In this article, I’ve pieced together 30 excellent CSS techniques and examples that showcases the capabilities and robustness of CSS. You’ll see a variety of techniques such as image galleries, drop shadows, scalable buttons, menus, and more - all using only CSS and HTML.

Clicking on the title will direct you to the documentation/tutorial, while clicking on the accompanying image will direct you to the demo page if it’s separate from the documentation.

1. Hoverbox Image Gallery

A pure css-based gallery; hovering over an image enlarges it.

2. Advanced CSS Menu

A creative and complex navigation scheme.

3. Sliding Photograph Galleries

An accordion effect; hovering over an image expands it.

4. Lightbox Slides

Part of an article entitled “Supercharge your image borders” showcasing how you can use CSS styles to make images look more interesting.

5. Drop shadow on an image

Aan image effect demo and discussion based on a A List Apart article entitled, “CSS Drop shadows“.

6. Cross Browser Multi-Page Photograph Gallery

Hovering over the tabs changes the category, while hovering over an image enlarges it.

7. CSS Photo Zoom

Uses a single image and adjustment of the background-position attribute.

8. CSS gallery layout—smells like a table

Mimics a table layout, but uses lists. The gallery is also fluid width.

9. Sticky Footer

A static footer with very little XHTML required.

10. whatever: hover

A navigation menu that mimics Window’s Start menu.

11. CSS-Only Accordion Effect

An accordion effect using div’s and :hover; the accordion effect can be vertical or horizontal.

12. Scalable CSS Buttons Using PNG and Background Colors

A technique that addresses vertical scaling, the use of many images, and lack of a hover effect.

13. Pushbutton Links

links that are styled to look like buttons without using images.

14. Scrollable Table with Fixed Header

The table’s captions stay put which is excellent for long tables.

15. Content Overlay with CSS

When you hover over the image, the container div is shown with more text.

16. A CSS styled table version 2

A beautifully styled, table with semantic mark-up - uses a background image.

17. PNG Overlay

Another way to add flare to images (rounds the corners and adds a border and drop shadow).

18. Showing Hyperlink Cues with CSS

Simple tutorial on adding icons to different types of links.

19. Simple Rounded Corner CSS Boxes

Uses only one image and very few lines of code and mark-up.

20. Sitemap Celebration

Tree-like navigation using nested lists, great for sitemap pages.

21. Easy cross-browser transparency

Opacity technique without the use of JavaScript (but at the cost of using non-valid XHTML code).

22. Curved corners 2

Fluid width and height divs with rounded corners.

23. Creating a graph using percentage background images

List items <li> styled into bar graphs.

24. CSS Bar Graphs: Examples

3 bar graph examples - “Basic CSS Bar Graph”, “Complex CSS Bar Graph”, and “Vertical CSS Bar Graph” using div’s and definition list tags.

25. Animated Rollover Arrow

The arrow follows along the entire width of the navigation bar smoothly, without the use of JavaScript or animated gif’s.

26. A CSS-based Form Template

Showcases an accessible web form.

27. CSS Image Text Wrap

Using empty spacer div’s, the page’s text mimics a wrapping effect around the background image.

28. Before your very eyes - a fade-in image

A demo using opacity and a single image that gradually fades in to cover the text.

29. Pure CSS Pop-ups

A pop-up technique that works even in IE 5 Mac.

30. CSS Gradient Text Effect

Uses background image overlays, and empty span tag, and position: absolute to create a gradient effect on text.

Special Thanks & taken from http://sixrevisions.com

Free professional WordPress themes are now become most demanded on the internet and there are also alot of free themes website from where you can download thousands of free wordpress themes. But to find corporate, professional and attractive wordpress themes is still very hard.  Today, I am going to introduce you with another great wordpress collection website from where you can get exclusive and beautiful wordpress themes.

SkinPress offers you to download free professional wordpress themes at no cost. Yes, Its absolutely free as long as you follow the license conditions.  Their all the themes looks like a premium wordpress themes which you can download easily. All the themes listed there has been released by SkinPress. They also release php link directory themes while zencart themes and website templates section is coming soon. Just take a look now and find the perfect professional wordpress theme for your blog.

