Design Principles

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This week the following hot articles have been added:

Design Principles (1 material):

Ten Of The Most Common Mistakes Made In Web Design

Designers can keep more of their website visitors by avoiding common mistakes. The following list describes some of the most common design errors associated with websites.

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Photoshop Tutorials (38 materials):

Singh Ray Blue Gold Polarizer in Photoshop

We will discuss how to the singh ray blue gold polarizer to help accomplish very high contrast black and white digital photo image.

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Remove Background using Pen Tool in Photoshop

In this video tutorial learn how to remove a background from a photo using the pen tool.

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Photoshop Tip using the Quick Mask Tool

In this photoshop video tutorial learn how to use the quickmask took.

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Remove Unwanted Objects in Photoshop CS3 Extended

In this Photoshop CS3 extended video tutorial learn how to remove unwanted objects from a photo using a very cool feature.

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Retro TV

Editor's Pick of December, 2008
Television is gradually loosing the role of the most powerful mass media, so making TV-set themed web design would look really stylish and classic as well as a bit nostalgic.

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Leather Notes

Draw nice looking leather notes in Photoshop.

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Discoball

Make nice looking discoball.

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3D Shining Text

Draw 3D lighting text in photoshop.

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Fireworks CS4 Photoshop Integration

For CS4, Adobe has been working hard to integrate Fireworks with the other apps, especially Photoshop...

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Making Photos Come Alive - Cutout

In this tutorial you will learn how to add a unique effect to your photos to make them come alive.

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Create a Dream Design with 3D Typography

Editor's Pick of December, 2008
Emotion and idea expressing fonts can keep your web design one-topic focused thus make mood and thoughts of your visitors most appropriate for the content perception of your site.

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Creating a Christmas Bauble Decoration

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a Christmas Bauble for your festive graphic decorations.

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Greeting E-card Drawing Tips (Exclusive Tutorial)

Editor's Pick of December, 2008
Creating a unique layout of a greeting card is a bit time consuming, but you can make it look and feel indeed the way you want it to be.

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Reflection in Broken Mirror

How to make a broken glass in Photoshop.

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Web 2.0 Text Logo with Gel Effect in Photoshop

This video tutorial will show you how to create a web 2.0 text logo gel effect using Adobe Photoshop.

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Learn How to Create a Smoke Brush in Photoshop

This video tutorial will show you how to create a smoke brush in Adobe Photoshop.

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3D Quick-Look in CS4 Extended

Get ready for an incredible 3D experience, as you view this quick-look at some of the new 3D features in Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended.

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3D Metal Text

Draw nice looking 3D metal text.

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Photoshop Stamp

Draw perfect stamp with your own symbol.

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Simple Glossy Navigation Bar Design in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you how to design a modern glossy navigation bar in Photoshop. This is a beginner tutorial with a just few simple steps, aiming to help beginner web designer for making their first-ever web page.

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Design an Awesome Starry Text Effect In Photoshop

In this tutorial, I am going to show you the steps I took to create this awesome starry text effect in Photoshop. The inspiration of this text effect comes from the EA game "Dead Space".

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Background with Photoshop and Illustrator

This Photoshop video tutorial experiments with a current design trend of creating techno backgrounds.

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Create Stunning Ruby Text Effect with Photoshop

Learn how to create this stunning ruby text effect with Photoshop.

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How to Create Matte Reflection with Photoshop

Learn how to create a very professional looking product presentation including creating the background, matte reflection, perspective lighting, and more.

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Create Space Scene Planet and Stars in Photoshop

We will walk you through creating everything in this space scene, stars, planets, lighting, coloring and more in this in-depth Photoshop video tutorial.

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Learn How to Change Eye Color with Photoshop

Here is a way to change eye color.

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Creating a Christmas Star

In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to create a Christmassy Star for your festive graphic decoration. We will be creating the star from the basic star Custom Shape in PhotoShop.

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Colorful and Dreamy Scene

Learn how to turn an original picture into a colorful and dreamy picture.

