Software Reviews

PDF Search Engine

jon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:09:03 +0000

PDF Search Engine is a simple and straight forward search tool for finding ebooks. You can either search from the website or use the provided search extension and add it to your Firefox search bar. Find PDF (Adobe Acrobat files) and other documents using the power of Google. Search engine dedicated to finding the most […]

35 Stunning Designs from Dribbble

jon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:09:00 +0000

Dribbble is a network of very talented graphic designers and digital artists from all around the world. Here the community is able to share small photos (or shots) onto their profile and critique others’ work. The list features icons, UI elements, buttons, vectors, and so much more!

For your inspiration, here are 35 stunning Dribbble shots. These are a mixed variety of artists offering some seriously amazing talent in the field of digital graphics. Aspiring artists are able to absorb a lot from the talents of each member and the community at large.

skyscrapers golf

An Epic Website

HipnHopeful website mascot

Nintendo inspired seal

Website splash page

Corkbin

Bear Characters

Cookery Website Teaser

Dashboard Stats

Website Thumbs

Upload

Delitouch mobile website

Haäfe&Haph Website Teaser

Balloon Landing

Minimal Forum Site Design

First pass

Magic Teaser Icon

Website(2)

Photography Website UI

Sky balloon website

Sensecall Update

bear logo

HTML5 drag-and-drop

Teaser Header

Keytar Website

Children’s Book Website

Illustration for new Subvert website

Rocket Website Header

Freebie

personal website

Online Store

Friendly Social Footer

iDoCafe Web Header

Usevine

8 Free High-Quality Fonts for Your Designs

jon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:08:58 +0000

You should know the routine by now. We do the searching, find the freebies, and tell you about them. That way you can spend time doing what’s important, like creating awesome web designs. It’s all about saving you time and making your job easier. So this week we’ve got 8 free high-quality fonts for your designs. Enjoy!

Dock 11

Alpha 63

Pompadour Numeral Set

Linden Hill

Fanwood

Arvo

Vador

Lato

WDL Premium: Illustrated Koi Fish Vectors

jon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:08:56 +0000

Here’s an amazing set of vectors for our WDL Premium Members. This pack from Designious is a collection of 10 Japanese inspired Koi Fish illustrations. Inside you’ll find vectors in different poses: surrounded by water, all drawn in the spirit of Japanese traditional art.

Be sure to check out Designious for more design resources.

Here’s a preview of the vectors.

Download Koi Fish Vectors

Premium Member

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

About this Partner

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

Font Size Measures: Options and Preferences

jon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:08:54 +0000

What is the Most Important Element in Designing Your Website? When you begin to design that perfect website, what do you think is the very first thing that you should be concerned with? Color? Templates? Graphic design? No. The first thing on the agenda should be font size.

“Font size,” you say? “Why should one be concerned with something as mundane as font size when there’s a whole website to be concerned about? So, you must be joking, right?”

Image Credit: Dekar Font from Fontfabric

Font Size Must Be the First Consideration

Sorry, this is no joke. Font size can, and will, make or break your website. The fact is that if your website is not readable, no one will stick around to try and decipher it, no matter how attractive the site may look at first glance.

The font size needs to be considered with care; a too large font can be just as unreadable as a font that looks like an array of tiny dots, no matter how hard you try to focus.

Four Ways to Consider Font Sizes

Fonts sizes are usually defined in four specific ways:

1. Absolute
2. Relative
3. Length
4. Percentage

Font sizes that are absolute are defined by the user-agent. These include the familiar xx-small all the way to xx-large; the default size usually being the x-medium. When a font size is relative, it means it is relative to the parent element, which makes it either larger, smaller or the exact size.

Length usually means a font that has some absolute measurement, such as an inch or centimeter, while a percentage is an absolute font that is relative to the parent element.

Reader Accessibility is Top Priority

One thing to remember in selecting the correct size for your typography is how accessible it will be to your readers. If your readers are mostly young adults, a smaller size may work but if you are wanting to appeal to a more mature audience, then your best bet is to choose a font size that is not only larger, but extremely readable.

Ems or Pixels?

A good accessibility trick is to create your design in ems. This function lets your chosen fonts become larger or smaller according to your readers’ individual browsers. Designing in ems allows the size of the font to become relative to the parent element. On most websites this would designate the font to be sized relative to the user’s browser.

One word of caution – one issue to consider in the use of ems is the possibility of not controlling the look of your site. With ems, your website fonts will scale relative to the default size of the browser, which can sometimes create a rather wild font size.

If desiring control over the look of your site is a must, then the alternative, and possibly best option, is to create in pixels. Pixels are the standard and results will usually hold few surprises in the look you want for your website.

Just remember, whatever decisions you make for website viewing, always consider your reading accessibility and the comfort of your visitors. This one area can make or break your website.

30 Dark and Inspiring Web Designs

jon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:08:50 +0000

Almost a year ago we featured a showcase with 50 Inspiring Dark Web Designs and today we decided to gather a new list of dark websites to inspire you. It’s always nice to remember that a dark layout also has it’s beauty, specially when everybody is talking about clean white web designs. So check out some examples of inspiring dark websites and start thinking about giving dark colors a try.

