BlogmyQuery – BMQ

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one — desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This creativity mission has been going on for over two years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month.

We continue to nourish you with a monthly spoon of inspiration. This post features 30 free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for November 2011. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!

Please note that:

• All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper,
• You can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

Real Artists Ship

"A tribute to Steve Jobs, from the crew at Busy Building Things." Designed by Andrew Power from Canada.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1920×1080, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1920×1080, 2560×1440

Design For Good

Designed by Nicci Miller from USA.

• Preview
• With calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1280×900, 1440×900, 1920×1200, 2561×1440
• Without calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1280×900, 1440×900, 1920×1200, 2561×1440

Coffee

Designed by Agnieszka Malarczyk from Poland.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 2560×1440

Autumn Impression

Designed by Agnieszka Malarczyk from Poland.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 2560×1440

Fall Leafs

"I like autumn colors on the leafs!" Designed by Petr Vaclavek from Czech Republic.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

The Hush

"Take time to sit and watch the leaves turn." Designed by Jason Krieger from USA.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• Without calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

November Nostalgia

"November Nostalgia has a bit of the old mixed with the new." Designed by Colin Whitehurst from Philippines.

• Preview
• With calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

November Rain

"It rains around here in november…." Designed by Inerseshen Creative Media from USA.

• Preview
• With calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440
• Without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440

The Most Productive Month

"Working hard or hardly working? What will your work stats look like in November?" Designed by Photo Stats from Sweden.

• Preview
• With calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Gunpowder Treason

"I doubt this piece needs any description at all, but here it goes. Because I’m a V for Vendetta fan, I decided to make a wallpaper out of the classic quote combined with the V for Vendetta “logo”. Of course this quote referenced to a historical event, which should never be forgot." Designed by Yentl from Belgium.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1280×960, 1366×768, 1600×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 1280×960, 1366×768, 1600×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Soul Candle

"When we do not visit the dead, they come to visit us." Designed by Pilo Francia from Philippines.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1440
• Without calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1440

Disco Ball

Designed by Emily Shirley from USA.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• Without calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

A Clearing In The Foggy Forest

"A clearing in the foggy forest could be your salvation or your downfall. Be careful!" Designed by Alberto Varela from Basque Country.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Pink November

"A face can manifest especially in a texture." Designed by Niki Virág from Hungary.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• Without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Winter Is Coming

"I always like to use the macro feature of my camera to capture all the nature’s changes. Winter is coming and the first molecules of snow appeared on the autumn leaves… Isn’t it amazing?" Designed by Tatiana Anagnostaki from Greece.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

November Love

This November Love desktop wallpaper is designed by Medianovak from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• Without calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Rainy Day

"A picture from Budapest (Hungary), a city full of history in which I spent two lovely days." Designed by Simona Gosu from Romania.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1280×720, 1440×900, 1600×900, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 1280×720, 1440×900, 1600×900, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Late Atumn

"The late arrival of Autumn." Designed by Maria Castello Solbes from Spain.

• Preview
• With calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Autumn Hair

"The colour of Autumn." Designed by John Rubio from Australia.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080
• Without calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080

Little Mademoiselle P

"Black-and-white drawing of a little girl." Designed by Jelena TÅ¡ekulajeva from Estonia.

• Preview
• With calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050
• Without calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050

Grey

"It’s November. Again. And we can’t believe that another year has gone by." Designed by Lotum from Germany.

• Preview
• With calendar: 320×480, 960×960, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 320×480, 960×960, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Frozen Kingdom

"Cold, cold November somewhere in Frozen Kingdom…" Designed by Frozen Kingdom from Estonia.

• Preview
• With calendar: 320×480, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• Without calendar: 320×480, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Hunting

"Sometimes you hunt a bear, sometimes a bear hunts you." Designed by Cheloveche.ru from Russia.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• Without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Flying

Designed by Nindze.com from Russia.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Cool November

"This big oak tree is standing in the middle of a big corn field, near the trail where I jog every other day. I always wanted to include into on of my creations, and finally, with Smashing Magazine’s wallpaper contest, it finally found its place in my November’s wallpaper. This year, autumn was very warm, and I hope this photo taken on a warm october day, will keep you warm through a cool and cold november that is coming up…" Designed by Uros Opaka from Slovenia.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1280×960, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1200, 1920×1440
• Without calendar: 1280×960, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1200, 1920×1440

November 1st

"The 1st day of November was the first day of the Algerian revolution. It started in 1954 and lasted more than 7 years." Designed by Houssem Teghri from Algeria.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1280×720, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050
• Without calendar: 1280×720, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050

Thanks Gathering

"November is a month for reflecting on the past year and beginning to look ahead to the coming year. During this time, we come together as friends and family to give thanks for the good things we have received and to band together in preparation for whatever may come next." Designed by Danielle Camorlinga from USA.