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Paper Curl

A detailed Photoshop tutorial that shows how to create a paper curl.

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Design a Dark and Crimson Forest Scene in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the processes I used to transform an average forest Photo into a Dark and Crimson Forest Scene, inspired by the Japanese Survival Horror Playstation game "Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly".

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Business Layout #3

In this tutorial I'll show you how to make a really simple clean business layout.

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Create a Matrix Poster

Learn how to create a matrix poster.

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Blue Glow Portrait Effect

Make a blue glow portrait effect by using some color blending techniques.

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Create a Website Layout in Photoshop

Learn to create this entire dealership website from start to finish.

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Enhance Photography & Cool Border with Photoshop

Learn how to enhance many aspects of your photography such as saturation, contrast, sharpening techniques and finish of the final presentation with an extremely slick border.

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Create a Cool Spark Beam

Learn how to create a product presentation with flare!

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Create Fake Mist and Sun Rays Beam with Photoshop

In this Photoshop video tutorial learn how to create fake mist, god rays (sun beams), and creating rich black and white images.

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Christmas Glass Balls Drawing Lesson (Exclusive Tutorial)

Editor's Pick of December, 2008
On-line Christmas Tree decorating may be somewhat as fun as a traditional one. Though Photoshop sets no limits on your creativity and you can go as far as your imagination lets you.

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CorelDraw Tutorial (1 material):

3D Euroleague Logo

Give 3D effect to the 2D logo.

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Illustrator Tutorial (1 material):

Patterns and Shapes in Adobe Illustrator (Video Tutorial)

This tutorial is based on an advertisement that uses patterns and shapes to create a unique design effect.

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Flash Tutorial (2 materials):

Rotating Billboard

One easy to make rotating billboard on Time Square. It's very easy tutorial for everyone.

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Flash CS4 Deco Tool (Video Tutorial)

Having fun experimenting with Flash CS4's Deco Tool.

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3D Tutorial (1 material):

How to Create Explosive Typographic Effects in Cinema 4D

Editor's Pick of December, 2008
Stunning tutorial on how to create an attention-attractive 3D logo and make it the most eye-catching element of your web design.

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HTML Tutorial (1 material):

Redefined HTML Tags

This tool in Dreamweaver allows users to redefine an existing component of HTML.

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Domain Names (1 material):

What Kind of Domain Name Should you Choose?

Domain names are unique on the Internet, you can't have two the same, no matter how you try.

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New Version of HTML Launched.....HTML5

Abstract

This specification defines the 5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability.

Semantics

Elements, attributes, and attribute values in HTML are defined (by this specification) to have certain meanings (semantics). For example, the ol element represents an ordered list, and the lang attribute represents the language of the content.
Through scripting and using other mechanisms, the values of attributes, text, and indeed the entire structure of the document may change dynamically while a user agent is processing it. The semantics of a document at an instant in time are those represented by the state of the document at that instant in time, and the semantics of a document can therefore change over time. User agents must update their presentation of the document as this occurs.
HTML has a progress element that describes a progress bar. If its "value" attribute is dynamically updated by a script, the UA would update the rendering to show the progress changing.

Structure

All the elements in this specification have a defined content model, which describes what nodes are allowed inside the elements, and thus what the structure of an HTML document or fragment must look like. Authors must only put elements inside an element if that element allows them to be there according to its content model.
a. Space characters
b. Text nodes
c. Inter-Element Whitespace
d. SVG specification

Kinds of content

# Metadata content
# Prose content
# Sectioning content
# Heading content
# Phrasing content
# Embedded content
# Form control content
# Interactive content

Metadata content

Metadata content is content that sets up the presentation or behaviour of the rest of the content, or that sets up the relationship of the document with other documents, or that conveys other "out of band" information.

Elements from other namespaces whose semantics are primarily metadata-related

Prose content

Most elements that are used in the body of documents and applications are categorised as prose content.

