So I've decided to change the design of this blog site. And instead of using another one of the "out of the box" themes that comes with BlogEngine.Net (the software I use to maintain this site); I've decided to "outside of the box". Of course, that doesn't mean that I'm creating a "look and feel" of my own. Been there, done that ... I'm not very good at it! I'm going to do what I do best - I'm going use someone else's web design and use it for my purposes.
In this case, I'll simply take an existing web design and convert to a BlogEngine.Net theme. While finding out the instructions on how to do that (since this is my first time), I came across a website that many of you may want to check out ... Open Source Web Design. It has over 2000 free web designs that you can download; and it looks like all you have to do is give props to those that created it at the bottom of the page. Turns out, the theme that I'm using right now (called Curiously Green) came from this resource.
Though I may not be good at web designs, I do know good designs when I see them. The ones I like the best are clean, easy on the eyes, and use screen space effectively. This site contains designs that match this criteria. Enjoy!
There have been several times in my adventures of creating websites were I've wanted to add content in a box with rounded corners. For those of you who've never tried it, let me inform you that it's not easy at all. In most cases, it involves creating a graphic with the box you want in your website, splicing it the four corners, strategically creating a table or several DIVs to place the images and your content, and then hoping that you can get them all the line correctly. For programmers that are graphically challenged (like me), this is a monumental task without some help.
For years I've said to myself that it'd be nice if there was a way to create a CSS that gave you rounded corners without images. Not only are they difficult to create and cut up, but they also take up bandwidth and make your pages load slower. Well this week, I finally went on a search for such CSS ... and found one that was quite helpful. Spiffy Corners gives you an online tool to generate the CSS and the HTML sample code you need to implement. This and other tools available use a technique called anti aliasing text, much like what is used in graphics program to make edges smooth. That's about all I know about it, other than it's real easy to use and worked great with the website I needed it for.
http://www.spiffycorners.com/
I want to send a special thank you to Greg Johnson for creating this tool, spending the time to figure out how to do it, and for making this available to the public for free. Just make sure you give him the credit he deserves. Thanks, Greg.