A Beautiful Apple-style Slideshow Gallery With CSS & jQuery Martin Angelov Introduction When speaking about design, there is one company that is impossible to go without. Apple values design – being a new product, a fancy catalog or their website – there is always something to admire. This week, we are making an Apple-like slideshow gallery, similar to the one they use on their website to showcase their products. So go ahead and download the example source code and continue with the first step. Step 1 – XHTML There is no need for a database nor a PHP back-end for this gallery. Lets take a closer look at the XHTML markup: demo.html The idea is simple – there are two main container DIVs – the one with id=”menu” holds the thumbnails, and the other – “slides” holds the slides themselves. To add a new slide, you’ll just have to add new elements to both containers. You can even put any kind of HTML in as well. Also notice that the thumbnail LI elements. Now lets continue with the next step. An Apple-like Slideshow Gallery Step 2 – CSS demo.css Step 3 – jQuery
CSS List Style Wizard CSS List Style Wizard Welcome to the CSS List Style Wizard! Use this wizard to experiment with list styles and generate sample CSS style source code. List Style Notes You can use any list style property for either ordered or unordered lists. Use cascading to apply style properties to sub-levels of the list. For information on dynamically setting styles with Javascript and how the HTML toggle buttons work, please see HTML and CSS Table Border Style Wizard. CSS Image Bullets As you may notice in the wizard, when using images as the bullet, the bullet does not line up to the text in an attractive way. As a work-around, you can properly align bullet images via the background image CSS property. You can see the style sheet and example below. More CSS Wizards Recommended Books Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference (2nd Edition)
99 Icon Sets To Use In Commercial Design Projects Today’s blog post we have decided to do a massive collection of 99 icon sets which can each be used within commercial design projects. This compilation was put together simply because of the lack of free icon sets which are available to be used in commercial design projects, what’s the point creating an icon set if its not free to use ? A great blog post of high quality icon sets which is a greate reference to bookmark for future reference. This post was time consuming putting together therefore any comments on your thoughts about the article would defiantly be really appreciated. 1. This high quality, hand made, icon pack is full with 9 Extreme Grunge Social Media Garments. 2. 50 Free and Exclusive Twitter Icons The icons are provided in both raster and vector formats: The transparent PNG versions are 256×256, and we have also included Illustrator files so that you can resize the icons as needed. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 21 folders icons . 11. 12. 13. 330 Free Letter Pressed Icons 14. 15.
CSS Layout Generator About the CSS Layout Generator The CSS Layout Generator was first released by Tony Aslett in October 2003, since then over 871,000 layouts have been generated. Updated in November 2010, HTML5 doctype can now be selected and a simple HTML5 template with appropriate tags will be created. Other HTML and XHTML doctypes are still available. The generator helps you create the structure of your website template using valid HTML and CSS. You can create a fluid or fixed width floated column layout, with up to 3 columns and with header and footer. The generator requires a modern DOM capable browser with JavaScript enabled. Instructions To create your layout select the structural elements your site requires (header, footer, columns). Info popups are available where you see InfoMore info example :) icon, just hover over it for more information. Join the CSS Forum to suggest changes or ask for help where needed. Author: Tony Aslett
20 Best jQuery Slideshow / Photo Gallery Plugins Photo Gallery, picture gallery, or slideshow are the best way to showcase your images/photos to your readers. jQuery Slideshow plugins are very useful to show the photo gallery in your blog or website in a eye catching way. Most of these plugins are lightweight , easy to install and compatible with all popular browsers . We can display sliding content in mobile devices ( like iphone, ipad , Andriod smartphones ) also with these plugins. Just with few lines of coding we can create beautiful animation effects with these plugins. This post is a showcase of 20 best jQuery slideshow plugins. 1.Galleria Galleria is a JavaScript slideshow plugin for image gallery unlike anything else. 2.Galleriffic Galleriffic is a jQuery plugin that provides a rich, post-back free experience optimized to handle high volumes of photos while conserving bandwidth. 3.Nivo Slider Nivo Slider is a lightweight jQuery Slider plugin for creating good-looking image sliders. 4.Avia Slider 5.Pikachoose 6.Image Flow 9.prettyPhoto
25 Awesome Tools for Choosing a Website Color Scheme 25 Awesome Tools for Choosing a Website Color Scheme As a designer, color management should be an integral part of your workflow. A website’s color scheme helps shape its identity and therefore should not be carelessly thrown together. Here are 25 online, desktop and iPhone applications to help you live and breathe color management no matter where you are. Online Tools There are simply a ton of free color tools available on the web. Kuler Kuler is one of the best free online color scheme creation tools out there and my personal favorite. Color Scheme Designer Color Scheme Designer has a beautiful interface that helps you create beautiful color schemes in seconds. colorblind simulation is built in so you can ensure usability will be optimized for all users. Colour Lovers An online community where color aficionados can create, share and browse color schemes. Pictaculous The guys at MailChimp created this excellent free service. Color Spire Daily Color Scheme Instant Color Schemes Color Explorer Loupe
20 Questions To Ask Clients Prior To Designing A Logo Before starting any project it’s essential to get the right preliminary information from your clients. This will help pave the way to a successful project, assist in bringing client’s vision into perspective and build a lasting relationship. Many of the questions below will also help in putting together an accurate quote for your client. Things such as deadlines, usage, etc. should take into account pricing. Since my primary focus in is logo design, below are 20 questions to ask your clients prior to beginning their new logo design. Also, many of these questions can be applied to other forms of design, so feel free to integrate them into your questions for various forms of print and web design. Company-related questions 1- How would you describe your services and/or products? 2- What are the long term goals of your company? 3- Why do you want a new logo? 4- Who are your main competitors? 5- How are you different from your competitors? 6- What’s the age range of your target customer base?
