When developers push aside CSS to concentrate on JavaScript performance, they might be overlooking some great applications of CSS. This eBook, CSS Essentials, explores some practical implementations of CSS, including usage of pseudo elements in CSS, decoupling HTML from CSS, Modern CSS layouts with equal height columns, taming CSS selectors, and many others. These techniques will help improve both the performance and maintainability of your Web pages in various browsers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Backgrounds in CSS: Everything You Need To Know
- The Mystery Of The CSS Float Property
- The Z Index CSS Property: A Comprehensive Look
- CSS Sprites: Useful Techniques, or Potential Nuisance?
- Modern CSS Layouts: The Essential Characteristics
- Modern CSS Layouts, Part 2: The Essential Techniques
- Writing CSS For Others
- Decoupling HTML From CSS
- CSS Specificity And Inheritance
- Equal Height Column Layouts with Borders and Negative Margins in CSS
- !important CSS Declarations: How and When to Use Them
- CSS Sprites Revisited
- Learning To Use The :before And :after Pseudo Elements In CSS
- Taming Advanced CSS Selectors
- Six CSS Layout Features To Look Forward To

With Web design, we can do much more than inform the audience. The power of storytelling and content strategy is in creating engaging, emotional connections that transcend their platforms. In this book, we will review emerging navigation design patterns and understand how to employ a content strategy, which is an important process, often underestimated and dependent on many factors. A case study of Smashing Magazines responsive redesign beautifully illustrates what this approach could look like in practice.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) The Missing Element of Redesign: Story by Denise Jacobs
2) Rethinking Navigation: Techniques and Design Patterns by Christian Holst
3) Rework Your Content So It Works for You by Colleen Jones
4) Responsive Smashing Redesign, a Case Study by Vitaly Friedman

New possible uses of CSS appear every day, and you shouldnt miss any of them. This eBook Mastering CSS3 brings together tips on the newest approaches to CSS, such as CSS animation guidelines, CSS grid frameworks and modern techniques for constructing page layouts, among others. Also, you will get guidelines on how to use CSS in email newsletters and how to code email designs with improved readability and usability for the Web, mobile and email desktop.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
- CSS3 vs. CSS: A Speed Benchmark
- Why We Should Start Using CSS3 And HTML5 Today
- Connecting The Dots With CSS3
- An Introduction To CSS3 Keyframe Animations
- The New Hotness: Using CSS3 Visual Effects
- Adventures In The Third Dimension: CSS 3D Transforms
- How To Use CSS3 Pseudo Classes
- CSS3 Flexible Box Layout Explained
- The Guide To CSS Animation: Principles And Examples
- Beercamp: An Experiment With CSS 3D
- Using CSS3: Older Browsers And Common Considerations

Designing for Mobile can be very complex: it requires many skills such as programming, usability, typography, creating applications. all of this without forgetting the necessary ingredient of visual appeal. This eBook: Essentials of Mobile Design, will give you an overview of the basic features you need to know for designing beautiful and useful Mobile interfaces and apps.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) Not Your Parents Mobile Phone: UX Design Guidelines For Smartphones
2) Why We Shouldnt Make Separate Mobile Websites
3) How To Build A Mobile Website
4) Making It A Mobile Web App
5) A Study Of Trends In Mobile Design
6) How To Market Your Mobile Application
7) A Foot On The Bottom Rung: First Forays Into Responsive Web Development
8) From Monitor To Mobile: Optimizing Email Newsletters With CSS
9) How To Use CSS3 Media Queries To Create a Mobile Version of Your Website
10) Creating Mobile Optimized Websites Using WordPress

Unlike its predecessors, the new Smashing Books 3 and 3 and a half have the main theme: Redesign. The books are a professional guide on how to redesign websites, but they also introduce a whole new mindset for progressive Web design. They challenge you to think differently about your work and will change the way you design websites forever.

A detailed look at the business and technical side of redesign is followed by a comprehensive overview of advanced HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript techniques that you can use today. You will get useful advice on innovative UX techniques, learn about the peculiarities of mobile context in Web design and discover useful Photoshop techniques for the new Web. You will explore a practical hands on guide to a bulletproof workflow for responsive Web design. Finally, you will also dive deep into emotional design, content strategy and storytelling.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Preface
- The Business Side of Redesign
- Selecting a Platform: Technical Considerations for Your Redesign
- Jumping Into HTML
- Restyle, Recode, Reimagine With CSS3
- JavaScript Rediscovered: Tricks to Replace Complex jQuery
- Techniques for Building Better User Experiences
- Designing for the Future, Using Photoshop
- Redesigning With Personality
- Mobile Considerations in User Experience Design: Web or Native?
- Workflow Redesigned: A Future Friendly Approach
- Becoming Fabulously Flexible: Designing Atoms and Elements

This Book was written by Elliot Jay Stocks, Paul Boag, Rachel Andrew, Ben Schwarz, David Storey, Lea Verou, Christian Heilmann, Dmitry Fadeyev, Marc Edwards, Aarron Walter, Aral Balkan, Stephen Hay, Andy Clarke and The Smashing Editorial Team.

Web design, with its wide range of disciplines and fields, is not an easy nut to crack. However, it is possible to put together a book with some of the crucial principles and fundamentals that you will need for every project you take on.

Learn about the harsh truths of corporate Web design and the troubles you are bound to run into. Create effective online portfolios with optimized user experiences, without the usual trial and error. Use storytelling to create engaging user experiences. Impress clients by staying on top of enhancements and Web standards. And in case you are wondering how to handle clients, we have some professional advice on how to deal with exceptional situations and customer requests.

