Have you tried posting a jQuery question on Answers yet? All you have to do is post the question and when someone does answer your ‘jQuery query’ (I love the way that sounds!), you will receive an email notification, and hey presto your solution is there waiting for you!

Couldn’t be easier, could it?

It has been yet another good week on Answers, loads of great questions and lots of even better answers from our huge 450+ members. Thanks for all your support!

“Have you asked a question yet?“

What’s the best way to learn jquery?

This question was asked by Ralph.

Answer from Paul Andrew:

Downloading plugins and following tutorials will only take you so far – what if you need something that simply hasn’t been done before? You would have to develop it yourself, you would have to learn jQuery from the begining and start with the basics.

In the Woods offers a video series (15 videos) that will teach you PRECISELY how to use the jQuery library in your own projects:
jQuery for absolute beginners.

Spyre Studios has written an article about how to how to get started with jQuery, and actually writing your first script: Simple Guide: How To Get Started With jQuery (Part One) …

… As has Six Revisions: Getting Started with jQuery …

… There is also
Learning jQuery, a multi-author blog offering jQuery tutorials and demos. They have tutorials for all skill levels, and each entry is categorized by level of difficulty…

… And finally
jQuery for Designers is another cool resource for learning jQuery.

Can libraries like Jquery replace everything you can do with Flash?

This question was asked by Rjene.

Answer from Prajwal:

Definitely not everything, especially when it comes to advanced motion effects, manipulation of images (beyond a certain extent), even user input to a certain extent..
jQuery definitely cannot replace flash…

Answer from Michael Mior :

However, for the practical purposes of most websites, you can usually get away with using jQuery over Flash.

Animations on the web – Flash or jQuery? Pros & cons?

This question was asked by Filip Biel.

Answer from Alessio:

Well, Flash is becoming less and less popular among web designers because Flash movies are so heavy and because not everybody has Flash (or the latest version of Flash) installed. Similarly, not everybody has Java enabled on their browser, but it’s default so more people would see a jQuery animation than a Flash one. So, I’d say going with jQuery would be the stronger choice. JQuery tends to be lighter and thus loads faster and easier on bandwidth as well.

How Can I Validate My Forms (strictly) Using jQuery?

This question was asked by Pablo G.

Answer from Alessio:

Have you tried the jQuery form validation plugin?

How can i create a nice javascript calender?

This question was asked by Vanart.

Answer from Nikowillson:

With the following code you’ll be able to create a JS powered calander that will shift to the relevant month when you click on the buttons…good luck

function writeCalendar(){
var calString = '';
calString += '';
// calString += '' + months[this.month] + ', ' + this.year + '';
calString += '<';
calString += '<';
// calString += ' ';
calString += '' + months[this.month] + ', ' + this.year + '';
calString += '>';
calString += '>';
calString += '';
calString += '';
calString += '';

return calString;
}

Unanswered Questions

There is only one question that has been left unanswered this week which is just amazing!
So, can you help poor Melissa Davis Nichols with her unanswered question:

1. I’m looking for an easy Flash Loader tutorial?

Thanks again, firstly to everyone who asked a question, but most importantly thanks to everyone that took the time to offer always helpful and useful answers.

For today’s news we have collected and want to share five of the best articles from the design community in last week. We also are not only contributors, we are also readers as well, as is the nature of this great community.

E-Commerce Design Resources: The Ultimate Round-Up

E-commerce design requires much of the same design knowledge and skill as any other type of web design. The pages are built from many of the same elements – headers, footers, columns, graphics, and text, among other things.

But there are additional elements that need to be considered, from both a design and usability standpoint. Site architecture is often more complicated, with products sometimes falling into multiple categories.

Product pages need to be laid out in a way that makes it easy for customers to see exactly what it is they’re getting. And the checkout process needs to be as simple and streamlined as possible while still capturing necessary information and encouraging repeat business. Overall, e-commerce design takes a bit more planning and care than simpler website forms.

E-Commerce Design Resources: The Ultimate Round-Up

Designing User Interfaces For Business Web Applications

A website is a collection of pages consisting mostly of static content, images and video, with limited interactive functionality (i.e. except for the contact form and search functionality). The primary role of a website is to inform. Some websites use content management systems to render dynamic content, but their nature is still informational.

Web applications, on the other hand, are dynamic, interactive systems that help businesses perform business critical tasks and that increase and measure their productivity. Thus, the primary role of a Web application is to perform a function that serves the user’s tasks and according to defined business rules.

Designing User Interfaces For Business Web Applications

10 Great Tools to Create a Mobile Version of Your Site

Every day thousands of people are releasing mobile versions of their websites and seeing greatly increased levels of traffic as a result. Unless you optimize your website for mobile phone users soon, you could be left behind by the competition.

Creating a mobile-friendly version of your site sounds like a daunting task, but it couldn’t be easier to do. Using one of the excellent tools from this article, you’ll be able to build, host and launch your mobile site with absolutely no coding knowledge whatsoever.

10 Great Tools to Create a Mobile Version of Your Site

34 Outstanding Admin Panels for Your Web Applications

An admin panel is a must have for web applications like e-commerce projects or content management systems, and all of the beautiful panels that are featured in this article have been created to not only make your life easier, they are also all perfectly coded and using the power of jQuery to animate the panels.

34 Outstanding Admin Panels for Your Web Applications

Showcase of Great Web App Interfaces

Web Apps are popping up everywhere. Five years or so ago, we could live without them, but as the internet has evolved we use them more and more in our daily lives.

The web applications that were selected to be part of this showcase are based on usability, simplicity, colors and overall layout.

Showcase of Great Web App Interfaces

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

So, here goes… What’s Better For Designing A Website, Photoshop Or Fireworks?

The original question was asked by Angela last Monday, and has so far received a hand-full of answers (you can read them below). We would love to hear your opinion, you can post it in the comments below or you can post an answer on the original questions thread here: What's Better For Designing A Website, Photoshop Or Fireworks?

“Have you asked a question yet?“

What's Better For Designing A Website, Photoshop Or Fireworks?

Answer from Alessio:

That’s a good question! I believe that it mostly comes down to personal preference.
I would use Photoshop because I’m much more comfortable with it and it’s quick and easy.
The reasons that Fireworks could be better, though, are:
1) It integrates rasters and vectors well, which you will probably want to do when creating a website.
2) It has better image compression, which can be important when creating graphics for the web. See this article: webdesignerwall.com for an in-depth comparison of the image compression in Photoshop and Fireworks.

So, I think for the most part it depends on whatever you’re more comfortable with, but there are slight advantages to Fireworks.

Answer from Mohamed Aslam Najeebdeen :

I use Photoshop for create mockups and Fireworks for wireframes and image slicing and optimization.

Answer from interface.net.pk:

It depends on your personal preference. The more you use a tool, the more comfortable you’d b with it. By the way, photoshop is believed to be the best application for designing websites.

Answer from Max:

Fireworks is the best, I’ve been using it since version 3. I use Photoshop for anything I do with my tablet.

Answer from Michael Lajlev:

I think you should go with photoshop, because it contains all you need, and sometimes fireworks isnt enough. If you go with photoshop you only need to learn one interface.

Unanswered Questions

There are always a couple of questions that somehow manage to go unanswered, can you help?
These are this weeks orphans:

1. What Tool Would You Choose To Create A Social Network?
2. How Can I Convert My Illustrations To Animations?
3. How Do I Parse My XML?
4. What's The Best Free Tool To Track Your Time On Projects?

Thanks again to everyone that took the time to offer some helpful and useful answers.

For today’s news round-up we have collected the best and the freshest font collections to expand your font libraries and help you choose that perfect font.

30 Free Fonts Ideal for Business Logos

30 Free Fonts Ideal for Business Logos »

20 Fonts Ideal for Big and Powerful Headings

20 Fonts Ideal for Big and Powerful Headings »

7 Free Grunge Fonts That Rock

7 Free Grunge Fonts That Rock »

20 Fonts Ideal For The iPhone And Other Mobile Screens

20 Fonts Ideal For The iPhone And Other Mobile Screens »

A Roundup of 45 Industrial Free Fonts

A Roundup of 45 Industrial Free Fonts »

The 30 Most Creative and Unusual Fonts

The 30 Most Creative and Unusual Fonts »

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

It has been yet another good week, thanks for your support!

“Have you asked a question yet?“

How Can I Display More Than One Twitter Feed On My WordPress Blog?

We do this by accessing the persons Twitter account RSS feed, then fetching it and embedding it on your site.

Replace the example RSS’s with the ones you’d like.

get_item_quantity(3);
$rss_items = $rss->get_items(0, $maxitems);
?>

<?php if ($maxitems == 0) echo '
• No items.

';
else
// Loop through each feed item and display each item as a hyperlink.
Foreach ( $rss_items as $item ) : ?>

• <a href='get_permalink(); ?>'>
  get_title(); ?>
  

I Have Multiple Authors On My Site, How Can I Display Their Info?

If you want to display their info at the bottom or beginning of the post, then use this and place it in the corresponding area of your WordPress files. (i.e. Single.PHP or Comments.PHP)

Edit the author box as necessary.

How Can I Display Someone Else’s FeedBurner Post On My Site?

You can add the following jQuery code anywhere you want on the site (i.e. Sidebar, footer, etc.) Just remember to replace and specify which feed you’ll be recalling.

$(document).ready(function(){
$.ajax({
type: "GET",
url: "http://feeds.feedburner.com/examplefeed",
success: Function(data){
$("#date").text($(data).find("item:first>pubDate:first").text());
$("#title").html("link:first").text()+"'>"+$(data).
find("item:first>title:first").text()+"");
$("#description").html($(data).
find("item:first>description:first").text());
}

What Can I Use To Place A Shadow Behind My Images And Outlines?

If you’re refering to having your images and boxes with a drtop shadow, then you need the Box Shadow CSS feature to work for you. Here’s what you need to place in your CSS:

.shadow {
box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #f2f2f2;
-moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #f2f2f2;
-webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #f2f2f2;
}

What’s The Easiest Way To Redirect A Specific Page On My Site?

If you want to redirect users to another site once they enter a specific area on your site then you just have to use some of this Javascript code in the page to be redirected from:

Replace the www.google.com with the URL address you wish to redirect to.

Unanswered Questions

There are always some questions that seem to get through the net, can you help us answer them?

1. What Is A Good Resource To Create Style Sheets For Multiple Web Browsers?
2. How To Create A Profile Which Can Be Navigated, Without Using HTML Or Flash?
3. How Do You Find New Clients?
4. What Are Your Top Usability Tips For Web Designs?
5. What’s A Good Mobile Framework To Use?
6. How Can I Integrate ECommerce On My Site Without Any Coding?

Thanks again, firstly to everyone who asked a question, but most importantly thanks to everyone that took the time to offer always helpful and useful answers.

For today’s news round-up we have a small collection of amazing text effects and tutorials for Photoshop.

3D Typewriter Text

In this tutorial you’ll create some 3d typewriter hammer keys in Illustrator and mix them together with some painting techniques and the Vanishing Point Filter in Photoshop to create a stylish multi-dimensional wallpaper.

View the tutorial.

Photoshop Grungy Metal Effect

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a text effect using textures from stock images. The final image is a grungy picture with text being illuminated in the dark.

View the tutorial.

Jungle 3D text in Photoshop

This is a hunourous Photoshop tutorial that explains how to create a 3D jungle text effect. You will firstly create the text in Xara3d and then Photoshop to texturize the letters using the animals’ skin.

View the tutorial.

Retro-Style Text Effect in Cinema 4D and Photoshop

For this tutorial you will learn how to create 3D text and merge it into a retro-style scene, using Illustrator for the text, Cinema4D to make the text 3D and finally Photoshop to bring it all together.

View the tutorial.

3D explosion using the Brush and Smudge Tool

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a 3D explosion using the Brush and Smudge Tool using Photoshop and its default settings. After creating the explosion, the tutorial also features a few steps guiding you on how to create and implement your own 3d text.

View the tutorial.

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

It has been another good week with yet more members, more questions and, most importantly, plenty of answers.

“Have you asked a question yet?“

How Do I Add My Feedburner Text Count On My Sidebar?

This question was asked by Autobots:

Answer from Rollback999?:

“You can do this by inserting the following code within the side bar div or sidebar menu. Edit the code to match up with your feedburner account.

Found on: yoast.com”

What Is The Correct Way To Set Opacity Using CSS3?

This question was asked by Themans:

Answer from Joel Reyes?:

“CSS3 allows you to set opacity for text, images, or sections. Here’s the magical code that allows us to do so. This code is compatible with Firefox, Safari, and Opera 9.

Code:
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=50); /* IE 5.5+*/
-moz-opacity: 0.5; /* Mozilla 1.6 ? ???? */
-khtml-opacity: 0.5; /* Konqueror 3.1, Safari 1.1 */
opacity: 0.5; /* CSS3 – Mozilla 1.7 +, Firefox 0.9 +, Safari 1.2+, Opera 9 */”

How Do I Limit All Of My Post Titles In WordPress?

Answer from Autobots:

“Limiting the titles of your posts is beneficial if you want to keep anticipation for the user, or to save some space. This is a php function, place this within your single.php file:

Function limit_title($title, $n){
if (strlen($title)>$n) {
echo substr(the_title($before = ”, $after = ”, FALSE), 0, $n) . ‘…’;
}
else { the_title(); }
}”

How Do I Create Cross-browser Rotation Transformation With CSS?

This question was asked by Autobots:

“Here’s the code for CSS transform rotation effect. It works with all of the common browsers.

#one {
-moz-transform:rotate(45deg);
-webkit-transform:rotate(45deg);
-o-transform:rotate(45deg);
-ms-transform:rotate(45deg);
}

Source: samuli.hakoniemi.net“

Do Web Designers Think Themselves Artists?

This question was asked by Shu:

Michael Cassius :

“It’s all depends if you’re a pixel pusher lead by clients or a creative, who creates… Like the difference between a house painter and Michelangelo.”

Jared:

“I’m somewhat new to web design, but I consider myself an artist – or at least my service as art… I guess that makes me an artist, huh? I do, because there is no one answer (like 2+2=4), but instead it allows me to be creative, like writing a poem or playing a instrument. Yes. It is art.”

Benjamin Alijagic:

“If they work enough years long and if they put enough soul in each part of their work, they should. Of course not client work but even client work can get into art sometimes.

In theory, design (including a web design) is only a decoration of final product (in web sites, final product is content on site) and design cannot be called Art or web designers Artists.”

Audee:

“Now I wonder how would an artist director who is fully involved in a web design project can be considered as web designer?

I think if you call yourself as a web designer, you know the rule of usability and sort of it in web design field, but at least you must have a little of aesthetic sense in you, to put together the beauty and function or usability elements into a website.

I’d say that the ‘artist’ in you could be relative to some levels, it depends on your talents or your artistic skills gained in time.”

Unanswered Questions

Even with all the helpful answers we have recieved over the past week, we do still have some unanswered questions.

If you have any spare time, perhaps you could help us answer some of these questions and give a little back to the community:

1. What Are Your Experiences With Expression Engine?
2. Quick N Dirty Method To Call A Flickr Group’s Number Of Members?
3. What’s A Good And Free Place To Post Jobs For Designers?

Thanks again, firstly to everyone who asked a question, but most importantly thanks to everyone that took the time to offer always helpful and useful answers.

20 Fantastic Usability & Conversion Analysis Tools

Usability and conversion analysis tools, such as the examples listed in this article, will help you design or redesign your site to make it easier and enjoyable for visitors to navigate around. Such tools can be expensive, but they needn’t be. Amongst the pricier ones listed you’ll find many that are cheap or completely free to use.

20 Fantastic Usability & Conversion Analysis Tools

20 Great Project Management Tools

Project Management is often defined as the science of organizing, planning and managing the available resources of a particular organization to successfully complete a project, which aims to meet the organization’s goals and objectives.

This type of system will be useful in ensuring the timely and effective output of a project. Furthermore, the implementation of such a system will give you greater productivity in every project.

20 Great Project Management Tools

30 Twitter Tools to Help Grow Your Community

With Twitter, professionals are able to avidly share, distribute, and promote information with the people who are following them. After all, finding an effective way to spread content throughout the web is becoming scarce these days.

