Best Travel Web Templates

July 1st, 2009

Summer is the hot time for travel agencies of all kinds and sizes. The heat and sultry air of the big cities make people migrate to the seaside and exotic countries. These days travel agencies websites are on top of popularity. Thus if you planned to launch a website for the travel agency now is the time. Here is a small showcase of the most creative travel and vacation website templates to inspire you. A well designed travel web design should not only be informative and easy to navigate, it should inspire your visitors and call the desire to hit the road and get away towards the pleasant discoveries and adventures. This is the main uniting feature of the showcased web templates - they all are creatively designed to give your clients the feel of close discoveries and create the atmosphere of exciting adventures.

Travel Agency Website Template

This plain HTML design is the best choice if you are looking for a simple but well designed web solution. Deep colors and tempting images fulfill their goal to create a feel of good vacation and give inspiration.

Travel Network CSS Template

This bright and plain CSS design is rather minimalistic regarding the color palette, but the slight use of blue color makes it stylish and reminds the sea.

Travel Agency Flash Animated Template

This vivid design is a perfect example of good use of the vintage elements in web design.

Travel Agency Web Design Template

The ingenious header of this CSS template definitely makes me want to leave everything behind and go to an island somewhere in the Mediterranean. Do you feel the urge to do the same thing?

Check out our vacation and travel templates for even more inspiring travel web designs.

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Reach Perfection in the Profession

June 26th, 2009

Being a professional in any field means working hard and constantly enriching your skills and knowledge, a true professional is curious and never satisfied with the achieved heights, he always endeavours at perfection. Here are some humble tips on how to become a better designer and reach success and perfection in your profession.

* Never rely on hypothesis
Do not assume that everything will work the way it should, check everything twice. It may look a bit paranoiac, but checking everything is actually a good custom for a web designer.

* Write down all ideas
Even if they seem useless at the first glance they may turn out to be brilliant later.

* Do not neglect the ready-made solutions
Such tools like Firefox extensions for instance can ease and fasten your work significantly.

* Stay up to date
You should know the recent trends and all the industry news, be in the center of current events. Remember - it is never bad to learn something new.

* Keep it simple
Simplicity is the key. If your design is going to have loads of complex elements try to use a simple color scheme and vice versa.

* Practice makes perfect
Well, I think there is nothing to add to the statement. : ) Do your work and learn from your mistakes and successes.

* Learn to abstract yourself
Everyone has creativity crises every now and then. Change the subject for some time, go to the movies, relax a bit and the muse will come.

Being a designer you should also know some common rules:

* Website goal should be obvious
* Your website should be easy to read and navigate
* Too many different fonts is bad
* Chose the color scheme carefully
* Your website should load fast
* Don’t forget about cross-browser compatibility

Of course all these rules are quite relative and can be and sometimes even should be broken. Just don’t forget to stop ;)

Well, would you add your own web design rules and tips to the list?

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Firefox Plugins for Web Designers and Developers

June 24th, 2009

Firefox is a very popular browser nowadays, especially among the designers and developers. Not only it is fast and comfortable to use, but also offers dozens of fruitful add-ons that every designer will appreciate, these Firefox plugins will make your work faster and easier.
Well, I’ve prepared a selection of the most helpful plugins that simplify the lives of many designers and developers.

Aardvark
This powerful selector utility selects elements. It will show the HTML element type and its class or id if they exist and let you do various actions with the selected elements like delete the element or set the element’s background to a random color for instance.

Firebug
This powerful plugin integrates development tools into Firefox thus allowing you to debug, edit and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript right in a web page.

HTML Validator
Shows the number of errors of a HTML page in your status bar. Very handy tool for developers

ColorZilla
This one is a great tool that lets you select any color you liked then adjust it and put in any other program.

Web Developer
This plugin adds a menu of various web development tools. It has window resizing options, validation tools for CSS, HTML and links and gives info on various objects on the page.

X-Ray
This Firefox extension lets you view a webpage code

Pixel Perfect
This Firefox extension requires Firebug and allows you easily overlay a web composition over the top of HTML you developed.

