Everything is Gray » Web Design

10 Inspiring Websites

James Barclay — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:57:07 +0000

Lately I’ve been spending quite a bit of time designing websites, whether it’s WordPress theme development or Joomla! template design. A huge part of this process, (for me), is finding inspiration. Below are 10 carefully crafted examples of good web design that I’ve been inspired by as of late.

31THREE

Kyle Florence

A List Apart

Buffalo

Design by Silnt

FullAhead

Viget

thinkdesign

Ed Merritt

ThemeShaper

American Airlines site redesign

James Barclay — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:54:48 +0000

I heard about a week ago that someone had done a mockup of a possible redesign for the American Airlines website, and the first thing I did was take a look at their existing site. It’s unbelievable to me that such a huge corporation with so many resources could produce such a terrible, unusable site. I for one haven’t ever needed to use the site, but a user interface designer named Dustin Curtis has, (which inspired him to create the mockup.) The redesign is visually interesting as well as functional. You should read more about it/take a look at it here.

Version 0.5 of Simplixity is now live

James Barclay — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:44:59 +0000

Today I submitted an update to my WordPress theme Simplixity, which improves how images are handled in posts and fixes an issue that existed while no widgets were activated in the admin panel. You can view and download it here.

I’ve already begun working on the next update, which should include an easily customizable client.css file, for making quick changes to the theme.

Is the browser the new WYSIWYG?

James Barclay — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 03:39:15 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about this concept lately. Have we come to a point where the Dreamweaver style IDE, (integrated development environment), has become a thing of the past? Ninety percent of my formal training has been heavily dependent on this model, yet I can’t see any forward thinking web designer/developer continuing to rely on it. In many ways, the browser has become my WYSIWYG of choice. You can quickly see the effects of changes made to style sheets and you’re not confined to any one proprietary system.