Don't know how to create buttons in Photoshop or just plain lazy? Generate buttons with a few clicks :>

As Button Generator

Oldie but goodie!

The biggest challenge for web designers is the unthinkably huge number of possible ways to solve any given problem. We usually don't think of this because we have our habits and traditions to fall back on, but there are literally billions of possible pixel combinations for each page we make.

An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design from 37signals

This is pretty cool. If you don't know what the golden ratio is, check out this Wikipedia article.

Golden Ratio Calculator from Design by Ninjas

Nothing can be more useful than handy tools you can use “on the fly” in your design process. Whether you’d like to generate css layouts, create vector images, format or optimize CSS code, generate patterns- you can use dozens of tools to make your life easier.

I personally don't use these kind of tools, but some may find them quite handy~

Handy Designer’s Tools “On The Fly” from Noupe

For web designers and graphic designers, gradients provide almost unlimited options for creating the perfect look. This list is a collection of excellent tutorials and resources for effectively using gradients. Some of the tutorials and resources are specific to Photoshop and Illustrator, and others are general.

71 Gradient Resources for Web Design from Vandely Design

If you have ever designed a beautiful interface only to find it ugly five months later because gaudy graphics, unpleasant colors, and distasteful fonts appeared over time, then you understand how maddening design disintegration can be. Similarly, if you have ever developed a clean, web standard, and accessible interface but later found the site littered with invalid, inaccessible, and presentational markup, then you understand this frustration as well.

Writing an Interface Style Guide from A List Apart

Ideas. They’re at the heart of every creative process. However, almost no really good ideas are flashes of inspiration. They may start that way—a single glimmer of something special—but in order to work, they need to be honed. Like a really good cheese, they need to mature. Indeed, the “flash of inspiration” idea—the Eureka moment—is only part of a longer process that, if ignored, will see most ideas simply fizzle out.

Saving the Spark: Developing Creative Ideas from A List Apart

Following up on last year’s post on web design research, here’s a new collection of research results, this time featuring further reading as well. It happens that I still watch the work of Association for Computing Machinery, Human Factors International, and the like.

Web Design: 10 Additional Research Findings You Should Know from Jens Meiert

For the past month, I've been away from the computer screen. Now I'm back reading on it many hours a day. Which got me thinking: How do we read online?

Lazy Eyes - How We Read Online from Slate

Tutorial Dog is a tutorial web site that seeks to help people learn Adobe Photoshop, CSS, Javascript, HTML and OS X Tips (and have fun). Tutorial Dog tries to provide the most insightful tips and coolest techniques to advance your knowledge of the subject covered. Having said that, we try to always include a psd (Photoshop Document File) with every Photoshop Tutorial so that you can go hands on with results we show. We also like to give away cool resources such as OS X icons and handy templates for free.

Tutorial Dog

While many people see YouTube as a fun and mindless distraction, the fact is that it's really quite useful. The video site is full of educational tools for just about anyone, webmasters included. These 100 videos for webmasters include clips with subjects ranging from SEO (search-engine optimization) to domain buying.

100 Awesome Webmaster Videos on YouTube from Inside CRM

This is pretty cool :]

PodiPodi is an experimental project in Interaction Design born with the aim to give web designers a way to enhance their websites with two new levels of interaction.

PodiPodi

Quotes are used to emphasize excerpts of text. Since users almost never read but scan we need to provide them with some focus anchors to fix their attention to the most important parts of our articles. Furthermore, quotes are always used for testimonials and sometimes for blog comments. They can be styled using graphics, CSS and a little bit of JavaScript. Sometimes, creative dynamic solutions can be applied as well.

Block Quotes and Pull Quotes: Examples and Good Practices from Smashing Magazine

Response times, availability, and stability are vital factors to bear in mind when creating and maintaining a web application. If you’re concerned about your web pages’ speed or want to make sure you’re in tip-top shape before starting or launching a project, here’s a few useful, free tools to help you create and sustain high-performance web applications.

15 Tools to Help You Develop Faster Web Pages from Six Revisions

In my previous article "Labels in form layouts" I wrote about how I have implemented "underlined labels" on web application forms. However, due to complexity of web appications I developed I often needed to find a way to focus a user on a current context. When I discovered jQuery I decided to use it because of its powerful features.

Building a Better Web Forms: Context Highlighting Using jQuery from Janko at Warp Speed

Whether you’re a website designer, logo designer, print designer or other, this comprehensive list of colour tools and resources will help. The links are separated into the following: colour palettes and combinations, colour theory, colour tools, colour patterns, and colour code.

Colour Tools, Palettes, Schemes and Theory from David Airey

In the right situation, a dark website background can create a stunning look. As a follow up to the original collection from several months ago, here are another 25 dark websites for your design inspiration.

25 Beautifully Dark Websites - Part II from Vandelay Design

It's hard to build a website that will please everyone. Some people respond best when they see basic facts on a clean page, others when they have a lot of charts and graphs at their fingertips. Now researchers at MIT's Sloan School of Management hope to make websites better at selling products by making them adapt automatically to each visitor, presenting information in a way that complements that person's style of thinking.

Adapting Websites to Users from Technology Review

You may have noticed that Google has a new favicon, the small icon you see in your browser next to the URL or in your bookmarks list. Some people have wondered why we changed our favicon -- after all, we hadn't in 8.5 years(!). The reason is that we wanted to develop a set of icons that would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other mobile devices.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish from Official Google Blog

And as long as we're building favicons, why not trick out your site with a iPhone/iPod Touch icon? The process is almost identical to favicons, and reaps the same rewards. True, most people probably won't use it, but the few who do will appreciate the effort.

Create Favicons and iPhone Bookmarks from Webmonkey