SpyreStudios - Design and Development Magazine

With all the content-heavy and CMS-powered websites out there these days, I find it refreshing to browse a single-page website where all the content is accessible without loading or refreshing a page.

The sites in this post make great use of things like sliders, carousels, Ajax and auto-scroll scripts to display content in a way that doesn’t hinder the user experience but rather improves it. I hope you enjoy this showcase, and of course feel free to chime in and leave a comment at the end of the post.

The computer sitting at your desk is far more powerful than anything available to all but the largest businesses in the 1980s, enabling us to continue to add layer upon layer without slowing down, and possibly losing focus on why we are here in the first place – to deliver a high quality product.

One possible solution is to this is to artificially limit your design and color options the way Shigeru Miyamoto was limited by technical constraints when designing Zelda and Mario on the NES.

While some of the NES library was filler, there were many standouts that used the limitations of 8 bit technology as strengths, rather than weakness.

If you’re been reading SpyreStudios for a while now you probably already know we like minimalist designs. In fact we’ve showcased many websites featuring a minimalist design in the past. We thought it was time for another round.

Minimalism doesn’t rhyme with grid systems, but many grid-based websites will feature a stripped down and clean design and make great use of typography. After all, it’s all about letting the content shine. I hope you enjoy this post!

More and more content is being published everyday and site owners need to find ways to categorize all this content. And with more content and categories comes greater navigation problems.

Sometimes navigation becomes a problem when there are simply too many options. Thus, it’s of great importance to cure the navigation-itis syndrome and make website navigation user-friendly and easy to navigate.

A while ago we shared 25 great web-design and development books and since this earlier post got a great response (and we’ve read a lot more books since), we’ve now gathered another 25.

In this list you’ll find books about design, theory, development, css, html and a lot more. I hope you enjoy the post!

Usability – a term that we hear almost everywhere we go on the web and for good reason. Good usability can mean the difference between one site’s success and the downfall of another.

Usability is especially important in the case of e-commerce websites. While most usability principles of regular websites still apply for e-commerce sites as well, the different specific pages such as shopping carts, shipping methods, shipping and billing addresses, order reviews, payment options, etc. all add another layer of complexity to creating usable online shops.