2011 has been Speckyboy’s best year yet in terms of growth. More great readers and followers, more great authors, more great sponsors. However, at the core is (hopefully) great content here on Speckyboy. And just to recap some of our best content, here are our top 20 Speckyboy posts of 2011. Top 20 Speckyboy Posts of 2011 45 Free eBooks for Developers and Designers This post covers visual design, accessibility, CSS, JavaScript/jQuery, mobile, optimization, UX, and much more. All of [...]

Some of the best and brightest trends we’ve seen this year (2011) in web design include responsive web design, single page scrolling websites, the proliferation of slide shows and sliders, the spread of font replacement and parallax scrolling. Some of these new trends may be passing fads, but others are likely to represent lasting shifts in the world of web design. As websites like Dribble allow web designers to showcase and share ideas, web design is beginning to develop more [...]

The move from physical to digital magazine content is an exciting process. Over just the past few years we have witnessed thousands of new brands and templates begin to surface. Magazine editors have wisely chosen the Internet as a medium to share their news stories. This not only reaches a wider global audience but also allows for the free flow of information. Without constraining signup fees these magazines can grow much faster with a lot less marketing. But to design [...]

The gaming industry has undergone some mindblowing changes in just a few decades. It seems like only last year that Super Nintendo games were skyrocketing into stardom. Yet now in closing of 2011 we’re seeing brilliant HD graphics running through custom PC rigs, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the Nintendo Wii consoles. Even with such advancing technology you can never forget the classics that brought us to this era. I’m a big fan of nostalgic/retro art and true gamers will [...]

It has been an amazing 2011 for Speckyboy. This was our first full year of daily publishing, we expanded our categories to cover almost all aspects of design from the web and mobile design to graphic design, from freebies and resources, from opinion pieces to tutorials, and a hell of lot in between. So far this year we have published 368 posts, generating an average of 2.4 million monthly page views (a million more than last year!), our RSS subscribers [...]

The search engine is our best tool for sifting through all of today’s websites. There are billions of domains online and many of them haven’t even been crawled by search engines! Google is certainly the pioneer of this industry. But over the years we have seen notable brands begin to surface as up-and-coming search engines. These other prominent companies are slowly gaining traction on the Internet. Many have taken some lessons from Google in regards to web interface design. This [...]

Colour. It’s something that we all use in our web or print work and finding the right colour to highlight, emphasise and stand out from the crowd can be easier said than done. Trying to make a decision about which hex code to use got me thinking, how many colours are there? 3 or 4? Depending on whether you work predominantly in web or print your answer might be 3 or 4. Red, green and blue or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow [...]

Drupal has a reputation for being strong in functionality and having a strong community, but weak when it comes to design. In deciding which cms to use, it is important to make the right decision, especially when considering design features. The following will cover how strong Drupal is from a design perspective and how to improve design if you are using Drupal. Why are there few Drupal Designers? One of the biggest reasons that Drupal has not attracted designers is [...]

Last weeks PhoneGap Beginner’s Guide giveaway has now ended, and it is now time to announce the winners. Thanks to everybody for all the comments and thanks to Packt for the books.

Today we have a small Christmas present for all you freelance developers and designers out there. Crafted by our friends IconShock.com, we have an exclusive icon set designed to keep your desktop organized by having tailored folders for all your freelance needs. Within the download package you will find a code folder, resources folder, clients folder, docs folder, ideas folder, inbox & outbox folders, an important folder and finally a blank folder allowing you to create your own. All of [...]

With Christmas just around the corner, its the perfect time to give yourself a little bit of seasonal cheer by decorating your desktop with a beautiful Christmas wallpaper. In this post, we have some of the best and most seasonal Christmas wallpapers for your desktop.

This week’s giveaway is from a new and exciting online website builder, IM Creator. They are giving away 3 Lifetime Subscriptions (worth $95 each per year!) for you to create your new website. All you have to do is to leave a comment below and tweet about this post, using the hashtag #speckyimcreator. Message from the IM Creator team: Whether you own a business or just want to promote yourself, you need to be online. IM Creator is a new [...]

This is our weekly selection of our favorite web designs from the past week, thanks to everybody for their recommendations. Feel free to comment and let us know what you think.