Y Combinator, an investment firm for early stage startups, will be upgrading its relationship status with Facebook today, as Facebook has just announced a partnership with the venture company.

The Facebook-Y Combinator partnership is designed to be mutually beneficial for both companies.

Y Combinator has a reputation for producing top notch startups that go on to attract high profile investors, including Justin.tv, Reddit, Scribd and Dropbox. Under the new partnership, Facebook will gain insider access to some of the brightest ideas in the web/tech space, an advantage that will help it build better social products and cherry pick the best startups before competitors like Google have a chance.

On the flip side, Facebook will provide Y Combinator startups with a bevy of resources including priority access to Facebook Credits and other beta features, product and design support, and technical assistance for those interested in building social products or Facebook applications.

Y Combinator will use its winter 2011 class to seek out social startups looking to benefit from the Facebook partnership.

“In the near future, we think it will be hard to imagine a web experience that is not personalized. Startups that can build in these interactions from the beginning — not simply add them to existing products — will be the examples of transformative social experiences others will follow,” said Facebook Platform lead Carl Sjogreen.

The strategic initiative is an interesting maneuver by Facebook and one that’s designed to help the behemoth social network stay ahead of the curve when it comes to social technologies.

Reviews: Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Justin.tv, reddit.com

More About: facebook, partnership, startup incubators, y combinator

For more Business coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

The mobile trends series is supported by Samsung. Read more about the Samsung Galaxy here.

For years now, forecasts have pointed towards a portable, mobile future. And now, hand-held mobile web and geo-location are being touted as the next steps in the evolution of social media. These predictions have been shouted from the rooftops and proven, for the most part, to be true. As technology gets faster and more efficient, our phones are becoming smarter and more important to our social lives.

But if the mobile web and app explosion is really all it’s cracked up to be, how come so few of us have smartphones? Global adoption rates have been steadily (sometimes exponentially) increasing over the past several years, but the overall penetration is still relatively low.

A chart illustrating steadily rising worldwide smartphone penetration from 2008 to 2009.

We looked at some recent North American and European smartphone adoption stats to find out just how quickly, and where, the “future” is being adopted.

Adoption Rates in Europe

The U.K., Germany, and France have the fastest growing smartphone adoption rates across Europe.

The U.K. leads European countries in smartphone adoption rate, according to a comScore study from March, 2010. In just one year, the adoption rate has jumped 70%, to more than 11 million U.K. subscribers. Other major European countries like France, Germany, and Spain also had substantial growth, falling around the average adoption rate of 32%. France had the second-highest adoption rate with nearly 50% change over one year.

Perhaps the most interesting trend shown in the study was the move to cheaper, more universal plans. Monthly subscription plans were split into two groups: Mid to low tier (less expensive plans), and high tier (more expensive, roughly £35). Across the board, the adoption rates of less expensive plans dwarfed pricier counterparts. In Spain, for example, cheaper plans grew by 31% more than high tier plans.

While smartphones are considered the Rolls-Royce of mobile, their growth seems to be spurred by accessibility and affordability. The goal isn’t to build a hand-held super-computer but to create powerful, inexpensive devices to compliment the everyman/everywoman.

Worldwide Penetration

Italy, Spain and the United States lead in smartphone penetration across global markets.

Adoption rates need to be tempered with penetration (what percentage of a population actually own smartphones) in order to make proper sense. A country’s adoption rate could shoot up by 100% if their penetration changed from one person to two people.

Given this context, Italy has the highest penetration of smartphones at 28%, according to a 2009 study from nielsenwire. Spain ranks second, with a penetration of 23%, and the U.S. trails in at third with 17% of Americans toting smartphones.

A statistical breakdown of worldwide penetration demographics in 2009.

Similarly, while the U.K. and France are both experiencing high adoption rates, they rank below the U.S. in overall penetration. The report also brought up some interesting insights: Smartphone users are predominantly male, and generally earn more than $100,000 a year. So much for affordability and inexpensive plans, right?

Not entirely. The penetration statistics show that a majority of smartphone users still see the device as a Rolls-Royce. On the other hand, this only means that there is a huge, untapped market for casual users. The adoption rates show that less-expensive calling plans are growing at a faster pace while U.S. sales have seen a boost from discounted phones.

North America Jumps on Discounts

The U.S. saw steady growth with a 36% increase in adoption rate, according to The NPD Group in a mocoNews article from March 2010. Even though the U.S. didn’t grow as much as the U.K. or France, it ranked above other major European countries for a comparable timespan. Canada enjoyed a modest presence with 12% market penetration.

The growth in adoption rate was again linked to discounts and cheap plans. Ross Rubin, NPD’s executive director, told mocoNews that as more and more smartphones enter the market, continued growth will depend on lowering the price of data plans.

As mobile technology gets better, smartphones will get cheaper, more versatile, and more important for our day-to-day use. But what comes next? We’d love to hear your thoughts on where mobile tech is heading, the discussion of adoption rate versus overall penetration, and whether this pace can really keep up. Have your say in the comments below.

Series supported by Samsung

The mobile trends series is supported by Samsung. Read more about the Samsung Galaxy here.

More Mobile Resources from Mashable:

- Top 5 Mobile Advertising Trends To Watch
- The Rise of Text Messaging [INFOGRAPHIC]
- How Mobile is Affecting the Way We E-mail
- How Mobile Technology is a Game Changer for Developing Africa
- A Look Back at the Last 5 Years in Mobile

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, fotosipsak

Reviews: iStockphoto

More About: adoption, adoption rate, android, blackberry, ComScore, iphone, mobile trends, mobile trends series, Nielsen, penetration, RIM, smartphone, Symbian

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Today, we have another Psd Premium tutorial exclusively available to Premium members. If you want to take your design skills to the next level, then we have an awesome tutorial for you. Learn more after the jump!

This Premium Tutorial is Filled with Creative Tips

We’re all aware that an ecosystem is a living community of plants and animals that share the same environment, but what happens when the natural world and man-made technology amalgamate to form a harmonious coexistence? In this tutorial I’ll walk you through the process of creating such a world by combining stock images and 3D renders.

Mark is a talented designer and illustrator from the UK. He has worked as a designer and creative director for several design/advertising agencies and specializes in print, branding, packaging, and exhibition graphics. Mark began his career when the tools of the trade were markers, layout pads, and most importantly, the ability to draw, but he embraced the digital revolution in the early 90′s and swapped his drawing board for a Mac. Today, Mark freelances from his studio in Cornwall for such clients as American Express, BMW, Future Publishing, IDG Communications and Imagine Publishing. Log in or Join Now to get started!

Professional and Detailed Instructions Inside

Premium members can Log in and Download! Otherwise, Join Now! Below are some sample images from this tutorial.

Psd Premium Membership

As you know, we run a premium membership system here that costs $9 a month (or $22 for 3 months!) which gives members access to the Source files for tutorials as well as periodic extra tutorials, like this one! You’ll also get access to Net Premium and Vector Premium, too. If you’re a Premium member, you can log in and download the tutorial. If you’re not a member, you can of course join today!

  

jQuery plug-ins provide an excellent way to save time and streamline development, allowing programmers to avoid having to build every component from scratch. But plug-ins are also a wild card that introduce an element of uncertainty into any code base. A good plug-in saves countless development hours; a bad plug-in leads to bug fixes that take longer than actually building the component from scratch.

Fortunately, one usually has a number of different plug-ins to choose from. But even if you have only one, figure out whether it’s worth using at all. The last thing you want to do is introduce bad code into your code base.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]

Do You Need A Plug-In At All?