Taken From www.smashingapps.com

Easily turn wordpress into an e-commerce solution. As someone who has used WP-ecommerce in the past, this was a lot easier!

I’ve been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to make money from blogging.

I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.

The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to make money through blogs.

Income Streams for Bloggers - How to Make Money Blogging

Advertising Programs - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google - Adsense. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks, Text Link Ads.

Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick and Value Click (to name just some of the options) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (YPN is only available to US publishers).

Lastly there’s BlogAds - one of the first blog specific ad networks.

RSS Advertising - The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.

Sponsorship - In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month - one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies - either in one off or a regular fashion - and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing so.

Affiliate Programs - There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.

Digital Assets - Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.

Blog Network Opportunities - with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks - bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.

Business Blog Writing Opportunities - as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.

Non Blogging Writing Opportunities - Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors - this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!

Donations - Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fund raising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.

Flipping Blogs - Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ - or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).

Merchandising - My recent attempt to sell ProBlogger.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress. While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising - quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details - but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.

Consulting and Speaking - While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work - his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago - but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.

As time rolls on there are more and more ways that bloggers make money from their blogs opening up. Feel free to suggest your own ideas and experiences in comments below.

Taken From http://www.problogger.net/

Picture by: destinetics
Here’s a collection of 115 social bookmark and news sites ranked by PageRank, number of links and value of each site.

We used dnScoop to gather the data for all these sites. This is what the dnScoop data is based on:

Page Rank- Google PageRank

Inbound Links- The total number of pages that contain links to www.sitename.com

Site Value Report - This value is calculated based on several factors shown above, including: Links, Traffic (Alexa), age of the domain, site category, domain keyword popularity, and overall occurrences of the domain name on the web.

The list was based on this social bookmarking list . We added a few more sites, such as, Shoutwire.com, Plime.com and PixelGroovy.com.

The dollar value of the sites are a bit misleading (is Simpy.com really worth $302,332,960 more than Digg?), but this list should hopefully provide you with some data on social news and bookmark that you haven’t seen before. If anybody knows of any better online tools to roughly estimate the value a site then leave a link in the comments section and we’ll update this list over the next few weeks and compare the data.

