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Top 8 Dreaded Favors Asked of Web Designers

Mon, 03/08/2010 - 23:30

Long before you officially take the profession of graphic or web designer, your friends and family will support your ambitions by developing your talent. At first, your loved ones inspect your work and if they like what they see, you’ll get flooded with their requests for one page flyers, t-shirt designs, logos, and company websites. When you are just starting out, you welcome their requests because it gives you a chance to grow your skill set as a designer. After all, it’s almost like dealing with real clients, right?

The drama comes when you actually become a full time designer. The friends and family who drew upon your talent during your newbie years are still standing around with their hands out, and now you also must contend with two more groups of favor askers: clients and anonymous foreigners who contact you through Twitter.

Here are 8 of the most common and eye-rollingly annoying favors all designers encounter at one point or another. For ease of reference, we’ll call the offending party “Dude.”

1. “Hey, can you take a look at my site and tell me what you think?”

At first glance, this seems like a harmless five to ten minute project. Dude asks for your opinion, and you both know that you are an esteemed and dedicated design pro. You optimistically click on his website link, and you’re teleported back in 1998 with a Geocities-reminiscent design so horrifying it makes MySpace look professional. After you try hard not to lose all respect for Dude, you carefully suggest that he get rid of the Flash intro. You are then met with an uncomfortable defensiveness, where Dude refuses to accept your professional advice.

Lesson learned: Decipher whether your friend is looking for actual advice or just a pat on the back.

2. “Um, would you mind designing my site… for free?”

It’s shocking how many people feel truly entitled to a free web design. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of introducing yourself as a web designer, you may notice the wheels instantly starting to turn in your acquaintance’s mind. Everyone, even those without any product or any relevant thing to say, want, demand and need a website. These are the people, especially, who will want such a website produced for free. They may lure you with the distant hopes they use to fuel their own insanity: “Once I get some visitors, I’ll direct them to your services” (Standard practice, regardless).

Lesson learned: Limit your charity cases to those you can do in your free time and only do it for charity because the only reward you’ll reap is psychological.

3. “Can you help me design my site to look like ______?”

This request is closely related to the first two requests. Perhaps Dude has taken it upon himself to designed a website, already had a moment of epiphany and now realizes that it sucks. At least you’re on the same page. Then comes, “I’d like my site to look just like Avatar. You know, all 3D and stuff.” Once you realize that Dude is serious, another realization also sinks in. If you take on this “consulting” project, all of your time and energy will be engulfed by this vortex, and you won’t be getting paid for your trouble. What’s the solution? Direct Dude to Yahoo! Answers? No, he’ll never go for that, because this is a top secret idea.

Lesson learned: Find your inner ineptness and apply it to this situation. Feign ignorance, suggest peripheral design ideas such as blue color palettes and wait for your friend to get bored of the idea and come to his senses.

4. “I think I have a virus.”

No one likes to hear these words, and if someone’s sharing this information with you, they usually want one of two things: sympathy or help, sometimes both. When you hear these words come from a client, you must assume they are referring to a computer virus (let’s hope). This your client’s passive/ aggressive way of getting you to offer assistance. If you, wisely, remain silent, he or she will shamelessly ask you for your help. Just because you work in front of your computer all day does not mean that you qualify for tech support. You have to Google things just like everyone else.

Lesson learned: Get the courage to finally direct someone to Let Me Google That For You. However, for professional relationships, avoid the snark and actually lightly research the problem, but make no promises and waste no longer than 15 minutes.

5. “Let me help you with any of your extra work.”

This favor comes in the form of a donated favor. In other words, Dude is suggesting that he’s doing you a favor, when he’s actually just trying to get paid. One morning you open your email box, and there’s an email from some dude you’ve never heard of. He wants you to lend him some of your work. Depending on your level of job-related stress, you may be inclined to offer him some work, but what’s this? No portfolio? No website? No spell-check. Wait, is Dude even located in the same hemisphere as you?

Lesson learned: You get what you pay for.

6. “So, it’s been a minute… How much longer is it going to take?”

