BlogmyQuery – BMQ

Have you ever had someone flirt with you and they did nothing but demean themselves the whole time? Did that make you attracted to them? Doubtful. Yet, this is how so many individuals seem to handle their business today.

With the advent of social media, the Web has been overflooded with individuals claiming that they are experts at everything. It has become so rampant that whenever I come to see someone label themselves as an expert, I immediately believe they are trying to pull a fast one on me. Unfortunately, many times these people get business because there are people out there who really do believe that they are experts.

How many great designers do you know out there who struggle to find clients, while the world’s worst Microsoft Frontpage jockey can’t keep client offers out of his inbox? I know some of you reading this are dying to get more clients or more users to the app you created. Obviously, to get more people you need to let more people know about you and that doesn’t happen unless you say something. Once you develop a big enough reputation, you can sit back and let others talk about you, but 98% of us aren’t at that point yet so we have only ourselves to depend on.

Being An Annoyance

The problem I find is that I don’t want to be annoying like the other people I see hawking their wares. You might have this problem as well. On Twitter, the world is informed of a new article on my Drawar blog once and that is it. On the very rare occasion I will send out another tweet hours or days later if a great discussion is happening, but beyond that I don’t want to bug my audience. I know people that have no problem promoting their articles once per hour. I don’t know how it works out for them, but I know it annoys me and if something annoys me, I try to avoid doing it myself and therein lies the problem.

When you are promoting your work it is hard to look at your acts of promotion from an outsider’s perspective. When you think you are being annoying, you might not even be registering as a blip on a person’s radar. You might not be promoting enough to get the attention of the masses and yet in your mind you feel as though the masses want to kill you for your own acts of survival. What happens if I am trying to promote an article at 10 a.m.? Does every one of my followers come across that tweet and then know to retweet it if they find it worthy? Probably not.

Be Proud

I believe we do design because we are proud of our work. We believe that we deserve a chance because we can offer the client a unique value. Internally, we believe in it and so that means externally we should show that we believe in it as well.

If you write or design, you must believe in what you do. If you don’t believe you have something to express, there are plenty of other jobs out there. If you believe in what you do, and if you’re doing it for real, you must find ways to let people know about it.

There is a difference between being arrogant about yourself as a person and being confident that your work has some value. The first is unattractive, the second is healthy and natural. Some people respond to the one as if it were the other. Don’t confuse them. Marketing is not bragging, and touting one’s wares is not evil. The baker in the medieval town square must holler “fresh rolls” if he hopes to feed the townfolk.

— On Self-Promotion

Not too long ago, some fellow informed me that he was going to unfollow Drawar on Twitter due to my arrogance. I’m not sure if he meant me personally or the fact that every once in a while I like to proclaim how wonderful I believe the site is. Admittedly, it can come across as arrogant and can be a complete turn off for many people, but to me that is just the confidence I have in the work I am putting forth with Drawar.

You often see testimonials on product and service sites, but not design blogs and portfolios. Why is that? Compliments and praise might be the greatest self-promotion you could ever achieve. Keep track of it. Put it out there for everyone to see. If your clients aren’t saying great things about you then you know you are doing something wrong, but if they are then why shouldn’t your future potential clients know about them as well?

You can’t complain about your lack of business if you aren’t doing anything about it. If you are working hard to spread the word and it isn’t working then either you aren’t doing it right or your product simply isn’t up to par. Hopefully, people respect you enough to let you know when it is below average.

When I first started writing articles, I didn’t write them and send them off onto the Web hoping that someone would find them. I sent them to my friends and asked them to tweet it, while I did the same on my personal Twitter account. Although I still think my friends should be tweeting everything that I write, I only ask them to tweet about my articles from time to time. Once or twice I have sent my friends a tweet linking to my articles and they have been kind enough to tweet about them to their audience.

Image source

I have also sent emails to individuals that I felt would be interested in an article and sometimes it works — many times it doesn’t. I still don’t feel comfortable asking others to tweet my stuff, but sometimes if you don’t ask then they won’t do it. In a perfect world, everyone spreads the word when you write something wonderful, but it just doesn’t work that way. We all need a little nudge from time to time.

The point is that even though I am proud of everything I write and wish that I had the audience to not have to worry about self-promotion ever again, I am not there yet and therefore have to continue to work and spread the word. This also means that when I do something I have to make sure it is quality and worth a person’s time. When you get people to commit to checking your work out and they don’t find it at all rewarding, you are going to have a hard time getting them back.