However, setting up a Twitter account and posting a tweet isn’t the end of the line. You need to know how to grow and manage a community of followers that will not only will be interested in what you have to say, but they will also want to share with others the things you tweet. This is the idea behind a solid community.

We can take this into account, and apply the same concepts to the success of our Twitter communities.

30 Twitter Tools to Help Grow Your Community

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

We felt it would be nice to share with you our favorite Questions and Answers, and ask you: “Have you asked a question yet?“

Would I Possibly Be Able To Know What Language My Websites Visitors Use?

This question was asked by Rollback999:

Answer from Themans?:

“Sure! This is mostly used for detection and then translation of a webpage.

Function getPreferredLanguage() {
$langs = array();
if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'])) {
// break up string into pieces (languages and q factors)
preg_match_all(‘/([a-z]{1,8}(-[a-z]{1,8})?)s*(;s*qs*=s*(1
0.[0-9]+))?/i’,
$_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'], $lang_parse);
if (count($lang_parse[1])) {
// create a list like “en” => 0.8
$langs = array_combine($lang_parse[1], $lang_parse[4]);
// set default to 1 for any without q factor
foreach ($langs as $lang => $val) {
if ($val === ”) $langs[$lang] = 1;
}
// sort list based on value
arsort($langs, SORT_NUMERIC);
}
}
//extract most important (first)
foreach ($langs as $lang => $val) { break; }
//if complex language simplify it
if (stristr($lang,”-”)) {$tmp = explode(“-”,$lang); $lang = $tmp[0]; }
return $lang;
}

Source: www.barattalo.it“

How Can I Redirect Mobile Users?

This question was asked by Heri Setiawan:

Answer from Joel Reyes?:

“If you’re looking to redirect users that visit your site on a mobile platform then you can embed this within your html file. It’s a very simple JavaSript code.

<!–
if (screen.width

All you have to do is simple replace the mobilevs.php with the location of your sites mobile version.”

Answer from Heri Setiawan?:

“Hi joel. That’s nice trick. But i recommend to use this PHP mobile detection, as it can be used to detect any mobile platform, like Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Opera Mini, Android, Iphone, etc.

Found it here, and official site here.”

How Do I Protect My Email Addresses On My Blog?

This question was asked by Themans:

Answer from Autobots?:

“If you’re trying to run a more secure enviornment by protecting/encrypting emails then you can use the following script to protect against bots and spyders.

Code:
function hide_email($email) { $character_set = ‘+-.0123456789@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ_abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz’; $key = str_shuffle($character_set); $cipher_text = ”; $id = ‘e’.rand(1,999999999); for ($i=0;$i”+d+”"‘; $script = “eval(“”.str_replace(array(“\”,’”‘),array(“\\”,’”‘), $script).”")”; $script = ”; return ‘[javascript protected email address]‘.$script; }

Source: www.maurits.vdschee.nl“

How Can I Customize My UL List?

This question was asked by Themans:

“UL Lists are for the most part the same, there is rarely much you can do when it comes to customizations beyond the links, text color, etc. However, here’s a script that will create a simple slide-out effect for your UL lists. Enjoy!

Create an ID section in your CSS. We then place the following as your HTML:

• Playstation | Hide
• iPod Touch | Hide
• XBOX 360 | Hide
• Nokia N97| Hide
• Dell Inspiron | Hide

Now we need some JavaScript code to allow the Slide-Out effect to take life:

window.addEvent(‘domready’, function() {
/* From the list with ID myList, for each li element of the list…: */
$(‘myList’).getElements(‘li’).each(function(e){
/* …get the ID of the selected item */
e.getElement(‘a’).addEvent(‘click’, function(listID){
/* Enable Fx.Slide effect for the selected item */
var list_element = new Fx.Slide(listID);
/* Enable slideOut() effect */
list_element.slideOut()
}.pass(e.id));
});
});

Source: woork.blogspot.com“

What Books Do You Recommend For A Beginner To Kick Off The Start Of Learning Web Design?

This question was asked by Shu:

Answer from Heri Setiawan:

“These may help beginner:

Principles Of Beautiful Web Design
Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Book
XHTML And CSS : A Web Standards Approach   <- this one is awesome
The CSS Anthology : 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks
WordPress Theme Design (here is the newer version)”

Answer from Cy Klassen:

“HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions: A Web Standardista’s Approach.
HTML Dog: The Best-Practice Guide to XHTML and CSS.
The Zen of CSS Design (see css Zen Garden).”

What Next for Design Reviver Answers?

Michael Lajlev asked us this question: Please Make An Option For Showing If A Topic Is Resolved And How Many Comments Is Made To A Q?. Its a fair question and this is our answer:

“Thanks for the suggestions Michael, we will be adding the number of answers onto the question pages shortly. At the moment we don’t have any plans to close questions (and mark them resolved) I know some Q&A sites like yahoo answers have that system so it might be something for us to add in the future.”

If anyone else has any suggestions or ideas on how we can improve the site, we would love to hear from you.

Thanks again, firstly to everyone who asked a question, but most importantly thanks to everyone that took the time to offer always helpful and useful answers.

Today’s news does not answer that question, what it does is give you an opportunity to break away from the norm, to kick back and enjoy this collection of not resourceful, but insightful articles on web design for web designers. No work required, just good reading!

How to Grow as a Web Designer

Getting in a rut is often the result of not staying up to date with the latest trends and technologies in the industry. Even if we do stay up to date, many of us at one time or another feel anxious about whether we’re advancing.

If you’re at a firm, you may be working towards a raise or promotion, or perhaps you’re thinking of jumping ship to a bigger and better company.

For the freelancers out there, you of course determine your own destiny; but far too often our careers feel stagnant, too.

This article goes over some insightful ways to reignite your growth as a web designer.

How to Grow as a Web Designer

The Principle of Contrast in Web Design

A web design is made of many different elements, each having varying levels of importance and some demanding prominence over others.

Some elements share a relationship, while others are not related at all. The tricky part is being able to communicate this visually and effectively. This is where the principle of contrast comes into play.

The Principle of Contrast in Web Design

Better User Experience With Storytelling

Today we communicate a bit differently from days gone by. Our information is fragmented across various mass-media channels and delivered through ever-changing technology. It has become watered down, cloned, and is churned out quickly in 140-character blurbs. We’ve lost that personal touch where we find an emotional connection that makes us care.

Using storytelling, however, we can pull these fragments together into a common thread. We can connect as real people, not just computers. In this article you’ll explore how user experience professionals and designers are using storytelling to create compelling experiences that build human connections.

Better User Experience With Storytelling

User Experience Of The Real Time Web

There has been much talk about all of the businesses that are sprouting up in regards to the real-time web. But, it can be confusing for the user because there is so much out there. They key for users is to first recognize what they are looking to do on the real time web.

Once that is known, it is important to know where to go to get the information that is being looked for. The rewards can be plentiful as the real time web offers outstanding resources once the user becomes experienced with how to use it.

User Experience Of The Real Time Web

How to Make Money as a Freelance Designer

Despite the glamorous reputation, freelance design is no walk in the park. It takes an incredible work ethic, significant entrepreneurial prowess, and a little bit of insanity to pull it off effectively. This article will discuss how to effectively make a living as a freelancer (designer or otherwise).

How to Make Money as a Freelance Designer

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

We have simply been overwhelmed by the response from the design community, it has more than beat our expectations and we very much appreciate the support from everybody.

Some Impressive Stats

Up to date we have 255 new members, over 120 questions have been asked and a staggering 370 answers have been given.

Wordpress, to be expected, has been the most popular topic/tag, closely followed by CSS and then by the sometimes tricky jQuery.

Heri Setiawan has been our most prolific member, by answering 29 questions (290 points). Next there is Cy Klassen with with 2 questions and 21 answers (210 points), and closely followed by Benjamin Alijagic with 20 questions (200 points).

How many points do you have?

Some Examples of the Impressive Questions and Answers

All of the questions, from all our members have been constructive and varied, resulting in intelligent and useful answers, here are some examples:

Unanswered Questions

Surprisingly there are still a handful of questions that have as yet been unanswered, could you help us? Here are some of the questions:

• Has Javascript Reached A Point Where Flash Is Unnecessary For Web Design?
• How Can I Create A Auto-Email Reminder With Date And Time?
• How Can I Properly Load An Xml File?

Help us get better

We would love to hear what you think of our new service, how can we improve it? What new features would you like?

Please leave your thoughts via the comments below.

Again, thanks to everyone for the support.

In today’s news round up we have collected some color related articles, some tools for your inspiration and learning.

Color Theory for Designers, Part 1: The Meaning of Color

Color in design is very subjective. What evokes one reaction in one person may evoke a very different reaction in somone else. Sometimes this is due to personal preference, and other times due to cultural background. Color theory is a science in itself.

This is the first in a three-part series on color theory, were the author discusses the meanings behind the different color families, and gives some examples of how these colors are used.

Color Theory for Designers, Part 1: The Meaning of Color

25 Color Combination Tools for Designers

There are a lot of online tools to help create a beautiful color combination. They all vary slightly to suit each designers with different preferences on how they work. In this article they collected together 25 of the best color tools, with a quick overview on each to help you decide which is best for you.

25 Color Combination Tools for Designers

Colorgorize the Web

The first version of Colorgorize was published in 2007 as a project at the University of the Arts Bremen, Germany. Back then, Colorgorize was a Firefox add-on that could display similar colored websites to the website currently opened. Colorgorize has since changed to a website recently to allow it to reach a bigger audience. Today, thousands of websites are already analyzed and can be searched by colors.

Colorgorize the Web

What If Computer Graphics Ran Under Crayola's Law?

What If Computer Graphics Ran Under Crayola's Law?

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Thanks to all of those developers for making our life easier!

30 Stylish jQuery Tooltip Plugins For Catchy Designs

Tooltips can be an important factors on a web site,although little and not always visible, they do offer so much. Although important, they also happen to be a very badly misunderstood and a poorly implemented component.

30 Stylish jQuery Tooltip Plugins For Catchy Designs

45 jQuery Navigation Plugins and Tutorials

As many of us know, the initial 15-20 seconds of a new user’s visit to a web site will have a large impact on whether on not they are going to like or dislike the site, prompting them to decide whether they will stay or go. This means it’s vital that you follow usability rules with common design practices and layout your site, especially the navigation, in a style that the user can either learn easily or already understands.

The biggest part of this process is developing a menu that is both easy to use and intuitive, as well as styling it to fit into your site’s design. Having said all that, an easy-to-use menu should not put the shackles on creativity.

In this article they’ve listed 45 jQuery plugins and tutorials that demonstrate not only how powerful jQuery is, but also how your website’s navigation can be both creative and usable.

45 jQuery Navigation Plugins and Tutorials

25 jQuery Plugins for Working with Forms

Almost every website uses a form of some kind. Contact forms and other types of forms can be enhanced with the use of a number of jQuery plugins that are readily available. In this post they feature 25 useful plugins that you may be able to use in your own work with forms.

25 jQuery Plugins for Working with Forms

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Our hope is that Design Reviver Answers with your help, can become a indispensable source of information and inspiration for Web Designers. Together we can help each other create better, more beautiful websites.

Interested in becoming part of this new community?

Get started answering one of these:

Tell Us About Yourself: Who Are You And Where Are You From?
Designers: Which Of Your Designs Are You Most Proud Of?
How Can I Add Social Media Links To My Pages And Posts In WordPress?
What Tools Can I Use To Debug My CSS Code?

Alternatively you can get started by asking a question

It all sounds good, doesn't it… There are some down-sides, though – some of the extensions are a little bit buggy (most are still in Beta) and others do lack a fair bit of polish. But if you choose your extensions carefully you will be able to build yourself a great web browsing environment.

Remember, the extensions directory has only just opened, with time Chrome and its extensions may just win the web browser war… Then again Firefox may come back fighting back, it always has done, hasn't it?

In today’s news round-up we have collected the best resources to help you choose best extensions for Chrome.

11 Chrome Extensions, For Starters

Google promised that Chrome would be fast to launch and fast to load web pages, but people predicted it would fail with the arrival of its extensions. Well, the extensions are here (at least for some of us) and surprisingly they do not affect the browser’s performance.

Here are a 11 cool extensions to get you started and ease you into your possible transitions to Chrome. Maybe not yet.

11 Chrome Extensions, For Starters

Creating a Web Development Environment using Google Chrome Extensions

How powerful can Chrome actually be for designers and developers? In just under a month there are dozens upon dozens of new extensions specifically developed for web developers, and in this article they have collected the best and most useful extensions for creating your own personal Google Chrome web development environment.

Creating a Web Development Environment using Google Chrome Extensions

Make the Most of Chrome with These 13 Excellent Extensions

Lifehacker, in this article, have pulled 13 fresh extensions from the extension gallery that were worthy of highlighting. They all have something a bit different from the widely-available bookmarklets, or at least fill a crucial need for those who use the web productively.

Make the Most of Chrome with These 13 Excellent Extensions

How To Create Your Own Google Chrome Extension

Developing your own Google Chrome extension is surprisingly easy. You might think you need all types of development skills and coding knowledge, but it’s really no more difficult than creating or tweaking a web page. If you know HTML/CSS and are somewhat familiar with Javascript, you can have a simple extension up and running in no time.

How To Create Your Own Google Chrome Extension

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

What we have done today is put together a collection of the best Photoshop resources from this year (2009), There are tutorials for image manipulations, text effects, icon design, digital imagery, illustration… and much, much more. Accompanied with all of this, there are also huge collections of PS actions and textures.

The 100 Most Popular Photoshop Tutorials 2009

In order to save your time, Photoshop Lady has been spending almost a whole year searching for the best photoshop tutorials for you. They have come up with The 100 Most Popular Photoshop Tutorials of 2009, selected from there published tutorials, with over 1 million votes and views from there Photoshop users and readers.

The 100 Most Popular Photoshop Tutorials 2009

The 30 best Photoshop tutorials of 2009 – Computer Arts

Whether you're after advanced advice on font trickery or you hanker for detailed guides on photo manipulation, you're sure to find something here to help you while away those long winter nights and boost your Photoshop know-how in the process.

The 30 best Photoshop tutorials of 2009 – Computer Arts

The Best 40 Photoshop Text Effects from 2009

In the resource you will find The Best 40 Photoshop Text Effects from 2009, a collection of diverse and unique effects and type treatments that will add a little extra to your next design.

The Best 40 Photoshop Text Effects from 2009

45+ Truly Stunning Digital Painting Tutorials

The author of this article have listed 45+ Truly Stunning Digital Painting Tutorials for those designers out there who wants to try this type of art. Read through the tutorials in this post and gain useful tips to master the technique… Have fun!

45+ Truly Stunning Digital Painting Tutorials

200+ Very Useful Free Photoshop Actions

In this article Tripwire magazine has a very large collection of Photoshop actions (some in large bundles). With the click of a button an action can help you achieve time consuming effects in no time, you just need to have access to the right actions.

200+ Very Useful Free Photoshop Actions

25 New Photoshop Action Sets for Photographers and Designers

This time, the Photoshop actions are for Photographers, with an impressive collection of 25 actions, this post is worth bookmarking.

25 New Photoshop Action Sets for Photographers and Designers

26 Photoshop Illustration Tutorials

This style of designing is mainly achieved using Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw to get that vector-like effect, but for those who do not have vector graphics editor, orsimply prefer Photoshop, this is a nice selection for you.

26 Photoshop Illustration Tutorials

45 Useful Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials for Christmas Season

The holiday spirit is once again here. Santas, Christmas trees and Christmas balls are once again in fashion…and just for that Naldz Graphics have collected 45 Useful Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials for Christmas Season.

45 Useful Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials for Christmas Season

The Best Free Texture Packs of 2009

There are a few things that a designer can not have enough of in his or her design arsenal, and one of them is textures. Since there were so many textures released in 2009, it must have been difficult to choose the best. However, this post does a damn good job with this collection, and most will be valuable additions to your texture library.

The Best Free Texture Packs of 2009

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Logo Design – How NOT To Design A Logo

This was the most popular design related article of 2009, published on Web Designer Depot in January.

It was an article about how underrated logo design in today’s world and how peolple do not understand how important a good logo is and how valuable it is to their business.

