Everybody knows that advertising is the main support of Internet. The most of web services such as diaries online, blogs and media sites earn their income from different kind of advertising.
On the other hand, many users see advertising as an obstacle in their browsing experience, which it has caused the development of Ad Blockers, or tools that prevent ads are shown.
Smashing Magazine, however, makes an interesting thought about Why web designers should not use Ad Blockers. This thought goes both for bloggers and users as well. The reasons given by the author are (according to my interpretation):
- Ad Blockers hinder the community: They break the line of Production-Consumption-Difussion.
- Promote a selfish attitude: The most important thing is ‘my’ navigation and not the hard work of web designers.
- Cause a mini bubble: Many companies investing in advertising but less people willing to consume.
- Make the web less real: You may have more to lose if you use ad blockers, as you will see the web very different, ad-free pages, almost uthopic.
I would add:
- Ad Blockers make worst the desing on various websites: Almost always current web designing considers save room for advertising, and the visual weight is calculated with ads kept in mind. Some sites lose this balance if they have no ads.
The benefits of using ad blockers are pretty known: a slightly faster navigation and less visual weight.
This is, without any doubut, controversial. In my opinion, ad blockers don’t cause a heavy impact in the revenue of websites yet. Otherwise, the more ad blockers emerging, the more ‘anti-ad blockers‘ would come up. But we can’t blame it on ad blockers: many people that decide to use them is because of sites that abuse in ads density and use intrusive advertising.
Got an ad blocker? What do you think about this as a user and as a blogger? We would like to know.
Photo by: Straws pulled at random (Creative Commons).
Ulises Arvizu, from Maquiladora de sueños, brings us today this amazing icon pack for BTemplates and Blog and Web exclusively. This time they are 3 great icons for Feed RSS, Twitter and Facebook available in three sizes: 32×39, 64×77 y 100×120, in PNG-24 format.
The vector file (source) has been also included for you to make your own Rubik Cubes or whatever you want.
License
- Released under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
- Personal or commercial use is allowed but not selling.
- When distributing, please link to this article and not to the file or to another post or server.
Download
Download Rubik Social Icons
The page load time is one of the most important things for a better user experience. Additionally Google has said this is one of the elements to consider for its positioning.
An even funny way to know the page load time is Which Loads Faster? where you can put your own site to compete against others or compare as many repeats as you want.
Pretty recommended is using its Speed Page or Speed Tracer extension to evaluate and decrease the page load time.
I dare you beat BTemplates or our spanish site Blog and Web. 
I think it’s always interesting give our buttons an animation effect. As in this tutorial, the RSS subscription button.
This time we will make an exercise to create a small character from the paper, through Adobe Illustrator, to its implementation on HTML and CSS. At the bottom of the page we leave a file with the images and the code for you, so you can implement it on your web if you want. (See demo)
Vectors and picture
Vectors have great advantages and latest versions of Illustrator are amazing, our designs will be more than colored spots.
I won’t deny the fact that knowing some drawing basics is helpful, but definitely the web is a summary with images to take ideas from, to see different techniques. To begin on making our projects, drawing helps, but good ideas are always better.
From sketch to Illustrator
Let’s begin sketching our character. This will help us to have an clearer idea on how to start. As I said before, you can take ideas from images you have seen before and you think they are interesting.
There isn’t too much to explain when I thought on make this icon pack. Many of us were marked by the Converse in our generation, icons of youth, rebelliousness, and in some cases, objects that passed through three generations. I really like these sneakers, so I wanted pay homage. Why not a social pack? It consists of icons for RSS, Share This, Twitter, Digg and Delicious, in three different sizes and in PNG24 format.
Download
Download Converse Social Icons.
License
- Released under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
- You may use these icons in personal or commercial projects, but you can’t sell them.
