etc.

Four Links for Photoshop Resources and Tutorials

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:44:12 -0500

1. Naldz Graphics has a big round-up of Free Photoshop Actions worth browsing. 370+ Free Photoshop Actions for Everyone 2. From Photoshop-Free Brushes, the Best collection of Free Photoshop brushes for Commercial use. 3. From My Ink Blog, a tutorial for Photoshop Adjustment Layers and Retouching. 4. Finally, from PSD Rockstar, Download 60 Awesome Grunge Backgrounds for Free.

Weekend Link Round-up

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 11:13:06 -0500

Scripts and Coding 1. From Bulletproof Box35 Essential jQuery Tutorials, Code Chunks and Plugins for Designers. 2. From devSnippets, 22 JavaScript Frameworks. Web Design and Development 1. From Design Reviver, 5000+ Color Gradients Sets for Photoshop. 2. Find some tips and tricks for great logo design at 45 Rules for Creating a Great Logo Design. 3. From "You The Designer", get some blue web design inspiration by browsing this collection of blue based website designs. 25 Refreshingly Blue Website Designs. 4. Not new but worth re-visiting for a comprehensive look at the use of colors in web design. Colors On The Web. 5. From Smashing Apps, 11 Free and Helpful Web-based Tools that Every Designer May Want to Know. 6. 22 Free Fonts from MyFont, a round-up of free offerings from Myfont.com at Fudge Graphics. 7. Again, not new, but worth revisiting for the motherlode of cheat sheets. The Cheat Sheet of Cheat Sheets. Top 100 Lists of Web Development Cheat Sheets. . 8. From Web Designer's Interviews, a round-up of some of the best web design podcasts out there this year. 10 Great Web Design Podcasts of 2008 CSS 1. From devSnippets, 23 Free CSS Frameworks. 2. From divitodesign, The Paragraph and Typography Guide looks at using CSS to style paragraphs. 3. Site Friendly Bit demonstrates how to highlight the current element using a yellow fade technique using CSS and a simple image. (No javascript required). Yellow Fade with CSS and a Simple Image. 4. Explore CSS Based design and be inspired at CSS Based. 5. From Dev.Opera, a CSS method for numbering. Automatic Numbering with CSS Counters

Two Cool Tools

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:55:20 -0500

Two handy tools that I came upon today ... smush it! is an image optimization tool that "that goes beyond the limitations of Photoshop, Fireworks & Co. It uses image format specific non-lossy image optimization tools to squeeze the last bytes out of your images - without changing their look or visual quality. You'll get a report of how many bytes you can save by optimizing your images and all the changed images as a single zip for download." To use, either upload pictures from your browser, provide a list of image urls or use their handy, dandy Firefox Extension to optimize images found on any web page. Get straight to the point with Splicd, a tool that lets you grab a segment of any length from a YouTube video. Just type in the YouTube url and the time frame from the clip you want. Splicd

Morning Coffee Links for September 30, 2008

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:35:13 -0500

Here are the links that have caught my eye this morning: From Graphics site Naldz Graphics, for Photoshop users, a nice round-up of 30 Free High Quality .PSD Files to Grab. From site SpeckyBoy, a nice round-up of sites offering free vector images. Top 25 Free Vector Resource Sites. (SpeckyBoy) A worthwhile read for any Firefox 3 users from PC Magazine - Firefox 3: 8 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do (PC Magazine) From Natalie Downe, a nice article about CSS Systems and how to use them to write maintainable CSS.

A CSS System is a reusable set of content-oriented markup patterns and associated CSS created to express a site's individual design. It is the end result of a process that emphasizes up-front planning, loose coupling between CSS and markup, pre-empting browser bugs and overall robustness. It also incorporates a shared vocabulary for developers to communicate the intent of the code.

CSS Systems for Writing Maintainable CSS (Natalie Downe) From UsabilityPost, a look at choosing the right colors to express your brand identity.

One of the key elements of building a strong brand is color selection. Every color has a different feel and various associations. By choosing a color or a combination of colors for your brand identity, you will take on those associations. Colors will evoke certain emotions and feelings towards your brand so it is vital to choose a color that will represent your identity effectively.

Guide to Choosing Colors for Your Brand (UsabilityPost) From DesignM.ag, 60 Free Textures from sxc.hu (DesignMag) From The Floating Frog, a collection of useful CSS Shorthand techniques. 10 CSS Shorthand Techniques You'll Use Everyday (FloatingFrog) Finally, from Sohtanaka, a nice how-to create Liquid and Color Adjustable CSS Buttons, worth a read.

When working on a large site with multiple buttons, it can be quite tedious to make all the buttons in Photoshop. Making future adjustments on the verbiage and colors can be also be time consuming. By having dynamic buttons, this scenario is much easier to handle, and by having liquid and color adjustable buttons with CSS, we are able to change the verbiage and colors in a flash.

