I have posted a lot about Template Monster in the past, mostly because I find it to be a great source of inspiration for some of my web designs. There aren’t many companies out there that are as popular as Template Monster, and they clearly dominate the Website Template business. So to quench my thirst for everything Template Monster, I have gone through and compiled a list of 25 of the best templates that I could find. Enjoy the list! Continue Reading…

As mentioned before, I am a huge fan of Template Monster and the work that they provide. Their templates can be found all over the internet, and they are the top website-template seller on the internet today. That is why I was excited to have an interview with Template Monster’s founder, David Braun, where we discuss the roots of Template Monster, how things operate while working for them, and some future plans as well. So if you are interested to find out more about Template Monster, sit back and enjoy the following interview!

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Forums are a very popular part of the internet today. They allow members to discuss all sorts of different topics, share knowledge and experience, and learn from each other. I am going to introduce to you 5 different forums on the web that will teach you a ton about website design, website development, and maintaining a website. So strap on your thinking caps, and get ready to delve into these awesome communities!

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I know it has been a while since I’ve posted, but I have been pretty busy of the past month with college stuff, getting a new job at Geek Squad, and plenty of other fun things. However I am trying to get back into posting to the blog more, so I don’t want to let that slip away from me. As for news I have, Business Professionals of America is starting up again. If you do not know what that is, it’s a club that is offered my my high school, which I was in last year and took home 1st place in Website Design Team and 2nd in Fundamentals of XHTML. I’m hoping to compete again this year and do just as well, but I’ve got a lot of preparing to do. Aside from just those events I’ve also thought about the Website Development Team, which would be quite a bit more work as you need to develop an actual application, but it’s always good experience.

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There are new startup companies that pop up every day, and there are always new ideas being shared across the internet. However there will always be the top sites as well. The creme of the crop of social networking, web 2.0, or whatever you want to call it. These are the websites that everybody loves to visit and uses on a daily basis, and these are also the companies that are looking for the most help. Most people to visit YouTube do not think about getting a job there, though I would bet it would be an awesome work environment. So with a little digging around, I have found 11 of the coolest companies to land a job as a web developer. Note that I have never actually worked at any of them, so I can’t say first-hand how it would be, but why not give them a little consideration if you’re interested? Continue Reading…

Along with Digg’s sleek color scheme and AJAX-based development, there are many fancy features on the site that fascinate me. So for today’s demo, I have decided to create a character counter that counts how many characters you have entered into a field a limits the amount you can have. This is seen on Digg’s submit page, which limits the amount of characters you can enter for a title and a description. It is a really neat effect that can be useful for many different reasons, such as limiting how long a username can be, or making sure a set number of characters are entered for information (like a phone number).

If you are interested in checking out the demo, you can view it by clicking below:

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A while ago I had found a website online called Brightegg. It was a site that allowed businesses to purchase a website template, and along with that Brightegg would add their own backend section to the site. This would make it an easy solution for businesses to get their own website up and going, plus get a great-looking design along with it. This also seemed like a good idea for designers, as they could make some money off of the templates they designed, plus it would be good practice as well. So seeing as how this could be a great idea, I decided to join. Continue Reading…

If you have ever been to Digg’s submit page, after entering the URL, you will see some forms to fill out. These include a title and description, along with choosing a category for your submission. These are very common fields that you would expect to see on a submission page for an article, but what is great about Digg is that it shows you a live preview of your submission at the bottom of the page, and it updates as you change it around. Today I am going to show you how you can mimic this behavior with your own site using just simple JavaScript, and how it can really help improve your user’s experience!

If you would like to view a live example of this, I’ve got one hosted right here. Check it out and let me know what you think, and please do continue on with the tutorial! Continue Reading…

I have always been a fan of web navigation. It is a huge part of what makes up each website, and it’s what allows visitors to get around the site. So I have decided to go around the web and collect 40 screenshots (and links) to 40 of the coolest, sickest, and most web 2.0-style navigations I could find. Hopefully you guys enjoy the list, and I plan on making another one in the near future. I tried to get websites from all aspects of the internet, not just the common social networking cliche that goes with web 2.0. So please, do enjoy the gallery! Continue Reading…

I was searching on a CSS gallery and ended up running into a great looking japanese site. The name of it, which happens to be in Japanese, is clearly not something that I can type easily, but the url is http://kousotsu-kyujin.com/. This got me wondering about other Japanese sites, and so I set off to find some of the coolest Japanese website designs I could. I didn’t want to spend too much time looking, and I found a small collection of 3 great-looking Japanese website designs, all of which I have no clue what they say or what they are about. Check them out below! Continue Reading…