The first step is to figure out whether you even need a plug-in. If you don’t, you’ll save yourself both file size and time.

1. Would Writing It Yourself Be Better?

If the functionality is simple enough, you could consider writing it yourself. jQuery plug-ins often come bundled with a wide variety of features, which might be overkill for your situation. In these cases, writing any simple functionality by hand often makes more sense. Of course, the benefits have to be weighed against the amount of work involved.

For example, jQuery UI’s accordion is great if you need advanced functionality, but it might be overkill if you just need panels that open and close. If you don’t already use jQuery UI elsewhere on your website, consider instead the native jQuery slideToggle() or animate().

2. Is It Similar to a Plug-In You’re Already Using?

After discovering that a particular plug-in doesn’t handle everything you need, finding another plug-in to cover loose ends might be tempting. But including two similar plug-ins in the same app is a sure path to bloated JavaScript.

Can you find a single plug-in that covers everything you need? If not, can you extend one of the plug-ins you have to cover everything you need? Again, in deciding whether to extend a plug-in, weigh the benefits against the development time involved.

For example, jQuery lightbox is a nice way to enable pop-up photos in a gallery, and simpleModal is a great way to display modal messages to users. But why would you use both on the same website? You could easily extend one to cover both uses. Better yet, find one plug-in that covers everything, such as Colorbox.

3. Do You Even Need JavaScript?

In some situations, JavaScript isn’t needed at all. CSS pseudo-selectors such as :hover and CSS3 transitions can cover a variety of dynamic functionality much faster than a comparable JavaScript solution. Also, many plug-ins apply only styling; doing this with mark-up and CSS might make more sense.

For example, plug-ins such as jQuery Tooltip are indispensable if you have dynamic content that requires well-placed tooltips. But if you use tooltips in only a few select locations, using pure CSS is better (see this example). You can take static tooltips a step further by animating the effect using a CSS3 transition, but bear in mind that the animation will work only in certain browsers.

Avoid Red Flags

When reviewing any plug-in, a number of warning signs will indicate poor quality. Here, we’ll look at all aspects of plug-ins, from the JavaScript to the CSS to the mark-up. We’ll even consider how plug-ins are released. None of these red flags alone should eliminate any plug-in from consideration. You get what you pay for, and because you’re probably paying nothing, you should be willing to cut any one a bit of slack.

If you’re fortunate enough to have more than one option, these warning signs could help you narrow down your choice. But even if you have only one option, be prepared to forgo it if you see too many red flags. Save yourself the headache ahead of time.

4. Weird Option or Argument Syntax

After using jQuery for a while, developers get a sense of how most functions accept arguments. If a plug-in developer uses unusual syntax, it stands to reason that they don’t have much jQuery or JavaScript experience.

Some plug-ins accept a jQuery object as an argument but don’t allow chaining from that object; for example, $.myPlugin( $('a') ); but not $('a').myPlugin(); This is a big red flag.

A green flag would be a plug-in in this format…

$('.my-selector').myPlugin({ opt1 : 75, opt2 : 'asdf' });

… that also accepts…

$.myPlugin({ opt1 : 75, opt2 : 'asdf' }, $('.my-selector'));

5. Little to No Documentation

Without documentation, a plug-in can be very difficult to use, because that is the first place you look for answers to your questions. Documentation comes in a variety of formats; proper documentation is best, but well-commented code can work just as well. If documentation doesn’t exist or is just a blog post with a quick example, then you might want to consider other options.

Good documentation shows that the plug-in creator cares about users like you. It also shows that they have dug into other plug-ins enough to know the value of good documentation.

6. Poor History of Support

Lack of support indicates that finding help will be difficult when issues arise. More tellingly, it indicates that the plug-in has not been updated in a while. One advantage of open-source software is all of the eye-balls that are debugging and improving it. If the author never speaks to these people, the plug-in won’t grow.

When was the last time the plug-in you’re considering was updated? When was the last time a support request was answered? While not all plug-ins need as robust a support system as the jQuery plug-ins website, be wary of plug-ins that have never been modified.

A documented history of support, in which the author has responded to both bug and enhancement requests, is a green flag. A support forum further indicates that the plug-in is well supported, if not by the author then at least by the community.

7. No Minified Version

Though a fairly minor red flag, if the plug-in’s creator doesn’t provide a minified version along with the source code, then they may not be overly concerned with performance. Sure, you could minify it yourself, but this red flag isn’t about wasted time: it’s about the possibility that the plug-in contains far worse performance issues.

On the other hand, providing a minified, packed and gzipped version in the download package is an indication that the author cares about JavaScript performance.

8. Strange Mark-Up Requirements

If a plug-in requires mark-up, then the mark-up should be of high quality. It should make semantic sense and be flexible enough for your purposes. Besides indicating poor front-end skills, strange mark-up makes integration more difficult. A good plug-in plugs into just about any mark-up you use; a bad plug-in makes you jump through hoops.

In certain situations, more rigid mark-up is needed, so be prepared to judge this on a sliding scale. Basically, the more specific the functionality, the more specific the mark-up needed. Completely flexible mark-up that descends naturally from any jQuery selector is the easiest to integrate.

9. Excessive CSS

Many jQuery plug-ins come packaged with CSS, and the quality of the style sheets is just as important as the JavaScript. An excessive number of styles is a sure sign of bad CSS. But what constitutes “excessive” depends on the purpose of the plug-in. Something very display-heavy, such as a lightbox or UI plug-in, will need more CSS than something that drives a simple animation.

Good CSS styles a plug-in’s content effectively while allowing you to easily modify the styles to fit your theme.

10. No One Else Uses It

With the sheer volume of jQuery users, most decent plug-ins will probably have something written about them, even if it’s a “50 jQuery [fill in the blank]” post. Do a simple Google search for the plug-in. If you get very few results, you might want to consider another option, unless the plug-in is brand new or you can verifiy that it is written by a professional.

Posts on prominent blogs are great, and posts by prominent jQuery programmers are even better.

Final Assessment

After you’ve given the plug-in the third degree, the only thing left to do is plug it in and test how well it performs.

11. Plug It In and See

Probably the best way to test a plug-in is to simply plug it on the development server and see the results. First, does it break anything? Make sure to look at JavaScript in the surrounding areas. If the plug-in includes a style sheet, look for layout and styling errors on any page that applies the style sheet.

Additionally, how does the plug-in perform? If it runs slowly or the page lags considerably when loading, it might be important to consider other options.

12. Benchmarking With JSPerf

To take your performance review to the next level, run a benchmark test using JSPerf. Benchmarking basically runs a set of operations a number of times, and then returns an average of how long it took to execute. JSPerf provides an easy way to test how quickly a plug-in runs. This can be a great way to pick a winner between two seemingly identical plug-ins.

An example of a performance test run in jsPerf.

13. Cross-Browser Testing

If a plug-in comes with a lot of CSS, make sure to test the styling in all of the browsers that you want to support. Bear in mind that CSS can be drawn from external style sheets or from within the JavaScript itself.

Even if the plug-in doesn’t have any styling, check for JavaScript errors across browsers anyway (at least in the earliest version of IE that you support). jQuery’s core handles most cross-browser issues, but plug-ins invariably use some amount of pure JavaScript, which tends to break in older browsers.

14. Unit Testing

Finally, you may want to consider taking cross-browser testing even further with unit tests. Unit testing provides a simple way to test individual components of a plug-in in any browser or platform you want to support. If the plug-in’s author has included unit tests in their release, you can bet that all components of the plug-in will work across browsers and platforms.

