Insights & Ideas

1140 Fluid CSS Grid System

A couple months back we offered up a FREE PSD download of the newer 978 Grid System that was orginally talked about in depth from @NickLa of Web Designer Wall fame. But just a few weeks later we became very aware that maybe there was a better alternative. Welcome to the world of the 1140px Grid System.

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New 978 Grid System

We've watched with interest over the past couple of years the effect that ever increasing screens and resolutions have had on sites and web designers alike. For several years now we have been conforming to what web designers call the 960 Grid System (gs). And what a great system it is too. The 960 gs gives us designers flexibility and helps to quickly prototype the layout in any number of columns: 9/3, 3/3/3, 4/4/4/4, 10/2 col and so on. It is no doubt the most popular recent grid system and is used on many sites and design templates.

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IE6 No More. We Drop Support From May 1st

It's becoming a bit of a fashion trend at the moment to drop or phase out support for Internet Explorer 6. All the big boys are such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, not to mention the 1000's of other sites already taking this stance, it looks likes IE6 days are numbered (check out the Internet Explorer Voodoo Doll).

We've already Tweeted how we've dropped support on various sites recently, to much support and praise from others in the industry, but this is it, from May 1st we will be dropping it from every site we produce*. Much rejoice can be heard from the developers corner of the office.

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10 Lab Inspired Sites

There seems to be a trend of late using the idea of a scientific lab or test tubes to the design of a site. A lot of these ideas probably do stem from name generation but its an interesting one to see emerging and is quite the opposite to the shiny apple trend of other web design styles. Here are some good examples of this pretty cool illustrative effect put into practice.

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15 More Inspirational Sites

Continuing the look for inspirational website design we stumbled on a few more gems that we thought was only right to share with everyone.

Once again we've put together a list of 15 websites that inspire, some you may have seen some that might be new to you and as always if you have any inspirational sites that you’d like to share please post a comment and start a discussion.

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15 Inspirational Websites

We spend a lot of time researching the web, trying to find websites that inspire - not only by the way they look but in the way they work and what they say.

There are many things that make up a great website; design, content, branding, layout, wording, clarity and many other things besides. We have put together a list of 15 websites that inspire, some new and some slightly older favorites.

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The Disappearing Home Button

During a recent web project we decided to drop the usual home button from the main navigation which proved to be highly controversial. After much debate we ended up adding it back in.

Since this project the same dilemma has cropped up on a number of occasions, the dilemma is this: Do we stick to what we've been doing for many years now or do we make the change and ditch the home button? After all, is it really needed?

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Top 10 Design Trends for 2008 (and not just for the web either!)

Another year brings another set of trends in the world of design and all things cool. Often, the web and the offline fashion trends show a lot of similarity, so we've put together our top ten design trends (on and offline) for 2008 - come back and check how accurate our predictions are at the end of the year!

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