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Professional Web Design Forums

Web design-related forums are a place where you interact with other designers, exchange ideas or discuss your first drafts. When you have a problem, you can post the issue, and then receive feedback on possible design or coding solutions from community members. This interaction is a great way to establish contacts and build relationships. Forums are used for networking and marketing purposes. They are practical places to solve problems and can serve as a form of social diversion.

As designers and developers, we choose a forum depending on its ability to approach our needs. In best case the forum should be large enough, moderators should be cooperative and the posts should be responded quickly. There is nothing worse than posting a thread on a forum and no one replies to it.

In forums, users develop a reputation over time. The forum software can be used to track this. Some forums allow users to rate each other as well. Also, the more you participate and the more professional input you bring to the community, the more other members will recognize you and respect your opinion.

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Best Of April 2008

Every month we take a look around and select some of the most interesting web-development-related web-sites. We read articles, check out tools, analyze the advantages of new resources. Below you’ll find useful references, tutorials, services, tools, techniques and articles we’ve found over the last 30 days - an overview of web-sites you shouldn’t have missed in April 2008.

All images can be clicked and lead to the sites from which the screenshots have been taken.

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Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: May 2008

Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why since April 2008 we supply you with fresh desktop wallpapers. And to make them a little bit more distinctive from the usual crowd, we’ve decided to embed calendars for the upcoming month. So if you need to look up some date, isn’t it better to show off a nice wallpaper with a nice calendar instead of launching some default time application?

This post features 17 19 free desktop wallpapers with calendars, created by designers across the globe for Smashing Magazine and its readers. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded and used for free.

Please notice:

• all images can be clicked and lead to the preview of the wallpaper,
• you can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our desktop wallpaper calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?
• Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: April 2008 features desktop wallpapers from the last month.

So what wallpapers have we received for May?

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(Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos

Photography is a very powerful medium and a very difficult craft. Excellent photos don’t only display some facts — they tell stories, awake feelings and manage to share with the audience the emotions a photographer experienced when clicking the shot button. Taking excellent pictures is damn hard as you need to find a perfect perspective and consider the perfect timing. To achieve brilliant photography you need practice and patience. However, it is worth it: the results can be truly stunning.

Below you’ll find 50 brilliant photos and stunning pictures — some pictures tell stories, some are incredibly beautiful, some are funny and some are very sad.

All pictures are copyright of their respective owners. Please explore the further work of the photographers by browsing through their work. We’ve tried to cover different themes so that everybody will find something interesting and spectacular for himself / herself. All screenshots are linked und lead to the pages from which they’ve been taken.

You may also want to take a look at the following posts:

• (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers covers desktop wallpapers related to typography, art, technology, photography and abstract themes,
• 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures presents 35 extremely beautiful and perfectly executed HDR-pictures.

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Inspirational Hyperreal Vector Artists and Images

Hyperrealism is an art movement,which requires the same level of technical ability as photorealistic illustration. To get an idea what is actually meant by that, you can take a look at some excellent examples in the post The World’s Most Photorealistic Vector Art. While Hyperrealism brings a similar level of skill to images, this style allows the artist to creatively interpret an image. In Hyperrealism artists utilize ethereal lighting effects, depth of field techniques, and camera style perspective to depict the images. They create images that are imaginatively realistic.

Often artists that work in Hyperrealism have other interests as well. These vary by subject matter and style. Some of the artists listed below are interested in Vexel styles, Digitalization, Classic Airbrush Painting, and have been influenced by a myriad of other styles. We’ve included work that ranges from strong Hyperrealism to work that is more a stylization of reality.

This kind of artwork is often created using Illustrator’s Gradient Mesh Tool, though not always. You’ll see that some of the artists create artwork with a fantastic level of detail, using many flat shapes. Illustrator is the most popular program for creating Hyperreal Vector art. Artists also use Flash and other vector programs as well.

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Free Credit Card Icons For Online-Shops

Credit card icons are an essential part of every online-shop. They are often used to indicate available payment conditions and purchasing options. The clearer they are presented in the online-shop, the easier it is for potential customers to figure out if they actually can pay online in this shop. Therefore when it comes to the design of an online-shop there is no way to get around using some credit card icons.

If you need some specific credit card icons — for instance the icons of a regional bank in your country, make sure to visit the official site of the bank first to get the most recent icons. They are usually presented in the sections titled “logo center”, “brand materials”, “media center” etc. Credit cards may also look differently depending on the country they are supposed to be used in.

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