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CSS Web Design Examples, Tutorials and Other Resource

CSS Beauty is not only an active database for well-designed CSS sites but it is also a way to connect designers with potential clients and a source for web design and general aesthetic inspiration.

Web Design Inspiration is a collection of screenshots showing excellent web designs. It is well worth browsing simply for graphic and web design inspiration.

Web Creme is a very simple site and easy to follow on RSS: screenshots are posted, often more than once per day, of truly impressive web designs.

Unmatched Style is a source for businesses and designers who seek inspiration from particularly attractive, interesting and progressive web designs.

Design Firms is one of many sites on which you can find designers directly but your best bet might be a simple Google search or simply contacting the author of a design found through one of the above-listed design inspiration sites.

25 Beautiful Minimalist Web Designs shows the awesome power of simplicity when it comes to web design - more isn’t necessarily better.

24 Great Niche Galleries has screenshots with descriptions and links to various galleries that you might want to see for more web design inspiration.

10 Great Web [Re]Designs of 2007 features mostly popular and mainstream sites you may already be familiar with but also provides some useful analysis.

Best of CSS 2007 is another great screenshot-packed eye-candy collection of cool web designs from last year - worth bookmarking for future inspiration.

Love it or hate it Web 2.0 design has had a big impact recently. Some consider it a passing fad, others see it as the future. If you’re in the former category then this is the list for you. Contained within this post are 99 resources for Web 2.0 design. Click on through and find:

• Badges
• Buttons
• Rounded Corners
• Logos
• Icons
• Gradient Images
• Speech bubbles
• Background images
• Colors
• Navigation icons
• Favicons
• Charts
• … and more.

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Sphere: Related Content

The most excellent site GoogleSystem has a write up on how to enable you to chat with your site’s visitors using Google Talk.

Google Talk’s gadget was a nice addition, but you couldn’t use it to chat with unknown people or with the visitors of the site, like in Meebo Me. Now you can do that using the new chatback badges. You only need to add some code to your site and anyone could click on the generated badge to chat with you.

“A Google Talk chatback badge allows others to chat with you even if they haven’t signed up for Google Talk or a Google Account. You can put the badge in your blog or website, and people who visit those pages can chat with you. The badge will display your online status (whether you’re available to chat or not) and, optionally, your status message.”

If someone clicks on the badge, a special version of the Google Talk gadget will open and he will be able to chat with you.

The conversations are private and only one-to-one, so other visitors won’t be able to read them. For some strange reason, they’re not even added in Gmail’s chat section. Unfortunately, being constantly interrupted by other people is not very pleasant, so you can disable the link from your badge by setting your status to “busy” or by signing out of Google Talk.

I’ve put this in place on my site to test it out. It was extremely simple to enable, just scroll down to the bottom of the page and look in the About Me section and you’ll see my Google Talk badge!

Johnny Chung Lee unlocks the Wii’s hidden potential.

In a collection of videos, notable for their lucid explanations, the Ph.D. graduate student from CMU’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute shows exactly how versatile the “Wiimote” system can be. Among the uses he convincingly demonstrates: a virtual-reality head-tracker; a virtual whiteboard on a wall, tabletop, and laptop screen; and a Minority Report-style arm-waving and finger-pointing multitouch user interface.

As of September 2007, Nintendo has sold over 13 million Wii game consoles. This significantly exceeds the number of Tablet PCs in use today according to even the most generous estimates of Tablet PC sales. This makes the Wii Remote one of the most common computer input devices in the world. It also happens to be one of the most sophisticated. It contains a 1024×768 infrared camera with built-in hardware blob tracking of up to 4 points at 100Hz. This significantly out performs any PC “webcam” available today. It also contains a +/-3g 8-bit 3-axis accelerometer also operating at 100Hz and an expandsion port for even more capability.

So that’s the geeky shit. Check out this video and have yer mind blown.

Check the full article on CNet’s News.com here. You can also visit Johnny’s Wii project page to see more examples, as well as instructions on how you can do this yourself!

“Throughout Lifehacker’s archive of over 14,000 posts, they’ve mentioned hundreds of free web and desktop apps that help you get things done—but which are the best? As they wrap up the year 2007, it’s the perfect time to put together an authoritative guide to their favorite pieces of free software and web services for common computing tasks on every platform. ”

I agree with nearly every selection they’ve made!

Application Launchers

• Launchy (Windows, open source)
  Previous coverage: Download of the Day: Launchy, Take Launchy Beyond Application Launching (Feature), Tweaking Launchy (Screenshot Tour)
• Quicksilver (Mac OS X, open source)
  Previous coverage: A Beginner’s Guide to Quicksilver, Advanced Quicksilver Guide, The Quicksilver Video Extravaganza, Nine Time-saving Quicksilver Triggers, Top 10 Quicksilver Plugins, Quicksilver Creator on the Future of QS (Exclusive Lifehacker Interview).

Backup Utilities

• SyncBackSE (Windows, local backup, freeware)
  Previous coverage: Automatically Back Up Your Hard Drive with SyncBack (Feature)
• Time Machine (Mac OS X, local backup, built into Leopard)
  Previous coverage: The Simplicity of Time Machine Compels You, Schedule Your Time Machine Backups with TimeMachineScheduler
• Mozy (Windows/Mac, online backup, up to 2GB free)
  Previous coverage: Back Up Files with Mozy

BitTorrent

• uTorrent (Windows, Free)
  Previous coverage: Organize Your BitTorrent Downloads with uTorrent
• Transmission (Mac OS X, open source)
  Previous coverage: Download of the Day: Transmission
• ted (Windows/Mac/Linux, free)
  Previous coverage: Automatically Download Your Favorite TV Shows with ted
• See also: A Beginner’s Guide to BitTorrent, Intermediate Guide to BitTorrent

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