scriptygoddess

Here's a few sites that have galleries of cool web designs

Cool Homepages
CWD.dk
misspato (previously linked in another post)
Design Interact's Site of the week (click archive for more)
Media Inspiration

Feel free to add more in the comments if you got 'em

(personal note: but if you're looking for inspiration to design a site that needs to fit within a 800×600 monitor that's compatible with NS 4+ – just shoot yourself now, and end your misery. 😉 Nothing zaps creativity like hearing the words "Netscape 4 compatible and fits within 800×600")

A tutorial on how to make a dotted line with a brush using Photoshop.

Or use these brushes from Ordinary-Life.net (whose site helped inspire the current scriptygoddess design)

Not related to dotted lines…

this post also from Ordinary-life – which had these links to faking a lomo look.

As well as this post which links to a free utility that will let you preview pixel patterns. (Note to self – check out squidfingers when I get home. Would you believe my work actually blocks that URL?!! I don't even want to guess why.)

…this concludes my homage to ordinary-life.net 😀

I was browsing around looking for a way to add smilies to my edit entry screen in MT. I found a few variations but none totally fit the bill. One of them was a modification of the lazyman smilies palette that worked on the edit entry screen.

But, it was not, unfortunately, xhtml compliant and it still pointed to the comments form – which meant it didn't work.

So, I fixed it up and wrote up a tutorial on my site. I thought people here might be interested. The in depth explanation is in my post on my new/modified smilies hack

This one only requires a one line addition to edit_entry.tmpl; so while it is a hack, it's pretty minor. Hope it helps someone out there! =)

While you generally have a great deal of control over how a webpage should be presented, basic CSS doesn?t provide many options for the style of underlines below the links on a page. Here's a technique for adding your own custom underlines, including ones that use animated .gif files!

One of the domains associated with this site went offline for a few hours today – so if you tried to leave a comment, search, trackback, or even email me – it didn't work. However, the good news is that everything is back to normal again. If you did try to email me, please resend. Anything sent in the last 24 hours will not have reached me. (Probably got bounced – but I'm not sure). Sorry about that! :-\

I'm going to start implementing the new design, but will have to do so in stages… So, some pages may be updated before others. Unfortunately, I don't have a ton of continous time to do it – so it will have to happen over the course of several days. Things could get a little ugly around here until then… Hope it doesn't drive anyone nutty.

update Yeah, I know the page has a few issues… it's going to take a little while to do all this… all the fun scripts on the page just make a re-design take a LOOONG time to implement :-\

A few links if you need to design icons and need some ideas:

Chris's icon page (he designed the icons for this site!)
Leo's Icon Archive
Iconfactory and (stockicons)
Pixelgirl (previously linked on this site)
Receiver Studio (i heart ny) (Receiver studios website designs are pretty cool looking too!!)

(If you have more – PLEASE post them in the comments – I'm needing inspiration and having trouble finding it)

There is a mob of designers praising the power of CSS. And while I think there are some things that CSS can do – I still believe that it can't do *everything*. I understand and can appreciate the concept of "keeping content seperate from design" – however I still face the fact that I want my webpage to do something, and CSS seems to fall short.

So, I want to redesign this site. I came up with the design already. I know how I want the page to behave. But I simply can't seem to figure out a way to get a CSS-only layout to do it. What I DID do, is create a half-table/half-CSS layout – and that DOES do what I want. I will grant you "under the hood" it's not pretty. But for the most part, people are seeing the "presentation" version, and they're not viewing source to read the web site!

I know there are a number of CSS-experts who happen by here – and I'm interested to know if you think you can do it. Can you create this layout – with CSS. But before you jump up and say "of course I can" – let me tell you some of the ground rules. Aside from the basic "look" of the site – I want it to be flexible in that if you shrink your browser down really thin – I do NOT want elements on the page to start breaking apart. I want the width of the main content to stay a minimum width (the minimum width of all the elements before they would start to break apart). ALSO, I want the main content and sidebar to EXPAND as the user expands their browser so that if they have a large screen – they could technically view a wider column of text.

If you can figure out how to do that – then I'll create the site with the code – and you'll get credit on the site (in a "credit" box – like I have now) for coming up with the CSS on the site. (If there's something else you'd want, that's not unreasonable 😉 then I'll see what I can do).

Update: I guess one additional question I should ask is those with larger browsers – how many of you always view your sites with the page *MAXIMIZED* – or do you scale your browser manually to what feels comfortable for each site. The last is what I do – which is why I only noticed later that my new design – with those particular restrictions – if you maximize your browser – the width of the main content is a bit too wide (*IF* you have a large monitor) The reason why this is important is because if those with larger monitors DO maximize their browsers – then I"ll have to change my thinking to focus on a FIXED WIDTH as opposed to a FLEXIBLE width. In either case – I still would not want something as simple as a long URL posted in the comments to break the look (ie – sudently the comment box in the sidebar stretches further than the header above it….) Clear as mud, right? 😉

update 2: I think we have a winnah!! 😀 Nice job Raena!!! (Now it's time to start getting the templates in order!) 😀

This isn't new – but I needed to find this before…

Silkscreen (a really tiny font)

I just found the Comprehensive guide to .htaccess. Its a really good beginner's site for basic .htaccess tricks like setting up custom error documents, redirects, preventing specific file types from being listed, denying access by domain (not just IP), and a wealth of other goodies. Its easy to understand for those who are .htaccess challenged and offers some really good tips.