CSS is considered the “back-bone” of a website. It structures, helps embed, and styles elements. Now, if we were to code a CSS layout by hand, it would take us an unneeded amount of time that we could be putting towards other areas of our designs.

With somewhat similar concepts to the all-famous button, background, and favicon generators, today we present you with 10 Useful and Time-Saving CSS Grid-Layout Generators that will save you mass amounts of time and help you eliminate some repetitive coding.

Blueprint Grid CSS Generator

This tool will help you generate more flexible versions of Blueprint’s grid.css and compressed.css and grid.png files. Whether you prefer 8, 10,16 or 24 columns in your design, this generator now enables you that flexibility with Blueprint.
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It has been said that good design is that which cannot even be noticed. When the users’ experience is so seamless that they do not even realize that they have completed an action/transaction or received the information they desired, then a perfect balance has been achieved between form and function.

Most times, this balance can only be achieved by paying a lot of attention to details. Even if there is a minor misalignment, inconsistent spacing or typographical error, it is very discernible and can dramatically lessen the impact of an otherwise beautifully designed site.

Here are some simple ways to increase the visual impact of your site by paying attention to details.

Colors

While contrasting colors are eye-catching, they can also be distracting and cause the user to lose visual focus. Analogous colors (colors from the same family) work best in a screen-based environment as they are able to direct the users’ focus. Contrasting colors can be used as highlights, and should be spaced out in a balanced way so as to direct the users attention to the appropriate points of focus.

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or why it’s called a web”page”

Legibility has always been of utmost importance in the process of visual communication. Billboards, advertisements, flyers. The clearer the message, the better the impact it tends to have on the target audience; the greater the sales.

In the 1990’s, with the emergence and increasing popularity of the internet came attempts to adapt this attention-grabbing visual aesthetic to websites. The effect this had though was to clutter up the real estate of the screen with unnecessary elements that didn’t really add to the effectiveness of communicating the message, but instead distracted and confused the user.

Today, there is a changing trend where the rules of traditional print design are being applied to the web. We see websites that are more typographically driven, with the main design elements being lines, subtle shifts in color and maybe one or two large images. This is similar to print design, where the message is relayed through words and images, and thus legibility of those words and images is of utmost importance.

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Over the past couple of weeks I have had the opportunity to chat with numerous great web and graphic designers from around the world. These people all have a few things in common: they are all talented designers, they are earning money by doing what they love, though most importantly they are all under 21 years of age. I highly recommend taking a read through the interviews as they are quite insightful and who knows, you might learn a thing or two.

Name: Blake Tallos
Age: 20
Website: http://www.cssispoetry.com
Hometown: Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
Currently Reside: Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

When did you start designing as a hobby and then for a living?

I started designing websites when I was a freshman in High school. I did a few projects for my school and it brought a lot of attention onto me and people were pleased with my work. I became more interested in this field and have learned a lot from it.
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Fancyzoom, Shadowbox, Lightbox2, Mediabox, Highslide There are loads of great pop-up galleries, “lightbox” clones and mediaboxes around that are freely available to web designers. All can usually display images and text, and some html and video embeds.

Here we run through some of our favorites and looking forward to seeing your sites with these great tools in place.

Lightbox 2

The sequel to the original “lightbox” is compatible in all modern browsers, lightweight and easy to install. You can even add fancy pants transitions and group the images into sets.

http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/

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