Site	PR	Inbound Links	$ Value
www.slashdot.org	9	28,018,962	$25,787,200
del.icio.us	8	370,943,962	$521,172,000
www.technorati.com	8	148,233,993	$276,243,000
www.digg.com	8	137,000,000	$215,992,000
www.reddit.com	8	132,924,191	$178,934,400
www.stumbleupon.com	8	59,888,074	$39,723,400
www.connotea.org	8	3,272,642	$11,241,440
www.furl.net	7	99,028,154	$188,853,100
www.newsvine.com	7	49,881,588	$35,890,400
www.blinklist.com	7	47,039,214	N/A
www.folkd.com	7	13,766,114	N/A
www.squidoo.com	7	7,171,958	$13,336,150
www.citeulike.org	7	3,694,298	$11,226,880
www.kinja.com	7	2,593,905	$9,965,880
www.propeller.com	7	2,503,342	$13,613,600
www.spurl.net	6	34,419,253	$32,200,000
www.simpy.com	6	23,405,771	$518,324,960
www.mister-wong.com	6	9,672,510	$10,667,840
www.rawsugar.com	6	7,481,362	$14,925,880
www.diigo.com	6	6,095,828	$11,243,680
www.linkagogo.com	6	3,987,085	N/A
www.corank.com	6	1,536,589	$4,281,340
www.care2.com/news	6	808,351	$2,237,900
www.backflip.com	6	733,144	$2,463,550
www.spotback.com	6	315,219	$459,980
www.kaboodle.com	6	309,115	$3,691,950
www.shoutwire.com	6	284,654	$216,910
www.sphinn.com	6	270,738	$100,000
www.searchles.com	6	261,216	$197,160
www.bibsonomy.org	6	141,521	$2,305,350
www.clipclip.org	6	59,146	$75,210
www.sitebar.org	6	15,661	$245,204
www.taggly.com	5	998,006	N/A
www.buddymarks.com	5	890,014	$3,090,150
www.mylinkvault.com	5	559,084	N/A
www.stylehive.com	5	547,675	$1,377,760
www.hyperlinkomatic.com	5	505,338	$1,457,890
www.plime.com	5	448,091	$474,360,000
www.lilisto.com	5	363,661	$529,000
www.sk-rt.com	5	322,076	$442,900
www.markaboo.com	5	238,271	$227,900
www.xilinus.com	5	57,701	$38,160
www.startaid.com	5	49,341	N/A
www.uvouch.com	5	34,057	$424,020,140
www.thoof.com	5	30,719	$20,600
www.myhq.com	5	27,015	$29,536
www.mybookmarks.com	5	25,443	$29,468
www.hanzoweb.com	5	12,618	$17,222
www.favoor.com	5	11,756	$6,322
www.socialdanger.com	5	7,095	$1,600
www.murl.com	5	6,017	$8,236
www.mobleo.net	5	739	$1,039
www.plugim.com	4	588,860	$1,313,340
www.zurpy.com	4	192,408	$111,180
www.tagfacts.com	4	169,135	$120,772
www.oyax.com	4	112,111	$115,000
www.lifelogger.com	4	99,808	$107,744
www.complore.com	4	93,751	$74,200
www.connectedy.com	4	59,588	N/A
www.sitejot.com	4	55,414	N/A
www.pixelgroovy.com	4	41,778	$19,080
www.cloudytags.com	4	41,654	$29,664
www.blurpalicious.com	4	27,567	$12,900
www.dropjack.com	4	27,251	$13,100
www.bookmark-manager.com	4	18,872	$7,434
www.myvmarks.com	4	17,084	$6,650
www.contentpop.com	4	13,188	$16,274
www.bmaccess.net	4	11,959	$5,600
www.memfrag.com	4	10,564	$5,668
www.bookmarktracker.com	4	10,518	$8,618
www.mysitevote.com	4	9,218	$6,500
www.freelink.org	4	8,427	N/A
www.urlex.info	4	3,962	$2,507
www.rambhai.com	4	2,926	N/A
www.easybm.com	4	2,236	N/A
www.zlitt.com	4	2,236	$3,193
www.chipmark.com	4	2,196	$1,792
www.thinkpocket.com	4	1,914	$848
www.mywebdesktop.net	4	1,329	$368
www.philoi.com	4	1,097	$1,397
www.bookkit.com	4	1,049	N/A
www.bookmax.net	4	874	N/A
www.votelists.com	4	399	$339
www.whitelinks.com	4	269	N/A
www.tedigo.net	4	135	$458
www.mixx.com	3	559,683	$1,854,160
www.marktd.com	3	43,855	$56,180
www.tagza.com	3	35,627	$7,500
www.wirefan.com	3	17,204	$27,772
www.blogbookmark.com	3	11,934	$11,124
www.bukmark.net	3	8,545	$1,620
www.getboo.com	3	7,742	$42,728
www.fungow.com	3	4,553	N/A
www.syncone.net	3	4,026	$25,070
www.linksnarf.com	3	3,893	$1,120
www.ez4u.net	3	1,030	N/A
www.listerlister.com	3	633	$5,702
www.xlmark.com	2	15,012	$5,974
www.totalpad.com	2	4,693	$510
www.barksbookmarks.com	2	2,786	$11,766
www.memotoo.com	2	2,382	N/A
www.blipoo.com	2	598	$100
www.bookmarkall.com	2	371	$694
www.yattle.com	2	127	$1,081
www.wetogether.info	1	911	$515
www.vuju.com	1	284	$145
www.newsweight.com	1	67	$42
www.voteboat.com	1	41	$10
www.freezilla.co.uk	1	38	$21
www.faves.com	0	50,781	$38,720
www.socialogs.com	0	50,090	$18,500
www.i89.us	0	28,192	$11,872
www.crowdfound.com	0	1,516	$3,050
www.quickieclick.com	0	9	$650
ma.gnolia.com	N/A	N/A	N/A