Unfortunately, very few plug-ins include unit test data, but that doesn’t mean you can’t perform your own test using the QUnit plug-in.

With minimal set-up, you can test whether the plug-in methods return the desired results. If any test fails, don’t waste your time with the plug-in. In most cases, performing your own unit tests is overkill, but QUnit helps you determine the quality of a plug-in when it really counts. For more information on how to use QUnit, see this tutorial

An example of a unit test run in QUnit.

Conclusion

When assessing the quality of a jQuery plug-in, look at all levels of the code. Is the JavaScript optimized and error-free? Is the CSS tuned and effective? Does the mark-up make semantic sense and have the flexibility you need? These questions all lead to the most important question: will this plug-in be easy to use?

jQuery core has been optimized and bug-checked not only by the core team but by the entire jQuery community. While holding jQuery plug-ins to the same standard would be unfair, they should stand up to at least some of that same scrutiny.

Related Posts

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• Commonly Confused Bits Of jQuery
• Spicing Up Your Website With jQuery Goodness
• jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best Practices
• 45 Useful jQuery Techniques and Plugins

(al)

© Jon Raasch for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: Coding, javascript, jquery

The new version of Digg is here. After months of testing and a change in CEO, Digg version 4 has been unleashed on the masses.

Digg’s new interface boasts not only quicker load times, but a personalized approach to social news. While the old version of Digg was known for its front page stories and the infamous “Digg Effect,” the new version focuses on “My News,” which displays stories dugg and submitted by those you follow. Being the submitter of a top story has also been de-emphasized.

How will Diggers react to the changes? Will the revamped Digg attract new users and help turn traffic around? Will the community embrace it?

These are the questions we hope you’ll help us answer. In a special edition of our Web Faceoff series, we want you to answer the question: Which version do you prefer: the New Digg or the Old Digg?

The polls will be open until next Wednesday, September 1 at 12:00 p.m. PT. We want to hear your thoughts on the Digg V4 and whether it’s an improvement over its predecessor. Be sure to leave your opinion in the comments.

New Digg vs. Old Digg: Which one do you prefer?online surveys

Follow Mashable on Digg

Reviews: Digg

More About: digg, New Digg, Old Digg, web faceoff

For more Battles coverage:

• Follow Mashable Battles on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Battles channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

This series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s hosting solutions here.

Mac OS X is a popular platform for developers and designers of all stripes. Apple has always had strength in the graphic design market, but even before Apple’s shift to Intel processors in 2006, developers started migrating to Mac OS X.

Mac OS X is a popular choice because it combines the power of BSD and other UNIX and UNIX-like systems with an elegant user interface. Mac OS X comes with Apache, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Subversion already installed, which makes it easy to turn a factory-fresh Mac into a local test server.

There is also a really robust and talented community of developers for Mac OS X, making some of the best apps around for designers and developers alike. Apps like Coda, CSSEdit, TextMate, Acorn, Pixelmator and LittleSnapper are just some of the many apps we love to use when designing or developing projects for the web.

As the end of summer approaches, we wanted to highlight six more Mac apps that have been released in the last few month for developers and designers.

1. Flux 3 – ₤69.99 for new users, ₤34.99 for upgrades

Indie shop The Escapers just released version 3.0 of its fantastic website design program, Flux. I like to think of Flux 3 as Dreamweaver reimagined.

It offers a visual and code-based approach to page design, along with support for plugins and code snippets, support for HTML5 and HTML5 video, ePub, WebKit transforms and other effects, and the Google Font API.

All of this power comes in an app that is easy to visually navigate or to edit as raw code. There is a learning curve, but once you’ve spent some time with the app, it’s easy to use to create and manage projects.

2. Gitbox – Free

One of the great things about the version control system Git is that it is super simple and super lightweight. Git was designed for the terminal, and oftentimes, the terminal is the fastest way to commit or merge changes.

Sometimes, however, it can be faster or more comfortable to add a visual element to the process. This can be especially useful if you are changing folder or file names or frequently switching between different places on your desktop.

Gitbox is a lightweight, single-window client for Git that makes it easy to see branches, commit, pull, merge and push all with a single click. It also supports diff viewing in either FileMerge.app or Kaleidoscope.

3. Kaleidoscope – €29

Kaleidoscope is from Made By Sofa and it’s a file comparison application that goes above and beyond a simple diff viewer.

Not only can you compare text files or code blocks, you can also compare images. If you’re working on a web coding or design project and you need to quickly view the changes between two versions of the same file, Kaleidoscope might just be your go-to tool.

It supports multiple layouts, syntax highlighting and searching, and multiple image formats. It can integrate with version control systems like Subversion, Git, Mercurial and others via the command-line or drag-and-drop, and the app is super fast.

4. Xmplify – Free while in beta

If you work with a lot of XML, you might want to give Xmplify a closer look. It’s a new app that is still in beta that makes editing XML and XSLT (XSL transformations) files really easy.

On the XSLT side, the program includes a Web Preview feature that shows a live look at the XHTML document created by the XSLTs.

You can also search using both XPath and by using regular expressions.

5. Loremify – Free

Loremify is a Dashboard Widget that can quickly and painlessly generate Lorem Impsum style text in the length and style that you specify.

This can be really useful when needing text blocks for filler content while creating a design. You can specify how many words and how many characters for a paragraph, header or list. You can also choose to automatically insert HTML tags into the generator, which makes the tool that much easier for using when designing in a browser or in a text editor.

6. Slammer – $20

More and more web designers are using grids, either of their own creation or something like the 960 Grid System, to create really flexible and great-looking layouts.

Slammer is a tool for applying and modifying grids to your designs or to existing content anywhere on your Mac. The app is an overlay that you can use on documents, web pages, images, previews, and the list goes on.

You can then customize the grid, get a feel for dimensions and pixel placements, and alter the layout of the grid to see how your content aligns.

You can then export your own templates as a JSON file that you can integrate with your designs or use pre-made templates for certain grid systems to use with future projects.

Basically Slammer is an interactive virtual blueprint maker that you can use for your web designs. You can try the app for 30 hours with no restrictions.

Bonus: Courier

Courier from Realmac Software won’t be available for another week or so, but as you can see from the awesome teaser video (above), it’s a utility that will likely appeal to many developers and designers.

Realmac is the same team behind RapidWeaver, LittleSnapper and Socialite, and they know how to deliver a Mac app that’s feature-packed and easy on the eyes.

I’ve been beta-testing Courier and really love the app. Keep your eyes peeled for this one!

Your Thoughts?

What are some of your favorite Mac apps for design and development? Let us know!

Series supported by Rackspace

Rackspace is the better way to do hosting. No more worrying about web hosting uptime. No more spending your time, energy and resources trying to stay on top of things like patching, updating, monitoring, backing up data and the like. Learn why.

More Dev & Design Resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Implement Google Font API on Your Website
- Top 10 Accessories for Typography Nuts [PICS]
- 40+ Web Design and Development Resources for Beginners
- 10 Tools for Getting Web Design Feedback
- 10 Free Wireframing Tools for Designers

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, David Benkovic

Reviews: Apps, CSSEdit 2, Coda, LittleSnapper, PHP, Pixelmator, Python, RapidWeaver, Socialite, TextMate, iStockphoto

More About: courier, Flux, gitbox, kaleidoscope, loremify, mac, mac apps, slammer, software, web design, Web Development, web development series, xmplify

For more Dev & Design coverage:

• Follow Mashable Dev & Design on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Dev & Design channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Just a few months shy of its sixth birthday, social news site Digg has launched its highly anticipated overhaul/redesign.