• Preview
• With calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1440×900, 1920×1080, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1440×900, 1920×1080, 2560×1440

Autumn

Designed by Leen Van Severen from Belgium.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1024×640, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050
• Without calendar: 1024×640, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050

Constellations

"As a young girl my father showed me the constellations in the night sky. These are the November constellations as they will appear from the northern hemisphere placed in a landscape I dreamed of. See their names in the non-calendar version. Look at the night sky and find them!" Designed by Christina Balanou from Greece.

• Preview
• With calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1920×1200
• Without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1920×1200

November Turkey

Designed by Roland Szabo from Hungary.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1280×720, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• Without calendar: 1280×720, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Undas

"”Undas” (Day of the Dead) is a significant holiday in the Philippines. A tradition derived from the “Dia de los Muertos” of Spain and Mexico. Families visit their deceased relatives in the cemeteries. They clean the tombs and decorate it with candles and flowers." Designed by Bored Astronauts from Philippines.

• Preview
• With calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• Without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Join In Next Month!

Please note that we respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work. This is why we give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience throughout their works. This is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves.

A big thank you to all designers for their participation. Join in next month!

What’s Your Favourite?

What’s your favorite theme or wallpaper for this month? Please let us know in the comment section below!

(il) (vf)

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© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

Over the summer we put together a couple of photography posts where we created color palettes to accompany each of the pics. With the fall kicking off a sweeping change of nature’s color palette, we thought we would turn our inspirational spotlight once more in this direction. So with this mission in mind, we collected a range of new autumn photographs from some talented artists, and derived color palettes from them.

Welcome to the Color Palettes of Fall! Below are over thirty beautiful photos that have captured nature during this seasonal transition with exclusive color palettes that our readers can use to create any of their autumnal designs. Armed with these natural color palettes, we hope to give our readers more than just an inspirational recharge, we hope they will find this a useful resource as well.

The Pics and Palettes

Lonely Path by iNintendork

three bucks running by gorillameister

597 by beautyinchains89

firebird by celestialwinds

Field by HeavenCondemned

moon over canyon ferry by gorillameister

East of Joseph by austinboothphoto

Endless Fields by Tiffa-Riika

Serenity by iNintendork

Jiuzhaigou – Arrow Bamboo Lake by stinebamse

Autumn by XxDarkColourxX

10.9.11 Panther Mtn by PeteZa88

Coldwarm by Vesperal

Beautiful Fall Day by sgt. slaughter

Colors in Waterfall by lica20

Leafy by xVani

Autumn Leaves by LouisTN

Early Autumn by ElderAmaranthine

cool tree by jasonxyzabc

Harvest Pumpkin by PintabianDreamer1222

Dead Lands by lollolbe

Vibrance by gummehbearlol

Autumn Sunset by DelphiRose

Autumn Panorama by KurgerBurger

Sweet Chestnut by Withabix

The Light Between the Trees by CODsnyper

A Dry Summer Breeze by Pure-Lucidity

Frame of Trees by ImaginingJackie

Sprinkles by PhotoBri25

The Last of Autumn by PhotoBri25

Fall Colors at Cuyuna II by Tarsurion

2011 fall woods 81 by Modernmilk

235 by levinsa

Barnes Creek 2011 by IrishGirl72

(rb)

Everyone who is a regular Smashing Magazine reader will know that we have a traditional habit of regularly researching the latest resources, tools and services out there on the Web, as productivity is a crucial asset of professional Web designers and developers. We could, and should, all integrate workflow optimization into our working practices.

Perhaps we should warn you upfront for the long compilation, but what can we say — there are so many excellent tools out there which deserve attention of the community, yet unfortunately remain obscure way too often. We love all the designers and developers out there for releasing and producing useful, valuable resources for all of us to use! We, for one, surely sincerely appreciate it in the name of the Web design community. Whether you like it or not, here are some of the most useful coding and workflow tools released recently.

