Last Weeks Hot Topics (03/07/11)

Here's a quick selection from this weeks blog posts I've found interesting from my RSS feed.

I hope you do too.

So, sit back, Relax!. Have a cup of Joe.

Enjoy.

If you've got any suggestions or you've got a blog I should add to my list of many then catch me on twitter

CSS3 Linear Gradients
Good write-up on CSS3 Linear Gradients + link to useful tool....=

Sliding Background Image Menu with jQuery
View demo Download source Today we want to share another jQuery menu with you. This menu will have several panels, each one corresponding to a different background image that will show on all panels w...

leanModal – A Micro jQuery Modal Plugin
Advertise here with BSA leanModal is a lightweight jQuery plugin for displaying modal boxes with minimum effort. The plugin doesnt use any images and a very good solution for for displaying anything...

Eliminate task duplicates
How many unique tasks are there in the following list? • Book an appointment online • Appointment reminders • Let me book an appointment • Make an appointment • Request an appointment Yes, two. One ta...

Are You a Creative Blogger?
This guest post is by Chris Kahler of bloggeritus.com . It doesn’t take a genius to stroll around cyberspace and quickly find that the World Wide Web is littered with junk. There is a lot of “stuff” ...

Aesop on giving critiques
It’s easy to speak negatively about the work of others, but never forget the quality of your own. The Two Bags According to ancient lore, every man is born into the world with two bags suspended from ...

RockWell – Portfolio & Blog WordPress Theme
Click on image for demo! Features 43 Unique ‘Category’ Templates – could be used as a Blog, Portfolio or just about anything you want 20 Unique ‘Single Post’ Templates – could be used as a Blog, Portf...

40 Examples of Beautiful Yellow Website Designs
Yellow is the color evoked by light that stimulates both the long and medium wavelength cone cells of the retina about equally, with no significant stimulation of the short-wave cone cells . A Light w...

Waving not drowning: or how I gave in and learned to love the content strategy flood.
Here’s a sobering admission. If the body of knowledge of content strategy is an ocean, I’m currently about ten foot out from

19 Free Block Print Textures
I've got a cool treat for you guys today. L&T reader Derek Oscarson has provided this set of 19 free letterpress and block print textures that you can use freely in your design projects (personal &co...

50 Questions to Ask Yourself after 6 Months of Freelancing
tweetmeme_source = 'FreelanceFolder'; It’s a well-known fact that most freelancers don’t get performance reviews. For one thing, most private clients don’t think of it. Even on bidding sites where...

The healthy future of the web industry maybe short-lived
Just three weeks ago I was stood on a stage in Vancouver, Canada. One of the first lines I said to the audience was, “Our industry is in one of the most exciting times of its life.”I meant every singl...

CSS3 Transitions with Custom Easing Functions
CSS3 transitions are easy to implement, more performant than the setTimeout based alternative &because of this work really well on mobile devices. However, it is not as flexible as the Javascript alte...

Fabric Texture In Web Design
In this showcase we have featured some of beautiful and creative fabric textured web designs for inspiration which inspired you how to use a fabric textures in your own web design. We also included so...

Add a Google+ Badge to Your Website
Google’s new Google+ service is taking the development world by storm, and why shouldn’t it?  It’s minimalistic UI, use of cutting edge web techniques, and overall usability make it Google+ one of the...

10 Principles Of Effective Web Designing
Web designing is not just creating a site with colorful images. You need to follow various rules and use tools for designing a website to attract target traffic. Using website design templates has si...

7 Top Freelance Survival Tips
tweetmeme_source = 'FreelanceFolder'; These seven freelance survival tips will help to see you through the lean times -and there will be lean times, at least until you have an established, reliabl...

Things Worth Paying For as a Freelancer
Advertise here with BSA A freelancer, like a baker, needs a few essential tools with which they create their products and use in order to offer their services. Instead of pots, mixing bowls, spoons an...

Ribbons and tags in web design
Trends can be born so silently and subtly that we seldom notice them. And when you survey hundreds of websites, you often see patterns that you would otherwise miss. One such pattern is the frequent u...

5 Simple Tips for Creating an Effective FAQ Page
A Frequently Asked Questions page is necessary if you’re selling something, providing a service, or giving information about a complex subject. It takes the guesswork away from your visitors who may h...

Episode #28: News Roundup and Ryan’s Weird Thing of the Week
This week Ryan is back from his spreadsheets and talks us through the possibilities of 3D hologram websites. We also discuss using WordPress to power your newspaper , the release of GitHub for Mac ,...

You Want To Become An Effective Web Designer? Follow These Steps!
Tweet Web designing is not just creating a site with colorful images. You need to follow various rules and use tools for designing a website to attract target traffic. Using free web site templates ha...

Typography Inspiration: 20 Creative Examples
Advertise here with BSA The word typography , from the greek word typos, is the art and technique of arranging type. And I have to agree that arranging typography is an art. Some designers have the r...

Introducing LazyLoad 2.0
While improvements in browsers means more cool APIs for us to play with, it also means we need to maintain existing code.  With Firefox 4#8242s release came news that my MooTools LazyLoad plugin was ...

Using Typekit fonts in your own CSS
With some of the recent improvements to our kits , Typekit is providing more tools for using fonts on the web than ever before. The options range from basic and drop-dead simple (just add fonts and s...