Tom Pain

Pierrick Calvez

Fill Studio

This Shell

FreeAssociation

Pixillion

Launchlist

Hungarian Wines

Bread & Pepper

Andrew McClintock

Troyca

Pointless Corp

TocToc

Cuban Council

We are Fixel

Haunted Cathouse

East Village Eatery

Tuscarora Tackle

Night Owl Interactive

Sarah Longnecker

Jan Kovacs

Pop the Box

Suplicy Cafes

Epic

ch3mical

Bluezoom

simó

malikafavre

code23

Mr. Booth

Source:

The Best Designs
The CSS Awards

8 Useful Online Tools for Web Designers and Developers

jon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:08:47 +0000

Finding stuff to make your life easier is one of our passions. Whether it be freebies like fonts and icons, or tools to help you do your job, we search and find them so you can focus on the important things. For this post, we’ve found some online tools that are useful for design and development tasks, and the best part is…they’re all free to use.

0 to 255

0 to 255 is a simple tool that helps web designers find variations of any color.

Spritebox

Spritebox is a WYSIWYG tool to help web designers quickly and easily create CSS classes and IDs from a single sprite image. It is based on the principle of using the background-position property to align areas of a sprite image into block elements of a web page. It was made using a combination of JQuery, CSS3 and HTML5, and is totally free to use.

jsFiddle

JsFiddle is a playground for web developers, a tool which may be used in many ways. One can use it as an online editor for snippets build from HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The code can then be shared with others, embedded on a blog, etc.

Frame Box

Frame Box is an easy to use online tool for creating and sharing wireframes.

CSS3 Generator

CSS3 Generator is a simple tool that creates some cross-browser CSS3 code based on whatever values you want.

ProCSSor

ProCSSor is a powerful (and wholly free) CSS prettifier that lets you format CSS in the exact way you want. It empowers you to turn your CSS into something that is visually more compelling, and with a minimum of effort at that.

Super Conversion Button

This little tool let’s you easily create a beautiful, effective call-to-action button in seconds.

wordmark.it

Wordmark.it is a tool that lets you quickly preview how a wordmark looks with the fonts installed on your computer before setting out to find new ones.

WDL Premium: Altered Perspective – Tumblr Theme

jon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:08:44 +0000

For this week’s WDL Premium file, we’ve go a premium Tumblr theme from our friends at Mojo Themes. Altered Perspective is designed especially for photographers and the creative type, the Altered Perspective theme features a custom javascript photography header and a unique left to right scrolling/post feature. Nothing says creativity like being different. That’s what this theme is – different.

Be sure to check out Mojo Themes for more premium themes.

Click the image below for a live demo.

Key Features

Sliding header photo gallery
Upload up to 5 photos via Tumblr!
Easy Twitter feed integration
Easy Flickr photostream intergration
Unique horizontal scrolling posts
Disqus Comments integration

All PSD, CSS, HTML, JS, and other external libraries are included!

Download Altered Perspective

Premium Member

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

About this Partner

Mojo Themes is a marketplace for web templates including Premium WordPress themes. Mojo Themes also offers templates for Magento, Tumblr, and CSS.

40 Awesome Photography Shots From Daily Life To Change Your Mood

jon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:08:43 +0000

Time never stops and so does our life. But still we sometimes find ourselves in some situations where we feel numb, the time stops for that particular moment. A photographer experiences emotions while taking a shot. Taking perfect/awesome pictures is really hard, as you don’t only need perfect timing but have to focus on other aspects like light, saturation etc as well. Here we have tried to collect 40+ beautiful and amazing photography shots from life around us, that would probably inspire you in your design projects.

Boo!

Who will win?

Magic fire

living life & loving it

Small Leaf, Big World

Wish u were here…. miss you, Eve.

Life Through A Lens

Wrong Size Maybe?

Barn Owl eating a small white mouse

We could stay in this moment for the rest of our lives…

Shine a light on your Music

Whitsunday Sunset

books and doves

Student Protest 09.12.2010 – Parliament Square

Road to winter

Ginger

Viva la revolution…!!!

yorkville waterfall (redscale)

Only Jackasses beg for treats

A needle for life

Newby

Ruth Kl¸ger at BuchBasel (CH)

if I keep perfectly still, the human will walk away

snail penthouse

Still life with Sampo

http://500px.com/photo/32837

Watching lives collide

Come to me, my prey…

25 Examples of Subscription Forms and Buttons in Web Design

jon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:08:41 +0000

Last week we showcased a list with 25 Excellent Examples of Forms in Web Design and today I’ve decided to gather some examples of subscription forms and buttons to show you. When I was browsing around looking for form examples last week, I found some interesting examples of subscription forms and though you would also like to see them.

I’m the kind of person that tends to subscribe to something when the design is appealing and beautiful. I think it’s a good way of showing your user you care about them and even with such small details you give your best.

Source:

The Best Designs
Pattern Tap