"Oh brave men and women of fire and soot, how thy engines of red blaze stanchly toward certain danger. How thy faces burn before magnificent compositions of peril. How thy bravery glows when instincts of self-preservation are cast aside for the sake of thy neighbors.

How then, oh great men and women of sacrifice, shall we repay thee?"

With a masterpiece of XHTML and CSS, of course.

First off, the guy, girl, team, dalmatian, or whoever it was that designed this site managed to get all the information onto one page. (With the exception of a video to be discussed later.) That’s not bad, considering this is an informational site. Importantly, at no point does the information seem crowded, out of place, difficult to ascertain, ugly, stupid, lame, or stinky. This is accomplished through a comfortable flow of different-sized columns and background changes. There are no tabs to different sections of the site, and I say, nice work. Who needs tabs when we never have to leave the page we’re on? This is one of those great sites that reminds you to always keep your eyes and your mind open to different methods of solving design problems.

Is it later? Okay. Now let’s talk about the video. Boo. This is my only serious criticism. The site is beautiful. The video is obviously professionally shot, produced, edited, and it’s beautiful too. Why oh why did that crazy dalmatian designer decide that the video could sit on a blank white page? Why oh why didn’t he dig his heels in, put off the kibble for just a few hours more, and finish off the site with an appropriate video-viewing page? Perhaps the timeline, the budget, or some other unforeseen culprit is to blame, so judgment is reserved. But needless to state after this rant, it is a loose brick in the firehouse.

But we forgive you. Because we really think you nailed everything else.

The color scheme throughout the site is patriotic, but not “vote for me in November” patriotic. We can see red, white and blue, but we don’t feel like taking a nap on a cracker. Instead, we feel the warmth of natural brown tones, the tangible personality of the paper and distressed textures, and the classic calm of the monotone photography. It is the addition of these elements that calms the overall color scheme, and also encapsulates the personality of a noble firefighter. At least the one I’m picturing in my head, who looks curiously like the one in the main banner.

The photography is also used in a place where many of us would sooner drop in a two-dollar stock icon, rather than approach the design problem with, yet again, a fresh perspective. The iconic subject matter of these photocons* is not out of the ordinary, but the method the designer used to create them results in an icon set that feels very much like the site they inhabit.

Overall, this site is a hero worth a hero’s prize. And we don’t really think it was designed by a dalmatian. Duh. Dalmatians are too busy fighting fires to create websites.

*Get it? Photo + Icon = Photocon? Brilliant? No? Crap.

We can´t answer all those e-mails as we have been doing the last 16 months with a plain : "it will be done in the future". I guess the future must be now.

So, we have released our brand new API. Most of the credits go to Luis Sacristán who helped us debugging some issues in our original code to make everything smooth.

CSS Mania's API is a never ending developed API, and could change depending on our readers interests. Depending on our readers response we will continue working on future releases to parse more data in case it is needed. So, please, feel free to contact us, and enjoy our API. It is extremely important to read about its usage limit. There are no restrictions right now, but, if its usage is done from a certain IP badly, the IP most likely will get a lifetime ban from our server.

So, if you want to work on an AIR widdget based on our API, feel free to do so, cause we may have a surprise for you if we like it. Everything is welcomed.

CSS Mania's API.

"Lately I have seen a lot of web sites blog and online newspapers coming up with their own “iPhone version” of their business. They are everywhere. They usually start with an “i” so, if you were looking CSSMania's web site for the iPhone it could be something like “http://i.cssmania.com/” which takes my mind back to the old times when it should be “http://wap.cssmania.com/”. From my point of view, building a web site, blog or newspaper entirely from scratch for a particular device is like going back to 1995 when AvantGo ruled the world and the “Palms” were “so hot right now!”.

If you have an application like basecamp for example, it’s necessary to do the “iPhone version” but, that’s just because the application needs to be specially designed as an app for the iPhone. On the other hand, having a blog, a newspaper or any other web site in the iPhone version is like doing a wap version; useless. There is a huge market for wap, we all know that. But it takes back innovation like 10 years. The browser should adjust the site, not backwards. If you don’t agree, then I’m assuming you are one of the really happy designers or coders who laugh with joy every time you have to do an Internet Explorer version of your work.

Again, the browser should adjust the site, not backwards. In fact, Apple agrees with me. They have come up with Safari for the iPhone, an splendid piece of software that lets you see, AND READ a website like if you were looking it at your own home or work computer. It displays the same. It doesn’t change.

I believe Apple innovates. It’s just that people is used to have “an X version of my website for the X“. Fill the “X” with any new device that you can think off, yesterday Palm, recently cellphone, now, iPhone. We have arrived to the era we all have waited: finally, a portable device manufacturer comes up with software that can read our work the same way we intent to, without touching anything, without modifying one line of code; and what do we do? we keep living in the past.

Just let it go!"

We couldnt agree more with you, Javier.

The guys from the NGO have sent us the final location photo for the school they will build with that money (8000$ aproximately is what a 600 square feet classroom costs, including built up area). As the donations were 11271$ (we did it 12000$) , with those 4000$ we can make 20 children a little bit "happier" during a year, so they will be able to attend to the school for "free" during a year (that means no extra "costs" for their families). And that's what we decided.

School will be located in the northern-eastern part of Bihar, and will be built in 3 months aproximately, most likely before the end of 2008. Above you can see the school's location.

More pics will come when construction begins.

One of the things we would like to improve from now on is the number of articles published per week. Right now we are not posting more than 2-3 articles a month. To be honest, the only thing we are publishing is just Creme de la Creme posts (we didnt realized we did seventeen already) and useful info of what's going on in here.

In order to achieve such a goal we definitely need more (well, right now it is just me) volunteers willing to write with us. So, if you wrote one useful tutorial, a nice review, etc and you want to have it published on our site, don't hesitate to contact us. If you want to be an editor with us and feel you have the skills, the knowledge and you can write at least once a week something useful for our huge community, we are really open to your ideas. Feel like you can talk about one of the sites we consider the best of the month, once a month? Then we want you to write for us.

Are we paying? Yes we are, however before a price can be set we must gauge your abilities over the course of a month. So, use our contact form, let us know what you can do, what you have done, talk to us about the weather, your city, yourself... whatever... we will for sure answer you.

Updated: 11th September 2008 (07:24AM GMT+1) Editors submission period has finished.

We know it is holidays time, but we know not all of us are enjoying them or we have already enjoyed them. Wanna have your banner displayed several million times a month? Are you a new advertiser in CSS Mania?. Let us know and we will do 20% on each of our advertising options if you purchase it before the 15th of August.

This is only applicable to new advertisers.

Photo credits: 8mobile]]> What's going on Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:34:38 +0100 In no particular order (except the alphabetical one), here is our top 10 selection for the month of July 2008. Enjoy. Btw, we are back from our holidays.... http://cssmania.com/blog/2008/08/04/creme-de-la-creme-july-2008.php 12811@http://cssmania.com/blog/ In no particular order (except the alphabetical one), here is our top 10 selection for the month of July 2008. Enjoy. Btw, we are back from our holidays.