Morning Coffee Good Links

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:29:03 -0500

Here are a few links that have caught my eye while I enjoy my morning coffee: For A Beautiful Web tackles the notion that designs need to look the same in all browsers and argues that this isn't the case. Five CSS design browser differences I can live with. From CSS-Tricks has a nice how-to, this time showing how to create a body border with a fade-in gradient. From Design Reviver, 22 Firefox 3 Plugins Web Designers Can't Live Without. Worth browsing. From Interesting Things, 5 Mistakes New Web Developers Often Make. Worth reading just to be sure we aren't making them :) PSDTUTS has a great tutorial, showing step-by-step how to make a Grunge Web Design in Photoshop. From position:absolute, a better html anchor using jQuery. Why jump through a page when you can smooth scroll? Finally, from Design Mag, 500+ Photoshop Brushes for Creating Textures.

Top 7 Fonts Used by Professionals

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:12:24 -0500

Just Creative Design has collected the top seven fonts that are used by professionals in graphic design. The fonts are all classics and are not free, but a great round-up for some quality font inspiration. Top 7 Fonts Used By Professionals In Graphic Design.

Today's List of Lists Round-up

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:52:13 -0500

There is never any shortage of numbered lists to round-up. Today's lists total an even "90". 15 Amazingly Free Magazine and Headline Fonts from woork.com, 10 Beautiful Icon sets for web developers and designers. Keeping on the icon sets theme, noupe.com has a round-up of 40 hand-picked icon sets from deviantART. Finally, from JonTangerine.com, 12 Examples of Paragraph Typography.

3 Nice Scripts to Check Out

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:48:02 -0500

From David Walsh Blog, has a nice article, showing how to make "fancy navigation" with MooTools that highlights the navigation items and creates a chain effect. Fancy Navigation with MooTools Javascript CrossSlide is a jQuery plugin that implements some common slide-show animations that are usually seen only via Flash. Position:absolute shows how to create a hover image link fader with jQuery.

Bored to see the same old CSS image replacement tricks for your hover links? Add a little twist.Make it fadeIn and fadeOut on hover without even touching the CSS.

Two Nice Photoshop Links

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:43:22 -0500

Hongkiat.com rounds-up more Photoshop text effect tutorials in 50 Great Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials, Part II From Emma Alvarez, 50 Free Photoshop Gradient Sets.

Web Design and Developer Links

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:56:13 -0500

From Style Time, a shared collection of vector PDS files that the author has collected. Worth a browse! D:/Templates - Final resting place of all good Vector’s PSD files and more… From Janko at Warp Speed, learn how to make a graphic comment form from a postcard graphic, in Photoshop. From CSS Divine, a nice round-up of 55+ background paper textures for use in Web Design.. Finally, From Hidden Pixels, more free CSS Templates worth browsing.

20 Free Page Analysis Tools

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:50:10 -0500

For those that like to know everything about their sites (or someone else's), Design Mag has a round-up of 20 tools to help analyze any site. 20 Free Page Analysis Tools

2 nice Javascript Posts

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:46:50 -0500

NETTUTS has a nice article today, with a round-up of 10 techniques to improve user interface with Javascript. 10 Smart Javascript Techniques to Improve Your UI. From Bulletproof Box, learn how to Create a Tabbed Navigation Area with CSS and jQuery.

CSS Typography: Contrast Techniques, Tutorials and Best Practices

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:54:22 -0500

From noupe.com a nice round-up of css typography tips, tricks and tutorials.

The main advantage of elegant CSS typography lies in its ability to be both attractive and improves the user experience. When chosen wisely and used carefully, it can be very effective to support the overall design. There are many outstanding examples of how we can do this, and below you will find some of the best ideas and tips when it comes to using Fonts and typography in your CSS based sites.

CSS Typography: Contrast Techniques, Tutorials and Best Practices

End of the Weekend Link Digest

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:00:42 -0500

Here are some links that caught my eye in the past couple of days ... Just Creative Design takes a look at the Top 7 Most Overused Techniques and Elements in Graphic Design. From woork.com, 7 Stunning tutorials to design modern interfaces for websites. From StylizedWeb, a Simple Show/Hide with CSS. From Plasticmind, 10 Tips for Creating Website Mockups in Photoshop. Design Reviver has some great CSS tips at 13 Training Principles of CSS Everyone Should Know. From Outlaw Design Blog, grab a nice free grunge font.

How to Master Photoshop in Just One Week

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:00:32 -0500

Is learning Photoshop on your "To Do" list? (It's been on mine for a while!). If so, then Elite By Design would like to help with their 3 part series of Photoshop instruction.

So you want to master Photoshop huh? You’ve come to the right place. This is the first part of a three part series that will help you to master Photoshop in and out in just one week. Today’s part is all about getting to know the basics of the program and how to operate the complex software - nothing amazing, but you need to crawl before you can walk!

How To Master Photoshop In Just One Week: Part 1