etc.

Round-up: Good reads from the last few day you might have missed

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:48:58 -0500

Things have seemed a little quiet in the webdev and design the the last while, but I still have a backlog of articles and resources that caught my eye. Here are some great reads that you might have missed ...

5 Simple But Useful CSS Properties (Web Designer Wall)
10 Fantastic and Creative Web Design Styles (Inspect Element)
26 Must Have Resources for the Web Developers Toolbox (Fuel Your Creativity)
What Beautiful HTML Code Looks Like (CSS Tricks)
CSS Resources, Tutorials, Cheat Sheets, Conversion Tables and Short Codes (Specky Boy)
55 Striking Website Headers That You Must See (Smashing Buzz)
Latest High Quality Free Fonts for Your Designs (Instant Shift)
Color and CSS Tools for Web Designers (InDeziner)
Ways to Avoid Common Web Design Mistakes (Five Finger Coding)

A Guide to Creating Email Newsletters

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:45:51 -0500

Adding an email newsletter to a site is a great extension of site brand and a great way to engage new readers/customers. Web Designer Depot has a great guide to creating an email newsletter, worth a read if this is something you've thought about.

A Guide to Creating Email Newsletters »

20 Useful and Nicely Designed Web Applications

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:55:16 -0500

From WebAppers, a collection of sites that are not only useful for web designers/developers, but are great examples of web design, as well. A nice article, worth browsing.

20 Useful and Nicely Designed Web Applications »

Rest of the Best: for November 2 2009

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:02:05 -0500

If you've had a busy day and didn't have time to keep up with the best web design and development articles, here are the ones that caught my eye today ...

40 Fresh and Free Icon Sets for Web Designers and Bloggers » (Specky Boy)
31 Creative Uses of Typography in Web Design » (Designm.ag)
Rounded Corners in Internet Explorer » (Dave Woods)
55 Extremely Useful Online Generators for Designers » (Balkhis.com)
Best Creative Bookmarks of October » (Tutorial 9)
Impressive WordPress Themes Released in October 2009 » (WPMash)
Selling Ad Space Tips from Top Design Blog Owners » ( Line 25)
50 Outstanding Free Design Textures » (Design Shack)
Designing Above the Fold » (Five Finger Coding)
15 jQuery Slideshow and Plugins » (Web and Designers)
Logo Design Tutorial » (Just Creative Design)

40 New Useful Web Development Tools and Resources

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:58:43 -0500

Noupe has "a useful collection of new web development tools to save developers and designers time, energy, and headaches". A big list of resources worth browsing.

40 New Useful Web Development Tools and Resources »

A Beautiful Apple style Slideshow Gallery With CSS and jQuery

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:09:36 -0500

From Tutorialzine, a detailed how-to create a good looking, apple style slideshow gallery. Worth a look for a nice gallery script.

A Beautiful Apple style Slideshow Gallery With CSS and jQuery »

10 Awesome Techniques and Examples of Animation with jQuery

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:35:09 -0500

Six Revisions takes a look at how to introduce animation into designs with the help of jQuery.

In this article, we share with you some innovative uses of jQuery in animating web design elements. You’ll read about some interesting techniques, tutorials, and examples that will show you how to create similar effects on your own websites and web apps.

10 Awesome Techniques and Examples of Animation with jQuery »

Breadcrumb Navigation Examined: Best Practices

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:31:22 -0500

Hongkiat takes a look at the sometimes overlooked area of breadcrumb navigation and provides some examples of breadcrumb done well and best practices.

Breadcrumb navigation is often overlooked in the design and development process. Some people may see it as unnecessary while others may feel it is too big of a hassle for what its worth. Fact of the matter is, breadcrumb navigation will greatly increase the usability of a website. Breadcrumbs give users an alternative method of navigation, allow them to see where they stand in the hierarchy of a website, and will reduce the number of steps needed to navigate to a higher-level within a website.

Breadcrumb Navigation Examined: Best Practices and Examples

12 Essental Plugins to Extend WordPress as a CMS

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:39:06 -0500

From Web Design Ledger, a look at 12 plugins that can take WordPress beyond blogging and into a CMS.

Using WordPress more as a standard CMS often requires some creative thinking when building themes and setting up the structure of categories and content. In this article we present to you 12 very useful plugins that will give your WordPress install extended CMS functionality.

12 Essential Plugins to Extend WordPress as a CMS

Two Nice Scripts for Rotating Image or Content Display

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:31:39 -0500

Two nice script today, for displaying rotating images or content:

Create a Simple jQuery Carousel (Quesness)
Create a Horizontal Accordian with Ajax (Dynamic Drive)

100 Clean Simple and Minimalist Website Designs

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:27:02 -0500

From Hongkiat, a nice collection of the best of minimalist web design, worth browsing.

Many people still view minimalist designs as boring. But there’s a real art to effective minimal website designs, something not all designers can effectively master. When you limit the number of graphic elements you use and put the focus on negative space and typography, a good eye for spacing and proportion becomes crucial.

100 Clean Simple and Minimalist Website Designs

19 Top Font Combinations

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:40:44 -0500

If you only have time to read one article today, this is the one I would recommend! I haven't seen a lot of articles on the subject of combining fonts effectively and this one is done really well. Definitely worth a read.

I followed the golden rule of font combinations, which is simply to combine a serif and a sans serif to give “contrast” and not “concord”. The farther apart the typeface styles are, as a guideline, the more luck you’ll have. Fonts that are too similar look bad. Set a line of Times Roman over Garamond and you’ll see what I mean. I chose the simple model of a bold headline font and normal weight body font. All the font combinations got the same “lorem” text.

19 Top Font Combinations »

Fonts for Designers

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:34:25 -0500

From Woork Up, the first in what will be a series of weekly posts, highlighting great fonts for designers. Each week will feature 5 fonts. Worth browsing.

Fonts for Designers (Part 1) » (Woork Up)

Create Sidebars of Equal Height with Faux Column

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:25:43 -0500

Faux Columns are not a new concept but one worth revisiting if it's not one that you normally use.

There are times when even the simplest of layouts take some serious brainstorming! One of those frustrating times is when you want to create a series of columns of equal height, but the content in one column might be longer than the next. Here’s where the Faux Column technique steps in, let’s take a look at how this solution can make even the most complicated layout a breeze to code up.

Create Sidebars of Equal Height with Faux Columns »

Fresh Web Development Goodies Bag

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:22:00 -0500

Noupe has put together a collection of 30 extremely useful development tools, templates, generators, and security suggestions, hoping you are inspired to utilize these handy tools to make your life easier.

Fresh Web Development Goodies Bag » (Noupe)