There is a simple tool to help you keeping tracks of you accomplishments: write down your new year’s resolutions.

I see a lot of people talking about nerdy things, like “learn a new programming language” or “write more about what you know” but the truth is if you aren’t satisfied with your personal life you won’t get better results at work. You need to improve yourself in both sides so you’ll be a better you.

Well, what we’ll see here is a kind of “new year’s resolutions template,” with a lot of ideas that you can steal and we’ll see how to keep track of them.

Don’t forget to check 20 New Year’s Resolution Ideas to Become Better at Your Career!

My Resolutions

Credits: adesigna

What I do is to write down in a paper my big targets. I try to keep them more specific that I can, so instead of writing “Read more” I should go with “Read at least one book per week”, which is based on what I’ve been doing before and what I want to do now. Le’s go to the funny part, the examples.

1. Read one funny book per month, at least

Credits: cindiann

Please change one to what better fits in your reading taste but remember life is not just about boring coding books, you have to get some fun sometimes.

2. Write 100 lines of code, every day, including holidays

Credits: Chapendra

Yeah, this post is not just about work. And so is this resolution.

It’s about discipline and self commitment, which is much more related to self-improvement than to work. The lines of code are just an auxiliary, you can change it to anything you want to do and be really good about.

3. Call parents and friends once a week

Credits: Neal.

You should be close to people that makes you feel good to be alive. Be it your parents, girlfriend (or boyfriend), friends, relatives. For me life is about what difference you make to other people, what is your piece of change in the world. Believe me, this will make you much happier.

4. Read ONLY 5 posts per day

Credits: zendamnabil

Ok, this one is pretty tricky. I know your job is to be updated, so is mine. But you have to deal carefully with information overload. Again the best way for doing so is discipline.

So what you have to do is chose a maximum about of posts to read, websites to visit, time to lose. And in the end you have to get your own ideas, it’s just impossible to hear every single opinion about a topic, just pick the best ones and move on.

5. Play with my pet every day

Credits: flynutaa

I have a turtle, so this is not that hard for me :)

Well, spending time with pets will help you to clear your mind and is a good exercise of giving your time to other people. And in the meantime you may lose a few pounds.

6. Play guitar (or just give it a try)

Credits: boston_camera

Listening songs is great for my productivity. But learning how to play guitar is much awesome. I mean, I just know the basics, but if I play it like 15 minutes it gives me a boost to work better and better for hours.

7. Check: Am I happy with what I’m doing?

Credits: Sigalokos

Credits for Steve Jobs by this one. Have you ever felt like “damn, it’s late and I have to sleep, but I wish I could work on this 24×7″ ? If no, my friend, you don’t know what is satisfaction.

If you do things that you don’t want to by a long period of time, it drains your energy, it drains your life. It just doesn’t worth it spending you time on what you don’t want to do.

Keeping track of them

After choosing what you want to do of your life next year, it’ll be good to know how you’re doing this during the year. So after writing down what I’m doing is to go to a to-do-list software (like wunderlist) and set up there my goals.

I’m used to track them down weekly so it’s way easier to change things since if you don’t beat a goal in one week you still have 51 weeks to change this, but you have only 11 another months to correct things.

So break them down to weekly goals and every Sunday read them, check how’s things going and change what you want, you don’t have to wait until next year to do so :)

After all I just can wish you a happy new year!

Here is an inspiring list of resolutions for web designers, developers and bloggers. Hopefully to get you started on the new year right.

1.Better Time Management & Get Things Done

Ending the holidays, you might find yourself in a high. You still might be pretty lazy to getting back to work and do your thing. To get yourself warmed up, why not organize and update your new daily planner. If you don’t have a daily planner or organizer – get one! Write down what you need to do for the day and prioritize your activities. Starting from the most important to the least. Using your time wisely will make you productive and efficient.

2.Leave Your Creative Comfort Zone

Venture to different type of creative outlets relevant or irrelevant to your usual thing. For example – if you are into print designing, try anything on web designing. If you are into web designing, then try print designing. Whatever your preferences maybe. Take yourself to a new and challenging forms of activities or hobbies that would also make you profit in the near or later future. Expand your horizon and explore. There’s a whole lot more to learn from.

3. Acknowledge Your Imperfection

It is understood that you can make really bad moves and decisions. The one thing that hinders us to change or improve is pride. Yes, it is difficult to admit you are wrong. But face it, everybody makes mistakes. If you don’t, then you might not be normal. If you own up to your mistakes and realize that you are not perfect, you are making room for improvements and change for the better. But of course, it always better to put it to action than just putting it in your mouth. You have to really commit to making improvements. If not, you’d just be sour-graping and that’s not a good thing either.

4.Try To Read One New Book a Month

Take a time to relax at least once a month. Reading a good book will take your mind off things and enhances your creativity by your imagination. Discover new things and words to add up to your vocabulary. Reading also boosts up confidence.