What started as an experiment in the fall of 2004 is now a major online presence with an estimated 40 million monthly users. Kevin Rose’s concept of a user-controlled community that votes to “digg up” what links that they collectively deem important, or “bury” down those of little interest, has been successful in part because of the company’s ability to adapt and add new features. Here, we take a look back at the time line of the site’s development and rise over the years.

2004

Dec 5: Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetsky and Jay Adelson start Digg with a $6,000 investment from then 27-year-old Rose. The team dubbed the site “Digg” because dig.com was already owned by Disney. The site would be a community-based news aggregator, and launched on December 5, 2004. Above is a screen shot from December 9, just a few days after the initial launch.

Dec 13: Rose features his new site on The Screen Savers, his tech/pop culture TV show, exposing it to a larger audience.

2005

Jan 2: A comment section is introduced, giving the community a place to talk about the stories they dug up or buried down.

March 19: Digg profile pages now include comment histories and sort by category for easier searching.

May 1: Kevin Rose and former Screen Savers co-host Alex Albrecht start a video podcast centered around what’s popular on the site and dub it Diggnation.

May 9: Digg spy is released.

May 27: Digg launches Digg 2.0, the site’s first major update, which features a friends list, the ability to “digg” a story without having to be redirected to a success page, and a new interface design.

Oct 28: Less than a year after launching, Digg finds funding to the tune of $2.8 million from investors.

Dec 5: Digg Spy 2.0 is released, and users can now see all the site’s activity from other users in real time.

2006

Feb 2: Digg got a credibility boost as users are now able to report stories as “inaccurate” and profanity filters were installed.

June 26: Digg 3.0 is released with specific categories that expand beyond its tech base. The site now includes Technology, Science, World and Business, Videos, Entertainment, Gaming, and a View All section for all the site’s content.

Sept 12: The site launches the #1 Story feature, which is later called “Favorites.”

Dec 18: Digg launches even more new features including podcasts, videos, a top 10 sidebar and a friends page.

2007

April 19: Digg opens their API to the public, meaning that developers can write tools and apps based on Digg’s data dating back to 2004.

May 1: The site goes nuts after hackers found a way to crack the (now defunct) HD-DVD encryption key, and posts it to the site, including instructions on how to copy and crack HD-DVDs. Digg tries to take it down to avoid legal troubles, but is basically overruled by the power of the community, who re-post the key in multiple creative ways. Kevin Rose eventually steps up and sides with the community, posting this to his blog:

“But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.”

August 27: Digg alters its main interface again, this time with changes in the profile area.

2008

Sept 24: Digg nets $28.7 million from investors Highland Capital Partners.

2009

April 2: The Digg Bar is released. Its a toolbar on top of a site allowing users to create shorter URLs and access digg comments and analytics without leaving the page. The Digg Bar is not well received, which leads the company to making several changes later that month.

May 6: Digg integrates Facebook Connect. This allows users of Digg and Facebook to connect their accounts, and allows Facebook users to participate, even without a Digg profile.

Aug 6: Digg ads is launched. Marketers are able to submit ads that look like news stories, and the community is able to vote them up or down in the same way they would to a real story, essentially controlling how much advertisers have to pay for ad space on the site.

2010

March 23: Digg launches their iPhone app, ensuring users can dig and bury stories where ever they maybe.

April 1: The site launches their Android app.

April 5: Kevin Rose becomes CEO and announces that the controversial DiggBar would be eliminated with the implementation of Digg 4.0.

July 2: Digg 4.0 alpha testing begins.

Aug 2: New user registration is taken down to prepare for the impending launch of Digg 4.0.

Aug 25: Digg 4.0 launches.

To nicely sum up Digg’s history, the company created the video below to celebrate their five year anniversary last December.

Are you a Digg user? What do you think were the most important changes to the site over the last few years? Let us know in the comments.

Additional Sources:

• Corporate Profile
• Interview With Digg Founder Kevin Rose
• Digg Argues It Has Ways to Prevent Manipulation

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 20 Cool Twitter Accounts for Daily Fun and Inspiration [PICS]
- 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now
- The WikiLeaks Debate: Journalists Weigh In
- A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places
- 5 Useful Facebook Trend and Search Services

Reviews: Digg, Facebook, favorites

More About: community, digg, digg 4.0, history, redesign, social new

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

  

What do corporate websites have in common with other people’s children? Three things: they have their charm, like finger-paintings on the refrigerator; they can be useful, if infrequently; they are usually admired only by the people who created them.

While designers know that a user’s experience on a website has a large impact on the way that customer will interact with them, impressing that concept on the corporate establishment has taken a very long time. Trends in design are making their way into corporate web, albeit slowly; with patience and a little luck, businesses will soon start to consider carefully coded and appropriately functional design as important as their mission statement and recent sustainability reports.

One unfortunate fact is evident above all else: despite having plenty of money at their disposal, many corporations are lost in sterile MS Word-esque designs that are more stagnant than a museum exhibit… though at least museums have dinosaurs and mummies and stuff. Here’s hoping we all will get new corporate clients soon.

Below, we present some interesting corporate websites, although the insight they offer may not be immediately apparent. This review is not about aesthetics or visual appeal, but rather about the design solutions the sites exhibit. In fact, corporate websites aren’t as visually arresting as you might think, so if the appeal isn’t immediately apparent in the previews below, take a moment to visit and interact with each of them.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #2 is Successful Freelancing for Web Designers, 260 pages for just $9,90.]

Beautiful Corporate Websites

Levi Strauss & Co
With its website, Levis demonstrates that it has not only a strong flair for style and interactivity, but a rich sense of history. Hover over or click the photographs to see some of the company’s defining moments; ever known for its sense of identity, Levis draws you into its past, present and future, excellently breaking through to customers and inviting them to stay.

McDonald’s
By simplifying and softening the navigation, McDonald’s opens the entire screen up to use as canvas for their product. Harmonious colors in the typography complement the food (and exploit the visual association with hamburgers), while the vivid photography does not obscure surrounding elements.

Starbucks
Gentle colors and careful hierarchy of elements aside, Starbucks’ strength is in the details. The navigation exhibits an attention to hierarchy not often seen on corporate websites, while offering alternative destination links, should you find yourself in the wrong section. Such consideration for the user would be a welcome trend in design going into 2011.

Sony
You’ll see that this is a link to Sony Canada’s website. While the navigation and theme is the same as its American counterpart, the experience here is different: here you can see short films in which people relate their experiences of how Sony technology has enriched their lives. Best of all, a floating meter lets you sort stories into categories, giving you control of the content. Brilliantly executed.

The Ones You Would Expect

Adidas
Few websites employ a grid design that is at once so rigid and flexible. Individual modules expand and contract to allow for dynamic exploration—a lot of fun, particularly because the website has so many parts to explore. The only thing to note is that images do not obviously reflects the content they open to display, necessitating the standard top-menu — an important point in usability.

Citroen
While the technique of using tiny images to fill a shape has been done a million ways, Citroen takes an old technique to the next level. Draw your cursor across the world to see the photos dance around it, beckoning you to select a region. An excellent use of a landing page, effectively drawing in users without information inundation.

Fender Guitars
While you may need to be a guitar player to fully appreciate the beautiful lines and tones of Fender products, you need only a pair of eyes to appreciate the simplicity and functionality of Fender’s website. Unobtrusive navigation at the top and hot links lower down make way for a large stage on which Fender can showcase the stars of its website: its beautiful instruments.

