Pixel art lives both in and beyond computer screen. Artists design pixel art posters, magazine covers, album covers, desktop wallpapers, paintings, “pixelish” video ads and even pixelated tattoos. And there is a good reason behind it: in times when popular design solutions strive for real-life-look or perfection pixel art offers a distinctive and creative artistic approach which is extremely expressive. In fact, pixel art can be impressive as well. This post attempts to prove just that.Below we present over 50 excelent pixel art designs — illustrations, paintings and posters as a part of our ongoing monday inspiration series. Some of the works presented below have an ext...

Space wallpapers have something overwhelming, mysterious and somehow enigmatic. They illustrate something which is too far away to be observed and provide us with some insights we wouldn’t be able to gain otherwise. In fact, space wallpapers can be extremely beautiful and hence extremely attractive to our eye. And this is a good reason for putting them on the desktop where “cosmic” motifs can serve as a fresh perspective in the tiresome daily routine.This post presents over 35 space and nebula wallpapers and related resources. Some of the presented wallpapers are real photos, some of them have been created using Photoshop or Illustrator. In either case the result is pret...

If you have one of the Netbooks which has a Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 500 (GMA 500) then you cant play old games like Age of Empires 2, Diablo, Warcraft , Starcraft etc due to direct draw/OpenGL issues with the default driver. The Default driver is really bad and buggy.So here is a driver which will allow you to play these games and more on your netbook. Its just that i still play AOE i had to find a solution and not disable GMA 500 to play it.This applies to most 11.6″ notebooks being powered by GMA 500. Some examples are Acer Aspire One 751,Asus Eee PC 1101HA,Benq Joybook Lite U121 Eco,Dell Inspiron 11z, MSI Wind U115 etc etc . For a complete list visit http://www.notebook...

Le format PNG autorise jusqu’à 256 niveaux de transparence qui ne sont pas pris en charge par Internet Explorer 6. La dégradation grâcieuse n’étant pas toujours possible, je me suis rafraichis la mémoire sur les différentes manières d’utiliser le filtre AlphaImageLoader. J’ai fini par tomber sur une solution globale pour gérer cette transparence même en présence d’un background-repeat ou d’un background-position ! (Cet article est en quelque sorte la suite de Opacité CSS et effet de trame avec GIF/PNG transparent.)Le format PNGLe PNG est format d’enregistrement d’image destiné à remplacer le format GIF dans sa version 8 bits. La version 24 b...

scoopeo_url='http://www.css4design.com/blog/menu-a-onglets-tabs-idtabs-ou-domtab'Menu à onglets avec Javascript et CSS fait partie des articles les plus lus de ce blogzine. Mais la solution présentée alors n’est pas un modèle d’accessibilité car elle ne fonctionne plus correctement si Javascript est désactivé. Dans ce cas, le menu reste bloqué sur le premier onglet actif. Bien que certains trouvent qu'il s'agit d'une fonctionnalité et non d'un défaut, je préconise deux scripts bien plus accessibles et efficaces : idTabs de Sean Catchpole et domtab de Chris Heilmann.Avant de choisir un système de menus à onglets, il est important de vérifier les trois points suivants :Poids du ...

WPML Multilingual CMS est un plugin pour Wordpress qui transforme n’importe quel blog Wordpress ou WordpressMu en site multilangue. Ce plugin est proposé par onthegosystems spécialisé dans la photo numérique et qui propose également le service ICanLocalize pour la traduction de votre site web. WPML.org vous accompagnera dans le paramétrage et l’utilisation du plugin pour profiter au mieux des nombreuses fonctionnalités de WPML accessibles depuis l’administration de Wordpress.N’ayant pas dans l’immédiat besoin d’un site multi-langues, je me suis intéressé aux fonctions qui améliorent l’expérience utilisateur (UX) et qui permettent d’avoir des...

Tester ses pages web dans les différents navigateurs présents sur le marché est souvent source de frustration. Même lorsqu’on utilise un système Windows, on rencontre des difficultés pour tester les sites dans IE6, IE7 et IE8 en même temps. Opera, Firefox, Google Chrome ou Safari ne posent pas de problème particulier. Selon votre configuration, il existe plusieurs techniques permettant d’assurer un affichage homogène sur la majorité des navigateurs : virtualisation, logiciels, services en ligne ou pourquoi pas un deuxième ordinateur dédié comme un NetBook ?Il est bien évident que la question de pose différemment selon que l’on utilise un Mac ou un PC et dans ce dernier c...

Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why since April 2008 we supply you with fresh desktop wallpapers. And to make them a little bit more distinctive from the usual crowd, we’ve decided to embed calendars for the upcoming month. So if you need to look up some date, isn’t it better to show off a nice wallpaper with a nice calendar instead of launching some default time application?This post features 17 19 free desktop wallpapers with calendars, created by designers across the globe for Smashing Magazine and its reade...

Handwriting seems to have lost some of its attraction over the last years. Nobody writes beautiful handwritten letters, and uses digital means of communication with smileys, abbreviations and standard lettering instead. And that’s a pity. Since handwriting is unique, it has a tremendous expressive power a standard lettering isn’t able to achieve.More than that, handwritten text can be incredibly gorgeous. In fact, there is nothing more valuable than a beautiful handwritten letter sent to your beloved ones. And this post attempts to prove just that.In the overview below you’ll find excellent examples of beautiful handwriting, creative lettering and professional calligraph...

Had enough of the same old operating system based select field style? Why not skin it up, this script allows you to apply a skin to a select box.This tutorial is based on the original code i wrote, however this version is less buggier and has support for non JS enabled browsers!Nice and simple to install, include the jQuery library and the select skin JS file and the CSS file like so.<style><!--@import url('./css/skinned-select.css');//--></style><script src="./js/jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="./js/jquery.skinned-select.js" type="text/javascript"></script>Then just wrap a div with the class name of 'my-skinnable-select' a...