Feel free to comment to this post and let us know how exactly you use these tools in your workflow and also share other tools you’ve found with others who may also find them useful and still haven’t run across them. Please do avoid link dropping and share your insights and your experience instead.

Useful Coding and Workflow Tools

Stripe: Easy Credit-Card Processing For Online Stores
A website owner has many options for accepting credit card payments. Most of those options have a verification process that is quite slow; some have APIs and interfaces that are more or less robust than others; and some solutions are much easier to use than others. With Stripe, you can forget the tedious experience of the PayPal API and other mysterious programming environments. Unfortunately, Stripe is currently available only in the US.

The Web Developer’s Wonderland
Web development comes with truly enjoyable, creative tasks and some mundane, boring ones. Probably the most frustrating task is having to reload the browser page during development or debugging every time you make a change to the page. Livereload is a desktop app that monitors changes in your file system. As soon as you save a file, the file is preprocessed as needed, and the browser is refreshed. Also, every time you change a CSS file or image, the browser is updated instantly without you having to reload the page. The tool supports CoffeeScript, SASS/SCSS, LESS, Stylus, HAML and Jade, and it ships with all of them included. Currently available only for Mac.

Ender: The End Of Monolithic JavaScript Libraries
Ender allows you to search, install, manage and compile front-end JavaScript packages and their dependencies. Essentially, it’s a command-line tool that allows you to combine and mix all of the popular and small JavaScript libraries out there to create your own personal development library. If one library you use goes bad or is abandoned, Ender will help you quickly replace it with another. And if you need a particular version of a package, the tool can help you out as well. The release page contains detailed documentation, a user guide and some video tutorials. No more wasted bandwidth!

Open-Source Exchange Rates and Currency Conversion
So, you’d like your customers to be able to purchase your products in various currencies, but how exactly do you build this functionality into your product? Finding a free and reliable API for developers to access the rates data is darn hard. Joss Crowcroft has created an Open Source Exchange Rates API, which provides up-to-date, flexible and portable currency-conversion data that can be used in any application, framework or language (not just JavaScript). It has no access fees, no rate limits, no nasty XML: just free, hourly updated exchange rates in JSON. Even better: Joss has also built money.js, a JavaScript currency conversion library that can be easily integrated in any website. A demo playground and detailed documentation are provided on the website, and the source code is available on GitHub.

Easier Number and Currency Formatting
This simple, tiny JavaScript library will solve your currency and numbers-related formatting hassles, and it even includes optional Excel-style column rendering to line up symbols and decimals. It will make all of your numbers and currencies look much more uniform and professional than they would if left to many content creators.

Tilt Firefox Extension: DOM Inspection In 3-D
How much time do you spend traversing the DOM in Firebug, exploring the relationships between nodes, analyzing the structure of code and trying to manipulate it with nasty (or not so nasty) JavaScript? Well, perhaps you’d like to try a different approach to DOM inspection for a change. Mozilla’s new tool, Tilt Firefox Extension lets you visualize the DOM tree of any Web page in 3-D. Because the DOM is essentially a tree-like representation of a document, the developers of the tool have decided to layer nodes based on the nesting in a tree, creating stacks of elements, each with a corresponding depth, and textured according to the Web page being rendered.

Mou – Markdown editor for web developers, on Mac OS X
When current available Markdown editors are almost all for general writers, Mou is different: It’s for web developers. Syntax highlighting, live preview, fullscreen mode, auto save, powerful actions, auto pair, incremental search, custom themes, HTML export, enhanced CJK characters support. It’s exactly the app you want.

Creating Buzz With Launch Effect
The one-page theme lets visitors sign up using their email. Upon signing up, the page generates a special URL for them to share with their friends, so that you can track your most active promoters and reward them for spreading the word. What more do you need from a pre-launch page? This is a good tool to bookmark for your next creative breakthrough or start-up idea.

A Better Responsive Grid
The Golden Grid System uses the concept of “folding� grid columns into one another, based on the browser’s size. So, a 16-column grid that works great in desktop browsers would fold down to an 8-column grid for tablets, and a 4-column grid for mobile devices. It can handle screen sizes ranging anywhere from 240 pixels wide all the way up to 2560 pixels. The columns themselves are not the only things that are elastic either; while the column’s widths are based on screen size, the gutter widths adjust based on the page’s font size (specified in ems). The Golden Grid System comes with other features that make it perfectly suited to modern responsive Web design.