Heinz
One of the most recognizable brands in the world, Heinz has intelligently focused its website on its consumers. Rotate the globe by clicking on photos to see simple recipes from around the world. A design brilliantly suited to users of any skill level, Heinz has found a new means to engage their customers and entice them to visit more.

Prologue Films
Any company that designs opening credits and effects for movies needs a keen aesthetic sense, and Prologue Films’ visual dynamic is evident on its website. A clean grid with gray tones puts the company’s custom type and effects (an impressive collection) front and center, the same technique made famous by artists and photographers. Using a pop-up window for the content, though, is ill-advised.

Rolex
The beauty of this website is in Rolex’ masterful attention to detail. With the gorgeous products on display, the eye almost misses the clever tricks contained therein, such as the clock face that adjusts to your time zone. The intuitive user experience reinforces the notion that great design blends together. When it works right, it’s seamless.

Steinway & Sons
Lucky for us, Steinway invests as much effort into its website as it does into its pianos. Elegant type and warm subtle imagery grace this design and project an image of quality, undoubtedly the intended effect.

The Ones You Should Have Thought Of

Aflac
While a blue and white palette is nothing new, Aflac has mastered the use of subtle gradients to enhance type. Smartly assembled, this site is intuitive and easily digestible. The clever part is the horizontal scrolling frame, a visual hook aptly used here to display customer testimonials.

American Standard
A gorgeous website; American Standard exemplifies grid design, employing the majority of frame as a news scroller. Intelligent use of color, elegant type and thoughtful spacing make this website particularly easy on the eyes.

Avery Dennison
At first glance, this might look like the website of any old manufacturer of office supplies. At second glance, though, brilliant little touches leap out:: the subtle grid, the attention to readability, the side-scrolling frame that harmonizes type, color and imagery. Oddly dissonant, the side and top navigations make this website looks almost as if it were a composite of different designs over time, a curiosity.

Con Edison
While the Con Edison website doesn’t have much to look at, the section for the annual report has been capably executed. Great attention to space, clean type and subtle movement are all used to great effect in this section where Con Edison addresses its corporate responsibility.

Grow Interactive
Most interactive firms don’t have exciting websites, which makes Grow stand out all the more. Grow demonstrates an expert use of type and illustration, moving your eye in perfect circles over the page, and nuances like the small interactive animals along the footer make it stand out among its peers.

PGI (formerly Premiere Global)
Here is another rare instance of a Canadian version surpassing its regional siblings. A playful take on the boxed blog/corporate theme, the website for PGI puts an interactive panel into the fold, an attractive way to draw users further into the website. The layout and color elements are evidence of authentic design acumen.

Rohm and Haas
This Fortune 500 company knows how to engage visitors online, with interactive features coming from every angle. The innovation in its products is reflected in the playfulness of the website, which encourages users to explore. Careful, effective use of otherwise familiar textures and themes support an engaging concept, to good effect.

Society for Environmental Graphic Design
While the inclusion of an organization of graphic designers in this showcase is no surprise, SEGD shines in its presentation of simple yet powerful elements. As any designer can attest, bold colorful shapes can easily run a design off course, but that isn’t the case here. SEGD has married vivid color with effective usability, creating a website that is smooth and wonderfully user-friendly.

Virb
Recently rebranded and redesigned, Virb demonstrates a capable grasp of visual elements even in this placeholder page: good typography, ample white space, soft shapes and forms — akin more to social media than standard corporate toadery, excellently indicative of the target demographic.

The Ones You Might Not Know About

Acro Media
A Web development firm that knows exactly when to stick to the grid and when to break boundaries. The most impressive parts of this website are the way certain elements react to hovering, such as the company name in yellow at the top left. Mousing over it flips the logo around to display a toll-free number. Clever.

AgencyNet Interactive
The spirit of AgencyNet is clearly the team of creatives behind its work. Showing the team at work (and play) behind the scenes in the office is refreshing, well executed and a great way to engage viewers to learn about the company.

AmoebaCorp
A small creative firm, AmoebaCorp shows expert use of type on its website. The type establishes a strong hierarchy, enabling the content and navigation to coexist on the left without confusing the user about functionality.

Imaginary Forces
Less is more with Imaginary Forces, which displays its brilliant work as prominently as possible by cluttering the screen as little as possible. Even without the showcased work, the website would stand out: take away the grand images, and you’d still have a clever arrangement of type and navigation, which is more than can be said of most websites.

Kurylowicz & Associates
This Polish architecture firm has produced a website that bleeds inspiration from every pixel. Elegant in its use of gray tones, this website combines line, shape and space in a way no other website does. Perhaps it took an engineer to think abstractly enough to design with such abandon, but the result is brilliance online, from start to finish.

Vancouver Convention Centre
Aside from the harmonious colors and subtle grid that frames the content, the Vancouver Convention Centre succeeds by going the extra mile to make its website visitors feel local: the “Cheers!” factor in action. Not many websites impart a sense of belonging with their welcome; that this one does makes a strong case for using heart as a design tool as much as shape, color and texture.

What Have We Learned Today, Bobby?

Finding beautiful corporate websites proved to be quite a challenge, and we had to make a number of unusual choices along the way. We sought regional versions of international websites, for instance, because multi-national companies present a number of differences among their sister websites. Bizarrely, did you know that many Fortune 500 companies don’t even have websites? Or worse, have non-working ones?

Admittedly, the word “corporate” is pretty loose in definition here. For the sake of impartiality, we did not discriminate by industry or field. We were more interested in collecting websites that employ interesting techniques. Because innovative and fresh stand out on the Web whatever the industry, putting aside traditional definitions is crucial.

For further reading on corporate websites and design, you may be interested in Corporate Blog Design: Trends and Examples, published August 2009.

Would you like to see more similar showcases on SM?

Would you like to see more similar showcases on Smashing Magazine?online survey

(al)

© Bobby Foley for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: showcases

  

Today we are glad to release a yet another freebie: Polaroid Magento Theme, a professional design skin for the shops powered by the popular open-source ecommerce web application Magento. The theme was designed by eCommerce-Themes and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. As usual, the theme is absolutely free to use in private and commerical projects.

Download the theme for free!

The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.

• live demo
• large preview (.png)
• installation guide and documentation
• download the .zip-package (zip, 1.1 Mb)
• release on the developer’s site

Features

The Polaroid theme includes the following features:

• the Polaroid effect is made with CSS3. The product grid displays products in random orientations.
• Product zoom: the category page was spiced up by adding a zoom functionality to the product grid. When you mouse over a product, it zooms in to show the product in more details.

The .zip-package also contains additional modules “Best Sellers”, “Features Products”, “New Products”, and “Multi Shipping”.

Home (large preview)

Category (large preview)

Behind the design

As always, here are some insights from the designers:

We wanted to go beyond the boundaries of Magento and break the usual design patterns. We really wanted to try something new, add rich CSS3 features to the Magento theme and experiment a bit with its different features. We are very pleased to share this theme with the community, especially with Smashing Magazine readers.

Thank you, guys. We appreciate your work and your good intentions.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #2 is Successful Freelancing for Web Designers, 260 pages for just $9,90.]

Related Posts

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• HelloWired: A Free Magento Theme
• Sigyn SM: A Free Magento Theme
• 25 Magento Templates For Your E-Commerce Business

© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: Freebies, magento

We all know that gaining Twitter followers is down to how often you tweet and what you tweet about – or if you’re a website owner and use Twitter, a way to communicate with your readers. However, there are additional ways to increase the chances of new stumblers to follow you, one of them being by having an interesting background.