This guide to professional Web design was carefully selected, prepared and edited to bring you the most useful Web design advice from Smashing Magazines articles. Know where you stand, put your situation in perspective, and get the advice you've been looking for.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
- 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites
- Portfolio Design Study: Design Patterns And Current Practices
- Creating A Successful Online Portfolio
- Better User Experience With Storytelling
- Designing User Interfaces For Business Web Applications
- Progressive Enhancement And Standards Do Not Limit Web Design
- Color Theory For Designers, Part 1: The Meaning Of Color
- Is John The Client Dense Or Are You Failing Him?
- How To Identify And Deal With Different Types Of Clients
- How To Respond Effectively To Design Criticism
- Web Designers Guide To Professional Networking
- Group Interview: Expert Advice For Students and Young Web Designers

Designing and developing e-commerce websites is a puzzle with thousands of pieces. Not only are the layout and structure of your Web store important, but you also have to keep the user experience and conversion rates in mind. These are what, in the end, really convince your clients customers to click that shiny Buy now button.

In this eBook (eBook 5) you will be studying the universal principles for successful e-commerce websites, which include improving your checkout process and making your product displays more attractive. In reality, optimizing your conversion rates takes little effort. Find out how to resolve small usability issues to immense effect. Are you familiar with A/B and multivariate testing? Use them to figure out how customers respond to minimal changes in design, content structure and check-out convenience. Customers decide whether to stay on a page in just a few (milli)seconds, so you better make them count.

Only outstanding articles have made it into the book, according to Smashing Magazines high quality standards. Our authors are professionals, and their careful research figures largely in the book. Take the advice of experts who know exactly what they are writing about.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Getting Started With ECommerce
- 5 Universal Principles For Successful ECommerce Sites
- 12 Tips for Designing an Excellent Checkout Process
- How to Engage Customers in Your ECommerce Website
- Principles of Effective Search in ECommerce Design
- 15 Common Mistakes in ECommerce Design
- E-Commerce: Fundamentals of a Successful Re Design
- Improve Your ECommerce Design With Brilliant Product Photos
- How To Use Photos To Sell More Online
- Design To Sell: 8 Useful Tips To Help Your Website Convert
- 7 More Useful Tips To Help Your Site Convert
- Optimizing Conversion Rates: Less Effort, More Customers
- Optimizing Conversion Rates: Its All About Usability
- Use Conversions To Generate More Conversions
- The Ultimate Guide To A/B Testing
- Multivariate Testing: 5 Simple Steps to Increase Conversion Rates

This guide to professional Web design was carefully selected, prepared and edited to bring you the most useful Web design advice from Smashing Magazine’s articles. Know where you stand, put your situation in perspective, and get the advice you've been looking for.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
- 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites
- Portfolio Design Study: Design Patterns And Current Practices
- Creating A Successful Online Portfolio
- Better User Experience With Storytelling
- Designing User Interfaces For Business Web Applications
- Progressive Enhancement And Standards Do Not Limit Web Design
- Color Theory For Designers, Part 1: The Meaning Of Color
- Is John The Client Dense Or Are You Failing Him?
- How To Identify And Deal With Different Types Of Clients
- How To Respond Effectively To Design Criticism
- Web Designer’s Guide To Professional Networking
- Group Interview: Expert Advice For Students and Young Web Designers

Since the appearance of the smartphone and tablet computers, we are experiencing a boom in Mobile Design. And, as it happens with the development of new gadgets and technologies, some trends and patterns are already established. With this eBook: Mobile Design Patterns, you will learn the most important guidelines and strategies for Mobile Design, including solutions for forms, tap ahead patterns and UX approaches.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) The Elements Of The Mobile User Experience
2) Picking A Mobile Support Strategy For Your Website
3) Essential Design Patterns For Mobile Banking
4) Seven Guidelines For Designing High Performance Mobile User Experiences
5) Useful Design Tips For Your iPad App
6) A User Centered Approach To Web Design For Mobile Devices
7) Mobile Auto Suggest on Steroids: Tap Ahead Design Pattern

As the technology becomes more advanced, all of us seek for time saving tips and guidelines to make our work much more effective and productive. The eBook Mastering Photoshop for Web Design Vol. 2 (eBook 8) contains 11 articles that cover useful and partly unknown Photoshop techniques and tricks from experts in the field. The articles discuss retouching, cloning, compositing, obscure Photoshop timesavers and designing for iPhone. The articles have been published on Smashing Magazine in 2010 and 2011 and have been carefully edited and revised.

Productivity is a crucial asset of professional designers. Photoshop is an extremely powerful application for photo processing and image manipulation, and we can make it even more powerful by using advanced techniques and design approaches that professionals and experts in the field are using regularly. The better our professional skills are, the more time we can spend to focus on the actual design process rather than the tool we are using to implement it on screen. This book is the brand new Photoshop eBook edition in our Smashing eBook Series which will help you mastering Photoshop and gain a more efficient, advanced workflow in your design process.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Mastering Photoshop: Noise, Textures, Gradients and Rounded Rectangles
- Useful Photoshop Tips And Tricks for Photo Retouching
- Photo Retouching Tips and Tricks in Photo Retouching
- The Ultimate Guide to Cloning in Photoshop
- Designing for iPhone 4 Retina Display: Techniques and Workflow
- Mastering Photoshop: Pixel Perfection when Rotating, Pasting and Nudging
- Setting up Photoshop for Web and iPhone Development
- Compositing in Adobe Photoshop: Time Saving Tips
- Mastering Photoshop: Unknown Tricks and Time Savers
- Preparing Photoshop Files for Web Developers
- In Defense of Photoshop