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Quality web hosting has always been in popular demand. No matter how good your website is, at the end of the day, awesome content and wonderful design will have little effect on your visitors if they are having a hard time reaching your website! Let's be straight: If you want your website to be a success, you must consider a proper web host. Speaking of successful websites, a growing number of them are powered by WordPress. As a result, web hosting companies begin specializing on WordPress. So, what exactly is managed WP hosting all about, and who are the major players? Read on as we attempt to answer this question in the following lines.

The Smashing Library grants you immediate unlimited access to all Smashing eBooks, released in the past and in the future, including digital versions of our printed books. The yearly fee of $99 covers the immediate access to the complete Smashing library with 38 eBooks — you save up to 70% off the regular eBook prices! We think that’s a reasonable price for a total of 60 quality eBooks during the first year. Take advantage of the launch discount and save extra $10 right now!

The Smashing eBook Library

Web design is an ever-changing industry, and to keep getting better at your craft and stay up-to-date with what’s going on, you need to invest a lot of time and effort in getting reliable, good quality content. Wouldn’t it be great to receive the most valuable and useful eBooks on the best design practices and coding techniques automatically every month? Well, grab a seat—we’ve got quite a sweet deal coming your way!

The eBooks contain thoroughly edited and curated ad-free articles written by our well-respected authors—already published on Smashing Magazine or written exclusively for the eBook. We guarantee to deliver at least 24 quality eBooks a year. Even better—you can vote on the topics that you’d like to learn more about, and we’ll prepare eBooks that fit your needs best!

You’ll receive all new Smashing eBooks (at least 24) released during your subscription period automatically in your personal dashboard. This includes not only our regular Smashing eBooks but also digital versions of our upcoming printed books, and only costs $99 (€89) a year — it’s just two coffees a month.

With the Smashing Library subscription, you will be able to:

• Immediate unlimited access to the complete Smashing Library with all published Smashing eBooks, including digital versions of the printed Smashing Books 1, 2, 3, 3â…“ (Check the overview of 36 eBooks included in the subscription).
• Vote on the upcoming Smashing eBooks and topics in the magazine;
• Get all new Smashing eBooks automatically in your personal dashboard—including the digital versions of all our upcoming printed books (e.g. The Mobile Book and Smashing Book 4);
• Download the Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks Bundle immediately upon subscribing;
• Receive all eBooks in all formats: EPUB, Kindle, PDF;
• Save up to 70% off the regular eBook bundle prices.

Subscribe now!Great eBooks for great Web designers.

Available And Upcoming eBooks

Our eBooks are written by experts in the industry and go through a comprehensive quality review check by invited professionals from the industry. They contain both already-published and exclusive articles from Smashing Magazine’s well-respected authors and experts: Christian Heilmann, Paul Boag, Addy Osmani, Bruce Lawson, Rachel Andrew, Andy Clarke, Aarron Walter, Mike Rundle, Susan Weinschenk, Dmitry Fadeyev, Tom Giannattasio, Marc Edwards—just to name a few.

The eBooks will be useful for both beginners and seasoned professionals. The content is primarily intermediate and advanced level, but the eBooks cover basics as well. On average, each eBook has 20,000 words (or 175 pages in PDF).

Already Available eBooks

Here is a brief overview of already available Smashing eBooks. You can find more details by clicking on the titles that you are interested in.

