Android App Recommendations, and Interviews with mobile app developers. A try before you buy or download unbiased Android Apps review service.

11. AppGuide by PCWorld

Android app reviews from editors of PCWorld—and you!

12. http://androinica.com

An Android blog to help users get the most out of their Android phone. Covering Android app reviews, news, phones, tutorials, and tips to master your Android device.

13. http://www.androiddevelopmenttalk.com

Android Development Talk is a blog where we talk about the latest android mobile news , apps , developer tools , and everything else about the android platform.

I have been using wordpress for the last 4 years and there were hundreds of plugins that claims to be the best in what it says. As far as I am concerned, I have a collection of these important wordpress plugins that is worth having in your site.

1. SEO Ultimate
A SEO plugin with tons of great features, such as: Title Tag Rewriter, Meta Description Editor, Meta Keywords Editor, Meta Robot Tags Editor, Canonicalizer, 404 Monitor, Linkbox Inserter, File Editor, Slug Optimizer, Competition Researcher, More Link Customizer, Internal Relevance Researcher, Rich Snippet Creator, Sharing Facilitator, and much more.

2. Secure WordPress
Secure WordPress beefs up the security of your WordPress installation by removing error information on login pages, adds index.html to plugin directories, hides the WordPress version and much more.

3. Google XML Sitemaps
Generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog.

4. Social Network Sharer
Make it easy for your visitors to share the content when they enjoy it.

5. Contact Form 7
Completely configurable and easy to set up, you can make any amount of forms you wish and send it to multiple users as well.

6. WordPress Database Backups
What person wants to wake up one day and find that their server crashed and took all of your site content with it? WordPress Database Backups is a must–have plugin. You can use it download copies of your database manually, or set it to automatically email you a copy at whatever interval you’d like.

7. WP Super Cache
This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

8. Yet Another Related Posts Plug-in
The Plug-in gives the reader a list of posts and/or pages relevant to the current entry thus introducing him/her to other relevant content on the site.

1. Use a Web Development Framework

I used to refuse frameworks for web development because they can be bloated with excess stuff. But ever since I’ve adopted one, I’ve loved it.

Good web development frameworks:

• Have features that provide solutions to common web development problems (e.g. standard web page layouts, functions for dealing with web forms, and browser compatibility fixes).
• Are tested by many other web developers for bugs, security and performance.
• Make code reuse easier because of a consistent API.
• Have community-developed extensions and tools that further enhance development (for example, jQuery has plenty of plugins that deal with things likeUI, images and web typography).
• Often force you to follow coding best practices and great programming design patterns without even thinking about it.
• Have a development community of supporters and users you can reach out to for help and collaboration.
• Typically are easier for beginners to start using.

All these benefits save you time and improve the quality of your deliverables.

There are many types of web development frameworks you can adopt.

• There are full web application frameworks like Ruby on Rails or CakePHP.
• You can use a JavaScript framework like jQuery, MooTools and many other lesser-known but excellent JavaScript frameworks to deal with UI, client-side logic and Ajax.
• If you want to speed up designing the presentational/visual layer, you can use aCSS framework (I’m using Toast and I highly recommend it) or just a web page layout framework like the 960 Grid System.
• There are specialized frameworks, such as WordPress theme frameworks that speed up production and deployment of content management systems.
• More recently, we now have frameworks for mobile web apps.

An often-cited downside to using web development frameworks is that they will invariably come with extra things that you won’t use. This extra stuff can slow down website speed and performance due to code bloat, so you have to make sure that the benefits of using them outweigh the potential performance hit.

More often than not — and this applies especially to those just starting out — the code of frameworks are written using the best coding practices and design patterns and are reviewed by many brilliant and passionate developers, which often translates to better, faster and more secure code compared to what an average web developer can produce by himself.

2. Create a Library of Code Snippets

There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. Recycle your code! Create a collection of your favorite and often-used snippets and make sure that it’s easily searchable and well organized.

At the simplest level, you can have a folder/directory of source code and text files in your hard drive. However, this may not be the most efficient technique.

A step up to that is using a source code editor or IDE that allows you to save snippets. For example, Notepad++ has a plugin called SnippetPlus and Dreamweaver has the built-in Snippets Panel that even has prepackaged code snippets ready to use.

Adobe Dreamweaver’s Snippets Panel.

Another solution is to use a dedicated snippet tool like Snippet or Snipplr.

Here’s an idea: You can even use a private code repository/version control system like Git for finer control over your source code. This additionally allows you to revert to older versions of your snippets and see how they’ve evolved over your career.

My collection of code snippets spans several different languages and is employed all the time for repetitive tasks like inserting new CSS3 rules with browser prefixes. It’s also handy for oft-used functions that are easily forgotten, like how to display Custom Fields in a WordPress loop.

