WebDesignerWall has a very nice trick to decorate your images and photo galleries without editing the source images.

The trick is very simple. All you need is an extra <span> tag and apply a background image to create the overlaying effect.

Benefits of this CSS image decoration:

• Saves time: no need to create every decorated image file
• Keeps original source images
• Flexible: change the decoration anytim.
• Cross-browser compatible

There are several options for creating rounded corners like: with one image, four images, javascript and plain CSS (and more).

Ask The CSS Guy puts the CSS rounded corners used in Google Analytics under scrutiny.

The technique works by leaving a 1px notch in every corner which creates the rounded corner effect .

This is definitely a nice way of creating rounded corners as it is always more flexible working with CSS rather than static images.

Nearly every project needs a printer-friendly output option.

Hartija is a CSS framework that aims to simplify creating such outputs.

The CSS file includes styles for common tags to make them look good as a printed material.

How to use this CSS Print Framework?

It is enough to insert the CSS file with the media value "print" like:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="print.css" type="text/css" media="print">

By doing so, when a user tries the print the page, print.css file will be used instead of the website’s standard CSS file.

Template World, a website providing high quality templates including premium WordPress themes, Joomla templates and even logo templates, has high quality free XHTML / CSS templates which you may use or inspire.

Look at how beautiful these free XHTML templates are:

Although everybody does not prefer using templates, with the high quality ones, it is very helpful to see the code and design files to learn new techniques and be inspired.

After downloading these free XHTML / CSS templates, you can send an e-mail to Template World to get the PSD files for free too.

P.S. This post is an advertorial.

Sitemaps, which make the website navigation easier, can be created using CSS with the "tree hierarchy".

CSS Sitemap uses list tags for the hierarch and formats the user interface nicely.

For the last touch, CSS Sitemap lets collapsing the sitemap using a jQuery function.

CSS Grid Builder is a web tool which can create standards-compliant grid layouts with a few clicks.

Outputs are generated with the powerful Yahoo! UI Library: Grids CSS which offers pre-built templates & page layout combinations.

YUI Grids CSS:

• Supports fluid-width (100%) layouts as well as preset fixed-width layouts at 750px, 950px, and 974px, and the ability to easily customize to any number.
• Supports easy customization of the width for fixed-width layouts.
• Flexible in response to user initiated font-size adjustments.
• Template columns are source-order independent, so you can put your most important content first in the markup layer for improved accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO).
• Self-clearing footer. No matter which column is longer, the footer stays at the bottom.
• Layouts less than 100% are automatically centered.
• Accommodates IAB’s Ad Unit Guidelines for common ad dimensions.
• Offers full A-grade browser support.

CSS Grid Builder is a quick solution specially for Yahoo! UI Library users or web developers who are better in coding rather than design.

Drop Caps are simple but very chic design objects that can change the look of a website easily.

Easy Drop Caps, a CSS based Drop Caps solution, requires no JavaScript files. Only some clever CSS files which do it all.

Easy Drop Caps adds a style to the first letter of every paragraph with the first-letter & first-line CSS properties and it is a very nice solution for anyone who does not want to add classes to each first-letter of a paragraph one by one.

Examples of how to make CSS gradient text effects are published in 2 different & beautiful web design blogs: WebDesignerWall and CSS Globe.

Both techniques are using a similar method which is adding a small PNG gradient file over the text with extra tricks. Both methods are compatible with all the major browsers. Have a look at how nice they are:

Css Globe solution:

http://cssglobe.com/lab/textgradient/

WebDesignerWall solution:

http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/css-gradient-text-effect/

Sample codes for these nice effects can be downloaded from each website.

CSS editing is always a multi-check job because of getting different results for every browser. This time-consuming design process gets easier with CSSVista.

CSSVista is a free Windows application for web developers which lets you edit your CSS code live in both Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously.

With small modifications, it may be easier to work with the default html/css editor that you are using but with large updates of CSS files or creating a new one, you might want to take a look at CSSVista.

Text in websites are normally in a rectangle shape. This is how things work.

How would it be if they were like this?

CSS Text Wrapper is an online web service which helps you to create the necessary html-css or javascript files for this effect.

You can choose between 3 solutions to get this css text wrap look:

- Inline Css/Xhtml
- Xhtml w/Classes
- Javascript

CSS Text Wrapper helps you to draw the "wrap look" and creates the necessary css or javascript information and all you need to do is to apply them. That easy.