Just when you’ve got your Good Samaritan on and decided to help Dude during your free time, he starts becoming a diva. Never mind the impossible requests to make his website look just like *let your imagination run wild on this one,* or the countless revisions to a perfectly designed logo, or the endless hours you spent over IM trying to explain why putting an invisible list of keywords at the bottom of the webpage is unnecessary. When you least expect it, expect to receive a phone call, email, direct tweet saying, “Hey, so, um… when’s the project going to be finished?” You reply back, “Dude, I told you I was going to fit this in between my actual work from actual clients that actually pay.” To this, Dude replies, “I didn’t think it was going to take this long, maybe I should just get this professionally done.” Oh, that’s a killer. First of all, Dude has no consideration for the amount of time you’ve invested in this project. Secondly and more importantly, you are a professional. Why not offer you money so that you can prioritize his project?

Lesson learned: Clearly state from the beginning that it will take you some ridiculously long amount of time to complete the project for free and if Dude’s still on board, he’ll be happy if you finish it sooner than expected.

7. “Can I use your server until I get my own hosting?”

What’s so wrong about this request? You have extra space and you can afford the bandwidth. The problem is that Dude will never get his own hosting, and eventually he’ll forget about his site. A year later, you’ll remind him, “Hey Dude, you know you still have your stuff on my server? I’m moving to another server, so is it alright if I get rid of it? You have a back up, right?” Dude will do one of two things: he’ll respond with indignant anger, upset that you’re rushing him to get his act together or he’ll pretend to be okay with it, all the while, holding a grudge.

Lesson learned: Friends don’t let friends use their servers.

8. “Hey, I volunteered you to re-do my co-worker’s step-daughter’s wedding album.”

You can replace this with any task in which your mom volunteers your services for free. It’s always lovely to deal with someone who’s happy to accept your honest labor for free, because we all know they won’t make any unreasonable demands. The most difficult part of this ordeal is having to contend with your mother in her role as the merciless middleman who nags you for quality, timeliness and her good reputation.

Lesson learned: Grin and bear it? There’s no real way to avoid this nightmare.

What are some of the most annoying favors your friends and family have asked from you?

About the Author

Jacqueline is an artist and a writer who spends an inordinate amount of time playing Super Nintendo and watching Star Trek. You can find out more about Jacqueline on her website, and follow her updates on Twitter.

Categories: Web Site Development

50 Inspiring Textured Web Designs

Mon, 03/08/2010 - 00:05

After showing you A Showcase of Clean White Web Designs a couple weeks ago, it’s time for us to add some textured designs to our lists. Textures are a great way to give a special touch to a website. They can be used in a specific part of the layout – the header/footer, for example, or they can be used in the whole page as a background. The thing is that textures are versatile, beautiful and stylish. So here are 50 excellent examples of textures in web design to inspire you.

monkeyworks illustration

Walk to Washington DPS – Designer Peter Steven

corvus

About the Author

Gisele Muller is someone that recently discovered a new career online. A person that really likes technology, design, photography and creativity. An eternal geek wannabe, tech fan and a communication lover! Current location: Porto Alegre, RS – Brazil. Twitter: @gismullr

Categories: Web Site Development

WDL Premium: Colorful Grunge Textures

Fri, 03/05/2010 - 08:56

Today we’re giving our WDL Premium members a premium texture pack from PremiumTextures.com. These twelve textures were created by combining public domain images of nebulae with existing grunge textures to give them a wonderfully unique, colorful feel. There some of the most unique textures you will ever see, and are great for creating beautiful website backgrounds.

There are 12 textures in all. Here’s a preview:

Download Colorful Grunge Textures

Premium Member

You must be a WDL Premium member to download this file.

About the Artist

PremiumTextures.com sells high quality textures for designers, photographers, and creatives alike. The textures can be used in any of your projects, both commercial and personal. Just don’t sell them as your own stock photography.

Categories: Web Site Development

22 Fresh High-Quality Fonts for Your Designs

Wed, 03/03/2010 - 23:34

Whether it’s textures, Photoshop brushes, or icons, we love finding top notch free files and sharing them with our readers. We try to post at least one collection of freebies every week. We do the searching so you don’t have to. This saves you time and helps you focus on what’s important.

This week, we are bringing you more high-quality fonts that have been created in just the past few months. There are 22 in all and they’re all free. There are a few however that will require a quick registration, but they are well worth it.