5.Clean the Clutter on Your Desktop

Start clean & fresh. Get rid of all the clutter in your desktop and make room for new to come. Keeping unused or unwanted files or software on your desktop make you no less than a pack-rat. So you better start cleaning – you’ll be amazed how much space those useless items are taking up.

6.Update Your Portfolio

Since this is another year for you and your business, freshen up and update your portfolio. Create a new design and add what’s most recent on your designs, themes, photographs etc. Keep your clients, followers & fans updated.

7.Step Away From The Computer And Exercise

Sitting in front of the computer half of the time if not most, may cause laziness or could make you gain weight – considering it makes you eat unhealthy junk food. Go for a hike, jog, do yoga or engage in a sport.  Slide in a workout routine to your planner for half an hour or more and get yourself fit. Remember, health is wealth.

8. Stretch Your Patience

This new year, go the extra mile and stretch your patience. The survival and main objective of a business is to cater clients’ demands and needs. So be extra patient with your clients. It will pay off when they get really pleased with your services, and that will make you happy. As well as your wallet.

9.Find New and Better Ways to Connect with Clients (Google Voice, Google Wave, etc.)

Reach out to clients in every way possible. This is also one of the many strategic marketing techniques. Some clients don’t know where to find good service providers. Be there to help them out and show them that you can live up to their demands and expectations. Promote your services and offer them the best.

10.Try a Color scheme You Have Never Even Imagined

Never be too cautious with designs. Because unique designs always stand out. Be more creative, play with colors. Maybe you will be the first to mix and match a new color that will go well that others haven’t tried. Step out of the circle and think out of the box.

11.Master At Least One Application Or Programming Language

Improve your performance by focusing on one application or programming language. This way you have a target on what your main work or field is on. After which, then you could proceed to another.

12.Take an Extra Class About Design

Make time for your passion. There are always new things to learn, better learn it from real teachers and go to school. When you know that you’re good at something and want to make the most out of it, it is better to keep enhancing that talent. That is what school does – it harnesses what’s the best in you and develop your skills even more than what you actually know.

13.Follow Top Designers on Twitter and Interact with Them

Get inspiration from top people in the business.  Twitter will get you updated on their latest activities. If you get lucky and get the chance to interact with them, they might give you tips about how they got successful.

14.Really Impress your Clients–Current and New

Never miss to surprise your clients. They are like the better half of your business. You need to keep impressing them to make your business last. Show them something fresh and innovate. New clients are as important as the new ones. Mainly because they both could find another service provider if you don’t meet expectations. So find new ways to excite them and always maintain that harmonious relationship with them.

15. Take Time to be Inspired

Always be on the look out for new inspiration. Make time to browse the web for anything fresh on the scene. Search for newly discovered digital artists, designers, web designing businesses, softwares, gadgets, applications etc. Everyday is a new day and that makes yesterday old news.

*These New Years resolutions are pretty much easy to accomplish. I know everyone has a struggle in fulfilling resolutions. But if you don’t start now, when? Hopefully you are now looking for a great year ahead. Making a New Year’s resolution is just the first step, putting it to action is the most important leap. If you have anything to add, feel free to share. Cheers to 2011!

Width is important to get rid of browser side scrollbar, which would be seen if You create Your design too wide and as to the height there is no limitations, but You must create design so the most important things You want to display would be seen for example – buttons, some hot links, maybe ads. If I analyze my web page it’s not so well thought-out actually, but I hope to create new design in my spare time real soon.

Okay, so the question remains and that’s why I want to share with You with this great resource -

This resource is so great because there are nice collection of different popular browser screenshots  1024 x 768 px and 800 x 600 px resolutions and in different versions.

And also they also offer not only screenshots but also browser templates as  *.psd files with the same 2 different resolution screenshots, 60px vertical grid to help You create column. Also You can switch on/off scrollbar, favicon, type in page title, to give You an overview how Your design will look in selected browser and also to help You show the most important things when user loads the page.

I used FireFox addon – Measure tool, to measure actual shown width and height for FF browser – it is 1000x660px.

You can get Measure tool addon here and also handy comes Firesizer 0.65 addon too, to easily check how Your page is displayed in different resolutions.

That’s one method, but I suggest You to use  955×600 document size, because a lot of articles and comments I read through suggested to use 950-960 width size or just use liquid layouts, that stretches to the current user’s window size and avoid to use fixed layouts that are always in the same size.  And for a height I checked with measure tool different browser templates and every browser window seems to fit in 600px height.

If You are interested to check how for example apple.com, windows.com, mtv.com, resize Your window to 1024×768 resolution and test different pages and with measure tool You will see, how much width and size they use . It’s good to check this kind of popular sites, because they spend many thousands to test and optimize their pages.

I hope this short article will help people, who just start to create fresh designs and struggle thinking what resolution they should design for and what width and height they should choose creating new document.

I will appreciate to see Your opinion about this question!

*edited

Also fellow from Squangles.com just gave me great site, where You can check browser compatibility, cross platform browser test. You can get screenshots how Your site would look almost in every browser.

Here is the site : Browsershots