Community Participation

Dribbble isn’t just a showcase of great design, it has become a portfolio site for many designers. A large number have gotten jobs simply because someone came across their work on the site. You might work hard to build out your own portfolio with your own URL, but if you can’t find a way to get people to it then you are stuck. Dribbble helps you reach an audience that you might not have reached before.

This also applies to other communities. Blogging can help get you in the search engines and one day someone might happen upon you and launch your career. That is how Zeldman found Jason Santa Maria:

A Google search on Illustrator and Web design led me to a post by a guy I’d never heard of. The post was enjoyably written and reflected a mature and coherent attitude not simply toward the technique it described, but to the practice of design itself. Yes, the blog itself was intriguingly and skillfully designed, and that certainly didn’t hurt. But what made me hire Jason was not the artistry of his website’s design nor the demonstration that he possessed the technical skill I sought, but the fact that he had an evolved point of view about Web design.

— One Blog Post Is Worth A Thousand Portfolio Pieces

Taking the time to share you knowledge with the community shows that you have an idea of what you are doing. When people start to understand the process you go through to design a website, it helps to build credibility in their minds. If people within the community start calling you an expert, how do you think that projects to potential clients? By no means should you attempt to write every single day (unless you really want to), but getting an article up once a month can go a long way in promoting yourself.

Image source

Another great vehicle for self-promotion is conference speaking. You might see the same people speaking at different conferences throughout the year, but that is because many times they make it aware to the conference organizers that they are available to speak. Conference organizers look at the speaking lineups of other conferences to get an idea of who their audience wants to see.

However, if they don’t know you are willing to speak then why should they take the initiative to ask? Don’t hesitate to email conferences that interest you to let them know you are interesting in speaking for them.

Sharing Is Caring

While you should stand on top of the mountain and yell about your services every once in a while, the best method of promotion is to get involved. If you have a site, share your knowledge with the world. Visit other sites in the industry and comment. Make a name for yourself by being someone that is helpful. It’s no surprise that some of the best forms of promotion are giveaways.

If you follow Smashing Magazine on Twitter, you know that their feed is 95% links to other articles and resources. They play an enabler role of feeding traffic to the sites around them and in turn more and more people follow them. The greatest promotion Reddit ever did was to link out to the Web and not keep the stories to themselves.

If you are going to claim you don’t have time for this kind of stuff, well, then either you don’t have time to grow your business or your business is already at the point of saturation so life is good for you. I hope that you are at the latter stage, but many of you are still in the former.

Image source

You must be careful when you reach a certain size though. Once your channel of sharing gets large enough there will be people out there that wish to exploit it. Maybe they want to fill it up with ads or you want to use it more for your own self-promotion. This is where the annoyance part kicks in and the reason your channel has been so effective in gaining an audience is because it was useful to them.

When you stop making it useful to them, then you lose them. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it for your own gain, but learn to find the balance because once they start to view you as nothing more than a marketing shill, you will find you have a hard time gaining their trust again.

In the end you will find that if you create something valuable for others, they will take over the marketing for you. I leave you with these two quotes:

“Marketing is what you do when your product is no good.”

— Edwin Land

“Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.”

— Milan Kundera

Related Posts

You might be interested in the following related posts:

• Web Designers, Get Out There and Make Something! by Michael Aleo
• I Want To Be A Web Designer When I Grow Up by Michael Aleo
• How To Become A Web Design Expert by Paul Boag

(vf) (il)

© Paul Scrivens for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

Editor’s Note: Last Friday, we published an article on the Do’s And Don’ts Of Infographic Design written by Amy Balliett which raised quite a discussion within the design community. Some readers agreed, some readers found examples contradictory, and some readers felt that there were some problems with the article which should be addressed in a further article. Nathan Yau was kind enough to write a counter piece arguing about the practices and examples presented within the original article. This article is his response to Amy’s article published a week ago. Please notice that the main point of this article is to show a different perspective at the points mentioned in the original article; it isn’t supposed to be a “corrected” guide to infographic design.

Smashing Magazine offered advice on the “Dos And Don’ts Of Infographic Design“, but they forgot to include the former. It’s as if I wrote a fake post and someone mistook it for a serious guide. Written by Amy Balliett, it seems to me that the post is basically about a couple of tips on how to create linkbait that doesn’t work. Or at least I hope it doesn’t. Many of the dos are actually dont’s, and judging by some of the comments that the article had received, it’s worth pointing out what’s what.

Data Makes Infographics Unique

Let’s take it from the top.