As a general rule, elements whose content model allows any prose content should have either at least one descendant text node that is not inter-element whitespace, or at least one descendant element node that is embedded content. For the purposes of this requirement, del elements and their descendants must not be counted as contributing to the ancestors of the del element.

This requirement is not a hard requirement, however, as there are many cases where an element can be empty legitimately, for example when it is used as a placeholder which will later be filled in by a script, or when the element is part of a template and would on most pages be filled in but on some pages is not relevant.

Sectioning content

Sectioning content is content that defines the scope of headers, footers, and contact information.

Each sectioning content element potentially has a heading. See the section on headings and sections for further details.

Heading content

Heading content defines the header of a section (whether explicitly marked up using sectioning content elements, or implied by the heading content itself).

Phrasing content

Phrasing content is the text of the document, as well as elements that mark up that text at the intra-paragraph level. Runs of phrasing content form paragraphs.

All phrasing content is also prose content. Any content model that expects prose content also expects phrasing content.

As a general rule, elements whose content model allows any phrasing content should have either at least one descendant text node that is not inter-element whitespace, or at least one descendant element node that is embedded content. For the purposes of this requirement, nodes that are descendants of del elements must not be counted as contributing to the ancestors of the del element.

Most elements that are categorised as phrasing content can only contain elements that are themselves categorised as phrasing content, not any prose content.

Text nodes that are not inter-element whitespace are phrasing content.

Embedded content

Embedded content is content that imports another resource into the document, or content from another vocabulary that is inserted into the document.

All embedded content is also phrasing content (and prose content). Any content model that expects phrasing content (or prose content) also expects embedded content.

Elements that are from namespaces other than the HTML namespace and that convey content but not metadata, are embedded content for the purposes of the content models defined in this specification. (For example, MathML, or SVG.)

Some embedded content elements can have fallback content: content that is to be used when the external resource cannot be used (e.g. because it is of an unsupported format). The element definitions state what the fallback is, if any.

Interactive content

Interactive content is content that is specifically intended for user interaction.

Certain elements in HTML can be activated, for instance a elements, button elements, or input elements when their type attribute is set to radio. Activation of those elements can happen in various (UA-defined) ways, for instance via the mouse or keyboard.

When activation is performed via some method other than clicking the pointing device, the default action of the event that triggers the activation must, instead of being activating the element directly, be to fire a click event on the same element.

The default action of this click event, or of the real click event if the element was activated by clicking a pointing device, must be to fire a further DOMActivate event at the same element, whose own default action is to go through all the elements the DOMActivate event bubbled through (starting at the target node and going towards the Document node), looking for an element with an activation behavior; the first element, in reverse tree order, to have one, must have its activation behavior executed.

The above doesn't happen for arbitrary synthetic events dispatched by author script. However, the click() method can be used to make it happen programmatically.

For certain form controls, this process is complicated further by changes that must happen around the click event. [WF2]

Most interactive elements have content models that disallow nesting interactive elements.

New Version of HTML Launched...HTML 5

Abstract

This specification defines the 5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability.

Browsable version-control record of all changes:

What Is CSS 3?

CSS 3 is the next version of the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) specification, and a current working draft by the Wirld Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The draft attempts to monularize the specification to allow easier updating in the future. Here's the abstract of the current draft (retrieved December 10th 2007):

"The members of the CSS&FP Working Group have decided to modularize the CSS specification. This modularization will help to clarify the relationships between the different parts of the specification, and reduce the size of the complete document. It will also allow us to build specific tests on a per module basis and will help implementors in deciding which portions of CSS to support. Furthermore, the modular nature of the specification will make it possible for individual modules to be updated as needed, thus allowing for a more flexible and timely evolution of the specification as a whole."

Major Updates in CSS 3

In addition to modularization, there are several other major additions or changes in CSS 3. Here are the ones that should be most interesting to web designers.

