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Web Design Ideas

We all need the inspiration of new web design ideas from time to time.

If you’re planning a career as a web designer you should start as soon as possible to collect your favorite designs to keep as inspiration. You could start a web design idea gallery as the owners of the following sites did, or just bookmark all the inspiring, beautiful, amazing sites you come across.

Here are twenty web design idea resources to inspire your creativity.

Patrick Haney has collected over 400 web design ideas on his Flickr account: Web Design Inspiration.

A Site A Day intends to give web designers one new inspirational site building idea daily:

Web Creme collects screen shots of inspiring web design ideas:

Web Design File has more than 650 inspirational web design ideas waiting for your perusal:

Only the best: Inspiration King focuses on quality over quantity:

Unmatched Style is a community blog acknowledging designs using CSS and web standards:

At CSS Clip you can submit your CSS site to the gallery and compete with other great web design artists of the internet:

Best Web Gallery defines quality design as “Visual + Technical + Creativity”:

The Best Designs features quality CSS and flash websites:

You’ll find plenty of web design ideas and inspiration at CSSremix:

I Love Blog Design specializes only in (guess what?) …blogs!

The CSS Zen Garden is perhaps one of the most inspiring places on the web:

CSS Mania! Be inspired!

CSS Revue isn’t in English but you don’t need to understand the language to appreciate the beautiful web design ideas.

Design Idol features beautiful CSS and flash sites:

MotionSpire provides a gallery for impressive 3D, 2D and multi-media:

Frequent updates: CSS Envy.

FantastiCSS - a gallery of fantastic CSS web design:

We Love WP - showcasing WordPress sites:

Inspiration Folder requests membership…

Filed under: Design Process — Linda @ 11:53 pm

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Graphic Background with Whitespace for Text

This week I’m presenting a workshop, Creating an Impressive Writing Website, at the 2008 Muse Online Writers Conference. One of the participants wanted the code for a web page with a graphic in the background, and whitespace for the text area.

I am a whitespace fanatic, especially for professional websites.

Anyhow, here’s the code I gave her. I’m putting it here in case someone else might need it.

Click here to see the result of using this code

You’re welcome to take this and use it in any way that suits your needs:

<html>
<head>
<title>YOUR TITLE</title>
<style>
body {
background: url(http://www.lindajomartin.com/images/ybg.gif)repeat;
font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
font-size: 1em;
}
div.whitespace {
background-color:white;
border: 2px #000000 solid;
margin: 150px;
padding: 30px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class=”whitespace”>
<p>Put your main text here.</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Filed under: Design Process — Linda @ 3:27 pm

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Opening Links In A New Browser Window Tab

If you’ve browsed the web for long, I’m sure you’ve come across sites where, when you click on links, a new browser window opens. If you want an example try this link: Blog Top Sites.

This is done by adding the attribute, target=”_blank”, to the link anchor tag.

How do you feel about having a site designer choose to force you to open a new browser window?

Lots of people don’t like this at all, and in fact I’ve seen it featured in lists of the most annoying things people have seen in web design, along with animated graphics and being caught inside someone’s frames. Many if not most people do not like having a site force the opening of a new browser window. It is intrusive.

Now, with the tabbed browsing used in Firefox and Internet Explorer v.7, I too find it annoying because I like to keep all my sites opened in tabs, in one browser window.

There’s a simple way to get around these types of links. If you realize you’re at a site that is opening browser windows you don’t want, just right-click on the mouse, right over the link you want to explore, and choose “open in new tab”. Voila! No more browser windows opening!

This tip is also very helpful for sites that use frames and force you to stay inside their frames while you explore other sites they’ve linked to. About.Com does this, though it also gives an option to click to get rid of their frame at the top of the page, so it is much better than many other framed sites we’ve seen. In the future if you find you’re at a site that keeps a frame open on the new site you want to see, just hit your back-arrow, and then right-click on the link for the new site you want to see, choosing “open in new tab’.

Filed under: Design Process — Linda @ 8:13 am

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Brighten Up A Site To Attract Customers

I found another great webmaster message board today: Web Pro World. While I was there I reviewed a site that dealt with a rather ponderous banking subject. The site looked like it had been done by an amateur, and I made some recommendations of things I’d change to make it look more professionally done.The first thing that hit me about the site was the font used. The site owner used Times New Roman 12pt., highlighting some key points in red and blue. The site’s colors: red, white, and blue, were probably meant to be patriotic and the only graphic on the page was a small American flag in the upper left corner. Though some of the blue in the header and left-side column was lightened, and the main section was white with mostly-black lettering, the site continued to give the feeling of darkness.

My first recommendation was to make the site look more professional by using a nice sans-serif font made for the web, like Verdana, 10pt..

I also recommended brightening the place up a bit. Here’s what I wrote…

â€œFor a graphic in the header, I think the flag in the corner is too small. Your site would look nicer with a large banner that extends across the page with the site name on it. To make one you could download the Paint Shop Pro program at http://www.jasc.com and use it for free for a few weeks on a trial basis. Make yourself a drop-dead gorgeous name banner and your site will look 100% better.

Put something in the background that makes people feel cheerful and happy - like a field of yellow tulips. Lighten up your colors. I recommend that because you’re dealing with a very deep subject and a few cheerful or interesting graphics may have a subconscious way of helping people deal with the idea of CD rates in a better state of mind.

For an example, check out this bank website with the cute photo of bears in the middle of it: http://www.bankofthewest.com - notice the light colors and the cute house and world icons further down on the page.â€

Catering to your potential customer’s subconscious feelings by putting him in a good mood is always good for business.

marketing web marketing web site design design photography stock photo free photo nature photo nature photography

Filed under: Design Process — Linda @ 10:53 pm

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