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Once again, thank you to everyone who entered our competition and filled out the survey. We have randomly selected a winner and the proud recipient of a new CSSEdit 2.6 copy is Domantas Jankauskas. Congratulations!
If you are interested in the outcome of the survey, please feel free to read on. We’ll be discussing some of your responses and how Design Shack has changed as a result.
Silverback is a new app which lets you run your own usability tests really easily. It looks set to be a great new tool for designers who want to analyze how users interact with their site. After a recent request for beta testers, a few interesting details are emerging:
It’s certainly an application which could bring the idea of usability testing to a large market. There’s no substitute to actually watching someone using your website when testing it. Keep your eyes peeled for a release and give it a try for yourself.
For the next few hours, the blog network 9rules have opened their doors to website submissions. They run a high quality network of sites and provide a central way to access all their content. Members includes sites such as Smashing Magazine, CSS Globe and PSDTuts.
If you think that your site has a great design, great quality content and regular updates then it is definitely worth submitting. There are some great tips to help with deciding whether you will qualify as well.
A few of our kind readers wouldn’t stop pestering us…! All updates to the CSS gallery and news will now be sent to Twitter, providing another yet another way to subscribe to Design Shack.
We are also likely to use this method to notify you of competitions, updates and new features to the site – so make sure you don’t miss out and become a follower.
See you there!
First of all, a huge thank you to the hundreds of people who responded to our survey – we’ve had some great suggestions of improvements to the site. The survey will be running for the next few days before we announce the winner of the contest so if you haven’t filled it in yet, please do!
Update: The survey is now over, thank you to all those who participated – we will be contacting the winner shortly
We have four questions to ask you – it will take somewhere between 30 seconds and a minute to answer them and you stand a chance of winning a copy of CSSEdit.
CSSEdit is a highly acclaimed piece of software, allowing you to design beautiful websites with greater ease. Our introduction to CSSEdit highlighted some of the application’s features, along with how to get started using it.
You can click the link below to fill out the survey – be sure to include your email address and we will be in touch if you are a winner!
Sure, the idea of providing a job board is not a new thing, but we are just going to quickly take you through a few features of our brand spanking new recruitment section. The board is powered by Krop, so it is already filled with positions from a range of impressive blue chip firms.
You have the ability to search by position (e.g. ‘css designer’), or by location (e.g. san francisco). If no jobs exist for a particular search, you can elect to be emailed when one is posted. Full details are available for each job and application is usually as simple as sending an email.
Obviously if you are a prospective employer the option to post a new job is available, which is seen by our audience as well as a whole range of other websites.
We hope you like the new feature – as ever, please hit us with your thoughts and comments!
May 1st Reboot is an international re-launch of websites around the world by authors and creatives working in the web design field. Voting has just gone live until the 8th May, so head over to the site and decide which designs you prefer.
If you are looking for a completely novel and inspired use of CSS, take a look at this rendering of Homer Simpson, using nothing other than text characters styled with CSS properties.
After following this tutorial you will have a basic understanding of how sIFR works and will be able to expand into more advanced areas.
sIFR can be a tricky technology to put in place, this guide will help you make sense of it.
This tutorial will be taking a look at some of the new ways you can manipulate user interface features in CSS3. But what do we mean by “user interface”?
CSS3 brings some great new properties relating to resizing elements, cursors, outlining, box layout and more. We’re focusing on three of the most significant user interface enhancements in this tutorial.
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Most designers are familiar with the relative pros and cons of different publishing tools – but what about the websites of the blog platforms themselves? We all know that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I would argue that there’s no harm in looking…
We’re going to take a look at the homepage for four popular platforms: WordPress, Textpattern, ExpressionEngine and Blogger. Which ones are beautiful enough to compel you to use their platform, and which ones have the design aesthetic of a hello kitty toaster? Hopefully through a critique of these designs you can take home some good pointers for use in your own work.
View full tutorialThe third part in this series on CSS3 will be delving into the new text effects. Typography is, without any doubt, one of the most important aspects to get right when designing a layout. Type can draw the reader through a page, give a certain impression, provide impact, be subtle, or aid in separating content.
CSS is already reasonably versatile in the way in which text can be displayed, but still constricts design in quite a few areas. CSS3 goes some way towards removing those limitations.
View full tutorialFor the second part of our series on CSS3, we’ll be taking a look at borders. Everyone who uses CSS is familiar with the border property – it’s a great way to structure content, create effects around images and improve page layout.
CSS3 takes borders to a new level with the ability to use gradients, rounded corners, shadows and border images. We are going to look at each of these in a bit more detail, using examples where possible.
View full tutorialThis article marks the first of several, providing an introduction to the new CSS3 standard which is set to take over from CSS2. We will be starting from the very beginning – taking you from not having even heard of CSS3, to feeling ready to hit it running as various features start to become more widely adopted.
View full tutorialKeeping track of visitors to your website is vital, and these ten tools can allow you to monitor and review traffic in different ways. Some are free, some require a small charge – all of them will help you optimize your website and know exactly who is passing eyes over your design.
View full tutorialUnknown to many, the latest version of the Safari web browser has a new piece of functionality allowing you to turn on a set of ‘developer’ tools for analysing how your website works. This article will break down some of these tools, and show you how to use them to make pages load quicker and test your website easier.
View full tutorialForms can be greatly enhanced with a touch of CSS, making them more usable and far more visually attractive. Follow some of the examples below and you’ll be creating stunning CSS forms in no time at all.
View full tutorialThe following tutorial on cross browser testing was written by Robin Parker from Remember to Blink.
A sure sign of a rock solid, well coded CSS layout is that it displays consistently across browsers and platforms. A look at recent global browser stats shows that, while Internet Explorer continues to be the most popular web browser in general use, its user base is fairly evenly split between versions 6 and 7. And although other browsers such as Firefox, Opera and Safari have a relatively small share of the browser market, it would be unwise for any web designer or developer to ignore them when testing their work.
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