Total Validator
Great plugin that gives true HTML validation using the official DTDs.

Font Finder
This simple plugin identifies CSS details of the text you select. Gives such info as color, font, decoration, spacing and element details.

Window Resizer
You’ll find this plugin great for testing your web designs in different screen sizes. Supports the 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1600×1200 resolutions.

Do you use Firefox extensions in your work? If so, which ones do you find to be the most useful?

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Most Popular Grey Web Templates

June 17th, 2009

Statistics show that grey web templates are among the most frequently downloaded ones. Grey is a neutral color and is considered to be great for business web pages and calm online sites.
Here are some brilliantly designed website templates that use grey color palette and are at the top10 popular templates from LayoutsPack collection.

Game Portal Template

This is quite an unusual use of grey in web design. Game portals are commonly designed in black, red, dark blue color palettes. But this game portal layout looks awesome with grey color. And what is more pleasant about it - it is available in HTML, WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal, thus you can choose the most convenient platform for your games related project.

Business Expert Template

You must have seen this design in the Web Templates Set 4 in 1 presentation post. I believe it is the most prominent example of the brilliant use of grey color palette in the business web design. Yet again - you can choose from HTML, WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal platforms or get them all together.

Buzz Marketing CSS Template

Another great example of business oriented web design created with the use of grey as the main color. This CSS template is certainly a great and reliable solution for any serious business project.

Business Company Template

This web layout is the best prove to the statement that grey is a great choice for any business web design. With the use of blue and white this design is perfect for any consulting or trading business.

Grey may sound dull and inanimate, but used properly it becomes the most ingenious and advantageous solution for a profitable web design. And the showcased above web templates definitely prove that.

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Web Design Tutorials for Beginners

June 9th, 2009

If you are starting your web design career you might find these tutorials useful. Most of them are Photoshop tutorials, as it is the most common software for designing a website.

Website Building Tutorial

Very detailed description of the process of building a website from choosing the niche for your site to website monetization and maintaining the ready online presence.

Buttons, menus, and headers in Photoshop

Web 2.0 style buttons

Web 2.0 style is still very popular especially in business web designs, thus here is a simple tutorial on how to design web 2.0 buttons with Photoshop for you to practice.

Big Buttons

Comprehensive tutorial on creating big stylish buttons in Photoshop.

Dark Modern Header

Very simple way of creating a beautiful, stylish header for your website.

Creating a Professional Header

Another good Photoshop tutorial on creating a stunning header.

Clean Blue Navigation Box

With this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a navigation box for your web page.

Clean style navigation bar

Here you will learn how to design a very nice and colorful menu for your website.

Practicing these tutorials and learning how to use the tools and techniques you’ll start creating your own designs very soon.

Below are tutorials on how to design a whole website layout using Photoshop.

Create a Sleek, High-End Web Design from Scratch

Elegant Blog Layout in Photoshop

Modern Web 2.0 Web Layout

Designing a Simple but Professional Website Design

Being a web design beginner you’ll most definitely find web templates membership a useful tool, downloading an unlimited number of web templates allows you to create your own web pages in no time.
Well, have fun and remember - practice makes perfect!

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CSS Advantages

June 4th, 2009

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets has been discussed here not once. You already know that CSS is used to style HTML, you also know that you can add looks to your old HTML, restyle the website, use created style on any webpage. But what are the advantages of CCS, why using it is better that using anything else? Let’s find out.

* Easy maintenance
Design and content in CSS are separated. This feature gives you the full and easy control over your website looks. With CSS you do not have to make alterations in the huge number of files, you just need to alter one file. And the task is extremely easy to do.

* Faster load
Your visitors will appreciate the fast load of your web pages. The thing is the Stylesheet needs to be loaded just once, thus when your visitors browse your website the only thing to be loaded is actually content and it loads extremely fast.

* Your visitors get control over your website view
Imagine your visitor has vision problems, with User Style Sheets he can easily change the size of the fonts or contrast for instance.

* Less code
In CSS the same class is used at different locations, thus we use less code. Less code means less mess when editing and maintaining and less bandwidth, plus faster load.