Title	Number of eBooks
Mobile Design 4 eBooks	Mobile design practices, UX techniques and peculiarities of the Android and iOS platforms.
Essentials Of Mobile Design (235 pages) Mobile Design Patterns (124 pages) Designing for Android (228 pages) Designing for iPhone (234 pages)
Coding 8 eBooks	Guide to the fundamentals of Web design: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery and Responsive Web Design.
HTML Essentials (106 pages) Mastering HTML5 (93 pages) HTML5 Semantics (71 pages) CSS Essentials (281 pages) Mastering CSS3 (251 pages) Responsive Design (160 pages) JavaScript Essentials (142 pages) Mastering jQuery (122 pages)
Web Design 3 eBooks	Innovative Web design techniques and approaches, rules of thumb and guidelines for good Web typography.
Professional Web Design, Vol. 1 (302 pages) Professional Web Design, Vol. 2 (279 pages) Web Typography (242 pages)
Graphics 5 eBooks	Effective design techniques and practical tips from experts on Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks.
Mastering Photoshop, Vol. 1 (178 pages) Mastering Photoshop, Vol. 2 (216 pages) Mastering Photoshop, Vol. 3 (220 pages) Mastering Illustrator (282 pages) Mastering Fireworks (309 pages)
UX Design 7 eBooks	A comprehensive guide for practical UX techniques and psychological insights into how users think.
User Experience Design (134 pages) Psychology of Web Design (272 pages) User Experience, Practical Techniques, Vol. 1 (149 pages) User Experience, Practical Techniques, Vol. 2 (145 pages) Designing Usable Websites (97 pages) Usability Testing (97 pages) How to Create Selling E-Commerce Websites (266 pages)
WordPress 3 eBooks	Understand the essential components of WordPress and learn how to use them effectively to quickly build advanced WordPress sites.
WordPress Essentials (157 pages) Mastering WordPress (166 pages) WordPress Tutorials (183 pages)
Freelancing 2 eBooks	Everything you need to know to improve your freelancing workflow: from pitching like a pro to handling your finances properly.
Successful Freelancing (218 pages) Professional Workflow (92 pages)
Smashing eBooks 6 eBooks	Digital versions of our best-selling printed Smashing Books. Exclusive insights from the experts of the industry.
Smashing Book #1 eBook (313 pages) Smashing Book #2 eBook (355 pages) Smashing Book #2: Lost Files (127 pages) Smashing Book #3 eBook (340 pages) Smashing Book #3? eBook (160 pages) Best of Smashing Magazine (409 pages)

Upcoming eBooks

We’ve got the following line-up of eBooks coming up in the next months:

Upcoming Titles	Description
Web Typography 1 eBook	Best practices and modern techniques for handling type on the Web, including practical techniques and expert tips.
Business Bundle 3 eBooks	Practical insights into the creative process, marketing, customer service, copywriting and leadership.
UX & Game Design 2 eBooks	Overview of interaction patterns and game design techniques for better UX of your websites and apps.
WordPress Pro 2 eBooks	Techniques for building advanced WordPress themes and finding your spot in the new (and tough) WordPress economy.
JavaScript Bundle 3 eBooks	Best practices and recent coding techniques for better performance and maintenance of your JavaScript code.
Your topic eBooks	The topic you suggest and vote for in your personal dashboard.

Subscribe now!Great eBooks for great Web designers.

Getting Started

Getting started is easy. Just choose the subscription of your choice, proceed with the checkout and find your eBooks in your personal dashboard: that’s also where you can suggest and vote on the upcoming eBook titles as well as topics in the Smashing Magazine. New eBooks will be available for download automatically at the end of every month. You will be notified about new eBooks via email, of course.

We’re working hard on the new topics and are proud to be able to start you off with the recently released Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks Bundle—that’s three brand-new Smashing eBooks to get started with.

Why Subscription Model?

When we launched this little website over six years ago, we wanted it to serve one specific purpose: to deliver valuable, reliable, practical insights to people who were building websites just like we were. Time has passed, and many things have changed, yet our deep commitment to this initial idea has never been stronger.

It’s with this commitment that we are proud to announce our new undertaking, a little extra that will help us make your reading experience on Smashing Magazine better, cleaner and more valuable in every way. Meet The Smashing eBook Library, an annual eBook subscription for our very own Smashing eBooks.

Smashing Magazine is and has always been free and independent, a publication deeply committed to quality work and professionalism in the best interests of the Web design community. We are proud of our thorough editorial work, based on principles that are postulated in our Publishing Policy. We don’t take the efforts of our contributors for granted. Every contribution deserves credit and respect, care and attention, acknowledgement and honorarium—which is why everybody involved in the editorial process always gets paid for their work, whether they want it or not.

Of course quality work doesn’t come at a cheap price. You know it, and so do we: Smashing Magazine strongly relies on the page impressions that its articles generate. At times, this reliance can collide with the editorial principles and guidelines that every Smashing Magazine article has to follow.

Smashing Magazine’s thorough Publishing Policy clearly states the rules and guidelines of our editorial work. We never publish sponsored articles or paid content; all ads are always clearly marked as such.

We want Smashing Magazine to be all about you. We want to provide a better and cleaner reading experience on the website and we want to invest more in new formats and sections—practical guides, case studies, tests and benchmarks, new regular columns and Q&A, expert advice for newcomers and many others. We want to further improve and enrich the content in the magazine and deliver more valuable content available for free for everybody to use and learn from. And this is where we could use your help.

We never accept donations or gifts, but we produce printed books and eBooks that help us stabilize the financial viability of the website while delivering value to our customers at the same time. By offering you a valuable product, we hope to provide a tangible value for the money you pay when purchasing our products. And before you ask: yes, Smashing Magazine will always remain free. And with your help we want to make our little publication as smashing as we know it can be. How? Well, with the Smashing eBook Library of course.