Raleway

Juice

Metal

PT Sans

DejaRip

Orial

Kain Block

Otari

Nautik

A_B_ Stochome Modular

Aldo Open

Sans Serious

Kilogram

Categories: Web Site Development

A Showcase of Beautiful Architectural Photography

Tue, 03/02/2010 - 22:57

Architecture is probably one of the most complex forms of art. Not only should it be beautiful, but it must also be functional. The same thing can be said about other forms of art like web design, but architecture takes place in the real world with real materials, and on a much larger scale.

Since we are most often surrounded by architecture in our daily lives, it’s to be expected that architecture is a popular subject for photographers. In this article, we are presenting a showcase of beautiful architectural photography. In these photos you’ll notice a strong focus on composition and lighting. As well, many are shot from angles that reveal beauty in the structures that probably goes unnoticed by passers-by.

Make sure you click on each photo to see a larger version and learn more about each of the talented photographers behind the cameras.

Categories: Web Site Development

12 Alternative Web Browsers You Should Try

Mon, 03/01/2010 - 23:35

Chances are you’re viewing this page in one of the following web browsers: Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Chrome. I can make this assumption because these three browsers combine for about 90% of the market share. Then again, you might be one of the few people that have adopted an alternative to the big name web browsers. Whatever the case, you do have options when it comes to web browsing. The three I’ve already mentioned have gained popularity for different reasons, but being popular doesn’t always mean something is the right fit for everybody.

In this article, we’ve rounded up 12 lesser known web browsers that you might want to try. Who knows – one of them might be a perfect fit for your browsing needs.

Maxthon

Maxthon has been around for a while. In 2003 it was known as MyIE2. Over the years it’s become a powerful tabbed browser built for all users. Besides basic browsing functionality, Maxthon Browser provides a rich set of features to improve your surfing experience. Some key features include: mouse gestures, anti-freeze, and magic fill which allows your to fill out forms with a single click.

Operating System: Windows

Arora

Arora is a lightweight cross-platform web browser. Arora uses the QtWebKit port of the fully standards-compliant WebKit layout engine. It features fast rendering, powerful JavaScript engine and supports Netscape plugins.

Operating System: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

Amaya

Amaya is not only a web browser, but it’s also a web editor. Browsing features are seamlessly integrated with the editing and remote access features in a uniform environment. This follows the original vision of the Web as a space for collaboration and not just a one-way publishing medium. Amaya is an open source software project hosted by W3C.

Operating System: Windows, Mac OS X, Unix platforms

Flock

Flock is a browser with a focus on social media. It has features built in for just about every social media site you can think of. This browser is built on Mozilla, so as expected, there are also extensions available to expand it’s functionality even more.

Operating System: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

Stainless

Stainless has features you won’t find in Chrome or in any other browser. One example is parallel sessions, which allow you to log into a site using different credentials in separate tabs at the same time.

Operating System: Mac OS X

Cruz

Cruz is a new social browser for Mac OS X with Twitter built-in. With Cruz you can view your Twitter Timeline and “@” Mentions in a split pane while browsing other sites. Cruz also allows you to open links from your Twitter Timeline in new tabs or browse multiple pages simultaneously in split views. Cruz has an open plug-in API for extending browser functionality.

Operating System: Mac OS X

Sunrise

Sunrise is an open-source web browser based on WebKit. It’s designed to be easy to use by making frequently used features easily accessible. The main window of Sunrise has the browser, bookmarks, downloads, source codes and find bars.

Operating System: Mac OS X

SeaMonkey

SeaMonkey aims to be an all-in-one internet application suite. So not only is it a web browser, but it also includes an email & newsgroup client with an included web feed reader, HTML editor, IRC chat and web development tools.

Operating System: Mac OS X, Windows, Linux

Lunascape

Lunascape is the world’s first and only triple engine browser. So it’s three web browsing engines rolled into one: IE (Trident)＋Firefox (Gecko)＋Chrome・Safari (Webkit). It allows you to choose the right engine at the right time, realizing a dramatic decrease in web-browser compatibility issues, long loading times, and messed up websites display. Lunascape is also compatible with the expanding array of Firefox add-ons in addition to the already supported Internet Explorer add-ons.

Operating System: Windows

SlimBrowser

SlimBrowser is a fast and secure tabbed web browser software fully loaded with powerful features. It saves you the burden of completing web forms with intelligent form filler.

