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You might have seen these fading dividers/separators on various sites, which seem to fade both horizontally and vertically. Here is an example of what I mean:
They provide a great way to split content up, doing so in a subtle and non-intrusive manner. I would like to share a simple way to create these fading dividers using Photoshop.
Lightbox scripts have become a very popular way of displaying images online in recent months. There are a huge number of them available, using a variety of different frameworks and languages.
I’m pleased to announce that today, in partnership with Pirolab, there’s a new jQuery lightbox script available. It has been designed and created by Diego Valobra. If you’d like to read more about the features and download the lightbox script, click through to read on.
I just thought I’d take a moment to mention a new designer forum which launched recently. Design Forums has had a really successful first month, with over 180 members and some 1500 posts. I’m not generally a huge forum fan, preferring to frequent design sites and blogs which have better ‘crafted’ content and articles. That said, I’ve read a few very well thought out posts with some excellent discussion over the past month.
It’s a UK based site, which means that it may not be perfectly suited to US readers (though to be perfectly honest, most of the content is very general).
Take a look and do let me know your thoughts. Are there any other design forums which you frequent regularly?
Our partner site, 13 Styles has just released a new CSS menu called “Simple Hover“. It is, as the name suggests, a simple affair, with a link description appearing when hovered over.
The menu is completely free to download, use and customize, contains no images (it’s all CSS) and should work in any browser or operating system you use.
Please let me know if you find any problems or would like to contribute a menu in the future.
A project we have been working on for a while launches today – Design Top 10. The site will be updated every month, featuring the best website designs, tutorials and resources published in that period. Hopefully it will grow into a great place to find inspiration and keep up to date with the best content produced online.
The design stems from a notebook style layout, as the site is a ‘scrapbook’ of discoveries and inspiration on a monthly basis. I feel that it fits the profile of the site well and I’m really happy with it.
Please take a look at the site and, if you find it appealing, write a post about it or drop me a comment – I’d love to hear what you think. I hope you find Design Top 10 a useful source of inspiration!
The ‘Dashboard’ feature on a Mac looks great, and the menu allowing you to add/remove widgets is a well designed feature. A similar effect can add a whole new level of functionality to a website, providing a simple slide-down menu at the top of a page. This tutorial will walk you through the process from beginning to end.
Before getting started, you may like to check out the demo, or download full source code here.
Thank you to all who participated in our 3D Spiral giveaway. We have randomly selected three winners, who are:
Congratulations! We have contacted each of you with information on how to claim your free copy of the 3D Spiral flash component.
To be notified whenever we give away new products and freebies, click below to subscribe:
For those of us who travel often, we often end up accessing our emails and other confidential web accounts on public computers. In such circumstances, we are completely at the mercy of keyloggers and other malicious software that track our keystrokes and record our passwords.
Yet, very few websites provide their users with the option of using a virtual keyboard to key in (at the bare minimum) their passwords. Yes, a few banks do it, but considering how much personal information we store in various web applications these days, the safety of these accounts are of no less significance to us. This tutorial will explain how we can implement a simple virtual keyboard with some (well, okay, lots of!) help from jQuery.
Before I begin, let me show you how it will all look in the end.
We have teamed up with FlashLoaded to give away 3 free copies of their latest Flash component, 3D Spiral (a retail value of $49.95 each).
The 3D Spiral is a Flash gallery component that displays images on an interactive 3D rotating spiral. You are able to obtain different layouts by changing the height and width of the spiral. The viewer can scroll, move up/down and zoom the spiral freely.
GoodBarry is a system which, rather than simply providing a content management service, attempts to offer all the facilities you need to turn your website into a fully functional online business. These range from e-commerce, to newsletter provision, to a complete customer management system. This review is going to cover what my main likes and dislikes are about the system, along with explaining under what circumstances it is particularly suitable.
Before reading this, it might be worth a minute of your time to watch the introductory video at GoodBarry.com. It gives you a quick flavour for what the system does and how it helps to manage your online business.
Contact forms are an indispensable part of every website. They are mostly implemented on a separate page and they rarely display creativity, even though there are many ways to improve their visual style. In this tutorial you will see how to create a dynamic, slide-in contact form using jQuery.
Let’s see what we’re trying to achieve with this tutorial. The image below shows the layout of our goal. In the upper right corner of the content is “Contact us” link. When the user clicks on it, the contact form will slide down. When the user submits the form they will get a message that their message has been sent successfully and within two seconds, the entire form will slide up.
As far as online web design magazines go, A List Apart has been around for as long as I can remember. Their regular articles never cease to probe into new areas of design, or express existing techniques in a new and forward thinking way.
A new post today is celebrating A List Apart’s 10 year anniversary, looking back at how the project started out and evolved over a decade. It also gives an insight into how article submissions are processed and filtered, along with who edits and designs the site today.
If you’re a regular reader, or interested in contributing to A List Apart in the future, it is an article well worth a read.