This isn’t a quick route to Twitter success, but it most certainly does help. By designing your own interesting Twitter background you can express your personality through images. One example is if you’re a creative person (which you probably are as you’re on Psdtuts+!) you would likely be able to put your skills to use and produce something beautiful that other creatives will appreciate. If they like your profile page, the chances are they’ll like your tweets, therefore following you!

A Quick Introduction To Twitter Backgrounds

Twitter doesn’t offer a whole lot of functionality when it comes to designing backgrounds, but there are a bunch of ways to work around this. You can change the color of the background, sidebar and links, and add background images – fixed or tiled. The biggest problem with Twitter backgrounds is the fact that the majority of your image will be hidden behind Twitter’s timeline and menu, leaving only the space between the edges of your browser and Twitter’s foreground, as seen below:

The above screenshot was taken on my 13″ MacBook Pro with a screen resolution of 1280×800 pixels. The amount of space for a background with this resolution is reasonably good, however with smaller screens or older laptops with a lower resolution the space can decrease dramatically and you will need to be able to work around this.

The obvious thing you need to do is to design your background around Twitter’s foreground content so that when you upload your image it won’t be hidden beneath the timeline.

Types of Backgrounds

There are a few different types of backgrounds in terms of image sizes:

• The Big Image: This is just what the image suggests, a very large image! It can be used to cover the whole background of your Twitter profile. The bottom of them are often faded off into a solid color so that it merges into Twitters background (which of course you can choose the color of).
• The Fading Image: This is often a much smaller image than the above option, often just a square or rectangle covering the top left corner or the complete right side of your profile. All of the edges are faded into a solid color so that they blend into Twitters background.
• The Repeating Image: The repeating image option allows you to repeat an image throughout your background. A common use for this is patterned or textured backgrounds, such as my own which can be in the screenshot above. Text is not recommended for this kind of background as it will be repeated anywhere from several to several hundred times!

Chris Spooner has summed up these examples of Twitter backgrounds with a bunch of great examples, which can be seen along with a Twitter background tutorial: “Twitter Background Design How-To and Best Practices“.

The Good Stuff: Great Tips, Gorgeous Examples & Resources

After that quick introduction to Twitter backgrounds, we’re now going to look at a small selection of some lovely examples of backgrounds. We’re going to look at one design at time, and follow it up with a “Twitter Background Tip” that you can keep in mind when designing your own. We’ll also be outsourcing to some other articles and tutorials for a more in-depth look at particular subjects.

Please note that these tips may or may not be used together. Ideally only a few of these tips should be put into practice at any one time, as they don’t all work together.

Tip #1: Make your Twitter profile clearly match your websites image.

@Envato

We all know about how important it is to have a clear and strong brand, whether you’re an individual, a freelancer or a full-blown company. Envato has made their Twitter profile represent their main website by using the same beautiful digital bokeh background and the strong green color scheme.

Bokeh Resources

If you like Envato’s bokeh background, check out some of the following resources!

• Stock Resources: More Than 620 Bokeh Background Textures
• Tutorial: Creating An Awesome Digital Bokeh Effect in Photoshop
• Photography: Shooting Your Own Bokeh Shots With The Bokeh Masters Kit

Tip #2: Use plenty of interesting shapes and colors in your repeated backgrounds.

@Daniesq

If you’re going to use a repeated/tiled image as your background, be sure to keep it interesting, or alternatively make it match your brand identity. Daniesq uses a lovely vector-style floral tiled image that fits together perfectly.

Pattern Resources

If you want to go for a repeating background, some of the following resources may come in handy!

• Resources: The Ultimate Collection Of Free Photoshop Patterns
• Tutorial: Create a Themed Repeating Pattern in Illustrator
• Tutorial: Repeating Patterns

Tip #3: Show your face to the world and stick it in your background.

@chrisspooner

After all everyone wants to know what you look like! Your profile picture is often to small to really represent yourself, or you may be using it to display your brands logo or another image. Although your profile picture can be enlarged, most people choose not to view larger versions of your pictures, therefore this is where your background profile can come in handy if you feel a picture of yourself is vital for your online identity. Chris Spooner for example uses a portrait of himself (which is important for his identity as he posts vlogs [video blogs]) with some of his infamous vector shapes to give his Twitter profile a highly-personalised touch.

Portrait Photography Resources

There’s no point including a photo of yourself in your background. Even if it is “just Twitter” you need to keep your standards up at a professional level. The below resources should help you do that.

• Tutorial: Simple Portrait Photography Tricks
• Resources: 100 Free Photoshop Actions (And How To Make Your Own)
• Guide: A Simple Guide To Choosing Your First Lens

Tip #4: Make a big deal out of your logo and include it in your background image.

@vpieters

Including your logo in your Twitter background isn’t really necessary if you are already using your logo as your profile picture, but if not there isn’t really anything better you can do – it not only shows off your skills but also advertises your brands image! Vpieters uses a beautiful illustration (also used in the header of their blog) along with the Veerle logo in their Twitter background to make their website and Twitter profile fit together like two peas in a pod.

Logo Resources

If you don’t yet have a logo for yourself it is recommended even if you aren’t a freelancer as it helps to identify you as an individual, and it’s something else to show off! Here are a few good logo resources:

• Inspiration: Logo Showcase
• Tutorial: Logo Design Project Step by Step Walkthrough
• Tutorial: Creating A Crazy Cool Logo

Tip #5: Make use of the infamous Twitter bird.

@KrisColvin

Twitter is very well known for its simple Twitter bird mascot (as you can see in the following post: “Splendid Twitter Accessories and Products“, the Twitter bird is very well known and pretty sweet!), so why not embed it into your own design mixed with any of the above or below features? KrisColvin uses the bird to her advantage to produce a stunning “big image” background.

Twitter Bird Resources

If you want to include a Twitter bird in your background, check out these resources.

• Resources: 8 Free Cute & Simple Twitter Bird Vector Graphics
• Tutorial: Create a Cute and Adorable Twitter Icon in Photoshop
• Tutorial: Create a Twitter Style Bird Mascot

Tip #6: Link your background in with your Twitter name and profile picture.

@mut1ey

If you have a reasonably unique name that you use for your online identity, then why not expand on that and base your Twitter profile picture and background around that name? Mut1ey uses a rather cool picture of Muttley the dog from an old popular TV show as the profile picture, and expands on this by using a great illustrated piece of the character, along with an actual picture of the man behind the Twitter account and some contact information.

Brand Consistency Resources

It is important to keep the consistency of your brands image throughout your marketing material and social networking sites. Here are a couple of informative and helpful articles:

• The No. 1 Rule / Brand Consistency
• How To Keep Your Blog Branding On Track

Tip #7: Use the space you have to share some information with your followers.

@oridusartic

Your background space is a great way to share a little more information about yourself with your followers without being restricted by the character limit Twitter gives you in the primary biography area. Oridusartic embeds her blogs URL, email address and a list of her passions within a simple but stylish vector-based illustration that merges into a solid color. This helps new stumblers decide whether or not the user is going to be tweeting about things that are interesting to them.

Tip #8: Use a restricted color palette.

@willbryantplz

Using a restricted color palette (especially in tiled backgrounds) is a great way to show off your skill, as it requires patience and great compositions to make it look good. Willbryantplz uses a beautiful illustrated background merged with a grayscale texture to "wow" his followers and make the white Twitter foreground pop out from the screen. To really make this style work, the same colors should also be used as your font and sidebar colors.