Operating System: Windows

Midori

Midori is a lightweight web browser built on WebKit. Some key features include: user scripts, styles support, and a customizable interface.

Operating System: Linux, Windows

Camino

Camino is an open source web browser developed with a focus on providing the best possible experience for Mac OS X users. Some key features include: annoyance blocking, malware protection, and tab overview, which allows you to all of your open tabs at a glance.

Operating System: Mac OS X

Categories: Web Site Development

55 Colorful Web Designs to Inspire You

Sun, 02/28/2010 - 22:50

We’ve already presented here a showcase of clean white web designs, and we’ve also shown you a collection of inspiring dark web designs. Now it’s time to get inspired by color, and by “color”, I mean a website “full of color” – a site with many colorful elements or even just using one or two bold and eye catching colors.

In this selection, we are presenting 55 colorful web designs to inspire you.

Hughes

christmastweets.co.uk

asemota

savetheturtlesgame.com

TANQ

k4lab

About the Author

Categories: Web Site Development

30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less

Fri, 02/26/2010 - 00:39

A logo is the visual cornerstone of one’s branding. While some logos are complex, often the most memorable ones are those that are simplistic. Instead of relying on detailed graphics and icons, these minimal logos rely on creative typography, simple shapes, and clever negative space to tell the story.

Here is a showcase of 30 minimal logo designs that say more with less.

Categories: Web Site Development

WDL Premium: Ornate Vectors from Go Media

Thu, 02/25/2010 - 07:22

Today we’re releasing another amazing vector pack for our WDL Premium Members from the talented people at Go Media. Ornate is one of the best vector packs released by Go Media. It features some of the most detailed and original ornamental design work that you can find online. With the popularity of ornamental design these days, it’s surprising how hard it is to find quality ornate vector graphics that are authentic and original. These florid vector shapes have a flowing and “undersea” appeal to them, but can be used in any design.

Be sure to check out Go Media’s Arsenal for more awesome vectors, brushes, and more.

There are 20 vectors in all. Here is a preview of some of them.

Download Ornate Vector Pack

Premium Member

You must be a WDL Premium member to download this file.

About the Artist

Go Media is a well known design studio with a lot of passion for what they do. This passion definitely comes through in their Arsenal, which is a collection of high quality, hand crafted design elements that they’ve made available through an online store.

Categories: Web Site Development

20 Fresh Sets of Free Icons for Web Designers

Wed, 02/24/2010 - 00:26

We love finding and sharing freebies with our readers, especially icons. We do this so you can focus on doing what’s important, instead of spending all your time searching the internet. In this article, we’ve rounded up 20 sets of freshly created free icons. If you don’t have an immediate need for them, I’m sure you can find a place for them in your icon library.

Shiny Icons

Once

Mini Icon Set

Fidelity

Vector Social Media Icons

TRANQUILITI

WooFunction

32 Pixel Social Media Icons

Nixus

Roundy

Help

Absque

Categories: Web Site Development

13 Useful Google Chrome Extensions for Web Developers

Mon, 02/22/2010 - 22:52

Google Chrome, like Firefox, has the ability to increase its functionality and capabilities through the use of extensions. If you’re a web developer, Google Chrome comes with a nice set of developer tools built in that will make your life easier. But there are also a number of extensions that will give you even more tools at your disposal. The great thing about extensions is that they allow you to perform tasks that would normally require you to switch over to another application. Being able to perform certain tasks without leaving your browser can be a big time saver.

Here are 13 Google Chrome extensions that you should find very useful.

Color Picker

Color Oicker lets you quickly get the Hex and RGB values of any color! Also adjust Hue, Saturation, and Balance.

Firebug Lite

Firebug Lite is a tool for web developers, that allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Domain Availability Checker

This extension checks the availability of a domain name. What’s the point of going to another page when you can check it from your toolbar.

Aviary Screen Capture

Aviary Screen Capture allows you to ake a screenshot of any webpage and edit it directly in your browser with Aviary.com applications. Plus it has convenient access to the Aviary website and tools.

Lorem Ipsum Generator

Lorem Ipsum Generator gives you an easy and convenient way to generate dummy text for your design mock-ups.