They outline the ways in which you should NOT go about getting your logo designed… that is, if you are truly serious about business.
Logo Design – How NOT To Design A Logo

30 high-quality free fonts for great designs

Even though you’ll have to pay for the best fonts, like Helvetica or Univers, the web is full of quality fonts that are perfectly suitable for professional design work. The impressive list of free fonts in this article have been classified to make the page easier to scan.
30 high-quality free fonts for great designs

22 Most Used Free Fonts By Professional Designers

The basic purpose behind this post is to show you popular and professional free font types to save your time searching online. This list is a combined effort of professional web designers and art directors to help speed up your project development time so you can save money and focus on making great applications and art.
22 Most Used Free Fonts By Professional Designers

34 Essential Tutorials To Get Started With Digital Photography

Starting out with digital photography can be quite overwhelming if you have no idea where to start. Luckily, there’s plenty of free quality information available on the web… with the potential of making you a semi-professional photographer in a matter of weeks.

The author of this article has compiled the best photography tips and tutorials found on the web, starting with the basics, all the way to the inner workings of your camera.
34 Essential Tutorials To Get Started With Digital Photography

60 Most Wanted Photoshop Tutorials, Brushes, .PSDs and Resources

This was the most popular Photoshop post of 2009. You’ll find an assortment of top-notch tutorials, brushes, patterns, textures, actions and .PSD downloadable files that others have freely contributed to the design community for making your next photoshop effect. Great post!
60 Most Wanted Photoshop Tutorials, Brushes, .PSDs and Resources

35 Basic Tutorials to Get You Started with Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a very powerful and versatile image editing/graphics creation application that is the industry standard in its category. Though Photoshop’s interface is intuitive enough for an absolute beginner to learn basic image editing tasks such as cropping and resizing, to be able to fully master and utilize all of its tools takes a considerable amount of time.

If you’re interested in honing your Photoshop skills to create spectacular compositions, this is for you.
35 Basic Tutorials to Get You Started with Photoshop

12 Common Photoshop Mistakes, Misuses and Abuses

This article is a list of 12 common mistakes, misuses and various ways new users abuse Photoshop. As the author freely admits, he has fell victim to a few of these himself when first starting out, so hopes this article helps educate designers and other individuals that are new to Photoshop.
12 Common Photoshop Mistakes, Misuses and Abuses

The Perfect 3 Column Liquid Layout

The CSS used for this layout is 100% valid and hack free. To overcome Internet Explorer's broken box model, no horizontal padding or margins are used in conjunction with a width. Instead, this design uses percentage widths and clever relative positioning.
Perfect!
The Perfect 3 Column Liquid Layout

10 Rare HTML Tags You Really Should Know

Web developers these days are often expected to know and work in multiple languages. As a result, it's tricky to learn everything a language has to offer and easy to find yourself not utilizing the full potential of some more specialized but very useful tags.

Unfortunately we haven't been tapping into the full potential of these more obscure HTML tags as of late. But it's never too late to get back into the game and start writing code that taps into the power of some under-used tags.
10 Rare HTML Tags You Really Should Know

15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website

Your website is designed, the CMS works, content has been added and the client is happy. It’s time to take the website live. Or is it? When launching a website, you can often forget a number of things in your eagerness to make it live, so it’s useful to have a checklist to look through as you make your final touches and before you announce your website to the world.

This article reviews some important and necessary checks that web-sites should be checked against before the official launch — little details are often forgotten or ignored, but – if done in time – may sum up to an overall greater user experience and avoid unnecessary costs after the official site release.
15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website

12 Useful Web Tools for Designers

When it comes to design, there’s a plethora of free web-based tools to help you accomplish tasks such as color palette selection, creating unique fonts, editing images, and testing typography. In this article, you’ll find a bunch of handy online utilities for designers.
12 Useful Web Tools for Designers

50 Beautiful And User-Friendly Navigation Menus

In this article there are over 50 excellent navigation menus — there are CSS-based design solutions, CSS+JavaScript-based menus and Flash-designs. However, they all have something in common: they are user-friendly yet creative and perfectly fit to the style of their respective websites.
50 Beautiful And User-Friendly Navigation Menus

14 Most Useful design cheat sheets and coding cheat sheets

Designers and developers simply can not get enough cheat sheets, and bloggers simply can not stop writing about them. This post was the most popular cheat sheet article of 2009. It features cheat sheets to help you with CSS , almost all the Javascript libraries, HTML, Flash and Photoshop.
14 Most Useful design cheat sheets and coding cheat sheets

70 New, Useful AJAX And JavaScript Techniques

Interactive solutions for lightboxes, form validation, navigation, upload, auto-complete, image cropping, slideshows, tool tips, sliders and tables are being developed that use nifty JavaScript and AJAX scripts.

When using these, developers have to carefully consider many subtle techniques to help users get things done. In this article, there are 70 new and useful JavaScript and AJAX techniques, all of which are of the highest quality and are more or less easy to configure. You will also find some very useful but better known techniques to use on almost any project you work on.
70 New, Useful AJAX And JavaScript Techniques

50 of the Best Ever Web Development, Design and Application Icon Sets

If you are looking for that perfect icon for your web site, blog, web app or application, you will find them in this post. It is a compilation of the best web dev icon sets ever, with mini pixel icons, glossy icons and even some useful blogging icons.
50 of the Best Ever Web Development, Design and Application Icon Sets

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Dress Up Your Site with 15 Top WordPress Themes

These days, ads venture on the irreverent. They cater to your physical senses and bend your mind to what is possible. In this post, there are some of the most insanely good advertisements of recent memory, broken down into ambient, billboards, commercials and print.

Dress Up Your Site with 15 Top WordPress Themes

The Most Original & Inspirational Wordpress Themes Out in November

This article is a collection of the most creative and fresh Wordpress themes released in November.

The Most Original & Inspirational Wordpress Themes Out in November

100 Premium Like But Free, Fresh Wordpress Themes: Year 2009

In this collection, the author, has collected on amazing 100 top quality free Wordpress themes. If the theme you are looking for is not in this collection, it doesn’t exist, I promise you.

100 Premium Like But Free, Fresh Wordpress Themes: Year 2009

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

1: Define Your Page Element

> Open a new Photoshop file to page requirements (72 dpi for web, 33dpi for print)
> Create a new layer and name it ‘Page’ (or a name of your choosing)
> Using the rectactangle selction tool – draw the page you want to apply the effect to

2: Apply a Drop Shadow to the Page

> Layers (from the main menu) > Layer Style > Drop Shadow

The settings used for this tutorial are; Distance=”4px”, Spread=”0px”, Size=”16px”. You can adjust these drop shadow settings to be appropriate with the particular type of image you want to emphasise; a poster, a postcard, an old sheet of paper etc.

Basically you need to imagine the natural 3D quality of the physical object and recreate it. A new sheet of paper would have very little 3D quality when layed flat so you wouldn’t need more than 16px in size, but an old photo may have heavily curved corners for example – in which case you would increase the size of the shadow. Here we are aiming for something in between.

The more you increase the distance of your shadow – the more you can control the direction of light to your page.

3: Flatten and Rasterize the Page Layer

> Right-click and convert your rectangle into a ‘Smart Object’
> Right-click again and ‘Rasterize’ your new Smart Object

4: Start Cropping the Shadow

> Take the Spherical Select tool from your tools panel and draw yourself an extreme oval
> Place the bottom edge of this oval at the top edge of your page
> Hit the Delete/Backspace button to crop your 1st curve into the drop shadow

What you may find is that for darker or larger shadows – the crop looks to clinical and precise to be natural. The cure for this is to add a Feather effect to the Spherical Select Tool before you carry out the crop. The Feather setting is found at the top of your workspace window, below the main menu. The darker and more dramatic the shadow – the more you will need to increase this value.

Once you have cropped the top of the shadow do the same with the bottom. The distance that you applied to the shadow in the settings box will actually do most of the work for you in terms of simulating natural light direction.

Once both the top and bottom edges are cropped we have a more natural looking drop shadow than is possible with the standard Photoshop effect. The image now looks 3 dimentional without appearing to hover in mid-air. See below …

You may want to add some more depth to the image. To do this, apply the same cropping technique to both the left and right sides of the page as well.

Now you have the a more natural effect to plant your nice image or content on to. Here I have used a photo I took in Barcelona.

Now the finished image has a natural quality all of it’s own and now sits ON the page rather than hovering above it.!

*This is a taster of things to come. Help us to deliver the things you want to see by leaving constructive feedback and requests for future Photoshop tips!!

By Lee Mason, a freelance graphic / web designer based in Norwich.

45 Advertisements You Will Never Forget

These days, ads venture on the irreverent. They cater to your physical senses and bend your mind to what is possible. In this post, there are some of the most insanely good advertisements of recent memory, broken down into ambient, billboards, commercials and print.

25 Print Ads Featuring Excellent Use Of Typography

Typography is everywhere, from the web to the print industry. In fact, there’s a lot of talk about beautiful typography in web design, but let’s not forget about the print industry – this is where it all comes from.

28 Creative Tech Advertising

40 Seriously Funny Print Ads

Humorous ads remain one of the few effective ways to engage an audience in a very saturated advertising market. This is an area where the audience is far more receptive and still willing to pay attention.
In this post, they’ve gathered 40 hilarious and really creative ads for your enjoyment.

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

The Magnificent Art of Adi Granov

One of the most incredible modern illustrators is the Bosnian Adi Granov. He first came into the spotlight in 2004 when he worked on the Iron Man miniseries Extremis. Since then, he has created the comic book covers for a whole list of Marvel’s comic books. In 2006 he was hired to help create the Iron Man armor for the first film which turned into such a huge success that he was called back for more conceptual art for the second Iron Man film to be released in 2010. There are more than 40 incredible illustrations in this gallery so wait no more and let your jaw hit the floor!

The Weird Artwork of Tariq Sheshani

Tariq Sheshani is a graphic designer based in Amman, in this portfolio article they showcase his amazing, and strangely weird, typography and montage works.

Beautiful Illustrations by Diego Morales

Diego Morales is a graphic designer student from Bauru, Brazil. In this article, from Abduzeedo, they showcase his creative, unique and colorful art work.

The Art of Illustrator Arthur Depins

Arthur Depins is a genius. Plain and simple, his illustrations are so human and filled with subtle expression, it is hard to describe how amazing this guy’s portfolio is. In this article he offers a series of sexy and cute posters, and several art books that are showcases his infectious illustration style.

Featured Artist – Martin Rud

Martin Rud is a Danish Art Director with nearly 10 years of experience working advertising, design and marketing. His portfolio is truly amazing and shows his use of photography and manipulation to the max.

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Want To Try Out Google Chrome OS For Yourself? Here’s How…

Most people won’t be ready to undertake the daunting task of actually taking Google’s recently open-sourced code and turning that into a bootable computer. So, in this article, they have put together a step-by-step guide to doing this, for free. It should only take about 15 minutes (depending on how long it takes to download the OS itself).

Want To Try Out Google Chrome OS For Yourself? Here’s How…

Download Google Chrome OS and Run it from a USB Drive

Within 24 hours of its availabilty, the web was littered with disk images for running the new Google OS on virtual machines such as VMWare and VirtualBox. As an alternative, this article shows you how to run Chrome directly from a USB drive.

Download Google Chrome OS and Run it from a USB Drive

Download Google Chrome OS for free – gdgt

This is one of the many places to download the Google Chrome OS. Signup here , takes about 2 minutes, and then you can download it.
You will need VMWare Player or VirtualBox to run the OS.

Download Google Chrome OS for free – gdgt

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Coding Clean and Semantic Templates

If you are the guy who uses <div> tag for everything, this post is for you. It focuses on how you can write clean HTML code by using semantic markups and minimize the use of <div> tag. Have you ever edited someone’s templates, don’t those messy tags drive you crazy? Not only writing clean templates can benefit yourself, but your team as well. It will save you time when you have to debug and edit (particularly the large projects).

Coding Clean and Semantic Templates

Designing CSS Buttons: Techniques and Resources

Buttons, whatever their purpose, are important design elements. They could be the end point of a Web form or a call to action. Designers have many reasons to style buttons, including to make them more attractive and to enhance usability. One of the most important reasons, though, is that standard buttons can easily be missed by users because they often look similar to elements in their operating system. In this post they have several techniques and tutorials to help you learn how to style buttons using CSS.

Designing CSS Buttons: Techniques and Resources

CSS Box Model: The Foundation For Improving Your CSS

The CSS box model lies behind everything you do in CSS. Every element is defined by a rectangular box that encloses that element. Understanding how the box model works is a key to understanding CSS and having greater control over your layout and presentation. In this article they talk about what the CSS box model is, how one box affects the other boxes around it, and some common browser issues when displaying CSS boxes.

CSS Box Model: The Foundation For Improving Your CSS

What Beautiful HTML Looks Like

What Beautiful HTML Looks Like

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

10 Useful Tools for Finding the Perfect Domain Name

Finding the right domain name is an important step in creating a successful website. Luckily there are tools out there to help you in this process by not only helping you find available domain names, but also helping you in the creative aspect by giving you suggestions. In this article there are 10 of these tools to help you find that perfect domain name.

10 Useful Tools for Finding the Perfect Domain Name

20 Free Mac Apps For Web Designer’s Toolkit

Free and MAC are two words that don’t go together very often. Thankfully, the author of this article has managed to find a total of 20 free app for web deisgners, and all of them are very useful, some are pretty powerful and all are FREE!

20 Free Mac Apps For Web Designer’s Toolkit

7 Apps That Could Be Really Useful At Work

These apps are not necessarily dedicated to only designers, they are for everybody. I am not very familiar with these apps, but they look promising.

7 Apps That Could Be Really Useful At Work

40+ Useful Online web tools for web designers and developers

In this article they have collected 40 tools of the best free online tools for designers and developers. The tools and apps range from the popular online image editor Aviary to lesser known tools like IzzyMenu and Splashup. This is a great round-up.

40+ Useful Online web tools for web designers and developers

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

20 Essential Tweaks and Tips Every Firefox User Should Know

Firefox may be your default browser, but that doesn’t mean you really use it to its full potential. Mozilla’s browser is a big threat to Microsoft not because it’s fast and full of unique features, but because it’s also extremely customizable. Add-ons, style scripts, and hidden preferences let you personalize your Firefox experience to meet your tastes and needs.

20 Essential Tweaks and Tips Every Firefox User Should Know

Top 20 Essential Firefox Add-ons for Web Designers

Mozilla Firefox is a very popular browser, especially among web designers and developers. These days, with such a crowded field, staying at the top of the browser heap takes a lot of work. One of the factors that make Firefox so well-liked is the huge library of great extensions that enhance your browsing experience. Among the massive list of add-ons, many are vital to web designers and developers. If used, it will make your work-flow quicker and more productive.

Top 20 Essential Firefox Add-ons for Web Designers

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

HOW TO: Use Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists are Twitter’s long awaited “groups” feature. They offer a way for you to bunch together other users on Twitter into groups so that you can get an overview of what they’re up to.

HOW TO: Use Twitter Lists

10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists

Savvy individuals are looking for ways to use lists to further their personal/professional agendas, and while we are all still learning how to harness the power of this new feature, here are a few ideas to get the creative juices flowing.

10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists

Listorious: Discover the Best Twitter Lists

Listorious is a simple to use and very useful new web service for discovering the best Twitter lists. Simply, select a tag and you will be presented with the relevant lists.

Listorious: Discover the Best Twitter Lists

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

40+ CodeIgniter Framework Tutorials for Kick-Ass PHP Application

CodeIgniter is an Application Development Framework – a toolkit – for people who build web sites using PHP. Here is the list of 40+ Excellent And Useful CodeIgniter Application Development Framework Tutorials & Resources that includes some useful tutorials and a few great resources that has been developed for programmer and designers.

40+ CodeIgniter Framework Tutorials for Kick-Ass PHP Application

25 New & Useful PHP Techniques & Tutorials

Finding new and useful PHP techniques can be difficult, in this great resource they have collected 25 tips, tricks, tutorials and of course, techniques.

25 New & Useful PHP Techniques & Tutorials

10 great Alternatives to phpMyAdmin

Most people in the web development world are under the impression that phpMyAdmin is the only MySQL client out there for websites. There are others, many more. The author of this post has listed and describes in detail 10great Alternatives to phpMyAdmin.