The Semantic Grid System
CSS grid frameworks can make your life easier, but they’re not without their faults. Fortunately for us, modern techniques offer a new approach to constructing page layouts. But before getting to the solution, we must first understand the three seemingly insurmountable flaws currently affecting CSS grids.

Bootstrap Kick-Start Development Toolkit
Bootstrap is a toolkit that includes the base CSS and HTML for typography, tables, grids, navigation, error messages, modal boxes, buttons and forms. It’s built with the LESS framework. It comes with a standard 940-pixel grid (i.e. 960.gs without the side margins), or you can create your own. Bootstrap allows you to create fixed or fluid layouts, and it comes with many elements that can be used as is or restyled to fit your website. Of course, the toolkit is free to use.

Colour Bookmark
Drag the Colour Bookmark link to your toolbar to find out the colour palette of the website you’re currently on. Then simply: copy, paste and use the colours you choose.

Leaflet: Open-Source Interactive Maps with JavaScript
The library offers a variety of map layers, including tiles, markers, pop-ups, image overlays and GeoJSON. It supports panning on both mobile and desktop browsers, double-tap zoom on mobile browsers (plus multi-touch zoom on iOS) and more. On iOS, hardware acceleration is enabled, and Leaflet has a modular structure that lets you reduce the size of the library to make it even faster. The project is open source and available for further development and forking on GitHub.

Weinre
weinre is a Web Inspector Remote that is essentially a debugger for web pages, like FireBug (for FireFox) and Web Inspector (for WebKit-based browsers), except it’s designed to work remotely, and in particular, to allow you debug web pages on a mobile device such as a phone.

Aardwolf: Remote JavaScript Debugger
Mobile browsers are becoming more powerful day-by-day and you can do almost everything you do on your desktop browser. One of the major concerns for the developers is the lack of developer tools. The reasons are quite obvious — real estate needed to show the debugger, non-developer friendly environment. The solution to this problem is remote debugging. You can use JSConsole for this purpose but when it comes to JavaScript debugging, Aardwolf is a better choice. Aardwolf is a JavaScript debugger for iPhone / Android / WindowsPhone 7 / BlackBerry OS 6+. (via Varun Kumar)

IE Vms
Microsoft provides virtual machine disk images to facilitate website testing in multiple versions of IE, regardless of the host operating system. But setting these virtual machines up without Microsoft’s VirtualPC can be extremely difficult. The ievms scripts aim to facilitate that process using VirtualBox on Linux or OS X. With a single command, you can have IE7, IE8 and IE9 running in separate virtual machines.

WhatFont
The tool allows you to easily get CSS typography details about the text you are hovering on.

WordPress TextMate Bundle
The WordPress TextMate Bundle is a TextMate bundle built with the sole purpose of reducing the amount of time spent digging around the WordPress core to look up the little things that we work with every day. The plugin features auto-completion of WordPress functions, snippets for common sections of code, and templates for WordPress components. We even snuck in function completion for the Carrington template framework functions. We’re always making improvements as we find more that we want covered by the plugin (merged from WordPress MU with the WordPress 3.0 code base consolidation).

cubic-bezier previewer
No matter how much you see someone changing the parameters, if you don’t picture it in a 2D plane, it’s very hard to understand how bouncing animation with cubic-bezier works. Lea Verou searched for a tool could use to show how bezier curves are formed. She found plenty, but all of them restricted the the coordinates to the 0-1 range. Lea then proceded to create her own cubic_bezier() curves generator.

Patternizer – Stripe Pattern Generator Tool
With Patternizer, it’s easy to make something amazing in just a few minutes. It takes all the work out of creating complicated patterns, letting you focus on creativity and play. Patterns can be saved and shared with anyone, allowing for collaboration and remixing. And you can access them from any device worldwide.

Chainvas
A tiny, modular library that can add chaining to any API that isn’t naturally chainable, like the Canvas API, the DOM and more.

Comparison Table Generator
This generator allows you to create beautiful HTML/CSS comparison tables on the fly.

DropKick.js
A custom drop-down jQuery plugin which degrades gracefully. If the user has JavaScript disabled, the drop-down will display normally using regular <select> elements. It works on IE7+.

-prefixfree
-prefix-free lets you use only unprefixed CSS properties everywhere. It works behind the scenes, adding the current browser’s prefix to any CSS code, only when it’s needed.

