For Android users, widgets redefine how we can customize our smartphones. It’s not enough that we get really powerful phones, sometimes the stock programs and interface may be found lacking. There are plenty of widgets online that could help us ‘build’ our own version of the perfect phone.

A widget is a useful addition to the Android platform with plenty of features, settings and tools made available right on the lockscreen or homescreen. However, as you the following examples will show, there are more things that the humble widget can do. Here are just 5 multi-feature widget packs and a few other useful widgets you might want to try out for your Android device.

Recommended Reading: Beautiful Weather Widgets For Your Android Home Screens

Widget Packs

1. UCCW

This is a well-known Android widget that are on many Android devices as its customization is one of the best in the field. UCCW enables you to create your own custom widget through its own set of customization features available within the app. You can also find all over the Web ready-made custom widgets developed with this app in UZIP format.

If you want a widget and a platform that can get you the functionality and experience that you deserve, try to get your hands on UCCW. You won’t be disappointed. [Free]

2. HD Widgets

A famous all-in-one app, with a huge list of widget sizes to choose from, you can get weather information in detail with bright and beautiful icons weather icons to go along with HD Widgets. Beside that, it also has shortcut widgets for easy access to Wi-Fi, Airplane Mode, Screen Rotation, Brightness and Bluetooth.

This is the you should get if you are looking for a nice large widget for your tablet of choice. [$1.99]

3. Atom All In One Widget

In addition to their own launcher, Atom released a widget app that prioritises minimalism. With their stylish and visually beautiful widgets, I believe it won’t be hard for you to start using one on your Android homescreen. They cover many aspects, from Clock and Calendar to Memo and Contacts in addition to other Android Settings.

Get the perfect minimalism experience on your Android with this, plus our recent compilation of 20 minimalistic clocks to go along with your new homescreen. [Free]

4. Wizz Widget

Here is a nice set of Android widgets you can use for both your smartphones and tablets. Wizz Widgets comes with a useful list of widgets for messages, social media, Calendar, Contacts and Agenda. There is also a timeline widget where you can get your Facebook and Twitter feeds under a single widget.

Need a good list of useful widgets? Wizz will provide you with a collection of them. Try them out! [Free]

5. Zooper Widget

Zooper brings many features that you need in your homescreen with simplicity and a straightforward design. There are all kinds of widget sizes in this one too, so you won’t find a hard time to try it in any of your Android devices. Common features that this has include Battery level, Wi-Fi signal Level, World clock, Calendar and whole lot more on the list.

Zooper Widget also comes with a template and font options, so you can build your own template to fit your style. [Free]

Bonus: More Widgets!

Want more? Here are more widgets that you might to try out. They serve more streamlined uses compared to the widget packs above but we’re sure you will love them all the same.

Shady Camera Widget. Take a camera shot through a widget right from your homescreen without the need to start up your camera app. [$0.99]

Power Toggles. Nice clean, single widget to toggle up to 8 of your Android settings. [Free]

SwitchPro Widget. Useful widget to switch on/off your Android settings right from your homescreen. [$1.16]

Slider Widget. Colorful circle widgets which lets you control the sound level of your system, alarm, voice call, volume, ringtone and brightness via its slider feature. [Free]

Playbar UCCW. A widget skin made for UCCW, this is styled in the Play Store design. [Free]

Colourform. Another huge list of widgets, extension themes to HD Widgets. [$0.99]

Resizable Contact Widget Pro. Your contacts with their profile pictures, names and phone number sshow up as a widget. [$1.29]

Beautiful Widgets. For fans of colorful box cards, this one will surely find a spot in your homescreen . [Free]

Tabr Widget. Tabbed widgets? Well, it does make including more than one function in a single widget way cleaner. [Free]

Evernote Widget. Get connected with all your notes in Evernote, with its very own Android widget. [Free]

Poweramp Widget Standard Pack. While the widget stays free, this standard pack is for the famous Poweramp Music Player where you can test them is free for a 15-day trial. It only costs $3.99 to unlock it. [Free]

Utopian UCCW. Another addition to the wonderful UCCW widget, a minimalistic and clean Android shortcut widget. [Free]

Locky Lockscreen Widgets. Notifications widget for SMS, Missed Calls, Email, Instant Messaging Apps, Social Networks and Calendars. [Free]

Missed It. A widget specifically for your missed notifications like your missed call logs, unread text messages or even your unread email notification. [$1.64]

Falcon Widgets. A great addition to a popular app Falcon for Twitter [$2.61] to read your timeline and access contents in your twitter feeds easily and quickly, all within this widget. [Free]

Editor’s note: This is a contributed post by Wes McDowell, a web designer at The Deep End in Los Angeles. In addition to client work, he has authored several books for freelance designers, and co-hosts a popular graphic design podcast called ‘The Deeply Graphic DesignCast.’ Follow Wes on Google+

If there is any one component that factors into a good working relationship, it is trust. A boss wants to be able to trust his employees, and vice versa. This holds especially true for freelancers. If you can get your clients to trust you, the road will much easier to navigate.

