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Getting Creative With Transparency in Web Design

Arm yourself with the knowledge of how different file types of images can be used to achieve transparency on web-pages. It’s important to first understand these basics. Then learn how to push the limitations of browser support. Take a look at what others are doing with transparency on the Web; only then you’ll be able to learn how to get creative with transparency in Web design.

There are well-established methods of imitating Web transparency that have been developed to overcome browser support issues. While we can appreciate past solutions, it’s important to break out of this faux methodology and learn to work with PNG graphics. We are at a tipping point where IE7 continues to grab market share. And fortunately, IE7 has thet support for full Alpha Transparent PNG graphics. In the near future, transparent PNG graphics will have excellent browser support.

Ultimately, it’s necessary to consider creative uses for transparency on the Web. This article reviews the use of faux transparency methods, presents examples of transparent images on both fixed and dynamic backgrounds, and points to creative solutions that take full creative advantage of today’s modern Web transparency effects.

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60 More AJAX- and Javascript Solutions For Professional Coding

When it comes to design of modern web-applications, Ajax is considered as a standard approach. Interactive solutions for lightboxes, form validation, navigation, search, tooltips and tables are developed using Ajax libraries and nifty Ajax scripts. Ajax is useful and powerful. However, when using Ajax, one should keep in mind its drawbacks in terms of usability and accessibility. With an extensive use of Ajax, you can easily confuse your visitors offering too much control and too many features.

Nevertheless, it’s important to know what’s possible, particularly since you can develop new ideas further, improving the quality of your web applications. Since our last article 80+ AJAX-Solutions For Professional Coding many things have changed — new scripts were introduced, new creative solutions were developed, new robust development kits have been released. They all are supposed to serve a better user experience and provide more comfort for web-developers.

This post presents over 60 new useful Ajax scripts, libraries and solutions which you can use in your future projects. License agreements can change from time to time — please read them carefully before using the script in a commercial web-application.

You might want to consider checking out the following related posts:

• 30 Scripts For Galleries, Slideshows and Lightboxes presents scripts of impressive slideshows, lightboxes and galleries you can use for effective presentations of your images,
• 40+ Tooltips Scripts With AJAX, JavaScript & CSS with handy tooltips scripts for intuitive and well-designed visual clues,
• Data Grids with AJAX, DHTML and JavaScript with free solutions for data grids, developed with AJAX, DHTML and/or JavaScript.

Please notice: the overview presented below is not just a yet-another-one-collection of Ajax-scripts. It’s a collection of really useful ones, the ones you can use in almost every project you’ll be working on.

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Excellent Book Covers and Paperbacks

Book covers are hard to design and nice to look at. An effective book cover manages to catch human’s eye and convey the idea behind the book on one single page. However, it’s getting even harder: to make a book really hard to forget, designers need to design the cover in a unique, creative and striking way. That’s not that different from Web where it’s important to build a sound information architecture upon a rather restricted design layout.

The main idea of this post is to provide you with some creative, expressive and appealing book covers. You won’t like all of them, but you’ll definitely find some designs which are worth pondering upon.

You may be interested in the following posts we’ve published earlier:

• Breathtaking Typographic Posters with over 50 breathtaking typographic posters designed by artists across the globe. We feature Oriental, Iranian, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese and Russian typographic posters as well as a number of further references.
• Award-Winning Newspaper Designs with examples of outstanding newspaper designs collected from dozens of countries.
• Data Visualization and Infographics showcases spectacular data visualizations and infographics which manage to combine a strong visual appeal with the effective presentation of information.
• Data Visualization: Modern Approaches presents interesting modern approaches to data visualization as well as related articles, resources and tools.

Please keep in mind: there are thousands of excellent book covers; we’ve selected only few ones which are excellent in our humble opinion. Although this selection is definitely subjective, we’ve tried to do our best to find interesting designs which make the book cover hard to forget. If you have further suggestions please comment on this post. All covers posted are the copyright of their respective holders.

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Free Fonts Of The Month: GrauBlau, Nevis

Every now and again we take a look around, select “fresh” high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually the time you should be investing in your current projects. We search for them and we find them, so you don’t have to.

This month we’re glad to present you GrauBlau, Nevis, Countries of Europe and a five excellent reduced fonts designed by the Ingofonts foundry. Please read the license agreements carefully - they can change from time to time.

• Free Fonts Of March feature M+ Outline, GeoBats, FF Unit Rounded Bold and IPAP Fonts Family.
• You can find over 80 more free fonts in our section Fonts.

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Footers In Modern Web Design: Creative Examples and Ideas

According to classic principles of web design, everything at the bottom of the page isn’t that important. Most users think like that. And most designers are convinced that this is true. Site elements at the bottom of the page aren’t really able to catch visitors’ attention which is why footers are often forgotten or ignored and not given the attention they deserve.

In fact, most footers are rather boring and uninspiring. Designers often use the bottom area to mention everything they haven’t found place for at the top of the site. E.g. disclaimers, W3C-buttons, copyright, “back to the top”-link and contact details. But if most designers forget it, why don’t make use of it? Why don’t use footers to impress visitors with something they actually don’t expect at all?

This post presents creative examples of footers and ideas for footer design. We’ve tried to identify some trends and some interesting approaches you may want to use or develop further in your projects.

You might also want to take a look at the posts

• CSS-Based Footers: Modern Solutions which showcases even more excellent examples of CSS-based footers.
• Navigation Menus: Trends and Examples with recent trends, examples and innovative solutions for design of modern navigation menus.
• Pagination Gallery: Examples And Good Practices with good practices of pagination design as well as some examples of when and how the pagination is usually implemented.
• Tag Clouds Gallery: Examples And Good Practices presents creative examples and ideas for design of tag clouds.

Basically, footers need to provide users with the information they are looking for. This is why contact details and a brief information about site or / and site owners needs to be placed in the footer. Corporate designs may need to provide driving directions, telephone number, a web form or at least an e-mail.

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Beautiful Handwriting, Lettering and Calligraphy

Handwriting seems to have lost some of its attraction over the last years. Nobody writes beautiful handwritten letters, and uses digital means of communication with smileys, abbreviations and standard lettering instead. And that’s a pity. Since handwriting is unique, it has a tremendous expressive power a standard lettering isn’t able to achieve.

More than that, handwritten text can be incredibly gorgeous. In fact, there is nothing more valuable than a beautiful handwritten letter sent to your beloved ones. And this post attempts to prove just that.

In the overview below you’ll find excellent examples of beautiful handwriting, creative lettering and professional calligraphy. It’s really amazing to see what one can create out of simple letters drawn with a pencil on a small piece of paper.

For further typographic inspiration you can browse through our previous posts

• Breathtaking Typographic Posters showcases over 50 breathtaking typographic posters designed by artists across the globe. We feature Oriental, Iranian, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese and Russian typographic posters.
• Typography in Motion with excellent examples of typography embedded into movies and videos,
• Hand-Drawing Style in Modern Web Design demonstrates excellent examples of hand-drawing style in modern web design.

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