Diverse And Engaging Instances Of Interactive Infographic Design

In the last few years, the way we design infographics has changed significantly. Infographics have evolved from static graphics to rich, interactive experiences with animation and video elements, all tailored to the uniqueness of the content, instead of pressing it into a precast mold. For this round-up, I have collected some of the best of infographic design to see what these kinds of engaging and informative experiences can look like today.

Most of the infographics on this list were chosen to showcase different ways that designers have approached data visualization. However, there are also a few hybrids here that illustrate the disappearing boundaries between infographics and richer multimedia experiences in creating engaging content and compelling stories. Deviating from the traditional infographic form means that we tread into more complex media territory, but such experimentation with technology and narrative will be key in shaping the future of infographic design.

The post Diverse And Engaging Instances Of Interactive Infographic Design appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Three Reasons To Install A New HVAC System

Matthew P. Guarracino

• Systems

Innovations in energy and building management systems have opened new avenues to implementing cutting-edge features to commercial buildings without increasing overhead. As developers and owners evaluate energy management strategies for their facilities, they often choose technologies that are both cost-effective and eco-friendly while supporting structurally advanced building design.

Netflix’s streaming catalog isn’t improving — it’s shrinking rapidly

Netflix's library has shrunk by a third in recent years, and while the company is producing critically acclaimed original content, it's still lost access to multiple high-profile movies and TV shows.

WIRED Awake: 10 must-read articles for 28 March

Your WIRED.co.uk daily briefing. Today, Facebook has apologised for a Safety Check error that led to people around the world being texted in the wake of the Sunday's bombing in Lahore, Japan's Hitomi X-ray satellite has lost communication with Earth, Microsoft has issued a formal explanation for the actions of its short-lived machine learning chatbot, Tay, and more.

By: WIRED.co.uk,

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Influencers more valuable with Instagram changes

Toronto's #Paid says the end of the chronological feed shifts the proposition

Image Optimization Tools: Making WordPress Pages Load Faster

With the recent launch of Accelerated Mobile Pages, which reminded everyone of Facebook Instant Pages and Apple News, it’s clear they want us slimming down our web pages. They want Speedy Gonzales, but we’re offering a fat, lazy mouse with unnecessarily giant ears.

And by “they” I mean: publishers, platforms, and your everyday web user. All of us have the need for speed don’t we?

Most people are using mobile devices these days, and besides, pages simply take too long to load regardless of browsing device (in many cases). It’s our images that are, in general, unnecessarily large. In file size, that is.

Really, there are a lot of factors that can affect the time it takes to load a web page, but my focus here today is supporting WordPress users, and talking about how we can keep our images lean (and optionally mean).

May I digress for a couple seconds though?

I personally blame the majority of web page slowness on the fact that most things are being pulled from databases and that multiple queries are run within one page load. What happened to the good ol’ days of organized folder structure, static text files, and include files with clean hand-coded HTML? When I learned of the BLOB field type for databases a decade and a half ago, I shook my head and screamed “why, why, why!” But hey, I get it, databases simplify things and reduce redundancy. Moving on.

Overall WordPress Web Site Optimization

For my WordPress sites, I used to take several days just to implement all (or most) of the best practices for optimizing web pages for speed. These days though I use a managed WordPress host that handles many tasks on my behalf.

In terms of speed, they have me covered for:

• An optimized, tweaked, web server that understands the nuances of WordPress.


• A proprietary caching system that knows when to serve dynamic pages, and when it’s better to take a snapshot of a page on first load, and serve that instead of hitting the database. See! BlogThis!