IE Tab

Use Internet Explorer to display web pages in a Chrome tab. Some sites can only be displayed using IE, and with this extension you can now see those sites without leaving Chrome. Great for web developers who want to test the IE rendering engine, users who use sites with ActiveX controls, and users who want to use the explorer view for local files (i.e. file:// URLs).

MeasureIt!

MeasureIt! gives you the ability to draw out a ruler that will help you get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.

PlainClothes

This extension styles — or rather “unstyles” — the web. Just imagine: text is black, backgrounds are white, unread links are blue, visited links are purple, all links are underlined. Or any other colors you like. And all text is rendered in your default fonts (as defined in “Options” > “Under the Hood” > “Change font and language settings”). Everywhere. Automatically.

Eye Dropper

Eye Dropper and Color Picker extension which allows you to pick color from any webpage or from advanced color picker.

Speed Tracer

Speed Tracer is a tool to help you identify and fix performance problems in your web applications. It visualizes metrics that are taken from low level instrumentation points inside of the browser and analyzes them as your application runs. Speed Tracer is available as a Chrome extension and works on all platforms where extensions are currently supported (Windows and Linux).

Pendule

Pendule extends the already built-in developer tools of Chrome.

Resolution Test

Resolution Test changes the size of the browser window for developers to preview their websites in different screen resolutions. It includes a list of commonly used resolutions as well as a custom option for you to input your own.

Snippy

Snippy allows you to grab snippets of web pages and save them for future use. It captures rich contents and preserves formatting, so you can capture paragraphs, images, links and more.

Categories: Web Site Development

55 Examples of Huge Typography in Web Design

Sun, 02/21/2010 - 23:31

Choosing the correct typography for your website is a very important part of the design process. And as a website is also a communication tool – a very powerful one – you can use the typography to help you on exposing your ideas! Using HUGE typography, for example, you will get the attention you want and your site will also look cool. You can use huge typo only in a word, a sentence, everything… it’s up to you. Here we will show a selection of very nice usage of huge typo in web design to inspire you to go a little wild on your website typography!

CharlesElena

Chirp >> The Twitter Developer Conference

Happy Cog’aoke 2

Morphix

teez

Sketchen

Digital Podge

zee

Make Photoshop Faster

TPUTH

Bills

Boxee

merge

Glitch

finch

Cupcake Creative Studio

Hull Digital Live

Bullet Pr

electricpulp.com

notoriousdesign.co.uk

flashgamingsummit.com

Grow

wordit

The Urban Landscape Lab

Denise Chandler

About the Author

Categories: Web Site Development

UPrinting Poster Prints Giveaway Winners Announced

Sun, 02/21/2010 - 15:37

Last week we posted a giveaway of 24×36 poster prints byUPrinting. In order to be eligible, all you had to do was leave a comment on that post. Today we’re announcing the 5 winners that were randomly selected from all the comments.

Here are the winners:

Jason Byatt
Gabriel Rosales
Wes
Amber Weinberg
Kristal

Make sure you visit UPrinting to learn more about their poster prints and other printing services.

Categories: Web Site Development

deLuxe: A Premium WordPress Theme

Fri, 02/19/2010 - 07:09

Today we’re releasing another beautiful premium WordPress theme from ThemeShift to our premium members. deLuxe is a warm and elegant WordPress theme. Use it on any site for hotels, restaurants or resorts or for websites about lifestyle and luxury. It makes your site look professional and unique, or simply deluxe. Be sure to check out the other great themes by ThemeShift.

If you’re not yet a WDL Premium member, you’re missing out on a great deal. Sign up here.

Click the image for a live demo.

Customizable Header

One of the top features of deLuxe is the customizable subheader where you can link three pages to feature your special content. You can also choose between different color schemes for the header and footer section.

Subpage Teasers

The deLuxe theme is an expert in managing loads of pages and subpages. If a main page has any subpages, the post images of these subpages will automatically be displayed as teasers below the page content. Turn off that feature if desired.

