Безплатен курс по front-end development

Телерик отново дадоха шанс за развитие на редица млади хора, този път в областта на уеб дизайна и уеб програмирането. За радост на всички нас курса по разработка на уеб приложения, който се провежда в учебната зала на Телерик е напълно безплатен.
Курса обхваща около 4 месеца, като се провежда един път седмично по 4 часа . Също така има възможност и за онлайн обучение. За целта на курса са се събрали екип разработчици в областта, готови да споделят знанията и опита си.
Курсът е подходящ за прохождащи уеб програмисти и дизайнери, но се разглеждат и много тънкости в областта на front-end development.
Front-end курсът се състои от две части. В първата част се набляга на HTML и CSS технологиите, също така се разглежда работа с Photoshop и рязане на сайтове. Освен това се изучават основите на JavaScript и се обръща внимание и на работа с CMS системите и Wordpress. Отделя се време и за SEO.
Втората част на курса разглежда тепърва прохождащите технологии като HTML5 и CSS3, като дава доста задълбочени познания и по JavaScript и JQuery.
По време на провеждане на курса на Телерик по HTML,CSS и Javascript, обучаващите се получават различни задачки, които им позволяват да затвърдят уменията си. Всяка част от курса завършва с практически проект, като доказалите се студенти като най-добри получават сертификати съответно Certified Web Front-End Developer" и "Certified Advanced Web Front-End Developer".
Препоръчвам безплатния курс по front-end, защото смятам, че би бил много полезен и би дал страхотен старт за всички, начинаещи и желаещи да се развиват в тази област, уеб програмисти и уеб дизайнери.

30 Fresh and Inspiring Logo Designs

Logo design is one of many services that a good graphic designer can provide to a professional company that is looking to make an impression on the marketplace.Designing logos can be very difficult but with great logo design, a company's name will resonate clearly with all of their customers.
Moreover inspiration is a very important thing for any designer.If you live without seeing what other designers are doing, it’s very difficult to improve your skills.That’s why I found some excellent examples of logo design and share them with you. Enjoy!

My Brand New Personal Site

I am very excited to share something with you. These days I have been working on my own personal site www.krisinikolova.com and it is finally online! There you can find my most recent works. I have tried to present myself trough them using non-standard and interactive design.


The site presents most of my interests. You can look at my paintings, my graphics, my art works. Similarly you can find some web site designs, developed by me. In case you are interested in Adobe programs, you can visit the page with my Photoshop works. Hopefully there you will find some inspiration to create your next-great-design. Except my works, you can find some information about me and my experience. If you want to contact me, you will find my e-mail address and my Twitter profile.
Any comments are more than welcome!

Books recommendation: Web Design

If you are beginner in the field of web design, there are different books that can help you to create your first project successfully. Sometimes the quickest way to get creative inspiration for a project is to see what others have done.
I will bring to your attention a pair of books that will give you a lot of advises and concepts. All of them are tested and will help you to gain more experience.

The Unusually Useful Web Book


What is the thing that is unusually useful in this book? 2 books in 1!
The Unusually Useful Web Book delivers large amount of information in a way that is approachable and helpful. The book presents details of planning, designing, building, and maintaining websites and contains do-it-yourself worksheets, lessons from the trenches, advice from experts, and jargon explanations. Anyone who has a passion for web design will enjoy this book for sure!

The Design of Sites


It is easy to create a website. But it takes research, skills and experience to make well-crafted site. The authors of “The Design of Sites” have done much of the research for you and after analysis of more than a hundred high-quality websites, they show us basic principles and best practices that make sites enjoyable to visit. This book addresses all of the functional pieces of a website and it is great set of patterns for web design, which are applicable to a wide variety of site genres. It presents easy to understand explanations for the concepts and full color screen shots, illustration and diagrams, helping to round out the ideas. The book should be read by anyone embarking into site design.

P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: http://twitter.com/krisinikolova

Make Photoshop and Flash your Friends

There are a number of different ways to create websites. Some people prefer to hand draw the idea, and after that to start coding HTML. Other way is taking a graphical approach to the design and layout. For example you can create images that form the general layout you'd like to use for your site, with Adobe Photoshop. But if you want to create interactive and animated Web sites, Adobe Flash is the tool that can do the work for you.
If you consider that these tools can be useful for your work, I recommend you these two books which will help you learning how to use them in your applications.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Classroom in a Book


This book is ideal for people who want to learn Photoshop. It allows you to learn quickly and easily the functions of this software. The book is the official training workbook of Adobe Systems, which is developed from experts working at Adobe and is used in their own educative work. The authors pay attention to basics and elaboration technology in Photoshop. They show how to work with layers and masks, how to navigate in the workspace, how to retouch the colors and prepare images for printing. Multiple advises, additional exercises and lessons will help you mastering your skills in Photoshop step by step.

Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Classroom in a Book


This is also an official training workbook of Adobe Systems and it is suitable for beginners. The project-based guide from Adobe will teach you how to create engaging interactive content with Flash CS3. This book shows you the key elements of the Flash interface, including panels, timelines, and frames. You will acquire skills in animating symbols, working with static and dynamic text, importing audio and video files, editing timelines and personalizing components. The book presents the new features in Flash CS3 like ActionScript 3.0 and importing files from Illustrator. The content of this book can assists you to become quickly professional Flash user.

The Mystic Images - Fractals

Have you ever think of how such images could be created? There are tools that allow you to create similar things literally for several minutes. But what actually are these images?

What is fractal?
A fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is, at least approximately, a reduced-size copy of the whole, called self-similarity. Fractals are with more complex structure than traditional geometric forms. They give mathematical information about infinitely large and infinitesimal quantities. They allow us to look into place, where no order exists.
The simplest fractal, which is well-known to us, is the spiral. If we take any part of the spiral, we will see that it`s a part of the same mathematical function that calculate the other spiral rotation to infinity.

Fractals in nature
A lot of natural objects are fractals, too. For example in this group are included mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines, snowflakes, various vegetables (cauliflower and broccoli), and animal coloration patterns. If we take a branch of tree, we will see that it`s a tiny copy of the whole tree. However, not all self-similar objects are fractals (real line is not fractal).

Fractals usage
Fractals are a very useful tool to create very realistic looking images. It is not easy to create such images, but with determination, ingenuity and imagination you can produce images that are hard to discern from the real thing. Moreover fractals can be highly decorative and can present beautiful abstraction. Fractal art has become one of the prominent art forms of digital artists.
You can use fractals as wallpaper on your computer desktop, as background art on web pages or simply to enjoy.

How to create fractals?
There are several fractals generating software products that could be used for creation of fractal designs. Photoshop is one way for creating fractals and in it, we do not need to use complicated math functions, but just the Pen tool and Actions window. Another good choice is Apophysis - a freeware Windows program for designing and rendering fractal flames.
So If you feel inspired and want to make your own unique images, you can try some of these programs.
Enjoy!