“Infographics are visual representations of information, or “data viz” as the cool kids call it these days. The term “data viz” comes from “data visualization,” which implies that sets of data will be displayed in a unique way that can be seen, rather than read.”

I’m not going to get into the semantics. That’s for people who are smarter (and cooler) than me, but the obsession with a visually unique result is overdone. Sure, you want your graphic to be compelling, but that comes from the data or the information. You’re just trying to make bad design look like good design if you do it any other way: it looks good from far away, but as soon as you take a taste, you realize that there is something fishy going on.

It’s tempting to approach infographics from purely a design and aesthetics perspective, but that’s only one half of the equation. Data is the other (and more important) half. Data is the foundation of every infographic, so when you have a dataset on hand, take the time to learn what it’s about, where it’s from, the methodology behind the estimates and what makes it interesting and unique.

Representing Data

Next up, which refers to the graphic above:

“What’s wrong with this infographic? It breaks the first rule right out of the gate. When you have an opportunity to display information visually, take it. Here, the tweets per second could have at least been shown in a bar graph.”

What? We all know the first rule of infographic design is to not talk about infographic design. I guess that’s implied. After that though, the first thing wrong is that there are numbers? What about that gauge on the left without any labels? What does it mean?

Most run-of-the-mill infographics take a few data points and make it look like a lot with big things. This is both a reflection of the data on hand and the creator’s data comprehension.

It gets worse.

Two alternatives to the above are offered. Do you choose the very boring, generic graph A or the very cool and round graph B?

Making a choice between accurate and “regular” or inaccurate and “unique.”

I hope you didn’t answer graph A. If so, you’re wrong.

“If you answered Graph B, you’re catching on. Of course, not all data lends itself to creative and unique graphs. Graph A might work very well if the rest of the infographic shared a similar aesthetic. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and produce a traditional bar graph or pie chart; nevertheless, always consider ways to dress it up [...]“

It’s that obsession with unique again. The problem isn’t the bar chart. It’s that there’s only five data points occupying a lot of screen space. Plus, the speedometer makes variance for the tweet rates look way more than it actually is, because the method uses arc length as its visual cue. The accuracy in representation, and thus a compromise in the story being told, is sacrificed to look different.

A more useful graphic would provide more context to the events that these numbers describe. What made the Women’s World Cup Final so much more exciting than Super Bowl 2011? Which final was it? Was it really more exciting? When were these measurements taken? Are they the peaks of each event or is it a mix? Were there more tweets because there were more Twitter users at the time? Was it because the time of the day each thing happened? Tell people something — anything — more about the data.

Applying General Design To Infographics

The second half of Balliett’s post covers mostly general design tips such as color and focus, so it’s less rough, but the examples aren’t any better. They simply try too hard to look “visually compelling.”

Remember that design isn’t just about making things pretty. It’s about making things work, and in the case of infographics, that means representing data accurately and clearly. It means letting the data speak and not putting extraneous icons all over the place to obscure what’s important.

I’m not saying strip your infographics down to barebones wireframes. But do think about what you’re showing and what you really want to focus on.

Once you’ve got that covered, you can bring in design elements that can evoke an emotion or portray an important image.

For example, here’s a map that shows where major airlines flew in the United States during February 2011.

Designing with the data in mind to highlight more frequent flights

More frequent flights are shown more prominently with a brighter shade of white and some blue, whereas less common flights aren’t as visually dominant. Also, a darker map helps with context but doesn’t get in the way. Let data do the talking, and you can use design to tell that story more clearly.

Wrapping Up

Bottom line: when it comes to information graphics, it should always be data and information first, and then you design around that. For that to happen, you have to learn more about data — how to work with it, where it comes from, and what it represents in the real world. Data can be beautiful when you realize the latter, and when you do, you won’t have to work so hard to catch the eyes of readers, because the story behind the numbers and spreadsheets will shine through.

A couple of years ago, big infographics with little substance were able to draw in lots of visitors because they were something new to look at. However, now these sort of infographics draw backlash. You have to put in the time to think about the story you want to tell and show some actual insight.

Using my suggestion box as an indicator, I can tell you readers used to send in these sort of infographics all the time. I even posted some for their novelty. Today readers demand more, and the only people who send me novelty linkbait now are “SEO experts” and “content managers.” Those emails are deleted right away.

When designing infographics, do analyze and understand the data. Don’t sacrifice accuracy, clarity and ultimately, an interesting story just to make something look unique.

What Do You Think?