Full Feature List

Choose preferred color scheme
Customizable homepage subheader
Choose recent posts, featured category or specific pages to be displayed on homepage
Superfish mult-level dropdown menu
WordPress 2.9 post thumbnails
Nice image effect (rounded corners, shadow) with image overlay
Subpage teasers (optional)
Threaded comments
Javascript comment form validation
Page templates: full width (no sidebar), archives page, bookmarks page
Widget areas: sidebar (general), sidebar home, sidebar category, sidebar post, sidebar page
Predefined CSS styles
CSS styles for WP-PageNavi plugin – activate and you’re done (see plugin page)
Theme options page
Post / page settings
Included PSD files: logo.psd

Download deLuxe

Premium Member

You must be a WDL Premium member to download this file.

About ThemeShift

Themeshift is a WordPress theme shop operated by Simon Rimkus. His themes are beautifully designed and of the highest quality.

Categories: Web Site Development

10 Simple and Light Weight CMS Solutions

Wed, 02/17/2010 - 23:35

Choosing the right content management system can be an overwhelming task for a web designer or developer. There are so many available, all with different features, it can be difficult to decide which is the best solution for a particular web project. For complex websites, a fully featured CMS is probably the best way to go. However, for simple sites, lots of bells and whistles can be overkill and actually be a bit confusing for the person maintaining the website.

In this article, I’ve rounded up 10 simple and light weight cms solutions. All of these systems were built with simplicity and ease-of-use in mind.

Wolf CMS

Wolf CMS simplifies content management by offering an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions, as well as the tools necessary for file management. Wolf CMS is a fork of Frog CMS. Although the two applications still share a family resemblance, Wolf has left Frog’s development path.

Get Simple

GetSimple is an XML based lite Content Management System. To go along with it’s intuitive user interface, it’s loaded with features that every website needs, but with nothing it doesn’t.

Perch

Perch is a really little content management system for when you (or your clients) need to edit content without the hassle of setting up a big CMS.

sNews

sNews is a completely free, standards compliant, PHP and MySQL driven Content Management System. It is extremely lightweight, simple and customizable. This cms consists of only one core engine file, one independent template file and its accompanying CSS stylesheet file, plus an .htaccess file that makes all URLs search engine friendly.

Zimplet CMS

Zimplit is extremely lightweight, simple and customizable. It’s easy to install, and easy to use via a simple web interface. Zimplit consists of only one core engine file.

PageLime

PageLime is a simple CMS for web designers. It acts as a remote Content Management System that allows you to update the content, images, and documents on your web site without any setup. All you have to do is add the ‘cms-editable’ CSS class to any element on your site, and we host the application that edits your site.

Surreal CMS

With Surreal CMS, there’s absolutely nothing to install. Just enter your website’s FTP info and you’re connected! Within minutes, you can enable webpages, add content regions, assign editors, and begin updating your website — and you don’t even need an FTP client to get started.

CMS Made Simple

CMS Made Simple provides a fast and easy way to create a web site and manage its contents. Use it to make a home page for your family — or your multinational corporation!

Simple CMS

A fully branded, easy to use content management system for your clients. All you do is add a little piece of code to your existing site.

CushyCMS

CushyCMS is a Content Management Systems (CMS) that is truly simple. It’s free for unlimited users, unlimited changes, unlimited pages and unlimited sites.

It’s built from the ground up with ease of use in mind – for both content editors and designers. It’s such a simple CMS that it takes less than 3 minutes for a web designer to implement. No PHP or ASP required for this CMS. If you can add CSS classes to HTML tags then you can implement CushyCMS. It’s also a hosted CMS, so no installation or maintenance is needed either.

Categories: Web Site Development

A Showcase of Workstations that’ll Make You Jealous

Tue, 02/16/2010 - 23:21

Whether you’re a designer, developer, animator, or blogger, your workstation plays a major role in how you get things done. Some of us like a neat, clean, and inspiring workspace, while others require a crazy over-the-top hardware configuration.

In this article, we’ve compiled a showcase of photos that will give you workstation envy. The thing about workstations is that even if you have a nice one, seeing another awesome setup can make you a bit jealous.

Categories: Web Site Development

The Most Common HTML and CSS Mistakes to Avoid

Mon, 02/15/2010 - 22:27

Beginners through advanced coders make mistakes in their HTML and CSS files, either through carelessness or lack of experience. Clean code is very important though and will help further your skills as a developer, as well as save you time in editing later on! It never hurts to review if you’re a skilled developer, many mistakes are caused by going too quickly and not practicing good coding skills from the beginning. Here’s a helpful list of common mistakes and missteps that I’ve encountered through my own work, as well as working with others.