They will be more receptive to your creative ideas; they will be less likely to question your invoices; they will be much more likely to hire you again for their next project. Building trust is something that takes time, but by taking the following steps, you can be on the fast track on the ‘highway of trust.’

Recommended Reading: How To Work Better With Your Clients

Be Transparent

To trust someone is to know someone. While it can be difficult to truly get to know your clients, and let them to get to know you, this can be simulated pretty effectively. By allowing them into your space to see how and where you work, you are stepping out of the shadows, so to speak.

You can do this in-person if you work in an actual office space. Invite them over for the initial consultation, or for the kickoff meeting before beginning the project. You can show them around, and they will get a sense of what it is you do there.

Working From Home

If you are like most freelancers and you happen to work from home, then I would not recommend having clients over in person. However, there is another way of letting clients get a peek behind the curtain: make a video.

Read Also: 30 Video Editing Software And Online Tools

I have several videos sprinkled around my portfolio site, and they all work toward the same end — to let clients see where I work and what I do there. The video on my homepage serves as a warm welcome for all visitors to my site. It could be the middle of the night, but I am still there to greet them.

Tell Your Story

On my portfolio pages, I have a series of videos featuring ‘success stories’ depicting the process of different projects from start to finish. These videos all give a sense of place, (so clients know I’m not working in a storage locker somewhere), and show not only what I do, but how I have helped other clients just like them.

After watching a few of these videos, prospective clients feel as if they have met me, which is a great start to building trust.

Take an Interest in Their Business

Before beginning a new project, you probably ask a lot of questions about your client’s business. This is standard practice, and you need this information to make informed decisions. But why not take it a step further and actually visit your client’s business?

Ask to be shown around. Meet some of the employees.

In doing so, you will have a much clearer picture of the business, and where your client is coming from. And in almost all cases, they will appreciate you going the extra mile. And the best part is, while you are there getting to know them, they are getting to know you at the same time.

All For One, One For All

One of the most important ways you can build trust with a client is to adopt the mindset that you and they are in this together. Make sure they know that your success is theirs, and their failure is yours. Getting this point across can actually be quite simple: just use the words ‘we’ and ‘our.’

For example:

• "If we add the main call-to-action on the left just under the logo, we will see a much higher click-through rate."
• "I would love to hear your feedback on this phase of our project."

Involving the client, and showing such an ownership of the project will show your client that you are working from the inside, rather than just as a contractor that will come and go once the project is over.

Watch Their Money

No client wants to be taken advantage of financially, and it is this fear that can really get in the way of trust between two parties. Once your client knows that you can be trusted to provide great service for the agreed-upon price, trust begins to form.

The obvious message here is to always stick within the set budget for the project. If the scope changes because of a client request, always let them know how the scope change will affect the final price before going through with the additional work. You want them to see that you are being responsible with their money.

Don’t Need It, Would You Like To Skip It?

Another way of showing this is to always be honest with your client about needless expenses. For instance, maybe a web design client is asking for a functionality that is expensive, but unnecessary. The easy (and tempting) response would be to just go with their request. After all, it’s more money in your pocket, and they request it.

But if you want to earn some extra trust, you would want to be direct. Tell them that the expense would not likely be worth the cost in terms of results. Even if they want it anyway, the fact that you were willing to take less money to save them some will make them take notice that you are keeping their bottom line in mind.

Ask For a Testimonial

Once the project is complete, hopefully you have already earned your client’s trust. But there is still one more thing you can do to reaffirm their positive feelings: ask them for a testimonial. Actually, I am getting ahead of myself here. Rather than asking for a testimonial, ask your client to fill out a feedback survey.

This survey should ask specific questions about how they think the project went. Each question should cover a different aspect of the project, and should elicit a positive response. Remembering how well the process went and how much they enjoyed working with you, and putting it on paper will only cement the experience in their mind, making it much more likely that they will call you the next time they need anything.

And asking for their opinion suggests that you value it. Another big checkmark in your favor.

Conclusion

Once the survey is filled out, thank your client for taking the time, and then ask if they mind if you use it as a testimonial on your website. In my experience, they are always flattered, and always say yes to the request.

So now you have one satisfied client who trusts you, and a testimonial that you can put on your site in order to gain the trust of your next client. And the circle of trust continues.

WordPress is updated regularly, about 2 or 3 times a year. In each of its new release, it introduces either some new feature additions or some improvements to the existing ones. In this post, we will be discussing one WordPress feature that I think is overlooked by many, that is the Editor Styles.

