Webmasters Gallery

If you are a website designer, you probably know that a style guide should be a core element of every professional website design and development process. Having a clear and well prepared style guide can save an enormous amount of time for developer and save the designer from having to explain the design details over and over. I have created a blank website style guide template.

Download it exclusively from Sharebrain:  a fully layered, well documented, blank Photoshop PSD template, with all design elements, typography tags, comments, ads, poll and many more, to speed up your design process and make your developers happier. It’s well documented layers make it super easy to adjust it to your needs, apply layer styles and add colors or effects as needed. Using the 960px grid system with guidelines makes layout rearranging a matter of seconds.

Features:

– 960px grid system with photoshop guidelines
– Header with Logo, Company name and company slogan
– Two level menu
– Two column layout with right sidebar
– Headline tags H1 – H4
– Typography formatting, including hyperlinks
– Category and Tags
– Video player with FlowPlayer layout
– Inline Image
– Quote box
– Social Bookmark icons
– Comments with avatars and comment form
– Search box
– Poll with voting results, Events with calendar icons, Ads and
Comments blocks in sidebar
– Footer with main menu links

Now please do 3 things:
a. Download it & use it 🙂
b. If you like it, tell everyone about it so we can bring you more freebies.
c. Share your designs with us in comments to this article.

Themes? Just what are we talking about here, a blog theme?

theme? Social network page theme? What, exactly?

If you have a page on the web and that page is owned by you, or represents you, you can present a “theme” coupled with the content. This will separate you from the masses and provide some stamp of uniqueness that represents you, or what you are trying to convey.

Now that you have decided that a theme is something that you want. You have the choice of a free theme, or a customized theme. A free theme, of course, is just that, free, and usually comes with the web page, or site you are dealing with. It will be limited in scope and will vary from single color backgrounds to multi-colored backgrounds, but it usually stops there. It may be quite sufficient for you and you need not look any further to get added impact. In fact there are some rich, and warm colors with free themes and you might want to stay with something simple. This will depend on the type of page the theme is going on.

If the page is very shallow in terms of showing the theme, then you do not need to be elaborate. If there is a dearth of space that needs to be filled up, or your entire page background is covered, then you might want to consider something with a little more pizzazz, a little more artistic flair. This you will get from a customized theme.

Now, not all customized themes are created equal. You might only get a choice from a limited package. A theme might be just a “skin”, or it might be more involved and provide buttons, motions and secondary actions when hitting links for instance. So it pays to shop around and look for the best choices based on the theme you are trying to project.

You will almost certainly have the choice of many customized themes when you make your decision.

A contributing actor when making the decision for free or customized is obviously price. A free theme is just that, no cost, and there are a lot of nice free themes available. Some are equal to, or better than premium price themes. For custom, or premium themes, you will get a multitude of choices ranging from a few dollars up to $100. You have to decide whether it is worth paying the premium, and that decision will be based on the audience you want to keep once they get to your site. Premium themes will generally give a clean and more professional look and will likely provide more functionality. The theme developer will usually be able to support the theme, especially the higher price ones. So although there is a cost involved, it may dividends to have that extra professionalism and functionality.

Make your decision based on your need. Don’t throw money away, but neither shy away from paying for a very professional look and feel. You are presenting yourself, your company, or an idea to a global audience. Make it look good and give the visitor a great experience!

Face Your Manga is a Flash Web Application that allows you to create an Avatar for yourself or your friends in an absolutely free, easy and quick way. You will be  able to use it with the most common Instant Messaging Programmes, or even on website, Forum, Blog and wherever you want in the virtual world.

With FaceyourManga you can create your own pretty and funny Avatar without needing any artistic skills. Once you have completed the Avatar, enter your nickname, birth date and e-mail address. You will receive an e-mail containing the Avatar immediately.

Following on from the success of the Free Hand Drawn Doodle Icon Set for Bloggers, this latest vector pack of doodles and sketches features more quick and dirty hand drawn elements for you to download and use in your designs. The pack comprises of a range of random pieces, including leaves, drops, bolts, arrows, hearts and textures.

To celebrate the holidays, we’re releasing a great set of icons developed by Jack Cai especially for WDD.

Ravenna is a set of 92 free raster based icons that you can use for your webpages and projects. The icons come available in 9 different sizes, from 16×16 up to 256×256 pixels and available as transparent PNG files. Icons are free for all your personal projects.

If you’d like to share these icons, please refer your friends to this page.

Here’s a full preview of all 92 icons for quick reference. Download yours below and enjoy!