10 great Alternatives to phpMyAdmin

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

10 Essential OS X Apps for Pro Web Developers

The Mac’s always been a strong platform for design applications, but it’s now also the obvious choice for web developers. If you’re new to the platform or fancy some shiny new tools for working on websites, the list in this details the best you can buy.

10 Essential OS X Apps for Pro Web Developers

6 Apps To Help You Focus & Be Productive [Mac]

If you struggle with personal disorganization, suffer from the inability to finish anything without starting another or you can never meet a deadline, this post is for you. The six apps in this post will help you bring some stability back into your life and productivity back to your work.

6 Apps To Help You Focus & Be Productive [Mac]

35 Mac Apps to Improve Your Web Browsing Experience

Out of the box, your Mac is a powerful machine for making the most of everything the Internet has to offer, but there are a few tweaks, plugins and applications that can make it go a little bit further. Covering both Safari and Firefox, this post has 35 different plugins and applications that will help improve your web browsing experience.

35 Mac Apps to Improve Your Web Browsing Experience

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

20 Handy Photoshop Tips For a Faster Workflow

You may use Photoshop on a daily basis, but I bet there’s at least one tip in this post that will give you the old ‘Why didn’t I know of this before’ moment! It’s tips like these that make the most common of tasks quicker and easier than ever to help speed up your Photoshop work-flow.

20 Handy Photoshop Tips For a Faster Workflow

Do’s and Don’ts of Photoshop Retouching

The number of options available for photo enhancement are now sky high, but what’s the best way to clean the photo up?
To simplify the retouching process, this post has highlighted the best and worst ways to create a clean, professional-looking photo in Photoshop.

Do’s and Don’ts of Photoshop Retouching

Setting Up Photoshop For Web, App and iPhone Development

Most people who have designed websites or apps in Photoshop will, at one point or another, have had issues trying to match colors in images to colors generated by HTML, CSS or code. This article aims to solve those problems once and for all.

Setting Up Photoshop For Web, App and iPhone Development

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Ultimate IE6 Cheatsheet: How To Fix 25+ Internet Explorer 6 Bugs

This cheatsheet/reference manual is a resource for anyone developer who has to deal with the demon that is Internet Explorer 6. 25 great tips.

Ultimate IE6 Cheatsheet: How To Fix 25+ Internet Explorer 6 Bugs

CSS Differences in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8

It is imperative that developers do thorough testing in all currently-used Internet Explorer browsers when working on websites for clients, and on personal projects that target a broader audience.
This article provides an exhaustive, easy-to-use reference for developers to know the differences in CSS support for IE6, IE7 and IE8.

CSS Differences in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8

A Comprehensive Test Strategy for Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8

In this article, the author, will show you how to install multiple, legitimate versions of IE to speed up testing by taking advantage of two no-cost products available from Microsoft: Virtual PC (VPC) and Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Images. When you’re done, you’ll be able to confidently test in IE6, IE7 and IE8.

A Comprehensive Test Strategy for Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

50+ Free Iphone App

After the release of iPhone 3GS there are so many apps avialable on the net, some are paid ones and some are free. In this post, the author, has compiled a list of their favorite Free iPhone 3G/3GS Applications.

50+ Free Iphone App

10 of the Most Beautiful iPhone & iPod Touch Apps

With over 75 gazillion apps in the iTunes App Store now having generated more than Umpteen billion downloads, it might seem a tad preposterous to try and pick the 10 with the most beautiful GUIs, this site has tried though.

10 of the Most Beautiful iPhone & iPod Touch Apps

13 Devilish Halloween iPhone Apps, Wallpapers & Ringtones

Halloween is right around the corner and soon kids from all over will change into ruthless trick-or-treaters, spooky Jack-o-lanterns will be smiling in the windows and horror movies will vanish from video rental shops. For now, let’s pimp your iPhone in the spirit of Halloween and enjoy the holiday’s spooks wherever you are.

13 Devilish Halloween iPhone Apps, Wallpapers & Ringtones

Top 10 iPhone apps for finance

Top 10 iPhone apps for finance

By Paul Andrew (

Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Can You Be a Web Designer?

How to tell if a web page sucks

So, what do you do?

How Do I Make a Single-Serving Site?

How Apple Decides Whether or Not to put an APP on the APP Store?

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

69 Free (or low cost) Tools to Improve Your Website

This post is choc-full of those little tools and apps that will give help give your website that little bit extra. Most of these tools I had never heard of, but I am planning in setting some time aside to explore each one. Tools range from website graders to optimizers, from usability testing to your Google page speed.

69 Free (or low cost) Tools to Improve Your Website

Different Methods for Choosing Color Schemes in Web Design

One of the most challenging aspects of design for many web designers is color selection. The color scheme of a site can have a huge impact on the overall look of the site, and it will have an impact on visitors as well. There are a number of different methods that can be used for finding the right color scheme for a particular project, and in this post they look at several of those methods.

Different Methods for Choosing Color Schemes in Web Design

6 Websites to Track A Website’s Traffic

These types of sites are really addictive, curiosity will always get the better of you, and you just have to know… How is my site performing?

Trying them all, each site will give you a different grading, ranking and value, mostly nothing scientific about them. These types of websites basically estimate the traffic levels of your website based on a number of publicly available factors. It is not analytics, but they are a lot of fun.

6 Websites to Track A Website’s Traffic

By Paul Andrew (

Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Google Wave Homepage
Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

Two-Minute Google Wave Video

If you’re struggling to understand what all the fuss about Google Wave is, then this quick video offers an excellent explanation of just one use for how Wave can outshine email as a cool collaboration tool.

Google Wave: A Complete Guide

To help make sense of all this Wave hype, Mashable, have compiled a guide with key information, definitions, and links related to the launch of Google Wave. This in-depth guide provides an overview of Wave, discusses the terminology associated with it, details information on Wave applications, (i.e. the Twitter Wave app Twave), and goes over ways to keep yourself informed.

Read about it here: Google Wave: A Complete Guide

Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009

Be warned, this video is long, very long. It is the Wave Developer Preview presentation at the Day 2 Keynote of Google I/O. This gives a thorough and indepth look at the many features and possible uses of Wave. If you have the time, watch this video.

By Paul Andrew (

Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Popular Logos with Hidden Symbolisms

Some logos are so creative and subtle that you have to look very close to find hidden symbolism or understated subtitle. In this excellent post, the authors shows us a collection of logos and highlights the hidden meanings. Logo design at its witty best.

Popular Logos with Hidden Symbolisms

40 Breathtaking & Creative Logo Designs Just to Inspire

Designing a memorable logo is not easy, it requires a lot of detailed attention with typography, colors & shapes to convey the style the designer has chosen. Designers excel in using shadows, contrast and transparency to represent the brand they are working on.
In this inspirational post you will find a compilation of 40 beautiful and creative logo designs.

40 Breathtaking & Creative Logo Designs Just to Inspire

72 Creative And Smart Typographic Logo Inspiration

This post demonstrates how with the correct use of typography a professional logo can be created. It proves the point that less is more by simply using one or two words and selecting the correct font, it also demonstrates, perhaps unintentionally, the effectiveness and the importance of negative and positive spacing.

72 Creative And Smart Typographic Logo Inspiration

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

44 Really Useful and New Adobe Illustrator Tutorials

In this great Illustrator tutorial round-up there is a list of 44 fresh and relatively new tuts. Following these basic step by step tutorials will help you to easily learn the Illustrator environment and help how to recreate the amazing effects and illustration techniques from each tut.

44 Really Useful and New Adobe Illustrator Tutorials

18 Impressive Tutorials on Creating Vector Illustrations

In this article, you will find a good number of high quality lessons by the best and most talented graphic design artists on the many ways to creating effective vector illustrations.

18 Impressive Tutorials on Creating Vector Illustrations

Top Places to Find Quality Illustrator Tutorials Online

Finding Illustrator tutorials online can be a mission, but luckily there’s a hand of websites and blogs offering top class Illustrator tutorials, tips and techniques. This post rounds up the best places online to find high quality tutorials and articles to help you learn Illustrator like a pro.

Top Places to Find Quality Illustrator Tutorials Online

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

40 Super-Neat JavaScript Plugins

With the right combination of JavaScript plugins you can turn a simple website into a fantastic one. In this post from net.tutsplus.com, they have reviewed forty of the most popular javscript plugins that are freely available. The plugins are not limited to only jQuery, which is normally the case, but also offer plugins from the other major frameworks (well, MooTools anyway). You would be hard pressed to find a better all round selection.

40 Super-Neat JavaScript Plugins

10 Incredible JQuery Navigation Menus

In this post, the author has showcased 10 cool jQuery navigation techniques. Remember, not all nav systems need to be mixed with Javascript or jQuery, sometimes the simpler the better. But when jQuery is mixed with the proper ingredients the effect can be very impressive.

10 Incredible JQuery Navigation Menus

15 Great jQuery Plugins For Better Table Manipulation

When talking about tables within web design we are, thankfully, not talking about an “ancient” layout system that should have died with the dinosaurs. We are, of course, talking about dynamic and sortable data tables. With the popularity of jQuery the volume of plugins available for displaying tabular data has greatly increased, and this post has a great round-up of the best.

15 Great jQuery Plugins For Better Table Manipulation

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

In this post we have collected 9 of the best MAC Inspired Furniture for your Home Office, and best of all 9for PC users anyway, most of the furniture can be used for the PC as well.

Novanta Workstation

Novanta, (translating as 90 due to its shape) is a workstation that has a completely unique style that sits perfectly with Apple designed products. Don’t be deceived by this minimal looking desk, it hides an awesome array of features. It has an inbuilt monitor stand, a really nice touch with the keyboard and mouse bay and an integrated iPod dock. The leather lined front drawers have been especially designed to accommodate a MAC laptop or A3 sized paper, or hide all the cabling that can accumulate from modern computer systems. Overall, this is an awesome workstation.

Novanta Workstation

iGo Desk / Workstation

The feature rich fashion statement that is the iGo desk is designed to fully integrate with your iMac and Mac mini with Cinema Display, so that you don’t have to compromise on the aesthetics of your environment. It is fully adjustable to allow it to be used comfortably in either a standing or seated position, it also comes with an iMac turntable so you can turn your monitor to exactly the right angle and if you but the sitting model it can be pushed around on it’s wheels. Overall, this one really cool workstation, the only thing I would worry about is could anyone sit at this desk all day, and be comfortable? Who cares, it looks good!

iGo Desk / Workstation

iDesk

Knowadys the computer replaces your radio and TV, as well as music and movies storage. It connects you to your neighbor and the rest of the world through chat and phone. And using the internet gives you access to information as well as entertainment. Your computer should be given a central and not to space consuming position. IDesk is the solution. The strong, small and minimal iDesk can be wall mounted, giving your office or living room a convenient solution to compact space and its useful drawer can be used to hide unsightly cables and peripherals that always gather around a computer set-up.

Calligaris Stealth Desk

Calligaris Stealth Desk

The reasonably priced (only £622) and elegant Calligaris Stealth Desk is among the best in contemporary Italian furniture. With its clean lines, smooth elegant curves, frosted glass surface and compact design would make this desk a welcome addition to any living room or office.

Calligaris Stealth Desk

The Tank Collection Desk

The height-adjustable desk from the Tank Collection radiates lightness and elegancy. The fineness is emphasized by the urgent smoothness which combined with the sturdy materials add strength and weight. This sturdy desk has a large and comfortable working surface, plenty of leg room and the elegant adjustable legs barely touch the floor bringing a sense of lightness “resembling a ballerina” (quote from the site).

The Tank Collection Desk

SFP-302628 FP Series MACTable

Styled as a typical classroom desk, the conservative FP Series MACTables are tailor built to accommodate both iMacs and Apple Cinema Displays. Your iMacs sits on the adjustable depth shelf, were there is easy access to the drives and connections and the keyboard and mouse sit on the spacious worktop. The worktop is large enough for not only the iMAC, it also offers plenty of surface space for writing, books and the always important cup of coffee.

SFP-302628 FP Series MACTable Homepage

StudioDesk

The stylish StudioDesk is specifically designed for laptop users, with its clutter free and professional working environment, this would be a welcome addition to any home office. All peripherals and excess cables are hidden just under the sliding desktop surface and the storage compartment is therefore conveniently accessed from above. An elongated slot across the width of the desktop allows the necessary peripheral & power cables to enter/exit at any point, maintaining the clutter-free environment the StudioDesk promotes.

StudioDesk Homepage

XYZ Computer Desk

The XYZ is a marvel in desk and computer design with its modern and sleek exterior, to a high spec interior that contains all the computer components, cables and drives all neatly hidden within the thickness of the desk. Specifically made for the more functional and versatile PC (I will whisper that), but designed to be as beautiful as a Mac.

XYZ Computer Desk Homepage

MILK

MILK is a series of beautiful tables designed to match the computers that sit on top of them. The desk height can be electronically adjusted for seating or standing. Its large 140 x 80cm desktop keeps unruly cables neatly in check within a drawer, there are also four modular storage square spaces that can be used for absolutely anything (even an aquarium, just look at the image below).

MILK Homepage

i-Con I – Integrated Desk and Computer

Almost everybody with a computer has the same problem. An ugly looking skin-colored box under the desk, all kind of ugly wires, all the peripherals like sound-systems, transmitters and so on are annoying too. No matter how nice the desk looks when you buy it, by the time you have everything installed there is not much left of it. There is a solution : i-Con I is a a modern designed desk with a fully integrated computer. The only things visible are the monitor and the wireless keyboard and mouse. No wires, no mess and looks good as well.

i-Con I – Integrated Desk and Computer Homepage

OneLessDesk

OneLessDesk is a beautiful, ergonomic, space-saving computer desk. At one time, you needed a desk that could fit a mountain of paper, two-foot-deep monitor, printer, and a CPU the size of a small car. Nowadays, your computer is an inch thick, the desk has finally caught up. When the desk is put away it is only 12 inches thick!
It is available in silver, black, red, buttercup (I think thats yellow) and cream.

OneLessDesk Homepage

OneLessStand

OneLessStand's rear-facing, hidden shelf hides your wifi, cable modem, networked hard drives, and the mess of wiring that comes with them. The height of the shelf is in-line with most power and cable wall outlets – so it even hides that mess as well.

OneLessStand Homepage

OneLessFile

OneLessFile would be a perfect and necessary addition to any home office. Ideally your work area would be paperless, but if that is not possible, the One LessFile, with its convenient carrying handles and pull holes, is probably the most stylish filer money can buy.

OneLessFile Homepage

Sonic Chair

When the stress of everyday office work gets to you, the Sonic Chair offers you a great way to relax and unwind. It provides you with a unique audio experience, allowing you to sit at the very centre of a top-notch sound system. Whether you enjoy listening to symphony orchestras, rock concerts, or audio books – the integrated satellite speakers are precisely adapted to your ears.

Sonic Chair Homepage

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

7 Very Simple Tips and Tricks for getting More out of WordPress

In this post there are a few handy little tips that even the seasoned WP developers may not have heard of. There are, of course, some basic tips, the rest are very useful, like the pagination implementation tips and the styling author comments tips. There is a tip for separating comments and trackbacks, which is very helpful, but won’t work on most advanced themes (speaking from experience). A little bit more fine tuning is required. Overall, this is a great round-up of Wordpress tips for getting more out of WordPress with very little effort.

7 Very Simple Tips and Tricks for getting More out of WordPress

45+ Excellent Fresh Free Wordpress Themes Around

Keeping up with the release of free Wordpress themes can feel like a full-time job, there seems to be several new themes released everyday. The easiest way to find the highest quality themes is by bookmarking a post like this. This post is not your traditional long list with all the available Wordpress themes on the internet but its an refined collection of the best handpicked fresh Wordpress themes.

45+ Excellent Fresh Free Wordpress Themes Around

15 Unconventional Uses of WordPress in Action

WordPress is known as one of the most powerful open-source blogging platform, but it can be a lot more than just a blogging platform. We already know about using WordPress as a content management system (CMS), but WordPress is much more flexible than that. With the combined use of plugins, and hacks, WordPress can be manipulated into many unique and unconventional web sites. In this article, the author, highlights some of the most unconventional uses of WordPress and shows you how you can use WordPress in these unconventional ways as well. Cool.

15 Unconventional Uses of WordPress in Action

100+ Massive Wordpress Tutorial Collection

In this post, from Tripwire Magazine, they have collated a collection of 100 and more resources and tutorials for Wordpress. The post mainly focuses on version 2.7+ but most resources will be relevant for earlier and later versions as well.

