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Depending on how many notes or messy modifications you make to your cascading style sheets, you might be about due for a little compression. By shrinking you external CSS files, you can save the bandwidth it takes to download them, each time somebody visits your web site.
Now how much optimization should you do? Well, the CSS files should be small enough to load quickly, however readable enough to where you know what does what where, and why. You have to balance size with readability.
Here are my three favorite online tools to help optimize and shrink my CSS files:
By using any of these three solutions, you can reduce the CSS code size and make your web pages load faster. They all allow you to choose from multiple degrees of compression, and they are all very quick too.
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Out searching for a new icon or set of icons to use on your web site? While there are more than a few ways to get this job done yourself, (hire somebody to do it, do it yourself, etc) one way I bet you didn’t know about was the icon search engine, Icon Finder.
Now this isn’t a free for all site where you can steal all the icons you can, rather you type in a phrase and you search depending on the keyword, license agreement, and size.
For example, this picture of a home I found is free for commercial use:
If you like the “style” of a certain theme, you can see other icons in that specific set too. Both the .png and .ico versions of the icon is available too.
So if you need some new icons or your just looking for some design inspiration, I would highly suggest you bookmark IconFinder.net.
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How does the old saying go? It isn’t cheating if you don’t get caught? Well, don’t tell anybody I gave you these two great CSS cheat sheets! Web designers rejoice, as these are two of the most handy things you can have, well… handy when it comes to cascading style sheets.
Know of anymore cheat sheets from around the Web that you get a lot of use out of? Let us know in the comments!
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Talk about a nice find. While browsing through my e-mail, I had found that a reader of the Lunartics blog suggested this resource to cover. Yahoo! offers a design and stencil kit to web designers out there for free, licensed under the Creative Commons. That would mean it is free to share and remix, however they do ask they you give them attribution – which is only right.
They offer the kit in the following formats: OmniGraffle, Visio (XML), PDF, PNG, and SVG. Some of the topics covered in the kit include:
- Ad Units
- Calendars
- Carousels
- Charts and Tables
- UI Controls
- Form Elements
- and many more!
You can visit Yahoo’s Developer Network site to pick them up for yourself. If you get some use out of them, come back, comment and show off your work.
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Now, as a web host, we are always telling customers that one of the most important things they can do is backup their web site’s content. You can never have enough backups – because in the long run, you can never tell when the worst might happen. In the same sense, you should also be backing up the files on your own personal computer too. Now thanks to Lunarpages and the fine folks at Keepit – you can get unlimited desktop backups if you are a customer of Lunarpages.
For all new or existing customers, we are offering three months free of unlimited backup service at absolutely no cost at all. You will have three months to try Keepit out, and see why they are one of the best Online backup providers out there today.
Now, I know somebody is going to ask, “Well, how much is it after the three free months?” and I can answer that for you too. After the three free month trial is over, you can keep the service for a low $5 per month fee. That isn’t much to ask for when it comes to keeping your important files securely backed up off site, right?
Be sure to check out our newsletter feature on the Keepit offer, and if you have any questions on how you can gain access to this wonderful special, be sure to contact us.
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Looking for a modern looking font for your next design? Look no further than the Contemporary – Modern font. This wonderful creation (via MyFox on deviantART) is a great simple font face to use for anything from logos to ad text in your next graphic masterpiece.
This is font free for public or commercial work. If you use their font, be sure to link back to them though (or at least tell them thanks). You can pick it up over on the DeviantART web site.
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Want to make your web page a little more accessible to Twitter users? You might look to add the re-tweeter from TweetMeme to your own web site layout. You (or your fans) can promote your web site using the TweetMeme button. It is a simple and easy way to integrate Twitter onto your blog and web site.
You have two different badges to choose from:
Once you pick the one you like most, you need to figure out how to get it working on your own web site, right? Check out this article for more help on getting that done:
They also have a WordPress plugin to install, which will automatically put the button on all your pages. Overall, I would say that this is a very stylish way to get people to re-tweet (aka share) your stories and posts from your web site to their own Twitter followers. Speaking of Twitter, be sure to follow @lunarpages for tons of web hosting fun.
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Are you tired of the old boring HTML bullets that may have come with your blog theme, or you want to make them a little more fancy, with a little less work? If you use Windows Live Writer to update your blog, there is a plugin to give you Fancy Bullets.
After you install this plugin, you will have up to 42 other bullets you can use in your blog postings. You can pick up the plugin on the Windows Live Gallery or via the official web site for the plugin.
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© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!
Are you tired of the old boring HTML bullets that may have come with your blog theme, or you want to make them a little more fancy, with a little less work? If you use Windows Live Writer to update your blog, there is a plugin to give you Fancy Bullets.
After you install this plugin, you will have up to 42 other bullets you can use in your blog postings. You can pick up the plugin on the Windows Live Gallery or via the official web site for the plugin.
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Looking for another alternative to your bland free web site editors out there? If you are looking to try something new, give Wizzypage a shot. This WYSIWYG editor provides true what you see is what you get editing abilities.
Here is a little more about how it works from the developers:
Wizzypage allows the user to add, position, and edit content "areas" using a series of mouse-click activated popup menus. These areas can then be dragged around and resized on the design surface to explore alternate layouts. Wizzypage’s text editor automates basic html coding chores like font and paragraph formatting or the assignment of background colors and images.
It also has a built in spell checker and FTP uploader, which are always nice to have handy in any WYSIWYG editor.
Want to see some examples? Check out these test sites:
As you can see, there is a lot to love here – and this plan would be Lunarpages.com/id/blog”>perfect for a hosting plan like our Basic or Business ones. You can download Wizzypage for free (tested to work on both Windows XP and Windows Vista), via at Wizzypage.com.
Related Tips and Tricks:
- Lunarpages.com/2009/04/10/inspiring-web-design/” title=”Inspiring Web Design”>Inspiring Web Design
- Lunarpages.com/2009/03/05/grab-a-social-network-badge/” title=”Grab a Social Network Badge”>Grab a Social Network Badge
- Lunarpages.com/2009/02/26/free-ico-and-png-icon-sets/” title=”Free ICO and PNG Icon Sets”>Free ICO and PNG Icon Sets
© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow Lunarpages“>@Lunarpages on Twitter!
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