Showcase of Inspiring “About Me” Pages
Advertise here A creative about me page will attract a reader’s attention, and, more importantly, provide them with a quick sampling of what you or your company represents. Are you playful, stylish, c...

Charging for freelance design: by the hour or per project?
Have you ever found yourself pulling your hair out over how much to charge for a design project? It can be very frustrating and usually ends up costing you more time (and thus money) than it should. T...

When You Absolutely, Positively Must Know if Your Content Will Rock … Do This
Ever had a great idea, and then started to doubt yourself? Or maybe you’ve already executed on that great idea, but you’re hesitating to launch. Maybe it’s an article, or an ebook, or a completely new...

Five Copywriting Errors That Can Ruin A Company’s Website
No matter how brilliant a website’s design, no matter how elegant its navigation, sooner or later visitors will decide whether to take action because of something they read . In the end, the effectiv...

Attitude Design Official Apple iPhone App Developers
We’re pleased to announce that Attitude Design are now official Apple Developers. This means we can now create Apps officially under the name of Attitude Design Ltd. We have been developing apps for t...

The Mysterious Ways of Web Typography
It has recently come to my attention that there are more honest politicians than there are web designers who understand typography. As few as that!? You cry. When I say ‘typography’here, I am not tal...

How to Create a Basic WordPress Theme with Gantry Framework
Advertise here with BSA Gantry Framework is a WordPress theme framework that, unlike most of its modern counterparts, allows the user to construct a layout and color palette from within the WordPress ...

Share Your Code with GitHub for Mac
GitHub for Mac has just launched recently. Now you can Clone repositories, Browse history, Commit changes, Branch code, and Share code on github.com as simple as possible. The sync button pushes your ...

25 of the Best Law Firm Website Designs
Attorney websites have a history of being boring and bland. Pages and pages of legal history and attorney-speak can only be spiffed up so much, right? Well it looks like some lawyers have started taki...

Fluid grid calculator
What with Ethan’s book and A List Apart article the whole community is responsive design mad. Which is a good thing…I’ve been looking at redesigning CSS Wizardry onto a fluid grid and also adding a ...

Techniques for Context Specific Images
One of the shortfalls of using CSS media queries as the only ingredient of a mobile solution is that the same content gets served to both desktop browsers and mobile devices (which theoretically are s...

How should a web designer use the services of social media?
Social media is the hottest topic online, but recently its importance seems to be transcending to real life as well. The great advantage of social media is that it allows people to communicate and exc...

25 Beautiful Navigation Menus
Navigation menus are a critical part of web design because of their importance for usability and creating a position user experience. Websites with poor navigational structure or a lack of clarity in ...

CSS Counters – The Right Way to Organize Your Ordered Content
It is pretty common to see step-based content. Tutorials, shopping carts, FAQ’s, grandma’s recipes. You know, numbers and steps are really good to grab attention, so many writers use this....

The Keys to Making Fresh, Forwardly Aesthetic Web Designs
Great graphics . Beautiful typography . Clean design . These are all things designers typically think of when creating stunning websites. But is it really just that combination of elements that pro...

How To Plan Content Marketing Strategies For Your Website
Theres an old saying that goes “If you fail to plan, youre planning to fail.”To put that another way, no one ever plans to fail or do a bad job, but plenty of people plan to make a plan of any kind...

25 Informative YQL tutorials to get you started with YQL
Yahoo! query language ( YQL ) is an SQL-like query language created by Yahoo! as part of their Developer Network. YQL is designed to retrieve and manipulate data from APIs through a single Web interfa...

9 ways to build an easy, engaging content strategy
Technology and luxury: two industries that move at a fast pace, demanding constant innovation and high quality products. Luxury was slow in embracing the digital world, but has come a long way in a so...

30 Creative Navigation Menus
It’s not always easy creating a navigation menu that stands out, and also serves its purpose without getting in the way. Sites that have a huge number of category pages in particular can be quite daun...

Useful Ideas And Guidelines For Good Web Form Design
The input form is an essential element of almost any website or application these days. Input is a core method of interaction, and in many cases it represents the hard conversion point between success...

50 Minimalist And Stylish Free WordPress Themes
WordPress is the preferred content management system of many bloggers and internet marketers owing to many reasons. Out of them its easily available theme is the most important reason that can complet...

Should Freelance Designers Run Design Blogs?
To blog or not to blog -that is the question. For freelancers, especially designers, it can be a particularly difficult question. Blogs have popped up as one of the most recommended methods for a free...

An Introduction to Object Oriented CSS
With richer interactions and media heavy pages mushrooming on the web, creating web pages, which load faster and respond well has become a challenge. Separating the content, presentation and behavior ...

HTML5 and CSS3 Form References, Resources and Tutorials
Advertise here with BSA This article explores some of the new HTML5 form features and how it has greatly improved text inputs, search boxes and other form fields by providing better and cleaner contro...

Showcase of Impressive Design Process Explanations
A common feature amongst the top design portfolio and agency websites is a visually presented explanation of their design process. This simple idea of describing how a potential client’s project will ...

25 Examples of Capital Letters Usage in Web Design
Advertise here with BSA Letter case -in orthography and typography is the distinction between the larger majuscule (capital, caps, upper-case, upper case, or uppercase) and smaller minuscule (lower-ca...

8 Reasons Why Bad Web Design Decisions Get Made
Sometimes when I'm struggling to complete a task on a website (or am watching my wife throw her arms up in frustration), I ask myself "What genius decided to build it like that?" Having been on the ot...