HTML Mistakes Forgetting to Close a Tag

This is very common, especially in beginners. Several tags require closing tags such as divs, strong tags, and links to name a few. Other tags require a closing slash to end the line such as an img tag.

<div>Text inside the div.</div> <img src="images/imagename.jpg" /> Incorrect DOCTYPE

HTML requires that you start out the document with the correct DOCTYPE declaration. It needs to be before anything else in the code, starting the document by declaring what type of HTML you’re using. Here’s the DOCTYPE for XHTML 1.0 Transitional.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> Improperly nesting tags

It’s very important to open and close tags in the proper order. Once something (for example a div) has opened, it must close before anything above it can close. The following is incorrect.

<div><strong>text</div></strong> Capitalizing tags

This is just considered bad practice, but won’t result in your code not being validated. You should always use lowercase for tags like divs, links, and images. The following is incorrect.

<DIV></DIV> Forgetting to open or close quotes

I’ve seen this a lot in beginners and will result in broken code and things not functioning properly. HTML requires double quotes that open and close correctly. Here’s an example of correct usage.

<img src="images/headerimage.jpg" /> Using Inline Styles

This is another one that is considered bad practice. Inline styles do work but will result in headaches later on! Items should be styled globally through an external stylesheet. It will be much easier to edit and add styles to in the future. An example of inline styles:

<a href="link.html" style="color: #000; text-decoration: none;">link name</a> Not Encoding Special Characters

Characters like “©” and “&” should be shown with the proper HTML code for the character. Here’s a great list of characters and their HTML counterparts that you should use.

Confusing Classes and Ids

Classes are for items that are used more than once on one page. This can be a link style that you’ll call in multiple times on one page but doesn’t follow the global link styling. Ids are items that are called in just once, like the header div. Classes and ids are often overused and used in unnecessary places as well. Stick to the minimum amount of classifications that you need.

CSS Forgetting to Close Things Properly

Each div or item called in starts with the opening curly bracket and ends with the closing curly bracket. Each style called in needs to end with a semicolon. The last declaration within an item doesn’t need a semicolon, but it’s best to use it in case you plan on adding more items later on, you may forget to add it back in. An example of proper use:

#divname { width: 40px; height: 30px; }

Condensing your stylesheet and putting all declarations for a div on one line is up for debate. I prefer to put each declaration on its own line, I think it’s easier to edit that way, but some may say that it just produces longer code.

Not Using Global Styles

Many things should be styled globally like paragraph and heading styles for text as well as link styles. This will reduce the risk of mistakes and will also cut down on the amount of code in your stylesheet.

Not Using Unique Names for Ids and Classes

It’s very important to choose names that are unique so that it’s easy to edit later on, and easy to identify in your stylesheet. Name your divs specific things like #home-left-column which is better than just #left.

Not Using Shorthand Code

Shorthand code is another way to condense your stylesheet, which is helpful for speeding up user load times as well as finding things when you’re editing later on. Instead of calling in padding-top, -left, -bottom, and -right you can just use:

padding: 5px 10px 0 10px;

Shorthand code can be used for many declarations including: padding, margin, border, and font.

Not Using Shortened Color Declarations

Hex numbers that repeat like #ffffff and #000000 can be condensed to #fff and #000. This is another way to condense your code and keep things short and easy to look at.

Incorrectly Using Positioning

Positioning is tough to understand when you’re first starting out with CSS. Your choices are static, relative, absolute, and fixed. Static is the default option and is positioned according to the normal page flow. A relative item is positioned relative to itself, meaning you can move it up, down, left or right, based on where it would normally sit. Absolute allows you to place an item anywhere on the page, and is the most misused positioning statement. The values you set for it will be relative to the last parent item with relative or absolute, and if there aren’t any, it defaults back to the html tag, allowing you to position it anywhere by declaring top left right or bottom values. Fixed is positioned relative to the browser window, so an item will stay in place if a user has to scroll. Learning how to use positioning correctly is important, but shouldn’t be used excessively. I rarely use these at all in my stylesheets.

Validate

Validating your HTML and CSS files will help in reducing errors and figuring out where a problem might be coming from. Your website may function correctly with some of the common HTML and CSS mistakes, but it doesn’t make it good practice or valid code. The validator will help identify these problems and you’ll be able to adjust the way you code for the future.

