Chutzpah UI Design Kit

Mimi Glyphs Icons

Blaubarry Free UI Elements

Bella UI

Mac Lion UI PSD

1. Verifiability

I can’t begin to tell you the amount of times that I’ve gone on Stack Exchange and grabbed a snippet of code, implemented it into my program, and set it loose only to find out that it didn’t do what I wanted it to! Getting lost in logic is incredibly easy, especially when you’ve got a dozen multidimensional arrays with obscure naming conventions and poor syntax. Which brings me to my second point…

2. Consistency

You’d be amazed at how many self-proclaimed coding gods out there! People will tell you (under the confidentiality of some clever moniker) that their code is superior, faster, and better written. You’ve got to learn a solid set of standards for yourself. It doesn’t matter if their code works, if you can’t read it, it does you no good. Imagine if they had 1 line of 1,000 characters of code. At first glance you’d think you need to run it through eval() only to find out they never spaced anything. Good luck finding the unexpected ; through that mess. Run it through a beautifier (again, beware of inconsistent results or broken code). Learn a set of standards, use documentation, and do it all the same. Every single time. I’m still working at becoming better at this practice.

3. Efficiency

Again, with the code jockeys that know everything about C decompilers and fancy shell scripts that can bring a server to its knees with the press of a key… they tell stories. They also tell stories about how well their code works. From getting in internet arguments about the difference in single quotes versus double quotes in PHP and the processing power associated with both of them. Okay, I admit it. I’ve participated in these arguments. But it shouldn’t be a contest at all! Learn to benchmark your code and you’ll save yourself a lot of time! Benchmarking takes seconds to implement and can save you HOURS of processing power on even a low trafficked website. You think the engineers at Facebook/Google/etc aren’t benchmarking every single line of code they push over to publishing? Of course.

That’s all for now… but I’ll add a few more later. Just remember, trust your judgement. If you’re relying on a snippet that’s 3 lines long that’s supposed to safely handle credit card processing, there’s something wrong. Or you’re damn good. Likely the former.

ToolBox from Automattic 

A semantic, HTML5, canvas for CSS artists and an ultra-minimal set of super-clean templates for your own WordPress theme development.

Personally, I agree that a well thought out design is critical to success. On a very rudimentary level, if you place a call to action in some obscure place , it’s not going to work well. If it’s above the centerfold, centrically placed where the user is bound to see it while following a natural flow of vision, it’s going to work much nicer. This can be exemplified all the way down to the microcopy, colors, and other pixel perfect details. If a design invokes happiness, I’m willing to bet conversions would be significantly better.

Here’s the original article: http://www.netmagazine.com/news/does-design-make-startups-successful-111666

I plan on using this journal as a means of sharing industry news and keeping up on the latest developments. I’ll share everything from very technical pieces to simple tips and tricks for utilizing WordPress and other CMS’. Enjoy.