February 5, 2015 by Roman Ožana

Team Roundup #5: Our Best Finds from Last Month!

We’re always on the hunt for great articles and tools at Testomato! With that in mind, we pulled together another roundup of our team’s favorite finds from last month to share with you.

Here are some great web development reads and cool tools to check out the next time you get some down time:

Web Design Trends That Will Rule 2015

Web design is an industry that’s always in a constant state of change! Tomas Laurinavicius of Designmodo reviewed 500 websites from Inspiring Sites of the Week on Despreneur to get an idea of the current state of web design and where it’s going in the next year.

Here’s a quick look at some of his predictions for 2015:

  • Natural stock photography
  • One-color dominance
  • Video backgrounds
  • Unique navigation menus
  • Big data/graphs
  • Material design
  • Interactive journeys

Check out the full list, here.

The SaaS Adventure

Neeraj Agrawal of Battery Ventures offers his answer to the following question:

“What does it take to build a billion-dollar SaaS enterprise-software company?”

SaaS growth path

He highlights the 7 key phases to achieve a go-to-market success SaaS company and shares his insight on everything from establishing product-market fit to maximizing different skills at different stages.

Don’t do it alone. Find yourself support.

“The downside of the digital revolution is isolation.”

Paul Boag explores the dangers we face when we work alone. Our creativity suffers, we lose confidence and miss learning opportunities, and often end up feeling overwhelmed.

His solution to working without a team? Get some support.

This post suggests some helpful ideas of ways to find someone you can ask for outside perspective on your projects and ideas.

The best UI is no UI

Just because an interface normally includes icons, buttons, toolbars, and other elements, doesn’t always mean they’re always necessary.

evernote

Craig Dennis thinks the best way to create great interface design is to make sure its unobtrusive and function.

In other words:

“What is the minimum interface the user needs?”

How to Create a Responsive Email Template

Don’t forget about email newsletters when it comes to responsive design! 91% of consumers are checking email on mobile devices regularly. 

email-600x398

This is a great tutorial from Designmodo to show you how to create a responsive email template using tables, inline, and external CSS with the help of media queries.

What Inspired Us Last Month

Looking for some new sources of inspiration? Check out what got us excited in January.

  • JavaScript I/O: A fork of Joyent’s Node.js with ES6 support and npm compatible.
  • Cockpit CMS: Escape page-centric web development! A new approach to CMS – simple, powerful, and flexible.
  • Materialize: A modern responsive front-end framework based on Material Design.
  • Parsedown: A better, faster Markdown Parser for PHP.

What We’re Writing About

If you enjoyed this roundup, you might enjoy these posts from our own blog last month!

What have you been reading lately? We’d love to hear your suggestions! 

Share with us in the comments or on Facebook. You can also find us @testomatocom

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