Gradients can be cool, but it's shading has to be right and subtle.
The details matter, not only the gradients.

There are things where you can use gradients and things where you can't.

The key is subtlety, the less you realize it's there the better.

@Trudesign took my thought. Subtlety. Definitely, gradients used in moderation can add a nice touch to any site design. But used too much makes it feel heavy and confusing.

As a front-end web developer, I also have found it difficult to create dynamic pages with overlapping gradients without creating overly large page download weight or hackish coding. Now, fortunately, with CSS3 poking it's head into more and more browsers these days, may prove to be a big bonus to generating these effects without the use of images at all!

It depends ond how you use it. Most of the time I think it looks so "newbie" like "Hey! I'm learning to use photoshop!"

But as the first comment say, can be cool if you know to use them.

~ Yueni.

Not a huge gradient fan. I agree, can be useful of course but in small doses. I'm more of a texture fan at the moment. Small scale and grubby textures.

I use it quite often in my work, especially typography. But they are very subtle, often, white to a light grey or such.

I like gradients but I'm not heavy gradient user it all depends what I'm designing.

1stklassdesigns