Color Resources

If you’re going to use a limited color scheme, choose it wisely. Make it match your branding. Below are a few great color scheme websites well worth checking out!

• COLOURlovers: Color Trends and Downloadable Palettes
• ColorCombos: Website Color Combinations
• Adobe Kuler: Color Scheme Generator

Tip #9: Use your background to show off your personality, characteristics and interests.

@ericsteuten

Images are one of the best ways to share your personality and interests with people that somehow land on your Twitter page. Ericsteuten uses a wonderful illustration to represent his characteristics; clearly a happy, funny and imaginative guy.

Character Illustration Resources

Illustrated characters in your background are one of the best ways to show off your personality to your Twitter profile viewers; it shows off your skills too! Below are a few resources to help with character illustration.

• Interview: Roughly Speaking: Character Design Sketching Approaches
• Navigating the Sea of Character Design Merchandising
• Creating a Collection of Quirky Caricatures

Tip #10: Make the most of your own mascot.

@MailChimp

If you have a mascot for your brand your Twitter profile is an excellent place to show him, her or it off! It’s not only fun and entertaining, but is a great way to link your Twitter profile with your brand. One superb example of this is MailChimp’s Twitter profile, who use their infamous MailChimp character to really jazz up their page.

Conclusion

By putting some of these Twitter background design tips into practice, you’ll be improving your design skills as you’ll learn how to work around design limitations which more than often do turn up in personal and client projects, as well as producing a great, attractive background that will appeal more people to hit the follow button when visiting your profile page!

Do you feel you have a good Twitter background? Share it with us in the comments section below!

  

Product photography could well be the single most important design aspect of any e-commerce website. Without the ability to touch, hold, smell, taste or otherwise handle the products they are interested in, potential customers have only images to interact with. Ultimately, the softer, tastier, flashier and more attractive your products look to shoppers, the more confident they’ll feel about purchasing from you and the better your conversion rate will be.

While any product can look great in a photo (sometimes deceptively so), keep in mind that your images should match your website’s overall aesthetic and your company’s image. Let’s start with a few great examples of how online retailers have incorporated high-quality product photos onto their websites. In this article, we will focus on images of actual items, rather than models, events or landscapes.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you already get your copy of the Smashing Book?]

Examples Of Beautiful Product Photography

Uncrate
Uncrate is probably the best-looking men’s shopping blog, and a lot of the credit goes to the product photos in its posts. One of the criteria for its blog posts seems to be for product photos to be incredibly well shot. This is a great place to get inspired for your own product photography project.

Ties.com
Ties.com has years of experience with dress-tie photography and has improved the quality of its photos over the years. Now it uses a lightbox effect to offer close-ups of its ties. The layout of the website is similar to that of Amazon. As with any website of this nature, super-clear photos are essential to compensate for the customer’s inability to feel the ties.

Made.com
Turning to furniture, UK website Made.com does a great job of showing its products from multiple angles and perspectives without cluttering the website or making the images feel redundant. Its lamps, for example, can be viewed up close or at a distance within the same frame, while its tables and desks can be viewed from both eye level and low angles. Again, the selective use of color throughout the website directs attention to the products themselves, while giving the overall design a sleek minimalist feel.

Harry Winston
High-end jewelry website Harry Winston emphasizes the brilliancy and luxury of its products by integrating them in a relatively stripped-down website. The sharp, vibrant images of colored gemstones and sparkling crystals command the viewer’s attention on every page, without overpowering the other elements of the design. The brilliant reds, greens and oranges of these products contrast with the neutral black, white and gray color scheme, while complementing the refined cursive and rolling script scattered throughout the website.

Louis Vuitton
Another up-market website, Louis Vuitton also uses wonderful high-res product shots and zooms for its non-clothing items, such as calendars and wallets. While this website predictably has numerous photos of models posing with the products in lifestyle and fashion vignettes, it also does an excellent job of emphasizing the craftsmanship and quality of its items.

Moben
Kitchen designer Moben has a much busier website, using pictures and videos of its products in various locations. The photos here show potential customers the innovative design and style of these products in a unified setting, while still offering detailed shots of individual items. This is a great strategy for e-commerce companies that sell large products or that sell services that are difficult to visualize.

Weber
Moving out of the kitchen and into the backyard, Weber, a well-known maker of grilling and other cooking equipment, has a fine product photography area on its website. The website itself is pretty basic, as you might expect, without much in the way of attractive text or icons, but the sharp images and high-quality close-ups add a lot of visual appeal. If nothing else, this is a good example of how good images can help a website overcome a mediocre design.

Bang & Olufsen
Turning to a website that at first glance seems a bit less inviting, audio-video manufacturer Bang & Olufsen opts for a harder, more architectural aesthetic than some of the other websites we’ve looked at. While there is plenty of black, gray and white throughout, this website is far from cold and sterile, thanks to the side-sweeping product photos, which are bright but do not compromise the futuristic feel of the design. The pages of Bang & Olufsen’s collection have another nice touch: product thumbnails glow when you hover over them.

Leica
As you might expect from one of the world’s biggest names in photography and imaging technology, Leica has some high-quality images, especially of its camera equipment. You won’t find a ton of photos here, but in keeping with the brand’s no-frills, no-nonsense approach, the pictures you do see are high-res and sharp, a perfect example of how to do more with less.

Victorinox
Another brand known for precision equipment, Victorinox has an impressive range of visual content on its website, especially in the product area. The sliding photo gallery in the “Timepiece” section, for example, captures both the mechanical and aesthetic beauty of the brand’s watches: you can really imagine how it would feel to hold and wear the watch, while still being able to see the complexity of its internals. The website is also notable for its great examples of selective focusing and dramatic lighting, which really make the products eye-catching.

CuffLinks.com
CuffLinks.com clearly puts effort into photographing its vast selection of cufflinks. It offers customers a good view of its cufflinks from all angles. It also shows the packaging or box that the cufflinks will ship in, giving us a well-rounded impression. Fortunately for this company, the size and inflexibility of cuff links make them a relatively easy product to photograph. Take a look at their many other products and the different angles the shots have been taken from.

Ties ’n’ Cuffs
Ties ’n’ Cuffs is another e-commerce store with a large selection of cufflinks, ties and other accessories. Like CuffLinks.com, it offers a handful of photos for each product. But Ties ’n’ Cuffs lets customers also zoom into its cufflinks, giving a super-clear picture of product details that one might miss in a wide shot and showing how the crystals reflect the light. Browse around this website to see how they’ve implemented their zoom function for many different products.

Chocomize
Chocomize lets chocolate lovers make their own custom chocolate bars by allowing them to select from a variety of ingredients. Here is a great example of using photos for products that offer a high degree of customization, without bogging down viewers with too many choices and images. The pictures on Chocomize—bright, glossy piles of candy, nuts, berries and decorations that can be added to a milk, dark or white chocolate base—are relatively uniform in size and shape yet distinctive enough to be unique and noticeable. It also has detailed photos of each ingredient.

Threadless.com
The t-shirt giant Threadless.com has a particular culture, and it has done a great job of keeping that culture intact with its photos, while still keeping the product itself front and center. Check out the many creative ways that it displays its t-shirts.

Designbyhumans.com
Another great t-shirt company. It has a super-clean website and keeps the product well in focus, despite the human models (which can sometimes distract from the product).

Apple
While it sounds cliché, the product photos at Apple would make anyone want to purchase an iPad or iPhone. With a limited number of images and a simple twistable 360-degree viewing mode, the designers behind this website visually sum up Apple’s mantra of simplicity and fun.

