45 excellent free web templates

Free Design Templates don’t have to be ugly, cluttered,and boring, Some web-sites offer high quality templates for free you can use them for your personal and commercial projects without any restrictions.

Convert your image to vector online...for free

If you would like to convert any image to vector, there is an easy way to do that without using any software like Photoshop or Illustrator. Vector Magic allows you to convert images to vector directly from their website.


Just upload any image from your computer. It is very easy to use, just follow the instruction and you will have your vector image. Then select the output vector (EPS) or in Bitmap (PNG) to download. They have are different prize-plans, but if you register new you will get 2 tries for free.

Create Web 2.0 Progress Bars: jQuery, DHTM, JS CSS, Photoshop

Progress Bars is one of the most interesting components that web designers like to use in their projects. They can be used in various places such as: page loading, redirecting, uploading files, sending information using Ajax and so forth.

Steps to gaining more web traffic

Anyone who has ever looked at a successful blog, or website will tell you that the reason it is probably successful, is because of the content. There is usually lots of copy, and even with the large quantity it is still extremely easy and not overwhelming in the least bit to navigate. Set some goals, grab a cup of joe, and improve your traffic right now!

Making Animated Flash Web Banners in Keynote

7 Female Graphic Designers That'll Rock Your Socks Off

In this article Kelly Erickson showcases 7 truly unique and inspirational female graphic designers with a brief bio on each.

Anatomy of a redesign

Redesigning an established website can lead to boom or bust. Dan Grabham looks at three sites that have worked hard on renewing their online presence. Theres a free PDF download.

csswebsite

Css Website is an innovative gallery of simple websites. Its purpose is to showcase designer’s work and to expand the CSS design community. We propose a classification by color and contents for a better usability.

   

How To Communicate Design Decisions To Clients?

This article provides you with 5 guidelines you can use as a designer to “speak business” — even if it’s just to get your foot in the door or land a big project.

Welcome To Web Topia

Thank you to those who keep coming back to Web Topia. To help keep providing you more insightful information for designing web sites, we've been busy adding additional information for you.

If you look to the right navigation column you'll see we've added additional links under 'General Design Information', and have added the following categories:

1. Web Design
   
2. Resources
3. Show Cases
4. Development
5. Adobe

We'll be adding more, so we hope you'll keep coming back, plus spread the word about our blog devoted to web design. Thank you.

Using CSS to Do Anything: 50+ Creative Examples and Tutorials

For those who could've find it from the previous blog entry, here's the link to the CCS tutorials.

CSS Layouts: 40+ Tutorials, Tips, Demos and Best Practices

The main idea behind CSS-based layouts is offering more flexibility and enhancing the visual experience of visitors. Some important tips and related key-factors can help to learn basics and keep essential techniques in mind.

Learn icon designing: The best of tutorials and articles

Maybe you think that designing an Icon is very difficult and just some professionals can do it.

Well, here are some professionals to teach you how to design your own simple icons via tutorials they have written.
The tutorials are broken down into 3 categories; Articles, Photoshop, and illustrator Tutorials.

Simple Tabbing System

Here's a blog site showing how to create simple tabbing system. It is a very common technique nowadays. Especially for those magazine site, news or blogs that contain a lot of sections or contents.

Slicing and dicing

How slice your web layout.

50 must-read resources for incredible web design

Here are some resources to help you if you're a new web designer or for those who've already started. Learning how to design and build beautiful web sites takes time, effort and a little sweat. Read on.

20 best web design studios from around the world

As web designers and developers we all strive to be the best. But the bottom line is that you are only as good as your client list. This collection of leading web design and interactive agencies not only talk the talk; they walk the walk as well.

14 Design competitions with deadline in August

Have you thought about a competition that will recognise your skills and will give a consistent prize for your talent and imagination? Well, there are 14 design contests in here with various themes that will surely attract some of you.

10 Tips to Finding Great Web Design and Development Services

Gain a better understanding of what to look for in a Web design and development company, how to ask for it and how to ensure that what you pay for is really what you need, writes Molly Holschlag.

30 CSS Websites for design inspiration

Here's a collection of 30 creative websites designed using CSS which will certainly provide inspiration to many of us. These websites reflect ingenuity and innovation. Please note that most of these websites are image heavy, so be patient while they load in your browsers.

The Internet is Color Blind

In the U.S. 7% of the male population – or about 10.5 million men – and 0.4% of the female population either cannot distinguish red from green, or see red and green differently.

For those of us who see colors just fine, it is hard to imagine what those with color blindness are seeing. Luckily humans are smart and have created technology like the Color Blind Web Page Filter.

See examples here.

