Remembering the different prefixes and the sometimes ridiculous variations in syntax for the attributes is a pain. Fortunately, Nettuts+ has made a nifty web utility that analyzes your CSS and adds in extra rules with the vendor prefixes. You just need to write your CSS with either the official attribute or one of the prefixed versions, and Prefixr will do the rest for you.

It can even minify your CSS for you. (Though Mac may users may also want to try Minimus for that.)

If that wasn’t cool enough for you, it even has an API. You could use this to create your own tools that make use of Prefixr, or you could use it to integrate it with your favorite text editor. Examples are included for Textmate, Vim, Espresso, Alfred and Coda. And someone has already cooked up a Text Filter for BBEdit. That’s the killer feature for me. I can just hit a keystroke in BBEdit and the text updates a second later.

Cross-Browser CSS in Seconds with Prefixr [Nettuts+]

You can choose which of the services are displayed, as well as hide the chart if you wish to have the widget be a bit more compact.

StatDash is my first item to be released on Code Canyon. It’s priced at $8, and is GPL compliant of course.

Also, the AppStorm main page has received a redesign. It’s simple, matches the rest of the site, and I like the icons along the top.

It’s certainly an interesting idea, though I wonder if it might take away from the blogs a little bit? The Tuts+ blogs pay a lot of money upfront to their regular authors, but infrequent contributors could be more attracted to the promise of recurring sales.

It’s all about quality tutorials for mobile developers – all mobile developers, regardless of preferred platform. Topics will include native development with the iPhone, Android, Windows and Blackberry platforms, cross-platform development with tools like Titanium and Phone Gap, and techniques for building mobile web apps and mobile accessible web sites with HTML 5.

Hopefully we’ll see some good content coming out of the new site in the future.

One of the first things I noticed was that the sites’ advertisement strategy seems to have been rethought. There are no more large leaderboard or 250×250 banners; instead, there are only 125×125 banners. They sit at the top of the narrow sidebar and run down the side of the page in a single column. It actually looks pretty good. They’re out of the way, yet still visible enough to be sought after by potential advertisers.

Overall the UI has been cleaned up, particularly the post footers and comment functions. I particularly like the icon-based “Related Posts” section, with the word bubbles that display the titles when you mouse over them. The “fold” effect on the premium membership box is kind of neat too, despite the fact that it’s becoming too much of a trend lately.

Overall, I would say the new design turned out very well, as is usual for Envato.

Perhaps more than the redesign, I am interested in one of their announcements: “Mobiletuts+,” which will be a tutorial blog “all about mobile development.” If that means it will include iPhone application development tutorials, I will be impatiently monitoring Twitter for the launch.

The new design looks a bit more polished and modern, and seems to be a little wider too. It also has a lot of neat touches. Some of my favorites include the ability to change the “view” of a list page between a flat list and a grid setting, the expanding search box that lets you narrow down search criteria, and the “site switcher” that lets you toggle between marketplace sites.

Oh, and those page headings? They’re rendered in MgOpen Modata using HTML5 Canvases with Cufon.

Go and have a look for yourself. The Envato redesigns are very well-crafted, and definitely worth looking at. (And be sure to have a look at some of their products while you’re there?)

Buy a 10 Project License for just 3 x the cost of a Single Use License.
A 10 project license means you can use the same file over and over – up to ten times – without having to buy it again and again.

They also offer a Web Service Licence, which costs 50x the cost of a Single Use License. The license could be used on a site such as WordPress.com, if Automattic had the inclination to purchase a theme from ThemeForest. A site where the design might be in use by multiple clients, but hosted by yourself.

There doesn’t seem to be a way to upgrade a license you already purchased, but you can simply buy another instance, as people have done in the past when they wanted to use a theme on another site.

What makes the designs stand out of the crowd? Small touches. Little things that add to the design, and give it a more polished look. They’re fairly easy effects to pull off if you know how.

Edge Effects

Anywhere a background of one color meets another, the edge can be softened with a little “bevel” effect.

As you can see, what ends up as a neat edge between two sections is a simple trick involving a dark one-pixel line, and a tiny gradient. If you want to see a lot of this effect in action, visit the Blog Action Day site. If you have a way to zoom in on parts of the screen, try using it to observe how the effect is done. (The ColorZilla extension for Firefox has such a feature.)

Spacing

What’s not there is often more important as what is. Ample paddings and margins and a bit of spacing between lines of text go a long way to improve a design. Whitespace leaves the user room to breathe as they navigate a site. If you cram everything together, you end up with a mess.

Subtle Gradients

Flat colors will only get you so far. A subtle gradient here or there will liven things up. Be careful of gradients, though, and keep them subtle. If you make the color shift too pronounced, the result will be very tacky.

Can you spot all of the gradients in the image above?

Conclusion

Obviously Collis Ta’eed isn’t the only designer to use these techniques. They’re everywhere. Collis simply uses them well, and often. Keep these techniques in mind, practice them. And have a look at the sites in the Envato network; besides having good design, they have some great content worth trying.

Today across the Tuts+ network we’re rolling out some changes to our brand and how our sites work together. These changes include a rebrand of our logos, a shift from multiple domain names to a single top level domain, a universal Plus membership, a Plus Affiliate Program, updated Plus interface, a Twitter Tuts+ news stream and a new tutsplus.com site complete with a rearrangeable dashboard. In other words, a whole bunch of stuff!

You can read the full announcement here, with all of the big changes they’ve been making.

Overall the changes seem pretty good. I’ve always been a fan of the Ta’eed’s sites, the TUTS ones especially. However, a couple of the changes bug me a little…

1. The new logos and naming scheme don’t seem quite right. Net.tuts+ just seems kind of awkward. It doesn’t read as well as NETTUTS. I’ve always wondered whether I should say “Net tutts” or “Net toots,” but now I have to say “Net tutts plus,” and write it with that awkward period and plus sign.
2. The move to subdomains of tutsplus.com seems silly. You have the domains, they’re well established, they’re easier to type why change them? They may still get you there, but you’re jsut dilluting your existing brand. There’s already Tuts+ and Envato branding plastered all over the TUTS (sorry, “Tuts+”) sites. I can see not wanting to drop thousands of dollars for new *tuts.com domains, but it seems silly to change the other ones as well. I think it would be better to make the subdomains be the secondary, redirect URL for the sites that have their own domains.

I can understand the changes, but those two just don’t sit well with me… I suppose I will get used to them in time.