Whether you are just starting out or a seasoned veteran these tools, tutorials, lists and other resources are great sites for any web designer. Organized into helpful categories (design inspiration, CSS resources, web design guides, color tools, free fonts and more) this collection not only has useful resources but also categorized links to other lists with 100s more. If you’re not a designer but still need to create sites you still might be best off spending a few bucks on a web page creation tool with a simple GUI than hiring a designer but can still use the first section below and these great wallpapers to get design inspiration!

General Web Design Inspiration and Useful Design Examples

CSS Beauty is not only an active database for well-designed CSS sites but it is also a way to connect designers with potential clients and a source for web design and general aesthetic inspiration.

Web Design Inspiration is a collection of screenshots showing excellent web designs. It is well worth browsing simply for graphic and web design inspiration.

Web Creme is a very simple site and easy to follow on RSS: screenshots are posted, often more than once per day, of truly impressive web designs.

Unmatched Style is a source for businesses and designers who seek inspiration from particularly attractive, interesting and progressive web designs.

Design Firms is one of many sites on which you can find designers directly but your best bet might be a simple Google search or simply contacting the author of a design found through one of the above-listed design inspiration sites.

25 Beautiful Minimalist Web Designs shows the awesome power of simplicity when it comes to web design - more isn’t necessarily better.

24 Great Niche Galleries has screenshots with descriptions and links to various galleries that you might want to see for more web design inspiration.

10 Great Web [Re]Designs of 2007 features mostly popular and mainstream sites you may already be familiar with but also provides some useful analysis.

Best of CSS 2007 is another great screenshot-packed eye-candy collection of cool web designs from last year - worth bookmarking for future inspiration.

CSS Web Design Examples, Tutorials and Other Resources

CSS Zen Garden allows you to see the full visual potential of CSS designs. You can pick a style sheet and load it onto the page to view the remarkable differences. The goal of the site is to engender new ideas about and discussions around the possibilities inherent in CSS-based design. While underlying code remains the same throughout the visual differences are readily apparent when you switch between views.

CSS2 Specifications is the place to start with CSS (or go back to when you are stuck). Yes, it isn’t trivial, but it is helpful and (despite the ironic lack of good design on the site itself) is something that everyone should have bookmarked if they are still learning CSS.

The CSS Panic Guide is a resource list which, as you might have guessed, is designed for those moments of utter despair and deparation where you are simply stuck. It is fairly well organized and contains links you’ll likely know as well as ones you won’t. This web design link list features everything from validation and text size to accessibility and media types.

The CSS Shark answers some frequently asked questions, explains some of the basics of CSS offers you a tutorial about Positioning with CSS (CSS-P, web design without tables). There is also a page with interesting links to other on- and off-site resources.

CSS Vault is a highly respected (PageRank resource for sharing beautiful CSS designs and layouts that involves (moderated) community communication regarding designs. If you want to get into active CSS discussions this is one place to do that. The content is frequently updated and the user feedback is generally positive. Overall, this is a great place to browse for interesting and well-done CSS web designs and even find designers.

101 more CSS Tips, Tutorials and Examples is what it sounds like: another great resource list if the aforementioned ones don’t fully handle your needs. Unfortunately, the resources aren’t fully described though some descriptive terms are used as part of the link text.

Web Design Guides and Readings on Contemporary Design and Style

Web Design from Scratch is a great resource for a web designer or aspiring designer of websites either just getting started or already experienced. It is designed to show explicit criteria for success and failure as well as step-by-step guides and instructions for improving your designs. Whether you are completely new to web design, working on new design project or simply revisiting and revising an old web design this is well worth checking out and bookmarking for future reference.