Why Should You Subscribe?

The eBook subscription has many advantages:

Further your knowledge with quality eBooks!
Receive the most valuable and useful articles on best design practices and coding techniques automatically every month. Web design is an ever-changing industry, so if you want to learn how to get better at your craft and stay up-to-date with what’s going on, learn what techniques are emerging and what practices are changing, the Smashing Library is just what you are looking for.

Decide on the topics of the next eBooks.
With the Smashing eBook subscription, you’re more than just a customer—you are a part of the Smashing Team. You can vote on the topics of the upcoming eBooks and suggest topics that you’d like to see covered next. You will also be the first to receive access to all new Smashing eBook publications—up to two weeks earlier than everyone else.

Save up to 70% off the regular eBook bundle prices!
You can save almost 70% on the eBooks with the subscription compared to buying each eBook bundle separately. Not only does it save you money, but it also saves you valuable time since you get everything in one swoop! It’s worth it—we care about quality content, we care about best practices and we care about delivering the most useful and valuable insights to you.

Immediate access to brand new eBooks.
You do not have to go through the check-out process for every eBook you would like to have—just log into your personal subscription dashboard and discover the latest and greatest bundles ready for download! The eBooks do not contain advertising and are DRM-free—available in PDF, EPUB and KINDLE formats. The best content, for the best price—just waiting for you to be downloaded onto your iPad, Kindle or any other eBook reader.

You support Smashing Magazine.
The high quality of the content on Smashing Magazine is held at the heart of what we do every single day. We’d love it to be only about the content for you, dear reader, not about the page impressions that articles generate. By subscribing, you help us stabilize our revenue which we need in order to operate on a long-term basis. We are dedicated to making your reading experience on Smashing Magazine better in every way—calm, convenient and user-friendly—day by day. We sincerely appreciate your support.

Subscribe now!Great eBooks for great Web designers.

If you are interested in corporate or educational licenses or have any questions, please feel free to ask us on Twitter or via email—we’d love to help you out! We sincerely appreciate your support.

FAQ & Support

Of course, you don’t need an eBook reader to read the eBooks—you can read the PDF version on your computer, but the EPUB and Amazon Kindle formats for your eBook readers or tablets are available as well. We’ll renew your subscription automatically at the end of the year so you won’t miss any eBooks, but if you decide not to continue, just cancel the subscription at least four weeks before the end of your subscription.

Don’t worry: you’ll still have access to your eBooks after your subscription has expired! You can always change your preferences in the dashboard. You can find more details in the Subscription Terms and Conditions as well as in our Smashing Library FAQ.

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© Vitaly Friedman for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

2013 will see a new resource for web designers. ByPeople is going to bring you a market packed with icons, templates, PSDs, logos and lots more. ByPeople promises to deliver everything web-ninjas could ever need. To shorten the wait its creators decided to put up a large archive for free. The archive, containing hundreds of design elements, comes at a weight of around 700 MB to a desktop near you. All you need to do is get your hands at an app that's able to unpack a 7z-archive and tell ByPeople your mail address.

How many times have you stumbled into a website that captivates you with its unique, remarkable design, where every functional part shines with originality? Then, when you decide to follow this creative person you suddenly discover that social media icons are just ordinary squares with recognizable colors and logos that barely fit into the whole composition. And as a result the overall effect fades away, the first impression proves wrong. It would seem that such a tiny thing as set of 32 px sized icons can’t bring disharmony, but as all we know, good design depends on attention to the details. Put that way even such a small part can radically change th general impression of what you see. An alternative would be creating everything from scratch. But that can be really time-consuming, especially with uncommon design intentions. What do we all do? We stroll along the broad avenues and tiny sideways of the world wide web, hoping to find these little helpers to make the web design shiny and impressive. Though this might cost a little time as well as money, generally, it is worth it. To save you from wasting hours of your productive time, we have picked 25 diverse social icon packs that can definitely outshine other ordinary collections and make your website design exceptional and memorable.

Twenty minutes after unboxing my first iPad, I realized this device’s potential to revolutionize the world of kiosks. Ten years ago, my team and I worked with Honda to develop touchscreen kiosks for its dealerships. Potential buyers could customize their purchase with a few touches of their fingertips. While innovative at the time, these early interactive kiosks didn’t come cheap, running Honda $3,000 to $5,000 per installation. Today, we can create such a kiosk for a fraction of the price.