{less}
An automated folder scanning/parsing tool for LESS. Once you add your project folders to the application, it will automatically start monitoring the less files inside these folders for changes. After you have saved the less file, the application will automatically parse your less file into a regular CSS file. Also, see: SimpLESS, an app for Mac, Linux and PC to compile *.less files into valid CSS.

Recurly.js
This tool allows you to easily embed a PCI compliant order form within your website. The library performs in-line validation, real-time total calculations, and gracefully handles errors. Your customer stays on your website while their billing information is securely sent to Recurly for approval. Because the cardholder data is sent directly to Recurly, your PCI compliance scope is dramatically reduced.

Responsive Overlay Grid for In-Browser Development
The Heads-Up Grid is a recently released grid overlay for in-browser development. It works with fixed-width designs but also works great with responsive grids. Just specify the page units, column units, page width, number of columns, column width, gutter width, top margin and row height, and then paste the Heads-Up Grid code into the head element of your website to generate the grid overlay.

Has.js
The library is similar to Modernizr, but instead of testing for HTML5/CSS3 features, it tests for JavaScript features such as: ES5 array, string, and object featuresNative JSON supportNative console supportActiveXNative XHRSome DOM and event features.

grumble.js
This library allows you to create tooltips that can be rotated around a given element at any angle. Any distance can be specified. Any CSS style can be applied. There’s auto-magic size adjustment for use with localised text. FX queues for animating multiple grumbles. And it works in IE6+, and all modern browsers.

testling: Automated Cross-Browser JavaScript Testing
An automated cross-browser JavaScript testing platform for your quality assurance.

Instant WordPress
A standalone, portable WordPress development environment for Windows that can run from USB.

CSS Stress Testing and Profiling
A bookmarklet for stress testing the CSS on any given webpage. It indexes all the elements and their classes, and then — class by class — it removes one, and times how long it takes to scroll the page. Selectors that save a considerable amount of time when removed indicate problem areas.

Needle: Automated Tests for Your CSS
This tool checks that CSS renders correctly by taking screenshots of portions of a website and comparing them against known good screenshots. It also provides tools for testing calculated CSS values and the position of HTML elements.

Last Click

Cutting-Edge Web Typography Experiments
The website is essentially an ongoing collection of experiments and writings on Web typography and the possibilities of cutting-edge standards-based Web design. Christopher is pushing the boundaries of what is both possible and practical in Web standards in a way that is compelling and exciting to the visually minded creative.

Font-Bot
It is time for your favorite font to stand its ground. The idea of this project is to build robots out of typeface glyphs, showcase them and hope others put together an opponent. Participating is not hard, the rules are clear: all Robots must be built of type alone (A-Z). You may reflect and rotate the letters. Keep it civil. May the best bot win. Let’s see if your type design has what it takes to defend its corner. Fight!

Lights
“Lights” is an interactive music experience which is created with CSS, JavaScript and HTML5. This is why we love the Web.

Stay Tuned!

More posts with useful tools and techniques are coming very soon here, on Smashing Magazine. If you want to be among the first to be informed about the new tools, resources and techniques, please

• follow us on Twitter,
• become a fan on Facebook,
• subscribe to our bi-monthly email newsletter.

You won’t regret it. Thank you.

Thank you to the Smashing Editorial team, especially Christiane Rosenberger, Iris Ljesnjanin and Luca Degasperi for their help in preparing and editing the post.

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© Vitaly Friedman for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

There are probably a good amount of Noupe readers who would think little to nothing of paying money for a high quality WordPress theme if it was exactly what they were looking for. When compared to spending thousands of dollars on a unique design, a $40 investment in a premium theme for your website design is relatively painless. The number of premium WordPress theme stores and marketplaces has increased considerably over the last two years. Thankfully, many developers are still releasing quality designs for free.

Today we will be showing you 50 great WordPress themes that were released in 2011 for free. A few of the themes listed are the free version of a premium theme. Upgrading to the premium version usually gives you priority support and/or more features.

We hope you enjoy the list :)

1. News

A clean design from DevPress that could be used for a blog, news or magazine website. The home page has a beautiful featured slider for showcasing your important articles or videos.

Info & Download | Demo

2. Swatch

A free business and portfolio design that was developed to celebrate the release of the 100th theme from WooThemes. Features a custom homepage, featured slider, custom widgets, custom typography and multiple colour schemes.