More Resources

Many of us are guilty of these HTML and CSS errors, myself included! We can only strive to learn from our mistakes and practice better coding in the future. Cleaning up your code will help you further your coding skills and allow you to create better sites with more functionality for your users.

About the Author

Shannon Noack is a designer in Arizona and the Creative Director of Snoack Studios. Designing is her passion in life and she loves to create websites, logos, print work, you name it. She also blogs regularly here and you can connect with her on Twitter as well.

Categories: Web Site Development

50 Inspiring Dark Web Designs

Sun, 02/14/2010 - 23:32

We’ve already shown here many great examples of web design to inspire you, from Clean White Web Design and Portfolio Designs to iPhone apps websites. We deliver great doses of inspiration to help you get new ideas.

Today, continuing our mission of delivering inspiration, we will present a selection of dark web designs. In days where minimal, clean and ’spacious’ sites are really popular, the dark ones sometimes are forgotten, but they are also great. So check out these inspiring dark web designs and remember that colors, in this case dark colors, are also a good choice for your website.

Pictory

bootb

jilion

robocat

zaum

oink fu

dyson

metalab

Tobolic

adaptd

rikcat

About the Author

Categories: Web Site Development

A Closer Look at FlashComponents.net

Sun, 02/14/2010 - 07:33

Here at WDL, we greatly appreciate our sponsors. They help make it possible for us to do what we do, and we feel that all of our sponsors offer services and products that can be very useful to web designers, developers, and online creatives. In order to let you know more about what our sponsors have to offer, we’re going to periodically feature one of them. Today we’re going to tell you about FlashComponents.net.

If you’re searching for an easy, accessible way to upgrade the look of your website and put yourself on the map, FlashComponents.net might just be solution. With thousands of Flash files, Templates, Galleries and 3D Menus, you can definitely say this marketplace is the eBay of Flash applications. The over 1000 authors can help you save hours and days of development time, and pay a small price for getting noticed in the crowd.

The website is well organized in categories, which makes it easier to navigate through the huge variety of Flash files. You can find right about everything here, and at decent prices. Simply create an account and browse through the files that catch your eye. To have an even more hassle free experience, just search through the files using a keyword of the kind of file you are looking for. Type in “Template” and here’s what you’ll get:

Do the same with video galleries, 3D carousels, menus, and you’ll find some inspiring files that are worth checking out. But FlashComponents.net doesn’t just sell Flash files. You can also find there a strong community of passionate flashers and a team that is available to offer support if you need it.

Categories: Web Site Development

WDL Premium: Grunge Photoshop Brushes from Designious

Sat, 02/13/2010 - 07:25

Today we’re releasing a set of awesome grunge Photoshop brushes for our WDL Premium Members from Designious. These brushes are great for adding a worn and distressed look to your designs. There are 29 brushes in all.

Be sure to check out Designious for more design resources.

Here is a preview of the brushes.

Download Grunge Photoshop Brushes

Premium Member

You must be a WDL Premium member to download this file.

About the Artist

Designious Designious is a small design studio specialized in creating amazing vector art and design elements for designers

Categories: Web Site Development

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Web Inspiration

Top 8 Dreaded Favors Asked of Web Designers

50 Inspiring Textured Web Designs

WDL Premium: Colorful Grunge Textures

22 Fresh High-Quality Fonts for Your Designs

A Showcase of Beautiful Architectural Photography

12 Alternative Web Browsers You Should Try

55 Colorful Web Designs to Inspire You

30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less

WDL Premium: Ornate Vectors from Go Media

20 Fresh Sets of Free Icons for Web Designers

13 Useful Google Chrome Extensions for Web Developers

55 Examples of Huge Typography in Web Design

UPrinting Poster Prints Giveaway Winners Announced

deLuxe: A Premium WordPress Theme

10 Simple and Light Weight CMS Solutions

A Showcase of Workstations that’ll Make You Jealous

The Most Common HTML and CSS Mistakes to Avoid

50 Inspiring Dark Web Designs

A Closer Look at FlashComponents.net

WDL Premium: Grunge Photoshop Brushes from Designious

Web Inspiration

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