When choosing a tool or method for collecting snippets, consider making sure that it has these time-saving features:

• Search
• Hierarchical organization so you can easily categorize snippets
• Syntax highlighting for enhanced readability
• In a perfect world, it’s integrated (or can be integrated) with your source code editor to reduce application-switching

Remember to regularly review, improve and update your existing snippets.

3. Use the Right Tools

This should be a no-brainer: Make sure you’re equipped with good tools and that you know how to use them effectively.

If you’re a web designer, you probably need Photoshop and Illustrator. If you’re a developer, you need a good set of web development apps to help you get the job done.

Of course, toolsets differ between professions and between people. Not everyone will need the Coda web development suite to build their websites — some just need a terminal.

What matters is that your tools should help you get the job done as efficiently as possible.

4. Collect and Organize Free Design Resources

There are many sites on the Web that give away free design resources. Add these sites to your RSS reader, and every time they post a freebie you can potentially use, grab it.

I’ve been doing this for months and now have a massive library of icons, PSD templates, vector illustrations, Creative Commons-licensed images and artwork, buttons, GUI elements, Photoshop brushes, @font-face kits, and all kinds of miscellaneous design elements.

Having such a huge library makes it incredibly easy to put together mockups in Photoshop, or get a quick sketch ready to show a client.

My icon and button library has been integral to putting finishing touches on websites I’ve nearly finished. This collection of little details is super handy — instantly sprucing up a design.

Here are some links to check out:

• Find posts that have culled the immense Internet for top-quality free design resources in the Six Revisions Resources category
• Read this list of excellent sources of design freebies
• Check out the Freebies section here on this website as well as the free resources on Design Instruct (a partner site)

5. Work in Sprints

Working in sprints can greatly improve productivity. For example, I wrote this article in short sprints, writing two or three bullet points at a time, taking a very long break from it to work on something else, and then returning later in the day.

Working in 10- to 20-minute blocks allows your brain time to generate new ideas andkeeps it from burning out.

Don’t work for hours at a time — your pace will slowly decrease and your work will decline in quality over time.

Working on a project in short bursts means you’re always coming back fresh.

6. Take Breaks

The most important part of sprint-based working is the break. It’s crucial to let your mind rest. Use these breaks to separate yourself from your workspace — go outside and stretch, or if you’re lucky enough to be a freelancer working from home, go to the kitchen and fix a little snack.

Again, don’t bother with tracking your time if you don’t have to. Your sprints don’t have to be exactly 15 minutes, and your breaks don’t have to be exactly 5 minutes. Work until you’re at a good stopping point, then take a comfortably timed break. Micromanaging time, in my experience, has only led to further procrastination.

However, some developers may be better served with more structure. If this is you, check out the Pomodoro Technique.

7. Invest Time in Learning

In the short term, constantly learning, keeping up with industry news and staying ahead of the curve is time-consuming.

However, the idea is that by investing your time in self-improvement, you can save time in the long run, increase your output and improve the quality of your work.

8. Don’t Over-Plan

There was a time in my life when I used to schedule out my day. I planned out everything in little 30- or 60-minute increments, stacking them up neatly in iCal.

I thought I was being productive, but I was only really setting myself up for failure.

You shouldn’t make your day any more rigid than it has to be — your mind needs to have some flexibility, some time to breathe and fully think.

Make sure to keep your schedule open to changes. I found that by over-planning my day, I only procrastinated more, and despaired watching those neat little chunks of productivity pass by.

9. Don’t Just Jump In Head First

This is the opposite extreme of over-planning. Although you shouldn’t over-plan, you can’t under-plan either.

Jumping in without knowing what you’re supposed to do can lead to disastrous website projects.

Whenever you begin work on a project, make sure you know what’s expected of you. In a web design project, this can be anything from knowing what the site is supposed to do, having the content of the landing page, having a set of colors from your client to work with, etc.

Before I start work on a client’s site, I always have the following:

• Color scheme
• Goal of the website
• Any content they can provide
• Any design ideas they already have

Knowing certain things about your project can lead you in the right direction without requiring you to take shots in the dark about what your customer wants.

10. Don’t Make Things Complicated

This is probably the most important one of them all: Don’t overcomplicate your job. Don’t do more than you have to, and don’t set yourself up for too much work in a given time period.

I’m not advocating delivering to your customer the minimum deliverable every time, but you certainly don’t need to deliver the maximum.

There aren’t any clear guidelines here, so you’ll have to judge it on a case-by-case basis. Give the client what they need. No more, no less.

Also, don’t overcomplicated your productivity strategy. Keep things simple. I tried using a “Getting Things Done” application to organize my life for a while, and it didn’t work.

Source : sixrevisions.com