100+ Massive Wordpress Tutorial Collection

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

"I love My Job. No, Seriously…"

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High-tech once upon a time – Image Gallery

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Clever Uses of Handles in Advertising

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Microsoft Sucks at Photoshop

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If Web Sites Were People

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15 Durex Ads So Clever They Almost Make You Want To Buy Condoms

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Amazing 3D Font Showcase

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15 Most Ridiculous Car Mods

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40 Clever Advertising Campaigns of McDonald’s

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By Paul Andrew from Speckyboy Design Magazine, you can follow him on Twitter

20 of the Worst Designed Websites In the World

We all come across some seriously bad websites in our day-to-day lives on the Internet. It’s just an unavoidable fact of life, like coming across monsters on the way to the market in video games. When you come across these things, you should approach them with a modicum of fear, for it is something you don’t know, after all. But, more than that, you need to be brave, and you need to relish the experience with full sense of humor employed. These are the 20 worst websites that the author of this post could find from across the world. Scary stuff!

20 of the Worst Designed Websites In the World

48 Trendy And Fresh Web Interfaces From Deviantart

This post is a showcase of interface designs all from Deviantart. They are all relatively new designs and this reflects in the modern and stylish interfaces showcased, a good indication of current web design trends.

48 Trendy And Fresh Web Interfaces From Deviantart

By Paul Andrew from Speckyboy Design Magazine, you can follow him on Twitter

In this post you will find 50 vector cartoon characters tutorials using Adobe Illustrator, each tut author takes you through there own individual cartoon character design process, teaching you new techniques in the process.

Create a Character Mascot

Create a Cute Furry Vector Monster

Create A Vector Art Twitter Bird Character

OWL DiNG Tutorial

Illustrate a LeBron James Cartoon Character

Cartoon Bug Tutorial

Create a Cartoon Character with Expressive Lines

Create your own Leprechaun

Create a Super Happy Octopus Character

Vector-Looking Cat Illustration

Creating vector characters in Illustrator

Drawing and Designing a Lovely Cartoon Character

How to Add Fur to Vector Animal Illustrations

Create a Stinking Zombie Flesh-Eater

The Making of Abe

Create a Vector Pirate Cartoon Character

Blue Vector Character from Pencil Sketch to Coloring

Vectorial illustration with Illustrator

Symmetrical Illustration: Thug Bunny

Circle Vector Tutorial

Turn a Sketch into a Fat Cat Vector

Create a Killer Chainsaw Bunny Character

Create a Cute Bunny Vector Character

Maintaining Rhythm and Flow in Vector Character Design

Drawing a character’s face in Illustrator

Character Illustration

Primitive Art Man Cartoon

Drawing a Fish in Illustrator Tutorial

Illustrate a Cute Emo Kid

How To Create Your Own Vector Cartoon Character

Create a Gang of Vector Ninjas

Make a Cartoon Turtle

Cartoon Monkey

How to Draw a Cartoon Duck

How to Draw an Amazing Vector Twitter Bird

Create a Cute Bird

Create a Simple Vector Creature

How to Create a Cute Hippo Character

Monster Character Series Part 1

Monster Character Series Part 2

Monster Character Series Part 3

Monster Character Series Part 4

Creating Line Drawings in Adobe Illustrator

Drawing a Funny Game Character

Character Illustration Wallpaper

Creating Convincing Characters

Twitterlove Bird

A Cow As Chinese New Year Zodiac For 2009

Fantasy Character

Drawing Kirby

By Paul Andrew from Speckyboy Design Magazine, you can follow him on Twitter

The 50 Funniest Internet Infographics

A common site when you are browsing the internet are the abundance of info-graphics. Some are interesting, some are simply pointless, some are really funny. In this post you will 50 of the funniest info-graphics ever, I love the Mr T graphic.

The 50 Funniest Internet Infographics

30 Funny Photo-manipulations of Animals by HumanDescent

Everyone loves photomanipulations, the image editing technique that gives us unlimited space for creative ideas, especially when working with a great working tool like photoshop.Photo manipulation is the image editing technique that gives us unlimited space for creative ideas, especially when working with a great working tool like photoshop.

30 Funny Photo-manipulations of Animals by HumanDescent

By Paul Andrew from Speckyboy Design Magazine, you can follow him on Twitter

250+ Resources to Help You Become a CSS Expert

Everyone buys something just because its packaging? Well, these package designs are definitely one of a kind and they do make you want to buy them regardless of whatever it is inside. This post showcases 10 different types of packaging that all have something in common; they are awesome.

10 Awesome Package Designs

60+ Unusual Business Card Ideas & Designs

There is something about business card showcases that everyone loves. Maybe it is because most business cards tend to be forgotten, with there simple and bland design with basic typography. To see something out of the norm is cool. You will love this post.

60+ Unusual Business Card Ideas & Designs

By Paul Andrew from Speckyboy Design Magazine, you can follow him on Twitter

250+ Resources to Help You Become a CSS Expert

In this post there are a monumentally huge 250 resources, covering every possible aspect of CSS, including CSS3. There are tutorials, how-tos, tips, free resources and even CSS inspiration. This is an awesome post, that needs to be bookmarked.

250+ Resources to Help You Become a CSS Expert

Taming Advanced CSS Selectors

This article covers the greatly underused, CSS Selectors, and explains how you could transform the look of your website in just a couple of minutes, and without even having to touch the markup. CSS Selectors are essentially a CSS method of not littering your HTML with excessive and unnecessary classes and ids, divs and spans.

Taming Advanced CSS Selectors

6 Ways To Improve Your Web Typography

This post not only offers CSS typography tips and tutorials, it also gives you a great overview to understanding general typography (see the image above), and a thorough look at how text and differnet fonts are rendered in the major web browsers. The post is a must read not only for newbies but also for the pros. Everyone will take something from it.

6 Ways To Improve Your Web Typography

By Paul Andrew from Speckyboy Design Magazine, you can follow him on Twitter

5 Sliding Content Techniques, Examples & jQuery How to’s

You have probably seen those cool image and content sliders everywhere, it is a new fad that has cropped up this year. And every month it seems new styles and tecniques are being developed, and you may be wondering: "How do they do that?"
In this design news resource, from noupe.com, they have taken five very cool and popular styles of image and content sliders and explained in the easiest way possible how each one was created. A basic knowledge of Javascript is definetly required, and everyone will take something from this great resource.

5 Sliding Content Techniques, Examples & jQuery How to’s

30 Creative Examples of Javascript Slider & Scrollers

On the same theme as the above news item, this post is a showcase of creative methods using javascript for sliders and scrollers. A special mention goes to Howarths.nl, who has quite possibly came up with the best and most original tabbed navigation using javascript. At first glance you would think it was developed with Flash. Cool.

30 Creative Examples of Javascript Slider & Scrollers

Destructed Magazine

Destructed is a free downloadable Art and Design Magzine in .PDF format. It is released quaterly and each issue deals with a unique topic from the community.

Download Latest Issue (N.20)

Download Destructed Magazine in PDF Format
Download Destructed Magazine as a RAR file
View Destructed Magazines Archives

Revolution Art Magazine

The objective of REVOLUTIONART is the one to serve as a inspirational source to artists, models, designers, advertisers, photographers, designers and communicators in general who wish to explore new alternatives of expression through graphical samples of design, photo, ads, fashion, music, and general visual arts.

Latest Issue (N.19)

Download Revolution Art in PDF Format
View Revolution Arts Archives

Proteus Mag – Art + Design Magazine

Proteus Mag encourage all photographers, painters, sculptors, graphic designers, fashion designers, illustrators, basically, all creative types to submit there work and showcases the best on the magazine. It is a place where all creatives can flex their creative muscles.

Latest Issue (N.07)

Download Proteus Art in PDF Format
View Proteus Mags Archives

ANTI

The aim of ANTI Magazine is to showcase outstanding visual content as an online magazine and also through future exhibitions the world over. They showcase all styles of visual media, including: illustration, graphic design, photography, drawing, painting, etc.

Latest Issue (N.09)

Download ANTI Magazine as a ZIP file
View ANTI Magazines Archives

Vektorika

If you have been living under a rock recently and haven't heard of Vektorika Magazine, here is a brief description: Vectorika is a really cool and popular vector art and illustration magazine, the magazines is filled with vector illustration, character design, graphic design, art, and everything you could possibly ecpect from vector design.

Latest Issue (N.10)

Download Vektorika Magazine in PDF Format
View Vektorika Magazines Archives

bitFUUL Magazine

This a new magazine that shows a lot of promise. If the contents from the first issue first issue (Photos, Artwork, Illustrations, Lyrics, Money, Poetry, Pictures, Fava Beans, Music) are to go by, the future is bright for this mag.

Latest Issue (N.01)

Download bitFUUL Magazine in PDF Format

Castle-Magazine

Castle-Magazine contains the work of illustrators, artists and other creatives. Every free issue is full of weird, creative and high quality arty stuff.

Latest Issue (N.14)

Download Castle Magazine in PDF Format
View Castle Magazines Archives

GizMag

For this 5th issue of GizMag, all the artists took the time to fill in their interview by hand. The result is a unique magazine with great artworks, handwritten answers and awesome doodles. Artists include 64 Colors, Katrin Kirojood, Michael Maitland, Titi + The German Kid, Akina, Meeshle and Slobots.

Latest Issue (N.05)

Download Castle-Magazine in PDF Format
View Castle-Magazines Archives

Candy Collective

CANDY magazine was launched in 2005 to showcase Irish creativity alongside international equivalents to a worldwide audience. Since then 11 downloadable pdf format issues have been released to local and international acclaim.

Latest Issue (N.11)

Download Candy Collective in PDF Format
View Candy Collectives Archives

Jetpac Magazine

Jetpac magazine is a cool free pdf culture magazine, featuring photography, illustration, design, comedy, poetry, interviews, reviews… basically all that is good with the world.

Latest Issue (N.01)

Download Jetpac Magazine in PDF Format

Bak Magazine

Bak is a magazine aimed towards design and the visual arts. To date, there are 14 issues for download, with artists profiled from all over Europe.

Latest Issue (N.14)

Download Bak Magazine in a ZIP File
View Bak Magazines Archives

Artzmania.com

Artzmania is an independent venture showcasing outstanding international creativity and culture., with a blazing passion for design. It is widely recognized as one of the most successful and popular free e-zine on the web.

Latest Issue (N.10)

Download Artzmania in PDF Format
View Artzmanias Archives

Be Different

Be | Different was founded in October 2007, and is an online magazine that focuses on contemporary art in all its forms: from the more traditional painting, sculpture to photography, street-art and digital art.

Latest Issue (N.05)

Download Be Different in PDF Format
Download Be Different in a ZIP File

View Be Differents Archives

Ruby Mag

Ruby is an online mag created with the purpose of putting together differnet artists in a monthly pdf magazine in order to promote their work in order to promote their work to the rest of the world.

Latest Issue (N.38)

View Ruby Magazine in Flash Format

Etel Magazine

Etel Magazine is a quarterly independent art and design magazine, it showcases Mexican design, without living aside its influences, that for, it presents design works and other disciplines, also considering what it is done in the rest of the world.

Latest Issue

Download Etel Magazine in a ZIP File
View Etel Magazines Archives

Other Magazines you might like…

Royal Magazine

24Hour Magazine

CYAN mag

{ths} BEAST magazine

multilink

Five to Nine

NewWebPick.com E-magazine (Lite)

2ndDesign Magazine

3DH – Design with love

Design&Life

FF3300 : Design della comunicazione

Kino Mag

NOTaZINE

And I Still Miss You…

Stchi Magazine

MagWerk

Wag Magazine

True Eye – True Digital

The Phase Collective
Moloko+

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy.com).

10 Super-Simple Web Designs

If you like your web sites with lots of white space and were the content is allowed to breathe, this is the post for you. The author has compiled an impressive list of (ultra) minimal web designs, for us to drool over.

10 Super-Simple Web Designs

30 Inspirational Portfolios With A Twist

This inspirational selection of web designs from, Smashing Magazine, offer a selection of portfolios that describe a studio or a freelancer with a unique personality. All the sites are unique, and all offer something different. Nice selection.

30 Fresh and Inspirational Portfolios With A Twist

33 Newly Fresh Web Design Layout Tutorials

If the two news items above don’t give you inspiration, how about some new Photoshop web layout tutorials. Most of the tutorials are of the highest quality and the layouts meet the latest in web designs trends.

33 Newly Fresh Web Design Layout Tutorials

From 1993 to 1996: The web is a boring place for designers

Trends: Plain text and blue underlined links.

Mosaic was the first web browser to display images inline with text. It could support gifs and webforms, which was a huge step forward for that time. Design wasn’t very elaborate due to browser constraint and limited bandwidth, so websites were pretty much designed by programmers and nerds, not by designers.

Websites at that time look quite boring: simple text, links and a few small images. However, keep in mind that there was only a few hundreds websites until the end of 1993.

From 1995 to 1998: browsers war

Trends: “Optimized for” buttons, animated gifs, blinking text.

In the middle of the 90s, Netscape was the leading web browser, but it was quickly competed by Internet Explorer, the browsers war was on. At that time, layouts started to get a little more complex with the use of tables or frames. Animated gifs were used to create cool buttons and javascript was slowly starting to appear on websites. For a live example of a 1996 website, take a look at Jacob Nielsen’s website.

Netscape's website in 1996

From 1998 to 2000: Designers get serious about creating websites

Trends: Frames, rigid layouts with tables, gif image menus with hover effects,…

Web developement tools like Dreamweaver or GoLive start to get more popular, giving to more people the access to web pages creation. Designers were getting more offers for website creation and had to improve their skills in that field. Some people also picked up the Flash technology, but even though some people had great websites with it, it lead most of the time to annoying intros. Websites of that period still look quite square, based most of the time on HTML tables and sliced images.

"A List Apart" website in 1998

From 2000 to 2004: the rise of web standards

Trends: transparency, corporate websites standardization,…

The Internet bubble’s burst of 2000 probably stopped the investors for a while, but it didn’t stop the W3C to develop web standards and designers to promote it. Tableless designs began to spread and designers learned a constantly evolving CSS technology. Some hacks are also allowing to get png transparency and CMS start to gain popularity among web designers.

A 2003 design from CSS Zen Garden

From 2004 to 2007: the era of Web 2.0

Trends: Glossy buttons, shiny colors, gradients, widgets, rounded corners,…

Popularized by Tim O’Reilly, the expression web 2.0 is used to talk about the new type of websites that were more community oriented. Websites with bold typography, rounded corners and shiny gradients spread at the speed of light (almost). The websites get more functionalities and need better user interfaces to be simple to use. Widgets are used everywhere, on blogs to integrate social networks, or on social networks to integrate external feeds or content.

Carbonmade's homepage in 2006

From 2008 to now: moving to other devices

Trends: mobile web apps, air apps, grid-based designs.

Out in 2007, the iPhone definitly gave a strong push to mobile web design. Many websites create mobile websites optimized for it and created apps. Big social networks create widgets to go on your blog and websites create widgets to go on social networks. In terms of design, good typography and grid-based designs are gaining ground.

Facebook on the iPhone

About the author: Mirko Humbert is a freelance designer from Switzerland. He shares his thoughts about his passion on his design blog. To connect with Mirko, you can follow him on Twitter.

ColorSuckr

ColorSuckr, a recently launched web service, is a color app that extracts the 12 most common colours from any images and displays each color on a new page with the HEX, RGB and web safe color. That is the main function of the app, it also offers a hell of a lot more features:

• Flickr integration
• A Firefox extension to make it super-easy (right click images & go)
• Adobe .ACO swatch file downloads
• Color schemes suggestions from Adobe Kuler
• Drag and drop the colour results
• A simple API via RSS, JSON and XML
• Permalinks to image results (+ short url generator)

ColorSuckr

40 (NEW) High Quality Adobe Photoshop Tutorials

Noupe has recently posted a great compilation of advanced Photoshop tutorials, the assortment of tuts are new & high quality, that others have freely contributed to the design community for making your next photoshop project easier.