Four Steps Of Product Photography1. Prepare Product

To take quality photographs, the complexity and time required will depend greatly on the type of product you’re shooting. Some of the easiest products to photograph are solid objects such as cups and toys; you may just have to give them a good polish before shooting.

Clothing, textiles and other items that can bend, stretch and wrinkle are much harder to photograph and could require hours of ironing and arranging to get a perfect result. Details, like whether a shirt collar is straight, will determine whether the photographs look like they were shot in a serious studio or by an amateur with a point-and-shoot camera.

Whatever the product, inspect it carefully for tears, stains, chips and other imperfections before beginning.

2. Light

To get a great-looking photo, lighting is crucial. Fortunately, with many products, you don’t need much equipment to get a well-lit balanced exposure. For objects the size of a digital camera or smaller, you can use an EZcube light tent with two small 30-watt bulbs on either side. For larger items, such as clothing, two 60-watt soft boxes on either side of the product should suffice. Also consider using a light reflector to get rid of any shadows and obvious highlights.

3. Set Your Camera

Watch out for noticeable light reflections on shiny surfaces. Even though most product photos look very staged, you don’t want yours to look too artificial.

Obviously, you’ll need a camera to take pictures, so make sure you have one. It doesn’t have to be the best or most expensive on the market, but it should at least have manual focus and shutter and aperture controls. These are all standard on most SLR cameras.

Once you’ve arranged the product and lighting equipment, take a few test shots until you get an exposure that isn’t too bright or too dark. Keep track of the shutter speed and aperture settings of your best photos, and use them again in future to maintain consistency. If you aren’t sure how things like shutter speed, aperture and lens focal length affect images, you might want to do some basic research.

If you understand the basics of photography but your photos still don’t look quite right, don’t worry, because you may have to change several in-camera settings before getting the kind of shots you want.

If your pictures look soft or don’t enlarge well, make sure the ISO setting on your camera is as low as possible. The ISO setting affects the light sensitivity of a camera’s photo sensor. By setting yours to 100 or 200, you’ll get a higher-resolution shot with less grain and pixellation. While you’re at it, change the camera’s image size to the highest possible setting. Most cameras default to a medium-sized resolution (around 1500 x 850 pixels).

Next, make sure the white balance is set to handle the kind of light you’re working in. Most cameras have modes for incandescent, fluorescent, direct sunlight and cloudy environments, and you should adjust your camera’s white balance according to these different conditions. If the white balance controls are off, your images might either look too bright or have a sickly yellow cast, especially if your product is white.

Color control settings are important to consider as well. Most digital cameras allow you to select several degrees of color saturation, ranging from muted to normal to vibrant. If your product is already colorful (flowers, for example), a less saturated setting would probably work better. This is especially true with red, which many digital cameras (even high-end ones) have difficulty processing.

Finally, make sure the image format is appropriate. If you’re just putting the photos online, high-resolution JPEGs are probably fine. RAW files, on the other hand, carry more data because they aren’t compressed like JPEG or TIFF files, and they carry fewer digital artifacts; but they take up more space and require special codices and converters to be viewed and edited. Some cameras have a “RAW + high-res JPEG” setting, which gives you both compressed and uncompressed versions of an image. Do a little research on your camera when deciding which format to use, because some models are automatically set to give a softer focus in JPEG mode.

4. Edit the Photos

This is the final and perhaps most important step of product photography. This is when you really take your photos to the next level and make them pop. If you’ve gotten the lighting right and your camera properly configured, then you are well on your way to great photos. Factors such as unwanted colors and objects that couldn’t be removed during the shoot, though, will require some adjustment.

Surrounding a product in white space is common practice. This makes the photo convenient to use on websites and in catalogs because it won’t clash with other elements. To make a product float freely in white space, you have to remove the background with masking in your photo editing program. As common as it is, it is often done poorly, making an otherwise fine photo look amateurish. Masking properly takes time, especially when you are not working with straight lines. Photoshop CS4 has a great “Refine edge” tool that makes it much easier to correct crooked lines.

Many people also use a variety of artistic effects in Photoshop and other bitmap editors to subtly manipulate their photos. One such effect is the soft or selective focus, which, as the name implies, softens a portion of the photo while leaving other areas sharp. This is great for creating the illusion of depth and size, and the trick is often used for pictures of food, jewelry and watches (see the examples above). Depending on your lens, you can get a similar in-camera effect by setting the aperture low and zooming in on the product from a distance.

Also, depending on the product and the look you’re aiming for, you could also experiment with the perspective controls in Photoshop. Most people assume this tool is only good for tall buildings and scenes with noticeable vanishing points, but you can also use it to make geometric objects such as tables and desks appear overpowering, especially when photographed from a low angle (see Made.com for examples).

Additional TipsBlend Photos With Design

When putting together a collection of product photos, ask yourself if the images you’re taking will match the color scheme and aesthetic of your website. The easiest way around such a challenge is to just keep things simple and minimalist.

Use a Gray Card

A gray card is a middle-gray reference that you can set your camera to for accurate and consistent color rendering, especially on older cameras that have limited controls for white balance and color. A gray card gives a more realistic depiction of your product’s color and reduces the amount of post-exposure color adjustment you have to make later. They can be bought at any photography store and for about $10. Most cameras have a function for taking gray card test photos; read through the owner’s manual carefully.

Get a Flexible and Sturdy Tripod

Taking sharp, consistent and professional product photos is nearly impossible without a good tripod. It can be any regular tripod, but if you are shooting a product on the floor from above, you’ll probably need a horizontal extension: as the name implies, this tool extends horizontally from the head of the tripod so that you can position your camera directly above and parallel to the product itself. This prevents linear distortion, vanishing lines and uneven image depth.

The tripod you need will depend on the size of your camera. If you have a heavy-duty SLR with a long horizontal extension, you’ll need a solid tripod to support the weight of the camera and prevent shaking.

If you put your tripod in storage, make sure you are able to reset it to the same height and position for your next shoot. Measure the legs of the tripod, and mark with tape where the feet of the tripod should stand on the ground.

Use Light Reflectors

As mentioned, light reflectors give photos an even spread of light and a fresh look. They come in many sizes and shapes. A medium-sized light reflector, one as big as a large pizza, should be more than enough for product photography. Anything bigger is more appropriate for videography or photographs of people.

Reflectors come with three different surfaces: silver foliated, gold foliated and white. The gold- and silver-sided reflectors usually reflect the most light, while white reflectors give a softer, warmer glow.

Define the Decision-Making Process

If your standard of quality is high or you’re working on a team, the lack of a decision-making process can waste a lot of time. Set clear criteria for what you’re looking for, and make sure your workflow allows all parties to follow the criteria without constant interruption.

Outsource When Appropriate

If your product is easy to shoot, then outsourcing is a great option. The most important points to discuss with the photographer beforehand are quality and their willingness and ability to contribute to the editing process.

The quality of the photos will depend on the time spent editing them. Some photographers don’t want to get involved with this part, feeling that image masking and other such tedious tasks are below them. Cover all your bases before starting with the photographer, otherwise the process could turn out to be more expensive and time-consuming than you expected.

Further Resources

If you liked this article, then read Smashing Magazine’s recent article How to Use Photos to Sell More Online for another look at photography and e-commerce.

Also consider these:

• An extensive practical guide to photographing various products.
• A guide to photographing watches, jewelry and other products.

Zachary Lowell contributed to this article.

(al)

© Peter Crawfurd for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: ecommerce, product photography