Yahoo! have just released the version 1.0 of Design Stencil Kit. The kit is available for OmniGraffle, Visio (XML), Adobe Illustrator (PDF and SVG), and Adobe Photoshop (PNG), and covers the following topics :

• Ad Units
• Calendars
• Carousels
• Charts and Tables
• UI Controls
• Form Elements
• Grids
• Menus and Buttons
• Mobile - General
• Mobile - iPhone
• Navigation and Pagination
• OS Elements
• Placeholder Text
• Screen Resolutions
• Tabs
• Windows and Containers

A pretty interesting set of stencils that are mapped to the Y! patterns and the code modules in YUI. Released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

Posted by Hatem at 6:34 PM to General | Permalink | Comments (0)

We used to talk about PHP Framework, JavaScript Framework, but CSS Framework is not a common work in web application development, especially for web designer. The case of BluePrint CSS which aims to provide a ready to use CSS solution for developers and designers :

Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your CSS development time. It gives you a solid CSS foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, and even a stylesheet for printing.

The advantage of having a CSS framework is certainly to make work with stylesheets more easy, in addition to providing a flexible way to design the page layout, and make it more accessible and easy to print. I'll definitely go for such frameworks, rather than writing myself all css on the fly.

Posted by Hatem at 11:10 AM to CSS | Design Techniques | Tips | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jeff Croft have written an excellent article on using transparent PNG in web design, especially that it is now supported with IE7. The advantages of using transparency with PNG is the great image compression format, the color depths and the alpha-channel transparency; an advantage of PNG againt GIF which offer a limited binary transparency. Jeff shared in the article some great techniques that you can use with the general layout, logo, icons and content.

What if I wanted to place my personal logo on all of my photographs? Yes, it's possible to open each image in Photoshop, apply the logo, and resave the image. However, this becomes terribly impractical when dealing with thousands of images that are frequently updated-and sometimes updated when I'm nowhere near a computer (for example, when I send photos to Flickr via my cell phone). Wouldn't it be nice if the logo were added automatically? PNG can help do just that.

Posted by Hatem at 11:10 AM to Design Techniques | Permalink | Comments (1)

On 7th september 2007 will be held the d.Construct 2007, an affordable, one-day conference aimed at those designing and building the latest generation of web-based applications. I loved the idea of the website with a live design schedule beginning with a wideframe on May, sketched ideas on June, a rough design on July, and final design proposal by August. For the current wideframe it's somehow the same thing that I used to do while designing a website (on paper), before writing any html displaying images. The user experience is very important for web designers, and d.Construct is of the best of conference in this context. I just find one day too short for such great yearly event.

Posted by Hatem at 11:31 AM to Design news | General | Permalink | Comments (0)

eLogodesign have a great collection of 50 logo design tutorials. Pretty useful especially that I was looking for some logo ideas, a mascot or kind of cartoon. Some good useful techniques, check it out.

Posted by Hatem at 11:08 AM to Design Techniques | Tips | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sponsored Post: Templates Factory provides professional template service with a great collection of HTML, Swish and flash templates, in addition to logos and corporate identity. Interesting for websites owners to take their websites to the next level by getting a professional design at accessible prices. Web designers would be also interested to buy templates and customize it for their needs with thousands of ready to use professional templates.

The big collection of templates is really useful for anyone with templates available in almost all business categories from Agriculture, Pets, Architecture, Books ... etc. Bloggers for example will be interested into ready to use wordpress templates for their personal or business blogs, with professional design and widgets enabled. For e-commerce also whatever you are using ZenCart, osCommerce or CRELoaded, there is a bunch of great commercial templates to get started.

Continue reading "Templates Factory, for Professional Website Templates" »

Posted by Hatem at 4:14 PM to General | Permalink | Comments (1)