40 (NEW) High Quality Adobe Photoshop Tutorials

10 Typography Tips to Bring your Skills to the Next Level

Web design has evolved in recent years, good typography, in the past, may have been ignored. It is now as important, if not more so, than any element of a web page.
In this article, you’ll read ten fundemental web typography tips that will bring your web design typographic design skills to the next level.

10 Typography Tips to Bring your Skills to the Next Level

How to Make Your Web Design Stand out from the Crowd

“All web designers want their work to stand out from the crowd … but what does that take?“, this is the question being asked in this article from carsonified.com. The author takes a selection of sites that stands out, and then explains why. This is a really insightful article, and you would be hard pushed not to take something from it.

How to Make Your Web Design Stand out from the Crowd

Also in the news…

Microsoft’s Long, Slow Decline.

Download the FREE, yes the free, version of NERO (about time!).

20 + mind-blowing social media statistics.

40 Free and Useful GUI Icon Sets for Web Designers

The demand for free GUI icons is always great, so when a post as good as this comes along you have to bookmark it and share it. The post contains quite a few new iconsets, all are well designed, and, as the title says, useful.

40 Free and Useful GUI Icon Sets for Web Designers

How big is the internet?

There are 1.46 billion internet users, Microsoft’s Bing has put the number of web pages at over 1 trillion and Google has indexed more than one trillion web addresses. What does this mean? Well. if you spent just one minute reading every website in existence, you’d be kept busy for 31,000 years, with no sleep. No, the internet is not big, it is enormous. If you know how to visualize one trillion, thats how big it is. Well, close enough anyway.

How big is the internet?

If the Twitter community was 100 people…

This is an interesting visual map of how active Twitter users actually are. One of the most interesting facts of this map was that 20% of all accounts are dead, and only 5% of users have over 100 followers. Maybe Twitter isn’t as big or as popular as we like to think. I still love it, all the same.

If the Twitter community was 100 people…

Behind the Scenes of the DesignBump Redesign

DesignBump has recently had a major overall. The pioneer behind the design was, the multi-talented, Chris Spooner, from blog.spoongraphics.co.uk. In his article he talks about the web development process from sketch to end product. The article gives you a great insight into a professional designers workflow.

Behind the Scenes of the DesignBump Redesign

Government Releases 20-page guide to using Twitter

Can you believe the UK Governement has released a 20 page guide on how to use Twitter? The 5,382-word official “template” translates into 36,215 characters and spaces and would need roughly 259 separate tweets to put the word around Whitehall using Twitter. I am sure I could I could explain Twitter to my Gran in under 100 words!

Government Releases 20-page guide to using Twitter

Vector Characters Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials

Vector characters are certainly in fashion at the moment, they can establish a memorable image of your site, probably more so than a logo. This article contains a mixture of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials that will be a great help to you to create visually appealing cartoon characters.

Vector Characters Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials

10 Handy WordPress Comments Hacks

If you were to ask 10 web designers, what part of a web design you hate? Excluding clients, 9 out of 10 would say the comments section. In this article, you’ll have a look at 10 great tips and hacks to enhance your WP blog’s comments section.

10 Handy WordPress Comments Hacks

Bumpbox Lightbox Clone

Not another Lightbox clone? Yes, it is, but this is one is much better than most. Developed using MooTools, Bumpbox has a few advantages over other lightboxes, it supports not only supports all common media types but also PDF’s (which is unique), its lightning fast with some nice effects and it automatically detects what kind of filetype you wish to show in the box, so you do not need to specify the type, easing the process of integration.

Bumpbox Homepage

When Illustration Meets Typography

This news item is a showcase of Spanish illustrator and typographer Alex Trochut. Its not very often that you can view a portfolio combining both design types so successfully.

When Illustration Meets Typography

Stackable Lego Fridges

These energy saving stackable Lego-brick-alike fridges were designed by Stefan Buchberger, a student at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. They are colorful, interchangeable into many configurations. With each fridge brick being smaller than a normal fridge, it takes less energy to cool and less cold air escapes each time you open the door. They look cool as well don’t they?

Stackable Lego Fridges

Combine Digital Painting and Photo Manipulation to Create a Platform Environment

This is a detailed tutorial from PSDtuts, where you will learn how to combine digital painting and photo manipulation. The process of combining digital painting and photo manipulation can be difficult, but it is a great mix. The final result is awesome.

Combine Digital Painting and Photo Manipulation to Create a Platform Environment

Card.ly

card.ly is a new online service that has potential to be big. Basically you create a tiny a portfolio (all the themes are styled like a business card) by integrating all your social networks, it could be Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, Delicious… then you add a little bio and your contact details, and you are good to go. Cool.

Sigup for your own Card.ly

The 10 Geekiest Pieces of Furniture in the Universe

This post, from cracked.com, is for all the geeks out there (99% of us, then), with too much money and who take there obsessions a little too far. The giant rubiks cube looks cools, as does the Han Solo table, some of them though…I just know the wife would say no.

The 10 Geekiest Pieces of Furniture in the Universe

How to Choose the Best Web Browser

This post could also have be called “The Battle of the Browsers: The Results”. Each of the biggest browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, IE8 and Opera) have been evaluated by the following tests: Rendering speed, web standards, features and customizability. I won’t tell you the results, all I will tell you is that I am sticking with Firefox.

How to Choose the Best Web Browser

With the gadgets below you will be able to access the information, perform tasks, and interact with your favourite social media platform. You will find gadgets for Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Flickr, Wordpress…and much more. You can now have all the info you need at your fingertips.

Digg News

Digg News Vista Gadget is a gadget that will show the lastest Digg news headlines, you can filter the headlines by categories and topics via the settings menu. Simply, click on the headline title to visit the Digg article, and click on the Diggs button to log in to your Digg account.

Download Digg News Vista Gadget

My del.icio.us

With My del.icio.us you can browse your personal bookmarks, view the latest popular links on Delicious or view the latest entries from your network. Easily switch from user to user or simply click the my del.cio.us button to return to your data.

Download My del.icio.us Vista Gadget

Twitter Explorer

The Twitter Explorer keeps you up to date with your Twitter account. With its easy to use interface, which can be resized and comes with various themes, you can post a Tweet and reply and retweet messages quickly and easily. You can also view recent activity, mentions, and trends, Cool gadget.

Download Twitter Explorer Vista Gadget

Chirpr – Gadget for Twitter

This gadget is similiar in functionality as the Twitter Explorer (above). Its features include: Automatic and manual refresh, audio notification of new messages, create new and reply to existing messages and keyboard shortcuts to submit (Ctrl+Enter) or cancel (Esc) a new tweet.

Download Chirpr – Vista Gadget for Twitter

Flickr Photo Search

Flickr Photo Search is a gadget that will allow you to search the Flickr website from your desktop or Vista Sidebar.

Download Flickr Photo Search Vista Gadget

Facebook Explorer

The Facebook Explorer lets you track incoming messages and friend activities, as well as allows you to change your status message form the sidebar.

Download Facebook Explorer Vista Gadget

Slashdot Feed

Get the last RSS feeds from Slashdot.org. The feeds are displayed 4 at a time. Clicking on a feed link opens a flyout with the text of the feed. Double clicking on the feed link will open the link on the Slashdot site. The feed list is automatically refreshed every 60 seconds, but a NOW link allows the user to refresh the feed list immediately.

Download Slashdot Feed Vista Gadget

Wikipedia Search

This Vista Gadget will allow you to perform Wikipedia searches directly from your desktop.

Download Wikipedia Search Vista Gadget

Skype Gadget

This gadget displays chats and your contacts' online status from Skype. Skype couldn't be easier to use, simply click on your friends icon to start chatting.

Download Skype Vista Gadget

YouTube Gadget

This YouTube gadget displays a selection of random videos, the selection updates every 30 seconds, and by clicking on the video-image you will start the YouTube player on the left side of the gadget. You can filter categories via the settings form or you can also select a custom search to show only the videos you like.

Download YouTube Vista Gadget

YouTube Video Downloader

A simple sidebar gadget to download YouTube videos. Simply enter the URL and download the video in flv format. Use the VLC Media Player or FLV Player to view the video.

Download YouTube Video Downloader Vista Gadget

FeedBurner Readers

This RSS tracker gadget, will keep you up to date with the number of readers at any feed available on FeedBurner.com (must allow Awareness API access). You just need to give the feed name, and it will check every 20 minutes.

Download FeedBurner Readers Vista Gadget

Sage RSS

This ticker news RSS feed gadget downloads your RSS feeds allowing you to easily scroll all the headlines. The Gadget has a compact design that allows you to view 30 items from your subscribed feeds.

Download Sage RSS Vista Gadget

Atom/RSS News Reader

A gadget that lets you get a sneak preview of your favorite feeds around the web. You can have the latest news, the latest posts from your favorite blogs, the latest posts from your favorite forums, the latest e-mails, etc, all in one gadget.

Download Atom/RSS News Reader Vista Gadget

RSS To Speech

This is an excellent gadget, it downloads your RSS feeds from any web site and reads them aloud. How cool is that.

Download RSS To Speech Vista Gadget

Blogger Buddy

Blogger Buddy is a gadget for your sidebar that allows you to log in, view, and post updates to your blog on Blogger.com.

Download Blogger Buddy Vista Gadget

WordPress Gadget

For any Wordpress user this gadget is indipensible. This gadget will allow you to get straight to creating a new post, with just a couple of clicks, you can also add a new blogroll link or moderate comments using this useful sidebar gadget.

Download WordPress Vista Gadget

WordPress Stats

WordPress Stats gadget displays all the visitors statistics for your WordPress blog as delivered by the WordPress Stats plugin. The gadget allows you to display the information for both today and yesterday – just as visible on the WordPress Stats page in the admin panel of your blog.

Download WordPress Stats Vista Gadget

Windows Live Writer Gadget

With this gadget you can open a new blog entry, open a previous blog entry or even open the options right from your sidebar (or have it floating and open Writer from anywhere). Not only this, but you can drag and drop onto the gadget too. The gadget supports images, urls, and image urls for drag and drop, and each one will open a new blog entry in Writer with the relevant details already in.

Download Windows Live Writer Vista Gadget

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Creative, Unique and Funny Manholes

Traditionally manhole covers are expected to be boring, dull and ugly. Not the manhole covers in this post, they can actually be a customized into creative art as well as an effective advertising medium. Have a look for yourselves.

Creative, Unique and Funny Manholes.

50 Examples of Vintage Typography

“Vintage art reminds us of a time when we were dependent less on technology and more on skill and technique”, as is written in the opening caption of this post. Its spot on. This article is showcase and a celebration of vintage typography, and a chance for us to appreciate the hard work that went into each poster.

50 Examples of Vintage Typography.

IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On

Internet Explorer is the thorn in every web designers side, just mention I-E-6, and you will have a laptop thrown at you. Yes, it is despised. Right or wrong, that is up to you, but this article from Mashable, puts forward a hell of a case to kill IE6. This is essential reading.

IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On.

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Amazing Light Paintings

If you haven’t seen example of long exposure photography involving light effects, you are missing out on a beautiful photographic style. This inspirational post from Abduzeedo.com, features the work from professional photographers Jan Wöllert and Jörg Miedza.

Amazing Light Paintings.

20 Creative Web Forms For Design Inspiration

Web forms are traditionally boring and dull, and, for some, difficult to style. Have a look at these web forms, as showcased by Webdesign.dev.com, they are amazing.

20 Creative Web Forms For Design Inspiration.

Dear Diary, I Saw a Wooden Workstation Today and I Think I’m In Love

Yep, it really is a work station made out of wood, and yes the PC does work!!! The computer is embedded in a traditional wooden desk, a wooden keyboard laser cut into and out of the surface of the desk with a screen to match. Cool.

Dear Diary, I Saw a Wooden Workstation Today and I Think I’m In Love.

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

CSS 3 Cheat Sheet

This is a must download for all web designers, it is a CSS 3 Cheat Sheet has a complete listing of all the properties, selectors types and allowed values in the current CSS 3 specification from the W3C. Each property is provided in a section that attempts to match it with the section (module) that it is most actively associated within the W3C specification. Next to each property is a listing of the expected values that that property takes (normal text shows named values it accepts and italics shows value types it will accept).

CSS 3 Cheat Sheet

Creative Advertising Photography by Thomas Lavezzari

Thomas Lavezzari is a talented advertising photographer and illustrator, based in Italy. You can find an inspiring compilation of his best work at creadvert.blogspot.com, it is well worth yout time.

Creative Advertising Photography by Thomas Lavezzari

Creating a Keyboard with CSS and jQuery

This is one of those really cool CSS tutorials that you will bookmark in the hope, that some day, you will have the time to actually use it. Yes, it really is a fully functional keyboard and it includes “action” keys (caps lock, shift, and delete) which dynamically changes the keyboard when clicked.

Creating a Keyboard with CSS and jQuery

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

One solution for the MAC user are widgets, those small indispensible apps that run on the dashboard. Below you will find a selection of the best social media widgets for your MAC Dashboard, I hope they help.

digg.com

A handy and easy to use a digg.com widget with the look and feel of the digg.com website.

Download digg.com

Twidget

Twidget is a free feature rich Dashboard Widget for OS X that allows you to update your Twitter status. Its displays the 20 most recent public tweets or your friends timeline, automatic refresh, links to reply to direct messages, mark tweets as “Favourite”and recognizes replies and auto-links them to follow conversations.

Download Twidget

Chirp

Chirp is a Dashboard Widget for Mac OS X that allows you to quickly and easily keep tabs on your microblogging, Web 2.0 life. With Chirp, you can quickly view your friends’ latest updates, and post links, updates, or even send direct messages to your friends. Microblogging has been taking the world by storm — and now, Chirp brings the best of it to your Dashboard!

Download Chirp

Twitterlex

Twitterlex is a simple Mac OS X Dashboard Widget that shows you the last 30 twitters by you and your Twitter friends, updating every 60 seconds when visible. When hidden, it updates every 5 minutes and sending Growl notifications if anyone has updated their status.

Download Twitterlex

Del.icio.us Widget

This widget enables you to login to your del.icio.us bookmark feed and easily browse your bookmarks from the comfort of your Dashboard.

Download Del.icio.us Widget

Stumbleupon Widget

Put simply, it searches Stumbleupon and returns the results via the Dashboard.

Download Stumbleupon Widget

Slashdash

Simply click the Slashdash icon in your widget tray, and you will have a small Slashdot themed widget window that will update every 30 minutes automatically. Click the article title and the article will open in your browser.

Download Slashdash

MySpaceViewer

This elegant widget displays any MySpace user’s most recent comment. Simply enter the user’s URL on the reverse side, and MySpaceViewer retrieves both the comment and the picture of the user who sent the comment.

Download MySpaceViewer

Technorati Tag Generator

The Technorati Tag Generator is a simple widget allowing you to generate HTML code that is associated with popularTechnorati Tags. Ysers, then have to, cut and paste the generated HTML code into their blog page.

Download Technorati Tag Generator

YouTube

With this feature rich widget you can watch and search featured videos, you can also view the most discussed, most recent, most viewed all within your Dashboard.

Download YouTube

Search Wikipedia

Enter in the search field any searcg term and it will open the Wikipedia page with that information.

Download Search Wikipedia

FlickIt

FlickIt is a dashboard widget specifically design to save you huge amounts of time. Whether you want to post a photo to your blog, send a link to one via email or instant message, or would like to paste the source of it into an application you’re using – FlickIt can handle it.

Download FlickIt

Flickr Interestingness

This widget shows a random selection of 16 images from the top 100 most interesting photos on flickr.com. It also allows you to zoom in on a selected image and then open a browser window showing the selected photo detail page on flickr.com.

Download Flickr Interestingness

Google Reader

The Google Reader Dashboard Widget will display on your dashboard the number of items from your feeds that are currently unread.

Download Google Reader

RSS-Reader

This dashboard widget allows you to display news feeds in your dashboard. It supports both RSS and Atom feeds. You can have multiple readers open which display different feeds. The widget can automatically reload your feeds.

Download RSS-Reader

Gmail Widget

This cool little widget allows you to view your Gmail inbox at a glance.

Download Gmail Widget

Blogger Widget

The quickest and easiest method of posting to Blogger.

Download Blogger Widget

Facebook Watch

Displays user data from the social networking site Facebook.com. The widget allows the user to view: Their wall ; Friends’ recently updated profiles ; Friend, group, and detail requests ; Their inbox ; New Pokes.