As you see Cascading Style Sheets are created to simplify the process of developing and maintaining a website. Both you and your visitors will benefit if your website is built with CSS. Have you discovered more advantages when using CSS?

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Web Templates Set 4 in 1

May 29th, 2009

We at LayoutsPack are doing our best to bring you the most ingenious and creative solutions thus making your lives easier and more comfortable. Today we are announcing a launch of our brand new product type. Actually it is going to be several new product types with one design - Web Templates Set 4 in 1. Have you ever came across the design you loved but couldn’t work with because of the CMS? You won’t have that problem any more, LayoutsPack offers you the brilliant solution - a set of HTML, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla templates all in one design. Thus you can chose the most convenient type of web template for yourself and won’t have to edit HTML template to WordPress for instance. We’ve done it for you. Well, what are the product types we offer in this set precisely? HTML There is no need to tell you what HTML is, you all know what HTML templates are - the most common and popular website templates. The reason of their extreme popularity lies in easiness of maintainanace and customization. The majority of websites on the World Wide Web is built on HTML (HyperText Markup Language).

Building Business Website Template

WordPress

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform. You for sure have seen hundreds of websites and weblogs built with this CMS. The reason of this high evaluation of WordPress is the huge number of great features and the ease of operating it offers. WordPress is an open source, this means that it’s constantly innovated, the more and more features are added each day.

Business Website Template

Drupal

Drupal is another open source CMS platform. Offering the diverse set of features for experienced web masters it is extremely easy to use for beginners as well. PHP based CMS, Drupal is also considered to be a module framework. Many developers appreciate the great range of administrative functions and a well organized interface.

Business Expert Template

Joomla

This is one more open source CMS that is not less popular than the two mentioned above. Joomla interface is extremely simple and functional. As well as WordPress and Drupal, Joomla! is constantly being updated and innovated.

Business Company Template

The main feature uniting all CMS types is that you do not need to be an expert to operate your websites built with them, Content Management System gives you the opportunity to manage all your website content: texts, photos, music, videos, documents etc. with minimum tech skills. The choice of the CMS depends on the comfort and preferences every web master finds for himself. Now you have the widest choice to find the most convenient template for your websites. And what about the price? The price is the same - you can download every web template from LayoutsPack at once, just sign up for any of our templates membership packages.

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Make your website load fast

May 27th, 2009

No one likes websites that take ages to load. You won’t disagree that long wait always irritates. In the world of severe competition it is extremely important to make your website comfortable for the users. Make sure that your visitors won’t leave your so-very-informative page before it actually loads. What can you do to make your visitors lives more comfortable and safe their time with your fast page loading? Well, here are some useful tips for you to use on every stage of web site development - designing, programming and maintaining. Following these tips you’ll for sure make your website loading fast, more comfortable for your users and thus will leave your competitors behind.

making a website load faster

* Optimize your HTML code.
Errors, broken links, unwanted tags, all these things slow down your page load. Make sure your website doesn’t have any errors and is optimized for load time.

* Lessen the use of images, graphics and Flash.
This is the easiest and most optimal solution for designing the fast loading page. The more images you have on your web page the slower it loads, thus try to reduce the use of graphics. Of course they are important for the attractive appearance of your website, but try to be reasonable. The simpler design is better.
As for the Flash animations, well, they indeed are catching and rather useful for attracting your visitors, but if not properly utilized they can slow your page load immensely.

* Create simple icons with tables.
Do not neglect the simple ways. Using tables creatively can bring brilliant results, thus you can get not only great designs but also achieve the faster loading time.

* Use text links.
Try to reduce the use of graphic buttons. Instead use text links. To be able to make them attractive learn some CSS.

* Optimize heavy files.
Reduce the sizes of the images, Flash files and scripts if possible. You can easily do that with the help of Photoshop, Adobe Flash or Fireworks software.

* Stick to simplicity.

The minimalistic and plain designs are more and more popular nowadays, thus your website will look more modern and stylish and will load faster. Isn’t it an awesome plus to the great and professional looks?

Well, have I missed something? Feel free to add your tips on making websites load faster in the comments below.

