Check out this Japanese drawing using HTML tables and background colour. This guy did an awesome drawing, some amazing work, honestly who has the time..?

For anyone who’s not familiar with the Firefox add-on - you really should be, it’s a really cool hands-on way to edit or peruse code while you browse, read more, or get firebug here *snipped from the website

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Visual design elements can considerably improve the readability of the page. Using them, you can make it easier for your users to scan the presented content and find the information they’re actually looking for. Icons can draw reader’s attention to the key aspects of the article and visualize the topic of the post. Buttons can be used to motivate users to some particular actions; and templates are supposed to help designers to create user-friendly interface elements right away. And whatever aim you’d like to achieve, free visual design elements are always useful - simply because they can give your text content a better visual appearance.

We’ve selected fresh high quality icons, buttons, vector graphics, templates and layouts. You might know some of them, but hopefully not all of them.

Not all listed freebies can be used for commercial projects, however you can use all of them in your private projects of for you personal purposes. Please read the disclaimers carefully before using icons - they’re changing from time to time.

You can also scan through the icons-related articles we’ve published before:

• Symbols, Buttons and Icons For Free
• More Symbols, Buttons and Icons

Freebies

1. Notes Icons

2. iMac Icons from FreeIconsWeb.com

3. Pixel Press Icons (.dmg, Mac only)

4. Vista Icons (for private purposes only, 2000 icons, 256×256, .png).

5. Desktop Icons (for private purposes only, icon sets are available for PC and Mac).

6. Browsing Dock Icons

7. Iconfactory Freeware Icon Sets

8. WebSiteIcons.net

9. Toolbar Icons by Matt Ball

10. Crystal Clear

11. Office Icons

12. Shopping Cart Icon

13. Deziner Folio (32 Aqua-icons, transparent, 128×128, .png). Can be used for both commercial and private projects. You can also request .psd-files via e-mail.

Icon Sets for Design Artists

14. Vector Graphics templates, available for free download. Punk Collection, Urban Collection, Resources Collection I und Resources Collection II. Formats are .ai and .eps.

14. Bittbox offers vector graphics for professional design: e.g. 35 Free Abstract Illustrator Brushes.

15. 25 Free Vector Drips, Drops, and Splatters. Besides: Free Vector Grunge Set. Both are available in Adobe Illustrator format or as .eps-files.

Icon Sets for Bloggers

16. Icon-Set for Bloggers by Sonia Anepeta.

17. Web 2.0 Icons by Utombox.

18. 77 Vectorbuttons by Go Squared. For Adobe Illustrator only. Besides: 165 Vector Icons and even more icons for private and commercial use.

19. Web 2.0 Date Icons For Your Blog. Layouts for Adobe Photoshop (.psd) ans as .png-files.

20. 9 Web 2.0 Badges. Available as .png or .psd.

If you are looking for even more elegant templates, you might be willing to take a look at Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) package. You’ll need Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape (Open-Source) to edit the images. What you’ll get out of it, might look like this:

21. Bitbox offers free glossy design layouts, which can be used in Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape. Among them: Vector Badges, Glass Buttons and Bars, Web Page Elements, Header Designs and RSS-Icons.

Bittbox also gives away various Adobe Illustrator-templates for modern web design. Among them Buttons, Badges, RSS-Icons, Ecken and numerous Icons.

22. Microformats Icon

23. Microformats Icons

Not Enough? Even More Icons!

• Giøn is an icon set designed by Silvestre Herrea (Argentina). The icon set (1.3 Mb) includes icons in 16*16px, 22*22px and 24*24px, in .png and as open source. The collection isn’t complete yet.
• Mouserunner Icon Set (12 icons). Rounded icons in various sizes in .png and .ico-formats.
• Free Tiny Small Mini Icons Bullets: the icons are indeed as tiny as they can possibly be. For different purposes, and free for commercial use.
• Tango Icon Gallery: hundreds of icons in different sizes.

References to Icon Collections

• Iconfactory Freeware Icon Sets (literally hundreds of freeware icon sets)
• Wikipedia: Icons - a regularly updated list of references to various icon collections.
• FreeIconsWeb (dozens of free icon sets)
• Iconbuffet delivers free icon sets on a regular basis. Registration is required.
• IconFinder is an icon search engine. Currently offline.
• Free! Icons for your website or application (31 icon sets)
• 22 Free 16×16 Icon Sets

check out the css

For the inexperienced web designer who’s looking at getting into Standards Compliant Web Design it can’t hurt to begin with a clean and logically set-up template to get you moving. Many good Designers wouldn’t deny going down this path until they fluently grasp code in detail, and I’m sure many on occasions still may use these template structures just to save initial coding time.

We’ve all seen Template Monster, and who could deny at the time, what a handy resource this site become for quick turnaround sites and for clean placement design ideas. However, in todays day and age, a lot of the code and layout of these templates are becoming redundant and more and more site’s will pop up that offer standards compliant alternatives, good idea? I think so.

Lately things have been fairly chaotic on the work front. Aside from full time work. I’ve been getting caught up in various projects such as:

• a new CMS Design / Web Page Layout for an upcoming Sydney based Software Developer,
• Graphic / Logo / Branding / Web work for Brisbane’s No Culture Festival
• Assistance in the New Full xhtml/css web front for NAF.
• a couple of other revamps, upgrades and general web fixes.

All this happening and trying to write music and manage my band - whilst keeping things flowing at home occasionally can become difficult. The hours in the day sometimes aren’t enough.

Life’s difficulties aside - I do have plans to get the new business site on the road and start progressing forward.

I’ll be posting some screen shots of the updated version shortly.

To see an example of what this looks like click here
To download SimpleViewer, click here

In my opinion this is a really handy find!  The gallery looks sleek, clean, usable and don’t forget FREE.

There’s some quite a bit of work to do, eg - thumbnail galleries and better formating on the sub pages - but i was eager so i threw it up there as is until i get round to adding more.