Download Facebook Watch

WordPressDash

WordPressDash offers an easy way for bloggers to post to their WP sites whenever they want from the comfort of their MAC dashboards.

Download WordPressDash

LiveWidget

A LiveJournal client with support for: Shared Journals (including moderated communities); Custom Friend-groups; Ready made basic HTML tags (just type your own if you want something else); Current iTunes track info; Mood entry (from the list or enter you own); Colour schemes; Shrinkable interface, for smaller screened users; Secure passwords (using Keychain); Userpics; Tags.

Download LiveWidget

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter)

Ping Pong Door

This cool door is for all you big kids out there, designed by Tobias Fränzel, the door flips into a ping pong table, all ready for gamepaly. And after you are finished, flip it back up and its back to being a functional door.

Ping Pong Door

10 things to know about Google Chrome OS

In case you have not heard, Google is going to be releasing there own operating system, called Chrome. It is a welcome addition to the OS market, something that may finally challenge Microsoft and compete with Apple. You can read the official Google Blog entry about Chrome OS here: Introducing the Google Chrome OS.
In this article, the author, has taken the details that have been released so far about the Google Chrome OS and assembled them into a handy fact list for your consumption.

10 things to know about Google Chrome OS

BBC – Glow JavaScript Library

Glow is an opensource JavaScript library from the BBC (yes, it really is!) which aims to make working with JavaScript and the DOM easier. It tries to do this by abstracting common tasks, hiding cross-browser issues, and providing a set of user interface widgets.
Glow is available under the Apache Licence, Version 2.0. This allows you to use the library in nearly all circumstances, and to modify it as you see fit.

BBC – Glow JavaScript Library

10 Web Apps To Build The Next Big Thing Without Writing Any Code

If you have a great idea for a new app, widget, gadget or some type of mashup, but have no idea how to build one, this is the post for you. This post gives you gives ten different easy to use resources to help you build your app with ease.

10 Web Apps To Build The Next Big Thing Without Writing Any Code

A-Z Of Typographers

In this phenomenal post, from freshbump.com, it lists an A-Z of typographers from all over the world, showing many different typographic styles and individual characteristics.

A-Z Of Typographers

5 Essential Google Cheat Sheets Which Surely Will Come in Handy

CSS Reflex has collected 5 essential Google Cheat sheets that are aimed to make browseing the web easier. Very useful.

5 Essential Google Cheat Sheets Which Surely Will Come in Handy

Beautiful Examples of Vexel Artworks and Tutorials

Vexel art is a digital art that is an entirely pixel-based form of raster art that imitates the vector graphics technique, in this post you will find some truelly beautiful examples of Vexel.

Beautiful Examples of Vexel Artworks and Tutorials

SlickMap CSS — A Visual Sitemapping Tool for Web Developers

SlickMap CSS is quite possibly one of the greatest free CSS resources realesed this year. It i is a simple stylesheet for displaying finished sitemaps directly from HTML unordered list navigation. It can be used on most web sites, and it can accommodate up to three levels of page navigation and additional utility links . It can also be easily customized to meet your own individual needs.

SlickMap CSS — A Visual Sitemapping Tool for Web Developers

100+ Minimal and Typographic Package Designs

The message from this post is "less is more". You will find over 100 examples of package designs that are either minimally designed, or have elements of slick and stylish typography.

100+ Minimal and Typographic Package Designs

HP – invent

Students were given this brief “Present an idea which promotes HP Workstations ability to bring to life anything the creative mind can conceive.” This is the result, cool.

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

10 Super Creative Business Cards

If your thinking of getting a new business card to impress everyone, here is a little inspiration for you. This selection, from Abduzeedo, showcases the type of business cards that stand out from the crowd, they are certainly different and very creative.

10 Super Creative Business Cards

The Ultimate Joomla Toolbox: Themes, Extensions and Resources

In this post you will find a thorough collection of all kinds of resources that will aid designers and developers working with Joomla-powered websites. This collection is intended to simplify your tasks and save you time when working with Joomla. This post covers essential resources related to Joomla— Themes, Extensions, Tutorials, Forums, Cheat Sheets and Useful Documents.

The Ultimate Joomla Toolbox: Themes, Extensions and Resources

Worlds Biggest Alarm Clock

This video shows one of the entries into the edge.ca’s “Worlds Biggest” contest, The Worlds Biggest Alarm Clock. This is awesome.
It was built by mounting a large air cylinder to the head of his bed and a valve controlled by a computer which is programmed to wake you up in the morning.

Worlds Biggest Alarm Clock

35 CSS-Lifesavers For Efficient Web Design

This post, from Smashing Magazine, 35 CSS-Lifesavers For Efficient Web Design will significantly improve your workflow and reduce your time and efforts for CSS-coding. Whether you’re writing, compiling, refining or experimenting with CSS code , these tools can help you get the job done faster and better than ever before. A must bookmark.

35 CSS-Lifesavers For Efficient Web Design

Twitter Guide Book – How To, Tips and Instructions

The Twitter Guide Book is the most comprehensive guide to Twitter you could ever find, it covers the basics as well as an indepth look at Twitter and business, sharing via Twitter and managing your Twitter stream. Is your Twitter getting out of control? This is the guide for you.

Twitter Guide Book – How To, Tips and Instructions

56 Light & Clean Website Designs Using A Minimalist Color Scheme

A selection of the best designed minamlist web designs, a great selection. Don’t you just love minamilism.

56 Light & Clean Website Designs Using A Minimalist Color Scheme

Ceiling Porn

Definetly not what you are thinking by the posts title, this is actually a showcase of the best designed ceilings. Some are remarkable, others seemingly impossible, have a look for yourselves.

Ceiling Porn

Even MSN.com isn’t IE6 compliant!

Judging by the above images, Microsoft ignored their own browser when it came to design. As you can see the new “Bing” search is hovering over the main navigation. Mom’s around the world are freaking out because they can’t click on their Hotmail.

Even MSN.com isn’t IE6 compliant!

14 Bizarre Japanese Toys

No one does weird toys like Japan does weird toys… from presidential action figures to toilet training tigers, this post has the strangest and most bizarre Japanese toys ever.

14 Bizarre Japanese Toys

The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads Of All Time

What do murder, pedophilia, suicide and a baby tiger have in common? They have all been used to sell stuff in these amazingly disturbing vintage ads!
These are real, untouched advertisements from the good old days. It doesn’t matter if it’s lovely ladies or adorable clowns, somehow these old-time ad wizards found ways to traumatize us while pedaling everyday products.

The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads Of All Time

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Setting up your office has to be perfect, it has got to be tailored to your professional and personal needs, it needs to get your creative and inspirational juices flowing, it has to have limited distractions, speedy access to all the tools of your trade and if possible, have all the coolest and latest gadgetry that you budget allows.

Could someone tell us why most cool workspaces seem to use MACs? Are Windows and Linux users not cool? Maybe its the MAC that makes the workspace cool.

All Systems Glow…

A cool glowing workstation from Hong Kong based photographer Mark aka Crouching Donkey.

View more and source

Geek Office Setup

Arthur Caranta’s geeky workstation, read his blog here: caranta.com.

View more and source

Elegant

This stylish and elegant setup is from Graeme Basson.

View more and source

MySpace

The workstation of freelance web designer and developer Lisa Risager.

View more and source

Home Office Upgraded

This sleek workstation is from m@rkos, he blogs here: medinaauto.blogspot.com.

View more and source

My Office

Cool, minimal and immaculate is the best way to describe this workstation from paszzz.

View more and source

My Workspace

There is a nature (maybe a jungle) theme going on here from student and freelance designer Chris Holder.

View more and source

Duncan's SOHO Makeover

This workstation from the creative Duncan Hopkins has been custom built by himself. View his professional work here: beyondbeyond.com/.

View more and source

Nuevo Sofa Naranja (and a Cool Workspaces)

The cool office from David Martinez Suarez.

View more and source

Mac Pro Monitors

The reason for all the monitors is that Mitch Haile is a software developer, view more images about this workstaion here: Office FAQ.

View more and source

My Workstation

I love this workstation, its simple yet feature rich, and simply love the flatscreen above the computer. This is from Geoff Harrison.

View more and source

Workspace

A lovely office setup from AtomicBunny.

View more and source

The Studio

A mood setting office and studio from musician sephtakular.

View more and source

My Computer Station

A great image of Jerome Slagle’s workstaion in the dark, I am not sure about the plasma ball, though.

View more and source

Brooklyn Home Office

This is the minmal workstation of Mackenzie Kosut, sleek office, nice view, Apple hardware everywhere, he must be loaded.

View more and source

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

This week we feature some cool resources, ranging from jQuery, Wordpress, typography and we even have a Macbook that transforms into a speace ship, you have to see this!

Cute Free Twitter Icons For Your Blog

A Free Twitter Icon Set from Smashing Magazine, with 12 original and lovely icons in this set. All the icons included in the set have clean shapes and neutral colors that can be used for various contexts, from a “Tweet it” button for your blogs to desktop wallpapers. This set was designed by IconEden.

Cute Free Twitter Icons For Your Blog.

12 Bad-Ass Chess Sets

The game of chess takes cunning and intelligence and can sometimes be incredibly intense. But your standard Chess Set just doesn’t reflect the same intensity. If you prefer to play on a board that’s as mighty as your chess moves then check out these 12 Bad Ass Chess Sets.

12 Bad-Ass Chess Sets.

15 jQuery Plugins To Create A User Friendly Tooltip

A tooltip is a great way of showing a little bit of information when the user hovers the cursor over an element. The “hover box” will appear when the mouse hover in, and disappear when the mouse hover out. And when the tooltip is being used properly, it can improve your site’s user friendly level, and also save us a lot of spaces.
Have a look at these 15 jQuery plugins to create an user friendly tooltip from Web Design Booth.

15 jQuery Plugins To Create A User Friendly Tooltip.

27 Must-Have Starter Kits For Web Designers

Starter kits are great timesavers for web designers that are particularly useful for those who often create mock-ups for projects on daily basis. If you are a designer-come-programmer think of them as your library of code snippets.
So what’s a starter kit? It can vary – depending on what each designer routinely works with. For GUI designers, keeping a copy of form elements (buttons, checkboxes, tab, drop down menus, etc) helps speed up the process of creating screens and layouts; on the other hand, browser (IE, Firefox Safari) templates with web safe area keep web designers reminded how/where they should prioritize their contents. Experienced designers will usually customize and keep a personal version of there own starter kit.
This is an indispensible resource from Hongkiat.

27 Must-Have Starter Kits For Web Designers.

25 Excellent Typography Tools for the Serious Designer

Typography is an integral part of design. There are many tools out there that are available for working with type, in this article from Six Revisions, you will find a collection of the best free typography tools available. If you’re a web designer or developer, then these tools are going to save you some serious time and effort. Take time to work your way through this extensive list and give everything a go.

25 Excellent Typography Tools for the Serious Designer.

50 Inspiring Examples of Minimalism in Web Design

The sophisticated image of minimalism has always been a popular style of design. In webdesign a minimalist site is stripped naked of eye candy and fancy colours or effects, leaving the underlying structure exposed. The key to a beautiful minimalist site is a solid and structured layout, as well as focus on stylish and well designed typography. These 50 examples showcase some of the best minimal site designs out there on the web.

50 Inspiring Examples of Minimalism in Web Design.

MacBook transforms and … well just watch it's AWESOME!

Some French guy is working on his MacBook laptop when suddenly it begins to transform into a spaceship then flies away, this really is awesome.

What’s New in Firefox 3.5?

Mike Beltzner gives a tour of Firefox 3.5, the new web browser from Mozilla. If you are serious about your browser, you must view this.

The 1KB CSS Grid – A simple, lightweight approach

CSS frameworks have become quite popular over the past couple of years. Some of them try to fit in everything: a grid system, a style reset, basic typography, form styles, you name it. Others focus solely on the grid, but still end up a bit bloated. Here is a fresh take on the CSS grid (loosely based on Nathan Smith’s 960 Grid System). Its mission is to be lightweight, which can be used to streamline page templates for content management. All this in just one measly kilobyte (actually, 662 bytes, but who’s counting). This has to be worth a look at.

The 1KB CSS Grid – A simple, lightweight approach

10 WordPress 2.8 Features To Look Out For

It's a great achievement for WordPress 2.8 to be released so soon after 2.7. Named 'Baker', 2.8 adds plenty of new features, including syntax highlighting for theme/plugin editing, a theme installer, and a great revamped widgets interface and API. Could Wordpress get any better?
This is great round-up from Net Tuts.

10 WordPress 2.8 Features To Look Out For.

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Drupal themes aren’t traditionally beautiful, they are designed to be designed and developed upon, but we think you will agree, that the premium Drupal themes below are pretty nice.

Platino

Ligo

Kopt

ZincOut

Newspaper style

Endless XS

Copywrite

Luxe

Galapagos News/Magazine

Stingray Magazine

Pump Up The Volume

Publisher

Minimalist

Fola

Toluwaleye

Sonar

Structura

Viva Gallery

Presato

Wazoo

Heavenly Skies

Leo

UberAwesome

Clophy Shop

Fasade

Design

Publisher

Efficient

Drupal Themes from OSSKNIS.com

Drupal Themes from Template Monster

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

How do you find the best theme, that one theme that is suited to you? Hopefully the list below will help. You will find 50 of the Best Premium WordPress Themes, they range from blog and portfolio styles, corporate and magazine and all the way to specialized themes for video and photoblogging.

Video Flick 2.0 Premium WP

Thesis Premium WP

Groovy Video Premium WP

Creative Studio Premium WP

Modfolio Premium WP

Folio Blogger Premium WP

Gridline Magazine Premium WP

YourFolio Premium WP

Fresh Folio Premium WP

WooTube Premium WP

Insight Premium WP

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By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

How to make a Photoshop Brush

A simple and detailed tutorial, giving you great tips and a step-by-step guide to creating a PS brush.

Creating Custom Brushes

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create your own brush preset so that you can easily replicate shapes and/or patterns.

How to make a brush and how to use it

Photoshop brushes are maybe the best ways to stylize your picture, you work. There are many settings that you can use to create different beautiful effects. Moreover you can make a brush from almost every picture, every pattern, out of anything. So in this tutorial you will be shown how to make a brush and how to use your newly made brush.

Creating Photoshop Brushes from a Photograph

This tutorial will show some basics on how to create a Photoshop brush from a photograph or a scanned image.

Feather Brush Tutorial

Leaf Brush Tutorial

In this tutorial, you will explore how a custom brush can be used to make realistic leafy foliage.

Beelzebub Brush Tutorial

In this tut you will creating two brushes, one is a cement face and the other is an image of Beelzebub.

Coffee Stains and Splatters Brush Tutorial

The grunge theme has no rules, this gives the designer a lot of freedom. Here, you will learn how to create coffee stain and splatter brushes that can be used again and again in your designs.

Lego Bricks Brush Tutorial

Learn how to create PS brushes out of a rendered image of lego bricks

Grunge Brush Tutorial

Textured Brush Tutorial

Texture and grunge brushes are great resources to have if you want to add an ageing effect to your work. And making your own set gives your design it’s own unique style.

Abstract Brush Tutorial

Create your very own abstract PS brush.

Dew Drops Brush Tutorial

Rose Brushes Tutorial

Brush Creation for Beginners

Making Brushes – AZ Forums

Fractal Brush Tutorial

Photoshop Brushes Tutorial

Custom Brushes and Brush Dynamics

In this video, you will learn how to create custom brushes and how Brush Dynamics work.

Create Custom Brushes in Photoshop

Photoshop Tutorial: Make your own brushes

Making Photoshop brushes from scratch

Hopefully, after all these, you will now be that little bit more familiar with Photoshop Brushes.

Multi-touch everywhere

The rise of the iPhone made the multi-touch technology very popular. Now many devices are using it: MP3 players, GPS devices, laptops,… This brings much more intuitive interfaces, making it so easy that even one year old children can use it. In 2009 we will for sure see new multi-touch devices appear.

Web applications get out of the browser

Mac OS X or Yahoo Widgets have already gotten the internet out of the browser for quite a while, but the trend is getting bigger. Think of Twitter and Twhirl, and you’ll get a good example of how a website’s usability can be improved by taking it to an independent interface. Many external apps now support web services like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed or Seesmic, will we see smaller websites getting out of the browser in 2009?