Five Minute Upgrade – Making Your Design Pop 1. Brighten Colors If you have a design that you just feel isn’t anything special – stop – crank up the color intensity – then reevaluate. 2. Monochromatic themes are great, there are some great black and white designs and sometimes using only a single color makes designing easier. 3. Here’s the deal, align your text and things will look better, not to mention it will increase your scannability. 4. This was discussed wonderfully over at PsdTuts a while back but there are a few key things to keep in mind. Don’t be afraid to use shadows sparingly, helps fight the flat and boring look.1px lines are great at clearly defining edges.Using faint gradients over text and backgrounds gives a subtle 3D look. 5. Overlap your images in ways that are out of the ordinary. 6. Give your user room to appreciate what you’ve done, it will help them focus on each element and not feel overwhelmed. 7. Adding noise to a background, including some rock pattern that fades into the backdrop, scribbles, whatever.
The Elements of Retro Web Design The vintage and retro style is becoming more and more popular in today’s digital artwork. The use of retro and vintage themes in design is probably one of the most pervasive trends since the industry went almost completely digital. In today’s post, we’ll look at examples of work sourced from the wonderful Dribbble, which helps us focus on snippets of a piece, rather than the entire design or illustration. From here, it’s possible to identify what techniques have been used and to describe how they impact the overall design. You will become familiar with these design trends and be able to replicate them. To help you, short tutorials are scattered throughout the article. 1. Simple shapes are commonly used in vintage design. p This lovely illustration makes use of elliptical shapes to produce a sun and is finished off nicely with a typographic effect. Circlebox Creative’s branding is based on a circle and inspired by vintage ink stamps and badges. Mini-Tutorials And we’re done! 2. Color Resources
27 Must-Have Starter Kits For Web Designers Starter kits are great timesavers for web designers and they are particularly useful for those who often create mock-ups for project pitching on daily basis. If you are a designer-cum-programmer think of it as your code snippets So what’s in a starter kit? In today’s article, we attempt to show you some of the best design starter kit we’ve come to know. GUI, Form Elements and Web Components From form elements like checkboxes, input fields, textareas to web design components like buttons, arrows, icons, badges and more. Yahoo’s Design Stencil Kit Probably one of the most complete kit for designers. Web Form Elements With all these tabs, buttons, dropdowns in one single PSD file, it’s sure going to give you a kick start in interface design. Browser Form Elements PSD Browser Form Elements PSD for Mac Firefox 3 and another for Vista IE7. Flex Dark Skin Sleek dark skin interface elements. Peter’s DeivantART ID Design ID cards made easy with this PSD template. Turquoise PSD Vista elements. Cursors
25 New Illustrator Tutorials That Will Make You A Master Of Vector Art Just because you can usually get a similar effect in Photoshop doesn’t mean the end result will be as good as using Illustrator (depending on the project). If you are like me (and I will bet most of you are) you will go ahead and use PS because you know it much better even though the final project will not be as good or as functional as it could be. Well it’s time to buck up and get this learning curve completely out of the way so you make the right choice next time. Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular photo editing programs that has ever been created. This tutorial teaches you how to make a portrait of William Shakespeare in Illustrator using text. Article Link Advertisement A very interesting tutorial, from Design Instruct, that takes you behind the scenes and shows you the illustration process from start to finish. Article Link In this tutorial, you’ll use the Blend Tool, Paintbrush Tool and textures to create a stunning abstract piece of art. Article Link Article Link Article Link
Beautiful/Decay Cult of the Creative Arts Gabriel Moreno does beautiful work with such basic materials: a pen and a brush. His illustrations begin in black and white, upon which Moreno builds, adding layers of color and images of other places and people tattooed into their skin. Flowers, birds, and faces organically expand from his subjects, as if a rush of creativity, or a dream, is escaping them.