Info & Download | Demo

3. Wootique

A free ecommerce design that was released in conjunction with the launch of the WooCommerce WordPress Plugin (which is a modified version of Jigoshop, the free ecommerce plugin we reviewed in Extending the Functionality of WordPress). With a featured slider, custom home page and custom widgets; Wootique is a great example of what can be achieved with Wootique.

Info & Download | Demo

4. Fungus

A Colourful blogging design that has social media links integrated in the sidebar and support for post image thumbnails.

Info & Download | Demo

5. WordPress Anniversary Theme

Released at the beginning of 2011 by Matt Mullenweg and ‘The WordPress Crew’, the anniversary theme has a traditional blog structure with a prominent header image.

Info & Download | Demo

6. BlueBubble

A simply minimal design that would be suitable for a blog or a portfolio. Includes an advanced option panel, 8 different colour schemes and social media integration.

Info & Download | Demo

7. Fotofolio Landscape

Designed for artists and photographers, Fotofolio Landscape automatically resizes uploaded images to fit the surrounding area and includes a useful slideshow option.

Info & Download | Demo

8. Big Square

A clean minimal design that is suitable for photo blogs. Perfect for travel blogs, personal blogs, portfolios and photography websites.

Info & Download | Demo

9. Balita

A brand new eCommerce designed for Smashing Magazine that was created to help sell children’s toys and related products. It was designed using HTML5 and CSS3 and features a beautiful home page slider, custom shopping cart and Facebook integration.

Info & Download | Demo

10. Parallax

A simplistic portfolio design that features a large homepage slider and a useful portfolio template page.

Info & Download | Demo

11. AutoFocus 2.0 Lite

Designed for photographers, AutoFocus lite is a simple HTML5 powered design that has a grid design and clean typography.

Info & Download | Demo

12. WordPress Diary Theme

A retro style design that was designed in HTML5 and CSS3. It uses Google web fonts, has built-in pagination and an AJAX powered contact form. Uploaded photos are displayed beautifully using lightbox.

Info & Download | Demo

13. Splendio

Based on the Twenty Ten theme, this is a feature rich colourful blogging theme from Smashing Magazine. One of the few free designs that also comes with the original layered photoshop psd files.

Info & Download | Demo

14. Gynix Tema

A business design which places featured articles on the home page. The theme could easily be used for a blog as well.

Info & Download | Demo

15. Triton Lite

Triton Lite is a self-proclaimed ‘All In One’ design that features a beautiful home page slider, shortcodes for styling content and 3 built in widget areas.

Info & Download | Demo

16. Shuttershot

A portfolio design with a difference, Shuttershot shows photos in full screen in the background of the design. Even when a visitor views a blog page or page the background continues to change. A unique idea that has thankully been implemented well.

Info & Download | Demo

17. Bonpress

A colourful blogging theme that supports custom widgets. It includes custom widgets for social media services and comes in 4 colour schemes (blue, black, pink, orange).

Info & Download | Demo

18. MyPhoto

The first photography theme from WP Explorer is a minimal effort that uses Javascript to highlight photos when a user hovers over them. It’s clean and fast loading, making it a good choice for a photo website.

Info & Download | Demo

19. Shadows

A minimal blogging design that was created for WordPress 3.0+. It supports post thumbnails and includes built in pagination and an author information box on blog pages.

Info & Download | Demo

20. MyCorp

A business theme that features a home page slider, custom post types and custom fonts.

Info & Download | Demo

21. GazpoMag

Featuring post image thumbnail support, social media integration and a beautiful home page slider. GazpoMag is a great option for an online magazine.

Info & Download | Demo

21. Lefty

A fun blogging design that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The home page has a featured post image slider and you can use custom fonts using Google fonts.

Info & Download | Demo

22. theSevenFive

A social media theme that is powered entirely by custom widgets. Through the options page you can style the colour of the background, fonts, links and borders.

Info & Download | Demo

23. Side Blog

A great looking blogging theme that uses post image thumbnails in the index and in the recent posts section on the sidebar.

Info & Download | Demo

24. PolarMedia

A multimedia friendly design that would be suitable for a blog, news website or online magazine.

Info & Download | Demo

25. Blissful Blog

A simple yet elegant WordPress theme that was created specifically for wedding related websites.