(vf) (il)

© Nathan Yau for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

Editor’s Note: Last Friday, we published an article on the Do’s And Don’ts Of Infographic Design written by Amy Balliett which raised quite a discussion within the design community. Some readers agreed, some readers found examples contradictory, and some readers felt that there were some problems with the article which should be addressed in more detail in a further article. Nathan Yau was kind enough to write a counter piece arguing about the practices and examples presented within the original article. This article is his response to Amy’s article published a week ago.

Smashing Magazine offered advice on the “Dos And Don’ts Of Infographic Design“, but they forgot to include the former. It’s as if I wrote a fake post and someone mistook it for a serious guide. Written by Amy Balliett, it seems to me that the post is basically about a couple of tips on how to create linkbait that doesn’t work. Or at least I hope it doesn’t. Many of the dos are actually dont’s, and judging by some of the comments that the article had received, it’s worth pointing out what’s what.

Data Makes Infographics Unique

Let’s take it from the top.

“Infographics are visual representations of information, or “data viz” as the cool kids call it these days. The term “data viz” comes from “data visualization,” which implies that sets of data will be displayed in a unique way that can be seen, rather than read.”

I’m not going to get into the semantics. That’s for people who are smarter (and cooler) than me, but the obsession with a visually unique result is overdone. Sure, you want your graphic to be compelling, but that comes from the data or the information. You’re just trying to make bad design look like good design if you do it any other way: it looks good from far away, but as soon as you take a taste, you realize that there is something fishy going on.

It’s tempting to approach infographics from purely a design and aesthetics perspective, but that’s only one half of the equation. Data is the other (and more important) half. Data is the foundation of every infographic, so when you have a dataset on hand, take the time to learn what it’s about, where it’s from, the methodology behind the estimates and what makes it interesting and unique.

Representing Data

Next up, which refers to the graphic above:

“What’s wrong with this infographic? It breaks the first rule right out of the gate. When you have an opportunity to display information visually, take it. Here, the tweets per second could have at least been shown in a bar graph.”

What? We all know the first rule of infographic design is to not talk about infographic design. I guess that’s implied. After that though, the first thing wrong is that there are numbers? What about that gauge on the left without any labels? What does it mean?

Most run-of-the-mill infographics take a few data points and make it look like a lot with big things. This is both a reflection of the data on hand and the creator’s data comprehension.

It gets worse.

Two alternatives to the above are offered. Do you choose the very boring, generic graph A or the very cool and round graph B?

Making a choice between accurate and “regular” or inaccurate and “unique.”

I hope you didn’t answer graph A. If so, you’re wrong.

“If you answered Graph B, you’re catching on. Of course, not all data lends itself to creative and unique graphs. Graph A might work very well if the rest of the infographic shared a similar aesthetic. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and produce a traditional bar graph or pie chart; nevertheless, always consider ways to dress it up [...]“

It’s that obsession with unique again. The problem isn’t the bar chart. It’s that there’s only five data points occupying a lot of screen space. Plus, the speedometer makes variance for the tweet rates look way more than it actually is, because the method uses arc length as its visual cue. The accuracy in representation, and thus a compromise in the story being told, is sacrificed to look different.

A more useful graphic would provide more context to the events that these numbers describe. What made the Women’s World Cup Final so much more exciting than Super Bowl 2011? Which final was it? Was it really more exciting? When were these measurements taken? Are they the peaks of each event or is it a mix? Were there more tweets because there were more Twitter users at the time? Was it because the time of the day each thing happened? Tell people something — anything — more about the data.

Applying General Design To Infographics

The second half of Balliett’s post covers mostly general design tips such as color and focus, so it’s less rough, but the examples aren’t any better. They simply try too hard to look “visually compelling.”

Remember that design isn’t just about making things pretty. It’s about making things work, and in the case of infographics, that means representing data accurately and clearly. It means letting the data speak and not putting extraneous icons all over the place to obscure what’s important.

I’m not saying strip your infographics down to barebones wireframes. But do think about what you’re showing and what you really want to focus on.

Once you’ve got that covered, you can bring in design elements that can evoke an emotion or portray an important image.

For example, here’s a map that shows where major airlines flew in the United States during February 2011.

Designing with the data in mind to highlight more frequent flights

More frequent flights are shown more prominently with a brighter shade of white and some blue, whereas less common flights aren’t as visually dominant. Also, a darker map helps with context but doesn’t get in the way. Let data do the talking, and you can use design to tell that story more clearly.

