The problem With HTML is that presentational elements will be removed in future specifications and so will not be able to be used under the STRICT DOCTYPE such as HTML 4.01 strict or the XHTML 1.0 strict. Don’t be alarmed though your page will still be valid, if you use a transitional DOCTYPE, although it is a good idea to start making the change away from these deprecated presentation elements. Another major drawback is all the tags involved just to get the font type and color right throughout the page and then add in the table tags UUUGGHH messy and boring, and what happens when you want to change the font style you have to go thru some mammoth effort, say good by to any plans you had for the next 2 days. So its XHTML all the way and it is now time to move on.

For the non believers this example below is a full XHTML / CSS WEB PAGE as is this site your now using

This New Plymouth accommodation site Below is controlled thru CSS

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

The basic purpose of CSS is to allow the website designer to define a style and apply it to one or more portions of the XHTML web page. Sounds Scary but in reality is not, it will become the industry Standard and one of the best tools available to serious standards orientated web-designers. CSS is a language used to define the formatting applied to a Website including Color, Background images, Type faces, Margins, and indentation.

There are many benefits such as easy to manage site wide Changes(huge benefit) as well as reduced file size resulting in faster Page load times, but to my mind the optimization of the page is as equal a prize, take for instance a Google robot or spider reads the page from the top left of the web-page to the right just Like a human so, by minimizing the code tags this allow us to put key words nearer the top of the page allowing for quicker indexing of keywords and content, believe it or not Robot and spider software is designed to move on if its having to bash thru endless HTML presentation tags so reduced indexing time for the search engines is massive plus, I use meta tags they do work and all of those additional keywords in the head has to be a plus!

A great book on CSS is

Now Who wants free Web-standard XHTML 2 column with footer Web page….!

>> Download zip file Example for XHTML page with CSS style sheet

Muck around with the code and the style Sheets see how the style sheet is called to duty Via the <div id =”example”> tag. you can also EDIT CSS on the fly with webdeveloper tools in Mozila Firefox , that is really a cool feature of the Mozila browser Do your self a favour and use this Web Browser.I’ll be back soon to add some more CSS / XHTML Web-page templates, and some really cool CSS tips and tricks

Articles on HTML | CSS | Graphic Design & Development

Download .PNG Files

Download .PSD (Photoshop) Files

How To Incorporate Into WordPress

To incorporate this into your current wordpress theme you are going to have to do a slight bit of image editing and css as well as xhtml… but don’t worry, we’ve done most of it for you!

Editing In Photoshop (if needed)

First download and unzip the archive. Then pick out your favorite color and open it in photoshop. You will now “save as…” the file into a .gif to be titled “dateicon.gif”…. why are we doing this? Because your visitors using the unholy Internet Explorer 5 or 6 cannot view semi-transparent .png’s.

When you save the gif a dialog will appear. Select the dropdown box next to “Palette” and select “Local (Selective)”. Make sure the check box next to “Transparency” is ticked (checked). Now select the “Matte” drop box and select “White.” and click OK. Now you have a IE friendly transparent .gif. Upload it into your wp-themes/YOURTHEMEHERE/images directory.

Adding the CSS/XHTML To WordPress

Log into your WordPress Admin Panel and go to “Presentation.” Now click on “Theme Editor” and select “style.css” on the right side (this is usually brought up automatically).

Add this code:

.the_date {
display:block;
text-align: center;
float:left;
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
background: url(/images/dateicons/dateicon.) no-repeat;
width:60px;
}

.date_m {
display:block;
font-size: .9em;
margin:0;
padding:0;
font-weight: bold;
text-align:center;
}

.date_d {
display:block;
font-size:1.4em;
margin:0;
padding:0.7em 0 1.3em 0;
text-align: center;
}

(thanks david!).

Also note your images directory might be named something other then “images” and your path will differ so keep that in mind.

After you’ve added the code above, click on “Main Index Template” in your theme editor and find a line containing the following partial code:

<a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>

You are going to add this above or before that line:

<div class=”the_date”>
<div class=”date_m”><?php the_time(‘F’) ?></div>
<div class=”date_d”><?php the_time(‘jS’) ?></div>
</div>

Now view your page and configure any changes you see fit.

And thats as far as i can take you! Enjoy. Some resources below if you are stuck…

Create a ‘Calendar style’ WordPress date format
WP Date Image Hack

Gradients may very well be the most abundant and apparent feature used in web 2.0 websites, graphics, and logos. Here is my pack of Web 2.0 Gradients. I’ve had these to myself for sometime but it never occured to me to release them for public use until i saw this resource. Which is also a very good pack of web 2.0 gradients as well. I thought i’d go ahead and share mine. So enjoy, and hopefully they will come in handy and maybe save some of you some time!

Click to download…
To install:

• Simply save file into your photoshop/presets/gradients folder
• Open preset manager in Photoshop (EDIT -> PRESET MANAGER)
• Select Gradients from the dropdown list
• Select “Load” and load: euphorish_WEB20_gradients.grd

And your done!

other resources:
Some Nice Colour Gradients
Web 2.0 Gradient Download