Info & Download | Demo

26. Melville

Inspired by classic literature, Melville is a clean minimal theme that has beautiful typography.

Info & Download | Demo

27. PhotoClick

One of the few one-column themes that was released in 2011. It comes in two colour schemes and includes short codes and custom widgets.

Info & Download | Demo

28. Minimatica

A fantastic looking minimal theme that has a beautiful image slider on the home page. This feature rich theme is perfect for blogs, portfolios or video websites.

Info & Download | Demo

29. Min

This is an extremely simple, clean and to the point theme. It has two widgetized footer areas to handle navigation or anything else you feel like sticking in there.

Info & Download | Demo

30. Ari

A beautiful 3 column blogging theme that comes in a light and dark version. It uses Google fonts and has great social media integration.

Info & Download | Demo

31. Grid

A fantastic fast loading minimal design that uses a 4 column grid layout to display posts. Perfect for a portfolio or blog.

Info & Download | Demo

32. Amphion Lite

A blogging design that comes with 2 theme skins, 2 custom widgets, 2 short codes and 2 WordPress menus. Featured articles are displayed prominently on the home page in an image slider.

Info & Download | Demo

33. Grid Portfolio

A beautiful minimal theme that was designed for illustrators, photographers and graphic designers. There are several custom home page layouts to choose from with most displaying posts in a grid layout.

Info & Download | Demo

34. Scherzo

A simple, clean and minimal design which features a widget ready sidebar, custom header image and custom background.

Info & Download | Demo

35. Showcase

A portfolio design that could also be used for a corporate website or blog.

Info & Download | Demo

36. WP Creativix

A nice corporate design that also features a basic portfolio template (which has jQuery lightbox support).

Info & Download | Demo

37. Spectacular

Another fantastic design from Smashing Magazine, Spectacular includes short codes for styling content. An elegant theme that is perfect for blogs.

Info & Download | Demo

38. Steira

A boxy minimal blogging theme from the Automattic team.

Info & Download | Demo

39. Platform

Designed in HTML5, Platform is a drag and drop framework that makes creating your ideal site a breeze. One of the best free blogging themes released in 2011.

Info & Download | Demo

40. Retro Fitted

A fun retro style blogging theme that comes with several widget areas.

Info & Download | Demo

41. Ambrosia

An HTML blogging design that is optimised for viewing on mobile devices. It features 4 widget areas, two custom menus and an option to stick posts.

Info & Download | Demo

42. HTML5Press

Created using HTML5 and CSS3, the theme lets you choose from over 40 Google fonts. It includes a featured posts slider, post image support, post format support and 6 colour schemes (pink, blue, green, red, orange, and bluish purple).

Info & Download | Demo

43. Portfolio Press

Another theme that was designed using HTML5, Portfolio Press is a good option for a simple portfolio blog.

Info & Download | Demo

44. Liquorice

A beautiful vintage design that uses Google fonts.

Info & Download | Demo

45. Delicate

A clean minimal blogging design that was created using the NattyWP framework.

Info & Download | Demo

46. PressWork

An HTML5 WordPress Framework for designers, developers & publishers. The user friendly front page editor allows you to move things around and modify your website in a live environment.

Info & Download | Demo

47. Tungstenation

A good choice for a business or portfolio website. The home page features a beautiful jQuery slider. It also features post image thumbnails, social media integration, built in page navigation, custom font integration and much more.

Info & Download | Demo

48. SixHours

A great looking minimal blogging theme from Caroline Moore.

Info & Download | Demo

49. Busby

A clean blogging theme that was built using the UpThemes Theme Framework. It includes social media integration in the header and a featured post slider on the home page.

Info & Download | Demo

50. Blog-O-Folio

Last but not least is Blog-O-Folio, a great looking blog and portfolio design from Noupe. Features portfolio integration, built in advertisement options and an email subscription form.

Info & Download | Demo

Do you know of a great WordPress design that was released for free in 2011 that didn’t make the list? If so, we encourage you to share it with fellow readers in the comment area.

(rb)

It’s not exactly news – it was announced in July in HTML5 Parsing in IE10 – but in case you missed it, Microsoft are removing support for conditional comments from IE10.

I don't expect this to be a big deal. Actually I’m not sure it will have any impact at all, at least not for me. It’s already a rare thing to need to do something special for IE9.

Read full post

Posted in Browsers.

Copyright © Roger Johansson