Design Shack - Web design showcase, CSS tutorials and web standards
About
Design Shack showcases inspiring web design, alongside resources and tutorials for you to succeed in the same way. It is carefully curated and edited by Josh Johnson and David Appleyard.
Articles & Tutorials
25 Brilliantly Simple Web Page Designs
Sometimes a site can be visually stunning not so much because of the content but because of the lack of content. Though often attractive, this is a tricky style to pull off correctly without just looking like you’ve got a boring page.
Today we’ll look at 25 sites that we think got it right. First we’ll discuss why these designs work well under certain circumstances and then we’ll jump into the examples.
Build an iPad-Themed Image Slider With jQuery
If you’re not a seasoned web developer, it can be quite intimidating to approach a project where your client is looking for something trendy and interactive such as an Apple-centric slideshow.
Today we’ll teach you how you can create just such a project in mere minutes using some awesome free resources from around the web. We’ll walk you through ten super simple steps so even if you have little to no web experience, this project should be a breeze!
Design101: Utilizing Strong Alignments
Today we’re going to examine one of the most basic principles in design: alignment. This deceptively simple topic is actually quite complex and is among the most notably lacking proficiencies in designers today.
A strong grasp of how and when to use certain alignments will instantly make you a better designer and will remain a foundational building block for everything you create throughout the rest of your career.
Create a Fun Animated Navigation Menu With Pure CSS
In recent years jQuery has become the easiest and best supported way to implement simple animations online. JavaScript is exceptionally good at what it does and this article is in no way an argument against it.
However, CSS3 offers a glimpse into a possible future where basic animations are performed with straight CSS completely independent of scripting. Today we’ll take a look at how to use CSS3 to create a fun and unique navigation menu that uses @font-face, transforms and transitions.
715 Awesomely Simple and Free CSS Layouts
Frustrated with the quality of free CSS templates online but aren’t quite to the level of building your own? Tired of spending hours trying to customize lame pre-fab designs?
Today we bring you over seven hundred freely downloadable CSS templates that focus on providing you with only a basic layout to build upon. Using these cross-browser layouts you can avoid endless CSS positioning woes and focus on what you’re good at: design.
Web Design Critique #13: Annual Design Awards
Every week we take a look at a new website and analyze the design. We’ll point out both the areas that are done well as well as those that could use some work. Finally, we’ll finish by asking you to provide your own feedback.
Today’s site is Annual Design Awards.
A Practical Guide to Designing With Faces
One of the principal functions of professional design, if not the central function, is to draw the attention of the viewer. Everyone has a message that they want to get across, but getting people to actually stop and take that message in is no easy task.
Designers are therefore tasked with attempting to use every human’s natural attraction to aesthetic beauty in such a way that it becomes possible to capture the attention of an audience almost without them even realizing it.
With this goal in mind, faces are a magic design element.
Using eCSStender to Clean Up Your CSS
Recently we looked at how to use LESS.js to enhance your CSS and save you tons of development time. Today we’ll look at eCSStender, another JavaScript tool that enables you to implement complicated CSS3 properties with very little code.
eCSStender can be a bit confusing to figure out on your own but once you figure it all out it will literally take you less than a minute to install and use. Below I’ll walk you through building a basic example that uses a number of eCSStender extensions.
10 Awesome Stock CSS Files From CodeCanyon
As both a customer and a contributor, I’m a big fan of the Envato Marketplaces. Each of these sites has done an awesome job at targeting and providing for a niche of creatives while creating a decent income opportunity for authors.
One of the newest sites in this network is CodeCanyon, which sells “scripts and components for a variety of languages and frameworks.” Most of these files only cost a few bucks and they can save you some serious coding time. Today we’ll dive into the infant industry of stock CSS components by looking at ten of the coolest items for sale.