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Best Text Editors for Programmers, Web Developers and Designers

May 22nd, 2009

If you at least once tried to code by your own you know how extremely important a good and reliable text editor is. The ease and comfort of your work commonly depends on it. The majority of you would assume that the best text editor is Notepad, if not the best than the easiest one. But Notepad isn’t a simplest solution. It lacks such useful features like a tabbed interface and search and replace functionality for instance. Many programmers and developers agree that the choice of a text editor is a matter of habit. Well if you still do not have a favorite text editor or are not satisfied with the one you’ve got, I’ve picked the most reliable text editors for you. Who knows, maybe you’ll find the most convenient tool to work with among them. I tried to include the most popular tools not only for work on Windows but also Mac and Linux as well. You’ll also appreciate that all these tools are free. Thus, here they are:

* Notepad ++
A good and very popular tool for work with Windows. Among the most useful features of Notepad ++ I can name an auto-completion feature, tabbed interface, code folding, side by side text comparison, zooming in and zooming out and many more.

* Text Wrangler
A great multi-purpose text editor for Mac. The features include built-in FTP controls, support of useful BBEdit plug-ins and function browser.

* Komodo Edit
Deservedly named one of the best XML editors, this tool supports all operating systems, thus works great on windows, mac, and linux. Has many useful features including code completion and call tips. Supports such template styles like CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, Python, XML, Perl, Tcl, HTML-Smarty, RHTML, Template-Toolkit and Django.

* Smultron
A very easy to use text editor for work with Mac. The main feature that makes it so easy to work with is the plain and simple interface. Except the basic features the tool has an obility to split thus allowing you to view files side-by-side, besides you’ll appreciate the code snipplet library that allows storing your most used code blocks. But the most of you most likely will be thrilled by its full-screen mode.

* Gedit
This one is created to work with Linux, actually it’s the official text editor of the GNOME desktop. Among the features are tabbed interface, syntax highlighting, spell-checking feature and a plugin system that allows to add new features.

* Bluefish
This open source editor is quite popular among programmers and web designers that work on Mac and Linux. The main thing it’s famous for is its speedy function.

* Vim
Great tool that runs in all the major platforms, that is: Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. There is a great number of features which makes it a bit complicated to work with it.

* NoteTab Light
This is another text editor that works with Windows, Mac and Linux. It is a free Notepad replacement. You’ll appreciate its built-in FTP client, tabbed interface and a reliable search interface.

Well, what is you favorite text editor?

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Test your website for cross-browser compatibility

May 14th, 2009

It is hard to believe that not that long ago there were only few internet browsers to choose from, when today there are literally hundreds of them. Well, the technology is developing fast and we have to deal with it. While there are so many browsers for users to choose from, the presentation of your website on each of them becomes more and more unpredictable. You can say that the majority of people use Explorer or Firefox and don’t bother about the presentation of your website on the other browsers. But a website can be performed differently in the different versions of the same browser. And do you really want the users of those other browsers to go past your website? So, how do you actually check your website’s compatibility? Install all the browsers out there and check it manually? Well, I think it’s hardly possible. For those of you who prefer their websites to be perfect everywhere I arranged a list of the best and most comfortable tools for cross-browser compatibility testing. The other thing except being easy to operate you’d love about these tools is that they can be used for free.

* CrossBrowserTesting
A very convenient tool that allows a full testing of your website’s interactivity not just in screenshots. All you have to do is to log in and select a machine with the browser and begin testing.

* BrowserShots
Awesome tool that allows testing in almost any browser you can remember. The only thing that may diasppoint you about this testing tool is that it can sometimes be rather slow.

* Litmus
Tests on all major browsers and gives you a bug report to help you correct the errors if you’ve got any. Unfortunately the free version is rather limited.

* BrowsrCamp
Tests on Safari/Mac. You’ll really like the speed of rendering screenshots.

* IETester
This completely free tool tests on every version of Internet Explorer. Just download, install and specify which IE version you’d like to browse in. The tool allows to compare two versions side-by-side.

Feel free to add more cross-browser compatibility testing tools in the comments below.

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