More than a year ago I wrote article about should you design for IE6. Things have changed and I don’t support it any more for some time. If you check this site in IE6 (if you still own that relict) I am sure it would look really bad. Don’t get me wrong if a client asks for IE6 support I would go along but unless I really have to I wouldn’t touch that stuff. IE6 is history and HTML5 is here to stay. There are still headaches, IE7 and IE8 have minds of their own too but IE6 was pure evil I tell you.

960 grid system is a great way to design websites. I don’t use it always but I would sure recommend it. First thing first, what the heck is a 960 grid system? Well go to 960.gs and get your copy. It is a tool (or bunch of tools) that will help you out in making your web site look professional and clean. Grid system is awesome for fast website prototyping. It will make your website layout bulletproof, with just the right gutter and spacing of elements.

Fireworks is really a great tool, and I am really glad Adobe keeps developing it. When comes to creating website mockups and preparing your graphics for the web Fireworks is one of the best. I am not going to discus which is better Photoshop or Fireworks, that is not the topic here, but if you want to become a web designer and having hard time dealing with Photoshop, believe me Fireworks is the right choice.

Theme for Aston2 inspired by DJ Hero game. I have never liked the idea of using brushed metal in UI and skins in general but I must admit it fit in quite nicely. My first animated wallpaper but so I hope you’ll like it. You can get the theme here and below you can see the 1440×900 screenshot. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did while making it. It took hours and hours too polish the look the way I wanted but I think it has payed off well.

I know some people tend to underestimate the knowledge of skinning and question its usability in other fields but I personally find the knowledge from my skinning background pretty applicable. I’ll show one example just to illustrate it.
CSS sprites, really cool way to achieve nice rollover effects, button states, look at the css code below from planetaston.com

And the image butts.png is below

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