• Multi-Column Layout
• New Selectors
• Improved Color Control

Multi-Column Layouts in CSS 3

The multi column layout module in CSS 3 adds functionality to flow the content of an element into multiple columns. This will be important in designing CSS layouts, because the space on wide screen resolutions can be more effectively used without forcing long lines of text.

Firefox has partial support of the functions of CSS 3 multi column layout: It supports -moz-column count, -moz-column width and a few other CSS attributes. They work like column-width and column-count in the CSS 3 draft module do.

CSS 3 Selectors

In addition to the selectors found in CSS 2, many additional selectors are added. The most useful of the many new CSS 3 selectors are the attribute selectors [a^=v], [a$=v] and [a*=v], and the nth-child selector.

With the attribute selectors, targeting only some elements is easy without the need of adding classes. Targeting all images from a certain location, all links with a certain relationship, etc. is very simple. The newest browser versions support these selectors, though some incompletely.

The nth-child selector allows highlighting of every other row in a table, of every other paragraph in a long piece of text, or many other meat tricks. The selector is supported partially by the current version of Firefox.

Color Improvements in CSS 3

The most widely supported and the most interesting addition to color handling in CSS 3 is alpha support. This functions both through opacity, and the new RGBA color values. Opacity works in all major browsers except Internet Explorer. RGBA colors are currently only supported by Safari 3 and Firefox 3 beta.

New Cascading Style Sheets Recommendation from W3C

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today issued a Recommendation for Web style sheets. The Recommendation - Cascading Style Sheets, level 1 (CSS1) - gives Web designers a robust set of tools to help them specify Web page presentation properties such as fonts, colors and margins. Through links, CSS1 allows a single style sheet to apply to all Web pages on a site and thereby dramatically simplifying Web site maintenance. Also, a style sheet can be put inside a Web document and in detail specify how the document is presented. W3C Members have reviewed the CSS1 specification and support its adoption by the industry.
Microsoft and other software vendors have products that support CSS1; Netscape, Adobe, SoftQuad and Grif are among the W3C Members who will be adding support for CSS1 in their upcoming software releases.
With Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) content providers do not have the control they have in print media over color, text indentation, positioning, and other aspects of style. Today CSS1 offers a powerful and manageable way for authors, artists and typographers to specify the visual presentation of an HTML document or collection of documents.
"The Web's main document format, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), was intentionally designed as a simple language that valued document structure over document presentation. However, with the commercialization of the Web, presentation of Web documents is becoming increasingly critical," said Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the W3C and creator of the World Wide Web. "CSS1 brings HTML authoring to the next level by effectively combining the structure and content of Web pages with powerful presentation capabilities. We look forward to the industry's further adoption of CSS1."
"CSS1 is a powerful tool. It can alter the look and feel of an entire web site simply by changing a single style sheet," said Håkon Lie, co-architect of CSS1. "CSS1 makes it very much easier to maintain a consistent style throughout the entire Web site. At the same time, CSS1 enables rich individual expressions that Web designers will appreciate."
Creative web designers have tried to bypass HTML's limitations by using images of text, which look like good typography but result in documents that cannot be searched, fed to speech synthesizers for visually impaired users, and do not print well. They have also used non-portable proprietary HTML extensions to gain control of spacing, and tables to simulate margins and indents. CSS1 allows designers to directly express the appearance they seek while retaining device-indepedent document structure, reusability, searchability and accessibility for the disabled.
"By separating the structure from the visual presentation of documents, we ensure the documents created today can also be displayed on the presentation devices of tomorrow," said Bert Bos, co-architect of CSS1. "HTML has become a universal storage format that will outlast current computers. CSS1, when used correctly, assures that documents can be preserved without sacrificing aesthetics on the Web."
It is expected that other specifications will build on CSS1 to provide support for Web fonts, speech style sheets, extended layout and printing capabilities. Also, W3C is actively working with its members to ensure that script-based applications can take advantage of style sheets. For example, a script attached to a Web page may dynamically alter properties, such as color, set in a CSS1 style sheet.
Please see attached fact sheet and testimonials document for additional information on CSS1.