New controllers for improved usability

The Wiimote and the Logitech MX Air mouse are good examples of the way our interaction with interfaces will be changed through new intuitive navigational controllers. Removing the wires to the mouse was a first step towards more freedom of movement, being able to handle it in the air is a second step. The gaming industry has already been revolutionized by it, professional usage should be next.

Buttons go away for minimalist designs

The new iPod Shuffle recently stirred up controversy because it was considered too minimalist. The product is really easy to use, but some would argue that it loses functionality by over-simplifying the design. Another great example of simple minimalist interface would be Mino, the coolest video camcorder.

The trend of minimalist designs doesn’t only apply to products design, but also to web design with grid-based designs getting popular. In every aspect of design, the ease-of-use becomes the ultimate goal.

The mobile Web gets bigger, interfaces get smaller

The mobile Web has been trying to develop for a few years without being able to extend its reach. The first iPhone came out in 2007, it was a huge success from the start with its revolutionary multi-touch interface. However, the iPhone’s potential really expands with the release of the iPhone 3G and the App store. Over 20′000 apps are now available in the store, and this number keeps growing, giving mobile design more importance everyday.

With Safari for the iPhone, Apple’s mobile device has also popularized mobile browsing. Many major websites have created a mobile version just because of the iPhone. Other mobile phones constructors have also been forced to improve the usability of their phones and to make their devices more attractive.

Blog engines and CMS are also starting to release plugins to make it easier to publish for the mobile web. For Wordpress, you can try the iWPhone WordPress plugin and theme or the WordPress PDA & iPhone plugin.

Written by Mirko Humbert

When the title says Image Map, It doesn’t mean basic image replacement, and when It says Pure CSS, It doesn’t mean CSS blended with javascript or ajax (which of course there are solutions), its CSS and only CSS. Lets make this perfect.

CSS Image Maps, Redux (Tutorial)

Tutorial URL : CSS Image Maps, Redux.

This CSS Image technique makes use of the Sliding Doors technique combined with a definition list. The sliding doors technique allows you to contain all your image rollover effects in one image file, and make use of the background-position CSS property to “shift” the image in any direction. By adding a :hover effect to your CSS, you can shift the image to a desired position.

CSS Image Maps With Pop-Up Tool Tips (Tutorial)

Tutorial URL : CSS Image Maps With Pop-Up Tool Tips.

Using an unordered list, a couple of images, and a little CSS, you can create an accessible “image map” with pop-up tool tips that will provide your readers with more information on the links the map contains. Unlike some image maps, the one outlined here has the advantage of working in older versions of Internet Explorer.

How do I… Use CSS to create an image map on my Web site? (Tutorial)

Tutorial URL : How do I… Use CSS to create an image map on my Web site?.

While Image maps are still considered valid HTML, you can use this CSS method to separate content from presentation. It also has the advantage of using less code for more complex image maps, and is good practice for knowing when to declare IDs rather than Classes in your CSS code.

Creating an Image Map using CSS only (Tutorial)

Tutorial URL : Creating an Image Map using CSS only.

With this tutorial you will be shown how to turn an ordinary Definition List into an Image Map, using nothing more than CSS that should work in all modern browsers. In this tut you will be walked through the styling one step at a time, fully explaining the reason for each style and showing the results of each step.

Night of the Image Map (Tutorial)

Tutorial URL : Night of the Image Map.

This tutorial dates back to 2003, don’t be put off by this, the depth and detail that the author gives will be helpful to anyone that wants to learn, understand and organize CSS.
In this tutorial you will use CSS to create invisible links and float them over the background image.

CSS Image Rollover Map (Tutorial)

Tutorial URL : CSS Image Rollover Map.

This tutorial is fairly advanced, roll your sleeves up and dig in. This map, including mouse over national flags, is constructed with one image and positioning on hover controlled with a css file.

Experiment with CSS Image Rollover Map (Technique )

URL : Experiment with CSS Image Rollover Map.

An image map of Europe, when you hover over each country the national flag will show.

Experiment with CSS Image Rollover Map (Technique )

URL : Experiment with CSS Image Rollover Map.

Hover your mouse over the image to reveal three areas of interest. Then hover over each area to reveal an enlarged detail with text.

Return of the Image Maps (Technique )

URL : Return of the Image Maps.

With this technique the image map that has pop up speech bubbles of various sizes with pointers on all four side. The speech bubbles also contain a short piece of text and links to further information on the web.

A Scrolling Image Map (technique )

URL : A Scrolling Image Map.

This is a horizontally scrolling image that has ten hotspots indicated by a white rectangle. Just click on any of these hotspots to see a larger image to the right and a small piece of information in the left hand corner of the scrolling image.

By Paul Andrew

drewwilliams27@twitter

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Jonathan360@twitter

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cheth@twitter

farrhad@twitter

csstinderbox@twitter

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k@twitter

MrTweet@twitter

ComputerArts@twitter

collis@twitter

djuro@twitter

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natalie@twitter

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Free Twitter Background Resources

Twitter Patterns
MyTweetSpace.com – Free Twitter Backgrounds
TwitterGallery.com
TweetStyle
Twitbacks
Twitter Treats
Twitter Backgrounds – a set on Flickr
26 Awesome Backgrounds for Twitter Fanboys. (and Girls).

Twitter Background Tutorials – Create your own

How to create a Twitter background image (blueleafcreative.wordpress.com).
How To Create A Custom Twitter Background (searchforblogging.com).
Make a Good Impression with a Custom Twitter Background.
How to Create a Twitter Background (ehow.com).
Create a Twitter Background Using Powerpoint (theclosetentrepreneur.com).

By Paul Andrew

Say what it does

Anybody who visits your site should be able to understand what it does within a few seconds. Be mindful that the majority of your visitors will probably not enter via the home page. Write a good tag line explaining what your website does, include it next to your logo or somewhere prominent, this will help get your message across to new visitors.

Who gets it right: Twitter.com

Further reading:
Turning Visitors into Users
How to Write a Strong Value Proposition
Tips on Making Great Taglines

Keep homepages clutter free

Be ruthless when deciding what needs to be on your homepage. Just include the necessities, when someone visits this page it should be instantly obvious what your site is and what their next step should be.

Who gets it right: Ning

Further reading:
The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines
UX matters – Home Page Design

Be consistent and use conventions

Try to use standardized ways of performing functions. That new jQuery menu you just made may be cool but it might just confuse your users. Try to keep the user experience consistent, keep navigation elements in the same format and position at all times. Having to continually search for key elements every time they go to a new page is going to frustrate your visitors.

Who gets it right: Amazon.com

Further reading:
Design With Web Conventions
Top 5 Web Conventions
Design with Consistency
Why Consistency is Critical

Navigation

Navigation is perhaps the most important element of any web design. Tabs can be a really effective means of primary navigation, they are also commonplace so everybody knows how they work. Whatever form of primary navigation you choose make sure its consistent across your site. If you have a big website that’s well categorized you should use this to your advantage, include a prominent list or related categories or other categories in that section.

Who gets it right: About.com

Further reading:
CSS Showcase – CSS Navigation Menus
10 Brilliant Multi Level Navigation Menu Techniques
50 Beautiful And User-Friendly Navigation Menus
webdesignpractices – Local Navigation
Create apple.com-like breadcrumb using simple CSS
Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful

Response and load times

Most users will not tolerate a slow website, if you ignore this issue you are going to lose a lot of potential page views / visits / customers. You want to aim for your pages to respond in under a second and ideally in one tenth of a second.

Who gets it right: Digg.com

Further reading:
Optimizing Page Load Times
15 Quick Ways to Shrink Page Load Times
Pingdom Free Tools – Full page test

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Let your users search

Sounds obvious but its surprising how many sites don’t have a search box or hide it away somewhere. Many web users are search-dominant and use search as their primary method of navigating, if you don’t have a search facility or it doesn’t work as it should, they wont be sticking around.

Who gets it right: Apple.com

Further reading:
Sphinx – Free open-source SQL full-text search engine
Google Site Search Implementation

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Test early and often

Everybody should be usability testing their website. Don’t assume just because you know how to use it that your site doesn’t have any problems. Testing doesn’t have to be expensive either, start with your family and friends watch them use your site. Ask them to perform certain tasks (like signing up or posting a comment) and take notes. It’s amazing how much you can learn this way, when you have identified a problem fix it and test again.

Further reading:
8 guidelines for usability testing
Why You Only Need to Test With 5 Users

Written by Christopher Lee

]]> http://designreviver.com/tips/7-common-web-usability-problems/feed/ 30 http://designreviver.com/tips/10-things-they-dont-teach-you-in-design-school/ http://designreviver.com/tips/10-things-they-dont-teach-you-in-design-school/#comments Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:04:26 +0000 Chris http://designreviver.com/?p=692 I had a great time in design school, I was constantly learning and surrounded by lots of like minded people. However, after five years of freelancing as a graphic designer, I’ve learned many new things. The following list is the top ten things that I had to learn the hard way.

1. Your diploma doesn’t help you to find a job

But your portfolio does! Of course it’s a good thing to get a design education and a proof of it, but when it comes to get money out of their wallet clients want to see what you are capable of, not a diploma. When looking for work, I never had to show my diploma, not even once.

Picture by ajschwegler

2. Good design takes time, don’t set too tight deadlines

When you are in design school, the teacher sets the deadlines for you and tries to give you enough time. Your boss or your client will not be like your design teacher, they will try to push you to be more productive and give you too little time to get work done. All my worst designs have been created when I agreed to work with unrealistic deadlines.

Picture by Swami Stream

3. You clients don’t think that you are an artist

They just think you should help them to sell more. This doesn’t mean you should give up on good design, it just means that you’ll have to be convincing when you want to bring a more artistic touch to a job. I’ve been very frustrated with this when I first got out of school, but I learned to deal with it by educating my clients.

Picture by Neil T

4. You must be able to handle irrelevant criticism

When you are in school, you learn a lot from getting criticized by your teachers and classmates. Obviously these people all have some design skills, sometimes more than yourself. It is much harder to handle critics about your work when they come from people with no design education. You can be sure that you’ll hear some insane things and have to deal with it.

Picture by liber

5. You should backup your data on a regular basis

Most people learn this the hard way, the day their computer crashes. Usually it happens at the worst time, before a client meeting or something similar. If you think that this isn’t design-related, you are totally wrong.

Picture by miss karen

6. Start networking, now!

Be sociable, even if you are the best designer out there, nobody will know it if people don’t get a chance to meet you. You don’t even need to attend work-related events, just join a sport team, drama group or whatever suits you, the most important thing is that you meet some like-minded people. When with people, don’t oversell and talk about your work all the time, but be sure never to miss an opportunity when you think that someone could need your skills.

Picture by chuck p

7. Make sure your client signs a contract

This is sometimes annoying, especially when you think that you can trust the client, but it can save you a lot of trouble. You should make it a habit to have you clients signing a simple and comprehensive contract before starting to work. If you have no clue of how to write a contract, take a look at this article by Andy Clark.

Picture by robertgaal

8. Learning design is an ongoing process

Getting your diploma doesn’t mean that your design education is over, far from it. As a designer you have to stay up-to-date with the latest trends, software updates and industry news, or you’ll quickly lose touch.

Picture by nickobec

9. Being a good designer is not only about talent

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it”. This quote by Thomas Jefferson says it all about the importance of hard work in creative fields. As a designer, you need to read, work and experiment constantly, it is the only way to let your natural talent explode.

Picture by Marcin Wichary

10. Your printer will stop working when you need it the most

Need to print your design to go meet your client? Chances are that your printer will chose that moment to die. Make sure you have some friends or working partners willing to help in these cases.

Picture by sheffnermarc

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Written by Mirko Humbert

]]> http://designreviver.com/tips/10-things-they-dont-teach-you-in-design-school/feed/ 130 http://designreviver.com/tips/a-decade-in-web-design-1997-to-2009-in-pictures/ http://designreviver.com/tips/a-decade-in-web-design-1997-to-2009-in-pictures/#comments Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:54:26 +0000 tim http://designreviver.com/?p=578 By reviewing what’s changed and what’s stood the test of time, we can make general assumptions of web design principles that will work going forward. Things have moved on in terms of interface design and graphics, some websites more than others. Looking at the examples below sites such as Amazon, eBay and Craigslist have changed comparatively little (Craigslist has hardly changed at all), a testimony to their forward thinking at the time, whilst others such as the Whitehouse have come a long way.

Whitehouse 1997 – 2009

Microsoft 1999 – 2009

Digg 2004 – 2009

(note 2004 CSS styling maybe missing)

CNN 2000 – 2009

BBC 2000 – 2009

Facebook 2006 – 2009

SmashingMagazine 2006 – 2009

Ebay 1999 – 2009

Amazon 1999 – 2009

Craigslist 1999 – 2009

Apple 1999 – 2009

Wordpress 2003 – 2009

(note 2003 CSS styling maybe missing)

Oakley 2000 – 2009

Techcrunch 2005 – 2009

(note 2005 CSS styling maybe missing)

Google 1999 – 2009

Yahoo 1997 – 2009

Other patterns can be seen, design centric companies such as Apple and Oakley consistently focus on design, whilst news based websites such as CNN and the BBC have only modernized the traditional news & picture format.

]]> http://designreviver.com/tips/a-decade-in-web-design-1997-to-2009-in-pictures/feed/ 38 http://designreviver.com/general/14-of-the-most-useful-web-design-blogs/ http://designreviver.com/general/14-of-the-most-useful-web-design-blogs/#comments Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:05:57 +0000 Henry http://designreviver.com/?p=177 There is definitely not a shortage of web design blogs floating around the web, and it’s easy to understand why. Web designers can utilize skills that they already have to get a good looking blog up and running with relative ease. Out of these blogs there are a handful that really stand out in terms of useful content.

Here are some of the most useful web design blogs out there. I’ve excluded big blogs like Smashing Magazine and A List Apart, since most web designers, more than likely, already follow them.

Noupe

Six Revisions

Vandelay Design Blog

We Function

Just Creative Design

Fuel Your Creativity

Dev Lounge

Outlaw Design Blog

CSS Tricks

Blog.SpoonGraphics

DesignM.ag

Woork

Web Resources Depot

Web Designer Wall

]]> http://designreviver.com/general/14-of-the-most-useful-web-design-blogs/feed/ 190 http://designreviver.com/general/10-of-the-best-color-resources-and-tools/ http://designreviver.com/general/10-of-the-best-color-resources-and-tools/#comments Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:20:57 +0000 Henry http://designreviver.com/?p=172 Color plays an important role in the way we communicate with each other. Color not only helps give a design visual beauty, but it can also make a person react or feel a certain way. This feeling may be on a subconscious level, but it could affect the way that person thinks about a product or service. That’s why it is so important to choose the right palette when creating a new design. Here are some resources and tools to help you choose that perfect color palette

COLOURlovers

COLOURlovers is the ultimate resource for all things color related. It is a social site that gives people the ability to share and rate color palettes and read color related articles.

Kuler

Kuler is an Adobe site that also lets you share and rate color themes, but it also gives you the ability to download and use these themes in Adobe Creative Suite.

COPASO

COPASO is a tool that can be found on COLOURlovers, but since it is so robust, I wanted to include it separately. It includes features such as a scratch pad to save colors and a photo color extraction tool.

ColorJack

Color Jack is an advanced set of tools for choosing color schemes.

ColorBurn

The ColorBurn is a simple widget that provides daily color palette inspiration.

ColorSchemer

ColorSchemer’s online tool allows you to enter a Hex value and in return, it give you a matching color palette.

ColorBlender

Color Blender returns a blended color scheme based to two color value inputs.

Color Wizard

Color Wizard returns a scheme based on a submitted color.

ColourMod

ColourMod is a dashboard widget that give you and easy way to pick and convert color values.

ColorZilla

ColorZilla is a Firefox extension that allows you to determine the color value of any point in your browser. It also gives you the ability to measure distance between two points and get various information about DOM elements.

]]> http://designreviver.com/general/10-of-the-best-color-resources-and-tools/feed/ 25 http://designreviver.com/general/font-resources-create-organize-identify-and-test/ http://designreviver.com/general/font-resources-create-organize-identify-and-test/#comments Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:28:16 +0000 Henry http://designreviver.com/?p=162