Smashing Magazine put together an interesting article regarding website table of contents that I think is well worth mentioning. While it has been dugg many, many times recently, I wanted to post it here for future reference. As the article referenced accurately, most of the time website table of contents pages are extremely boring and dull. Why not create a ‘revolution’ of sorts and apply some creativity to this page! Most of the examples they show are derived from books, however as several of the commenters there mentioned, “inspiration for creativity can be found in a multitude of places.”

If you enjoy a good font, then you will truly enjoy I Love Typography. This site is a humongous resource for all things typography related. It contains some excellent articles related to typography. It is also full of great font resources too (which is usually helpful to designers looking for an eye-catching font to incorporate in to a new design).

I found what I think is a great, easy to follow 9 step tutorial for building an interactive stack of photographs. This is a great design technique when you are very limited on page space, but wish to display multiple images. Check out the tutorial at Design Reviver and let me know what you think of it.

Squidfingers is an excellent source for some great wallpaper or background patterns. Check out their list of 158 patterns! These are all free for use. However, if you do choose to use one of them, make sure you credit Squidfingers with a link. It’s only fair…after all, they are letting you use the design for FREE. (Have I mentioned before that free is a great price??)

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOGP_Qft0MA

The CSS way of creating great website backgrounds. Nathaniel from tutvid.com did a nice video tutorial that shows how this is done.

Using a top gradient image with a background color you can acheve unique looking backgrounds for your websites. Just use your imagination to create the one that will work with yours.

Business Week published an article in June that contained their “10 Commandments of Web Design, distilled from what they say was a bevy of “Internet luminaries.” Many of the tenets listed are practical and relevant. Unfortunately though, they managed to break one of their own commandments while publishing the article. Some of the points they listed are marginal in my opinion (#5, #6). If you’d like to read their entire article, click here.  Here are their 10 Commandments without all of the “fluff” from the original article.

1. Thou shalt  not abuse Flash.
2. Thou shalt not hide content.
3. Thou shalt not clutter.
4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections.
5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.o company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels.
6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography.
7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences.
8. Thou shalt be social.
9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies.
10. Thou shalt make content king.

So, are you wondering which rule Business Week broke on their own site with this article?? Number 3. They took an article that should have taken up one page and spread it over two pages causing the reader to have to click through to a second page primarily filled up with advertisements. Irritating. Content is king. Wisely laying your content out is extremely important too. Creating content that gives the reader a great experience is extremely important. Business Week failed in its implementation of those aspects in regard to their content.

Anyhow, there’s the list. I’m not sure why it took an entire group of uber-Interneters to come up with this list. Most of us could have come up with a list that is equally as impressive while sitting on the couch at home…

While searching for wood grain textures yesterday, I found Alex Buga’s website. Yes, it does have a great wood texture in the background, but I saved his site to highlight other features that I like about it.

1. As noted before, I like it when sites include hand drawn elements. Alex’s site does this very well with the character sketch and introduction. I also like the fluffy little clouds scattered here and there. The footer also incorporates more hand drawn elements.
2. I also like his choice of colors.
3. The pendant light is cool. I really like the way it “lights” up his comments section. Very clever idea.
4. Navigation menu. Simple and not overloaded with too many choices. I don’t necessarily like the “skip to content” feature as it doesn’t really accomplish much (I can scroll down an inch and a half just as easily as I can hit that button). But, this does not take away from the nice, simple navigation menu he’s created.

So, check out his site and let me know what you think of it. I think it’s great!

Okay, I’m copying Valik’s idea (sorry Valik)! But, I had to see if I could find another great looking wood grain texture. Success! HighResolutionTextures.com’s background texture is really cool. It looks like a nice weather wooden fence gate (see the hinge?). I also like the way it fades out into black as you scroll down the page. There are also plenty of other great looking textures featured on this website that could be of use to designers too. Check them all out. If you see something else of interest there, let me know about it and we’ll post it here!

http://www.vimeo.com/1346744

Here is a simple way to turn a design done in Photoshop into a webpage using HTML and CSS. Anyone can follow this video and do the same with their design.

Click here to download the Photoshop CS3 design file.

Wood look anyone? This website that belongs to Komodomedia has really nice wood theme going. It gives a warm cartoony feel. The navigation bar, the nice wood seal, the heading bars, all in wood. I also like the foliage that they have hanging here and there. Good illustration work.