Which industries are the most likely candidates for tablet kiosks? Four that immediately spring to mind are hotels, restaurants, museums and retailers. Kiosks help streamline information-gathering processes, such as signing up for mailing lists, making reservations, ordering products and services and checking in and out of locations. By automating these processes, the kiosk eliminates the customer’s frustration from waiting in line to speak with a representative and, likewise, frees the employees to focus their energies on higher-level tasks.

Recent consumer-privacy laws put limits on the data that retailers may capture during a transaction. For example, a recent California ruling forbids the process of “reverse appending� by ZIP code. Kiosks give the retailer a second chance to collect customer data, away from the cash register. A privacy-savvy customer might balk at providing their personal information to a cashier at the time of purchase and yet be willing to enter the same information at a kiosk for a contest or discount. Success depends on having an appealing interface that encourages interaction.

Step 1: Hardware Considerations

Obviously, your client will need a tablet for this project. We’ll focus on the iPad here because it is what most of our clients choose, but other platforms such as Kindle Fire could also be used as kiosks. Whichever device you choose, consider how to secure the tablet so that it doesn’t disappear! We developed a device that securely mounts an iPad to a wall, counter or desk (we called it Padloc). Remember that physical security is key; an unsecured tablet is an attractive target for thieves.

iPad securely mounted with a Padloc.

Step 2: Software Considerations

This step is optional. Perhaps your client simply wants to display their website or use a third-party app. In our experience, however, a customized interface can make or break the user experience. We recently worked with a client to develop a simple interface for gathering email addresses in exchange for special offers. Here is the process we followed:

1. We decided to create a Web app rather than a conventional app, thus bypassing a potentially lengthy and complicated submission and approval process through the App Store.
2. We picked the device to program on (in this case, the iPad). This was important because, knowing we would be using mobile Safari, with all of the interesting little nuances available for it (through HTML5 and CSS3), we were able to streamline production.
3. We designed an interface that was visually striking, intuitive and compliant with interface guidelines (including those related to the on-screen keyboard, viewport size and touchscreen conventions). (Apple has some great resources for developers, such as its “Human Interface Guidelines.�)
4. Because we were working in mobile Safari on the iPad, we were able to program some cool features into the Web app. But these came with restrictions, such as:
   • The features would work only in portrait orientation,
   • The Web app had to be saved to the iPad’s home screen and launch from there,
   • All links in the Web app would open in a new browser tab.
5. We also made some other tweaks:
   • Hid the browser chrome (URL bar and buttons) using <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes" />;
   • Created a bookmark icon for the home screen and linked to it using <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/path/to/icon.png" />;
   • Set the color of the status bar (the options are black, gray or black translucent) using <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black" />;
   • Made all events “touchâ€� events, as opposed to “hoverâ€� events, to accommodate the limitations of the touchscreen.

Do Clients Really Want This?

What is the current demand for touchscreen tablet kiosks? We recently conducted a survey of our existing and potential clients; 89% indicated that they would use a touchscreen for a kiosk, and the iPad was the tablet of choice for 84% of them.

The results of our survey

Pretty eye-opening, eh? We also asked survey participants to identify the biggest factor affecting their decision to move forward with a kiosk (choosing from 10 options, ranging from price to screen size to operating system to security options). Price was most important for 41% of respondents, with screen size coming next at 18%.

Interestingly, a majority of respondents chose the iPad, yet also mentioned price as their top concern. This suggests that lower-cost entrants to the market (such as the Kindle Fire) are well positioned to gain market share and become viable candidates for these kiosk projects. Our survey shows a strong desire for kiosks, and the price barrier has been removed with these low-cost tablets!

A Bright Future With New Possibilities

In addition, a wide array of hardware is constantly emerging, creating previously unimagined possibilities. Consider Square’s reader. Plug this tiny device into the headphone jack of your iPad, download the app, and you’re ready to take credit-card payments. Now, add a locking mount, install it anywhere in your store or in your trade-show booth, and you’ll have the best-looking, quickest-to-set-up cash register you’ve ever seen!

iPad mounted with a Square reader to accept payments.

As more advanced devices are introduced to the marketplace, the traditional limitations of kiosks are being surmounted. It’s time for us to think outside the box and imagine a new future for low-cost tablet kiosks!

Conclusion

The clunky, expensive kiosks of yesterday are becoming irrelevant in today’s world of elegant low-cost touchscreen devices. Whether clients want to capture email addresses, enable customers to sign up for events in the store or add interactive elements to their artwork, a touchscreen kiosk can deliver the results they’re looking for. Tablet kiosks can be integrated into any decor smartly and sleekly. Now that affordability is no longer a factor, you can start working with clients to develop apps that bring imagination back to their business solutions.

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© Jason Mark for Smashing Magazine, 2012.