Wrapping Up

Bottom line: when it comes to information graphics, it should always be data and information first, and then you design around that. For that to happen, you have to learn more about data — how to work with it, where it comes from, and what it represents in the real world. Data can be beautiful when you realize the latter, and when you do, you won’t have to work so hard to catch the eyes of readers, because the story behind the numbers and spreadsheets will shine through.

A couple of years ago, big infographics with little substance were able to draw in lots of visitors because they were something new to look at. However, now these sort of infographics draw backlash. You have to put in the time to think about the story you want to tell and show some actual insight.

Using my suggestion box as an indicator, I can tell you readers used to send in these sort of infographics all the time. I even posted some for their novelty. Today readers demand more, and the only people who send me novelty linkbait now are “SEO experts” and “content managers.” Those emails are deleted right away.

When designing infographics, do analyze and understand the data. Don’t sacrifice accuracy, clarity and ultimately, an interesting story just to make something look unique.

What Do You Think?

(vf) (il)

© Nathan Yau for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

Using tabs in a user interface can help you better organize content, so it’s only natural that WordPress themes that have a lot of options would benefit from tabs on their settings page. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a tabbed settings page, and you’ll get to download a WordPress theme that implements the code.

Overview

To get a quick grasp of the tabs we’ll be creating, go to Appearance/Themes in the WordPress admin area. You will find two tabs there: “Manage Themesâ€� and “Install Themes.â€� When you click on one, the content changes and the tab’s title is highlighted.

The process is actually fairly simple: we set and send a tab variable when a tab is clicked. By querying this tab variable later, in $_GET['tab'], we will know which tab was selected so that we can highlight the corresponding title and display the corresponding tab.

In our approach, there are three times when we will need to know which tab the user is currently on:

1. When we initially display the tabs and the form fields for the settings (in order to display the correct set of fields);
2. When the user saves their settings (in order to save the correct fields);
3. When redirecting the user after they have saved their settings (in order to redirect the user to the correct tab).

For the sake of brevity, we won’t explain all of the code, only the snippets that are relevant to this approach. You can, however, find all of the code in the accompanying theme.

Creating The Tabs

The first snippet we will inspect is the code that produces the tabs:

function ilc_admin_tabs( $current = 'homepage' ) {
    $tabs = array( 'homepage' => 'Home Settings', 'general' => 'General', 'footer' => 'Footer' );
    echo '<div id="icon-themes" class="icon32"><br></div>';
    echo '<h2 class="nav-tab-wrapper">';
    foreach( $tabs as $tab => $name ){
        $class = ( $tab == $current ) ? ' nav-tab-active' : '';
        echo "<a class='nav-tab$class' href='?page=theme-settings&tab=$tab'>$name</a>";

    }
    echo '</h2>';
}

This function will be called later in the content for the settings page. We first define an array that contains all of our tabs. The first tab, which is displayed first by default, is homepage, where we can set up some option for the appearance of the home page. Then we have general, which could be a page containing options used throughout the website, and, finally, footer, to include a tracking code in the footer.

We then set up the URL links for each tab and output them. Notice that if the tab is open, an additional class, nav-tab-active, is added.

Displaying The Tabbed Content

The content for the settings page is displayed in the callback function for add_theme_page (which is an abstraction of add_submenu_page, with the parent slug set to themes.php), which in our theme will be named ilc_settings_page. This is where you will call the function that we just went over.

function ilc_settings_page() {
   global $pagenow;
   $settings = get_option( "ilc_theme_settings" );

//generic HTML and code goes here

if ( isset ( $_GET['tab'] ) ) ilc_admin_tabs($_GET['tab']); else ilc_admin_tabs('homepage');

If the tab is the default one, then $_GET['tab'] is not defined, in which case the current tab will be homepage and, thus, the highlighted one. Otherwise, the highlighted tab will be the one defined in $_GET['tab'].

Following the same function, we now need to display the right set of fields. Depending on the value of $tab, we would display the fields for the settings tab for the home page or for one of the other tabs:

<form method="post" action="<?php admin_url( 'themes.php?page=theme-settings' ); ?>">
<?php
wp_nonce_field( "ilc-settings-page" ); 

if ( $pagenow == 'themes.php' && $_GET['page'] == 'theme-settings' ){

   if ( isset ( $_GET['tab'] ) ) $tab = $_GET['tab'];
   else $tab = 'homepage';

   echo '<table class="form-table">';
   switch ( $tab ){
      case 'general' :
         ?>
         <tr>
            <th>Tags with CSS classes:</th>
            <td>
               <input id="ilc_tag_class" name="ilc_tag_class" type="checkbox" <?php if ( $settings["ilc_tag_class"] ) echo 'checked="checked"'; ?> value="true" />
               <label for="ilc_tag_class">Checking this will output each post tag with a specific CSS class based on its slug.</label>
            </td>
         </tr>
         <?php
      break;
      case 'footer' :
         ?>
         <tr>
            <th><label for="ilc_ga">Insert tracking code:</label></th>
            <td>
               Enter your Google Analytics tracking code:
               <textarea id="ilc_ga" name="ilc_ga" cols="60" rows="5"><?php echo esc_html( stripslashes( $settings["ilc_ga"] ) ); ?></textarea><br />

            </td>
         </tr>
         <?php
      break;
      case 'homepage' :
         ?>
         <tr>
            <th><label for="ilc_intro">Introduction</label></th>
            <td>
               Enter the introductory text for the home page:
               <textarea id="ilc_intro" name="ilc_intro" cols="60" rows="5" ><?php echo esc_html( stripslashes( $settings["ilc_intro"] ) ); ?></textarea>
            </td>
         </tr>
         <?php
      break;
   }
   echo '</table>';
}

?>
   <p class="submit" style="clear: both;">
      <input type="submit" name="Submit"  class="button-primary" value="Update Settings" />
      <input type="hidden" name="ilc-settings-submit" value="Y" />
   </p>
</form>

All of the settings will be stored in a single array in order to prevent several queries from being made.

Saving The Tabbed Fields

Now we need to know which slots of the array to save. Depending on the tab being displayed, certain options stored in the settings array will be displayed. If we just save all of the array slots, then we would overwrite some of the positions not shown in the current tab and thus not meant to be saved.

function ilc_save_theme_settings() {
   global $pagenow;
   $settings = get_option( "ilc_theme_settings" );

   if ( $pagenow == 'themes.php' && $_GET['page'] == 'theme-settings' ){
      if ( isset ( $_GET['tab'] ) )
           $tab = $_GET['tab'];
       else
           $tab = 'homepage';

       switch ( $tab ){
           case 'general' :
         $settings['ilc_tag_class'] = $_POST['ilc_tag_class'];
      break;
           case 'footer' :
         $settings['ilc_ga'] = $_POST['ilc_ga'];
      break;
      case 'homepage' :
         $settings['ilc_intro'] = $_POST['ilc_intro'];
      break;
       }
   }
   //code to filter html goes here
   $updated = update_option( "ilc_theme_settings", $settings );
}

We’ve used a switch conditional again to query the value of $tab and store the right values in the array. After that, we’ve updated the option in the WordPress database.

Redirecting The User To The Right Tab

Now that the contents are saved, we need WordPress to redirect the user back to the appropriate tab on the settings page.

function ilc_load_settings_page() {
  if ( $_POST["ilc-settings-submit"] == 'Y' ) {
   check_admin_referer( "ilc-settings-page" );
   ilc_save_theme_settings();

   $url_parameters = isset($_GET['tab'])? 'updated=true&tab='.$_GET['tab'] : 'updated=true';
   wp_redirect(admin_url('themes.php?page=theme-settings&'.$url_parameters));
   exit;
  }
}

Depending on whether the $_GET['tab'] variable is set, we use wp_redirect to send the user either to the default tab or to one of the other tabs.

Now our tabs are working, displaying the right set of fields, saving the right fields, and then redirecting the user to the correct tab.

Download The Theme

Almost any theme with a moderate number of options would benefit from tabs on the settings page. Just remember that this is one approach. Another approach would be to add several collapsable meta boxes, as seen on the page for writing posts, and to automatically collapse the boxes that are not frequently used. However, tabs enable you to better separate each set of options.

Finally, here is the theme, so that you can take a closer look:

• Theme with tabbed settings page

The theme also implements the function whereby each tag is outputted with a unique CSS class, so you can check that out, too.

(al)

© Elio Rivero for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

Since uninstalling Flash I’ve noticed how common it is for sites that still use Flash to pay little or no attention to visitors that do not have Flash Player installed. Showing a “Missing plugin� message instead of navigation links or even worse, the entire site, is an efficient way of turning people away.

There used to be a time when “everybody� had Flash player installed. These days there are many millions of iOS users that don’t. Apple does not include Flash Player with new Macs anymore (neither is it included with OS X 10.7 Lion). And then there are people who block Flash with browser extensions or uninstall it completely.

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Posted in Accessibility, Usability.

Copyright © Roger Johansson