Prior to version 3.0, where this feature was first introduced, you frequently need to refresh your page to see how your post looks like in the front side. This is due to the fact that the content styles at the WordPress TinyMCE editor is quite different from one at the front-side. The styles in the front-side come from the theme styles.css, while the editor styles are specified from the WordPress core function.

Recommended Reading: 30+ New Useful WordPress Tricks & Hacks

As you can see below, the WordPress editor uses Serif font family for the content, while at the front-side it uses Sans Serif font.

In version 3.0, WordPress let’s you customize the editor styles to match your theme styles. Let’s take a look.

Add Editor Styles Function

The editor styles can be added with add_editor_style() function. You need to create a separate stylesheet for your style editor apart from the default stylesheet. Assuming that you named it editor-style.css, you can add the following in your functions.php file of your theme.

 add_editor_style('editor-style.css'); 

This stylesheet should contain only the styles for the elements on your post like the paragraphs, headings, links, and images. But if you are unsure what is necessary to include in this stylesheet, here is my tip:

Download one of the WordPress default styles like TwentyTen, copy the editor-style.css, you can then customize the style rules to match the ones from your theme, and to set the tinyMCE width, we can add the following in the stylesheet:

 html .mceContentBody { max-width: 640px; padding: 10px; } 

That’s it, you should now find your content styles in the editor similar to what is on the front-side.

Editor Style for Post Types

In version 3.0, WordPress allows you to create Post Types to hold different focus of content. By default, WordPress allows you to create Page and Post. Using Post Types, you are able to create one for Products or Portfolio with more customized field sets, for example.

To add specific Editor Styles for your Post Types, you can add the following functions.php.

 function my_theme_add_editor_styles() { global $post; $post_type = get_post_type( $post->ID ); $editor_style = 'editor-style-' . $post_type . '.css'; add_editor_style( $editor_style ); } add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'my_theme_add_editor_styles' ); 

Now, in your theme directory, create the stylesheets with the following name convention editor-style-{post_type}.css. If you prefer using different name, simply change the value in the $editor_style.

For more advanced implementation, you can head over to the following reference at WordPress.org Codex.

ZURB has recently released a new version of their popular responsive framework, Foundation. In this version, they’ve made some drastic changes, eliminated a few components, and added new features. So, here are a few things that I think is worth noting in this release.

Let’s check them out.

Recommended Reading: 50 Useful Responsive Web Design Tools For Designers

The Variables

The most noticeable change when you open the _settings.scss, where Foundation sets variables for colors, length and other stuff, is the Variables names. For instance, these are the variables that were used to store website color scheme in Foundation 3:

 $mainColor: #000; $secondaryColor: #fff; $alertColor: #f3f3f3; $successColor: #ccc;

In version 4, these variables turn:

 $primary-color: #000; $secondary-color: #fff; $alert-color: #f3f3f3; $success-color: #ccc;

If you previously built with Foundation 3, these changes will certainly affect your website more or less. And it is likely that you have to do some significant adjustments to your SCSS stylesheet to reflect the change.

In addition, Foundation also added more variables to give more flexibility over the website component styles. For instance, Foundation now provides variables to define the body background color, and global rounded corner, which is unavailable in previous versions.

 $body-bg: #fff; $global-radius: 3px; $global-rounded: 1000px;

So, you probably also need to examine whether you should replace your current style definitions with the variables provided.

The Grid

The basic concept of consructing the grid hasn’t changed from the previous version, but in this release, Foundation made an enhancement for mobile grid. Foundation has two types of grid size small and large, and there are now 12 columns for the small grid.

Given the following markup

 <div class="row"> <div class="small-2 large-4 columns">...</div> <div class="small-4 large-4 columns">...</div> <div class="small-6 large-4 columns">...</div> </div> 

We will see that the columns width are split equally in large screen size.

In small viewport, the columns are adjusted in accordance to their specified small grid number.

emCalc Function

em is a relative unit mesaurement, thus it is not certain how much exactly is 1.879em — depending on the specified base font size, the return might slightly be different.

In this latest version, Foundation makes it easy to use em unit with emCalc() function. Simply add the pixel value, like so.

 width: emCalc(10px); 

It will return in em unit when we compile it into CSS. The calculation is based on the value specified in $em-base variable provided in _settings.scss.

Related: Understanding em Units in CSS

Switching to Zepto.js

Foundation 4 uses Zepto.js over jQuery as the default JavaScript library to run the plugins. Zepto.js is a lightweight JS library that has compatible APIs to jQuery. So, technically speaking, the Foundation jQuery plugins from the previous version should work just fine.

The decision behind this switch as ZURB explains it is to lighten the code base and make things a bit faster.

Related: How to Use Foundation 4′s Faster, Better and Stronger JavaScript

Final Thought

Foundation is a great framework to build your resposnive website. But, if you have built one using the previous version, and decided to upgrade, it seems that you have some work to do.