Studio 7 Designs

Studio 7 Designs Inc is located in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia. They’re a forward thinking design company specializing in creating strong branding for social and environmentally-conscious companies.

Tools and techniques for managing website evolution

This post started from the ideas of a two-part post written last year by Seth Gottlieb & Brice Dunwoodie. The post is a point of reference for those involved in the daily running and development of sites that are continually evolving. Read the article here.

40 Excellent Web Based Tools to Help You Design from Anywhere

In today’s busy world it can be hard to be tied down to one computer. With web based applications becoming so advanced it is now possible to still get work done anywhere there is a computer without installing any software. From image editing to Word documents, you can do it all online.

Start conference

Been thinking of starting a company? Maybe started one recently? Or just have entrepreneurial tendencies in your blood? Check out Start. Friends and colleagues, Jeffrey Veen and Bryan Mason, are hosting a one-day conference in San Francisco on August 7 “for smart, talented Web people to take hold of their ideas, follow their dreams, and start their own companies.”

SynthaSite Launches New Interface To Simplify WYSIWYG Site Creation

SynthaSite, an AJAX-based webpage editor that lets users create websites by dragging-and-dropping, has relaunched with a new interface that it hopes will make the site more appealing to casual web designers. While most of the feature set will stay the same, the company believes that the new interface will expose users to features that were hidden in confusing menus in the last iteration of the site.

One of the most useful features of SynthaSite is its integration with Picnik, an online image editing site. Users can easily manipulate the images they’ve uploaded to SynthaSite using Picnik’s browser-based editor, with the changes seamlessly reflected in their SynthaSite library.

Mark Boulton's Freelance Design Secrets

Mark Boulton Design is a small design studio based in Cardiff, UK, which specializes in designing simple, beautiful interfaces for the Web. In this interview, Mark Boulton, owner and designer, talks about how it all happened, and to share some important factors of running a successful design business. Read the interview here.

Why make sites’ prototypes

Part of the whole web development process is making prototypes of a page or a whole site. Why do this? How to do this? What are the benefits of doing it?

Future of web design

Mark it on your calendar.

WebsiteTips

WebsiteTips.com is an educational Web site design and development resource especially for Web site owners, Web designers, Web professionals, webmasters, teachers and educators, students, and anyone wanting to learn about Web sites.

15 Tools to Help You Develop Faster Web Pages

Here’s a few useful, free tools to help you create and sustain high-performance web applications.

Inspiredology

Inspiredology is a new resource that covers everything that inspires . Most sites show Best of galleries and massive databases of thumbnail sized screen shots of css sites. This site provides insights to get inspired. If you find yourself stuck or looking on how you can make your project better, visit inspiredology.com to get yourself out of that dark creative hole.

Designoogle

A custom search engine that lets you search for inspiration based on keyword or keyphrase.

Website of the week

StylizedWeb is blog about web trends and tutorials, KnowHow community forum and InspireMe inspiration gallery, designed and maintained by Dejan Cancarevic. Visit StylizedWeb.

Applying Divine Proportion To Your Web Designs

Effective web design doesn’t have to be pretty and colorful — it has to be clear and intuitive.

10 SEO Rules for Designers

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a vital component of any website. As a web designer or blogger, it’s important you understand how SEO works. Here are ten easy rules that will immediately improve the SEO on all of your web sites.

Faux Absolute Positioning

There are two popular approaches to positioning with CSS: float and absolute positioning. Both approaches have their pros and cons.

25 Websites With Beautiful Background

Backgrounds are one of the most important aspects in the overall design and feel of a web page, Designers try to impress visitors with appealing design elements, Background images are one of those , unfortunately they are often overlooked or misused, This section will attempt to Give some examples of websites which used page backgrounds impressively.

Top 10 Navigation Menus

The navigation menu is a fundamental part of a web design, no longer is it okay to simply have a load of hyperlinks linking to the different main pages of a website. It is now normal to see hover effects on menus and in this collection. Check them out.

65 Resources for Grid-Based Design

Grid-based design is obviously a popular approach in modern web design. Ford designers that use grids, this post includes links to useful tools that can improve your efficiency and effectiveness, as well as some articles for advanced techniques. For those of you who are not as familiar with the details of grid-based design, there are plenty of articles and learning resources here.

As Web Traffic Grows, Crashes Take Bigger Toll

Alex Payne, a 24-year-old Internet engineer here, has devised a way to answer a commonly asked question of the digital age: Is my favorite Web site working today?

Best and Worst of the Web

BusinessWeek canvassed the Web's best and brightest designers—from Khoi Vinh of The New York Times' Web site to Don Norman, Silicon Valley's chief usability guru—to find out which site designs they rate — and which ones they hate.