Current Style in Web Design Guide takes you through a series of successful and contemporary designs and then parses the various elements that go contribute to the success of these creative designs. From the particular designs, the author of this useful web design guide extracts general principles which can be applied to other designs. For those of us who have difficulty making the jump from principles and examples to actual design practices this is a must-read guide.

Web 2.0 How-To Design Style Guide: This design guide discusses the generally known but rarely articulated styles associated with designing for what is known as “Web 2.0″ by some and cursed as a passing fad by others. Whether or not you buy into the concept of Web 2.0 or consider it overused and outdated this will take you through the parts and pieces of such designs in a way worth at least browsing through if not bookmarking. On a related note, here are 99 Resources for Good Web 2.0 Design.

Color Tools, Ideas, History and Palette Creation Resources

COLOURlovers is probably the web’s top resource for all things color from color inspiration to palette examples, color history and inspiring uses of color. The tricks learned here can be applied to web design as well as other kinds of design work and are designed for both the color-savvy as well as the virtually color-blind designer.

ColorBlender lets you select a preferred color and then creates a palette based on that input. Blends can be saved for future use and tweaked as needed.

4096 Color Wheel is a pretty straightforward and user-friendly tool for creating color palettes and shifting color schemes.

ColorSchemer Studio suggests palette ideas based on initial and changeable inputs and is both fun to play with as well as useful for professionals.

Photo Color Matcher lets you create a color palette from an existing image of your choice. This can be helpful to people who don’t have a natural eye for color and for clients who may wish to have a designer create a color scheme from a photograph or other image.

Web 2.0 Color Palette is organized to help you develop color schemes based on certain criteria that will fit into a so-called Web 2.0-type scheme.

The Meaning of Colors explains the origins of associations we have with colors including cross-cultural analysis of the meanings of colors across ethnic and geographic groups.

Elegant, Obscure, Abstract and Other Free Fonts

Creamundo is a great place to start searching for free fonts organized in useful ways and easy to view custom samples of prior to downloading. These fonts range from simple and refined to complex and unusual with everything in between.

ShowFont has a likewise extensive collection of free fonts of different kinds

Urban Fonts aren’t all necessarily urban in any traditional sense but many of them are quite interesting and out-of-the-ordinary. Some are based on classic fonts while others are quite creative and original, much like those found at Abstract Fonts or at Better Fonts.

SimplyTheBest has a helpful series of categories that are easy to navigate and understand which, despite their somewhat limited selection, makes them worth seeing.

Mike’s Sketch Pad includes a lot of great fonts but some of them can only be used for non-commercial purposes so be sure to check out the creator details.

Modern Life is an elegantly-designed site run by a skilled designer who recognizes the power of good fonts and shows you some recently successful examples.

TypeTester won’t work for every font but is extremely useful for those it has and to give you a general idea of what different fonts will look like in different situations.

1001 Free Fonts is yet another source for free fonts if the above resources weren’t enough.

Other Great Web Design and General Design Resources

The Landing Page Composer is one great way to go if you aren’t much of a designer and don’t intend to be. It is a program that allows users to create a range of landing page designs from basic templates using a remarkably simply graphic user interface.

Open Source Web Design is a trading post of sorts for web designers to share free web design templates with one another for the common good of web design and designers.

Blue Vertigo is a hodge-podge collection of free resources for web designers including stock photography sites and free fronts, brushes and clip art.

Browser Shots is a great pre-final test site for web designers. The site allows you to see what your design will look like in various browsers.

Top 50 Logo Design Tutorials is a useful collection of logo design guides, accompanied by screenshot images, that range in content from simply elegant to striking and complex.

51 Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials Many designers fail to see the importance of text and text effects as a critical component of quality web designs. These text effects are an essential part of any web designer’s toolbox.

9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design is another good place to start and get your bearings if you’re a relatively new designer or want a refresher course.

Webunload has finally got it together. It’s one of my favorite new resources to sell my stuff at. It’s all free, so give it a try if your interested.

http://www.webunload.com/