Backgrounds, patterns can easily change the total look & feel of a website.

Squidfingers is sharing 150+ patterns that can be used in our designs.

Click to check them out.

Rather than standard website templates, a free admin template is nearly impossible to find.

This is an admin template which you can use for web applications like:

• E-commerce projects
• Content management systems
• And more..

I have created this admin template for a project of mine and pleased to share with WebResourcesDepot readers.

It is a 3 column design with a tabbed menu. The idea is having the standard categories in the tab menu for an easy reach and have all the detailed ones in the left menu. And there is an info box at the right to inform users what’s going on at that page.

You can customize it however you want to fit your project. It has a listing and a new entry sample which covers %99 of an admin screen.

It is totally free to use the template, no backlinks or anything required. If you want to say thanks for it and like WebResourcesDepot, I prefer that you subscribe to the feed and get the free resources everyday.

Icons used are famfamfam icons.

You can check it live here.

P.S. If you share the template on your website, please don’t give a direct link to the file and give the link to the post. Thanks.

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.

Web 2.0 styles, if you like the gradients and shiny looks, simply boost the design process.

Similar to the DezinerFolio Web 2.0 Photoshop gradients, 2EXPERTSDESIGN created a set of Fireworks Web 2.0 Styles which Fireworks users will find handy.

Easy News is a jQuery plugin which allows creating "news slides" on the fly.

Supporting any HTML content, and even Flash, it can display the content with fade-in / out, left to right ,slide-up / down effects.

Using this jQuery news slide plugin you can adjust the speed of the effects and rotation, or enable / disable mouse-over pause features.

Easy News, has also a "plus" version which displays content with another sliding effect and can be integrated into Joomla with a ready to use module.

Browser compatibility issues with how they render HTML differently is a common problem for web designers and developers.

Reset.CSS, if you are not already using it, can save some time from the CSS editing process.

What is Reset.CSS?

Reset.CSS is simply a collection of CSS styles which removes and neutralizes the inconsistent default styling of HTML elements.

By using Reset.CSS, you simply clear the default values of web browsers and you won’t need to alter these differences for every element again.

There are 2 popular Reset.CSS styles:

• YUI Reset CSS
• meyerweb.com Reset.CSS

How to use Reset.CSS?

Using Reset.CSS styles as another CSS file or by inserting the Reset.CSS styles at the top of your CSS file is enough.

SearchField is a lightweight and unobtrusive script that adds styling and static auto-suggest behaviour to your search form fields.

Auto-suggest data comes from a static data source, a JavaScript file, no data connections are necessary, updating the JavaScript with the common phrases is enough.

To use SearchField, all you need is linking to the CSS and JavaScript files, that’s all.

Regex (regular expressions) always seem hard to learn but once learned, it gives you power to solve many complicated coding tasks easily. With the JavaScript and SEO (for mod_rewrite) oriented web, Regex is a must-know for developers.

What is Regex?

A regular expression, often called a pattern, is an expression that describes a set of strings. They are usually used to give a concise description of a set, without having to list all elements. For example, the set containing the three strings "Handel", "Händel", and "Haendel" can be described by the pattern H(ä|ae?)ndel (or alternatively, it is said that the pattern matches each of the three strings) (via Wikipedia).

The Regulator is an advanced, free regular expressions testing and learning tool. It allows you to build and verify a regular expression against any text input, file or web, and displays matching, splitting or replacement results within an easy to understand, hierarchical tree.

Regex actions supported:

• Find multiple matches 
• Replace text according to expression
• Split text according to expression

The Regulator is also integrated with RegexLib.com, a free regular expressions library, and helps finding ready-to-use regular expressions.

gotAPI provides an interface which makes it easy to reach the methods and functions of many JavaScript frameworks, scripting & programming languages, databases & even CMS softwares.

gotAPI gets the information from the original sources or trusted websites which makes the data up-to-date. Once you get used to the web interface, reaching data becomes faster because you browse all data for many APIs the same way.

Some of the supported APIs:

• Google GWT
• Prototype.js
• jQuery
• Yahoo! UI
• MochiKit
• Flickr

Many users updating a domain’s DNS addresses while switching web hosting companies, probably, has an experience with new DNS addresses not being activated in a short time & spent some time with checking if they are activated or not.

DNSPinger is free web-based service that checks the domain name provided every 3 minutes for 24 hours and notifies the user via e-mail when the DNS update is activated.

The story

Few days ago, I updated the DNS addresses of a domain name and it took more than 12 hours to activate and I spent some time with pinging it to see if the hosting switch was successful. Rather than checking for it anymore, I created a .vbs file that would check the update status and notify me.

Hoping to help other users having the same problem, here is DNSPinger, an easy to use DNS update notifier.

If you’re dealing frequently with domain names, bookmark DNSPinger and it’ll save your time.