We are pretty bored with the current limits of the HTML-CSS and it is clear that the HTML5-CSS3 is the cure to let the creativity flow.

And, browser compatibility is no more a big issue as there are various resources like Modernizr, ExplorerCanvas or IE7.js that empower incompatible browsers.

If you didn’t already, it is a good idea to warm your hands on HTML5 and CSS3 as they offer so much.

Here are 10+ free HTML5-CSS3 website templates to help you get inspired and started:

HTML5 Starter Pack

HTML5 Starter Kit is an impressive template that doesn’t force you to build a specific type of website but shape it how you want.

This free HTML5 template is cross-browser (including IE6), tablet/netbook ready, can instantly use Cufón and includes some structural/re-usable classes.

And, it includes the layout as a .PSD file.

Gotta’ love HTML5 & CSS3

An image gallery layout with HTML5-CSS3 which includes:

• animated transitions, like a hover animated description for the images, using only CSS
• a tabbed interface for different galleries using CSS3’s :target element

A Free HTML5 and CSS3 Theme

The template has a working sub-page and a contact form which has a server-side validation and send-mail code (PHP).

It uses 960.gs and has a custom font named Chunkfive that makes use of @font-face.

Coding A HTML 5 Layout From Scratch

The template is a showcase for most of the new elements header, footer, section and so.

hCard microfortmat is used as well to define the creator of the template.

In means of CSS3, there is the popular text-shadow and others like last-child or selection.

52framework

52framework is a complete tool to help you start building with HTML5 and CSS3 with the use of new tags, input fields, rounded-corner, text-shadows, etc.

It includes a grid system and CSS reset (that is modified for HTML5).

iPhone App. Website With HTML5

A very detailed tutorial on creating an iPhone application website using CSS3 and HTML5.

The template uses new tags like section, aside, header and footer.

Create An Elegant Website With HTML 5 And CSS3

This is a tutorial on creating a slick webpage with HTML5-CSS3 and shares the result as a free download.

Many new elements are used and Modernizr is integrated for IE compatibility.

Free HTML5 Template

A HTML layout that comes in 2-column and 3-column versions.

It also includes the .PSD file of the layout.

HTML5 & CSS3 One-Page Template

A one-page-template that uses jQuery for sliding the content for displaying the specified links.

There is also an optional HTML version provided.

OWMX 1 HTML5-CSS3 Template

A 2-column blog layout that uses many new HTML5 tags and CSS3 techniques.

It also uses the hCalendar microformat.

FlipThru HTML5 and CSS3 Template

The template is a pretty simple one using the HTML5-CSS3 features.

However, it has a pretty-slick accordion that only makes use of CSS3.

HTML5-CSS3 Starting Template

This starter template offers a complete structure for a HTML5 website that will be built with PHP.

It includes CSS styles for the layout, typography, print and reset.

There are already PHP includes for functions, header, footer, etc.

Looking for a place to create a free website?  There are plenty of resources that allow you to create you own website, blog, wiki, or social community without having to know any programming language.  These free website creation sites allow you to easily create a site, customize the design, add content, and use a custom URL.

Take a look at 45 best web builders to create a free website.

Google Sites

Hey its Google and they are letting you create a free site….so do it.  As usual, Google makes it extremely easy to build a free website with cool integration features like Google Docs, Google Calendar, and RSS.

Windows Live Spaces

Webs

Google Knol

Google Knol came out about 2 years ago and even though it has not gotten the same praise as Wikipedia, it is still a valuable resource that you should take advantage of.  Free easy to create your own free knol and help position yourself as an industry leader.

Jimdo

Jimdo is a new free website builder that is very clean and easy to use.  As you can see in the screen-shot you can create your own url and add text, photos, and custom design.

AngelFire

Edicy

Squidoo

One of my favorite places to create a free webpage is Squidoo.  Not only do these pages tend to rank well in the search engines, but you can monetize them by adding amazon affiliate products and links, share easily through Facebook and Tweetmeme buttons and much more.

Yola

Tripod

Wetpaint

Wetpaint is the place to go to create your own free wiki in a matter of minutes.  Similar to the other website builders out there, however like a wiki anyone can add, edit, and remove content from the page.

WikiSpaces

Blogsome

Weebly

Wix

I personally don’t have a lot of experience with Wix, but it seems like a very neat way to create free flash websites.  They have separated themselves from the rest, since most of the free site builders only let you create html pages.  Would love to hear from anyone that has used Wix.

Hubpages

Hubpages is very similar to Squidoo, in the fact that you can build free pages and they tend to rank very well in search engines.  You can also make money by adding affiliate products, links and adsense in your hub.  It has all of the cool features that you would need including adding images, videos, ratings and reviews, and the ability to comment.

Piczo

Webnode

Moonfruit

Let’s Eat

For anyone in the restaurant industry, Let’s Eat is for you. Let’s Eat lets you create your own restaurant website where you can add information about your restaurant, menu, hours, location, and more.

Sauropol

GoGoFrog

Launch Splash

Nexo

Roxer

Viviti

Ever

DevHub

SnapPages

SnapPages is the easy drag and drop website creation service.  No need to know css to position your site!

350

WebStarts

BlinkWeb

Thoughts

ClutterMe

DoTemplate

ComfyPages

Moogo

GetShopped

Groupie Guide

Hyper Web Enable

Notanent

Blogetery

Blogster

Flooha

FreeWeb

1. IconFinder

Iconfinder provides high quality icons for webdesigners and developers in an easy and efficient way.

2. IconLet

Iconlet is simple search engine for free icons, images.

3. IconLook

ICONlook.com is a place where to find your icons.

4. VeryIcon

The VeryIcom.com is a icon search engine, it contents over 20000 high quaility web icons in more than 1000 icon packs.

5. IconSeeker

The IconSeeker.com is the best icon search engine on web, it contents about 50,000+ high quaility icons and each icon has PNG, ICO and ICNS formats for Windows, Macintosh and Linux Systems.

6. Icons-Search

The Icons-Search is an Icon Search Engine that helps you to find quality icons available on the Internet.

Fonts type that can be used for Safari, Chrome and Firefox3.1+ are .ttf(True Type Font) and.otf(open type font). Both support the @font-face rule that allows stylesheet to point to a .ttf  or .otf on server.  IE has little problem with .otf.  After declaring the @font-face rule give reference to your required font-family property in your stylesheet as following:

  @font-face {
   font-family: MEgalopolis Extra; src: url(‘MEgalopolis-Extra.otf');
   }
  h3 { font-family: MEgalopolis Extra, sans-serif; }

Reference:
@font-face {
 font-family: MEgalopolis Extra;
 src: url('MEgalopolis-Extra.otf');
}

Example:

MEgalopolis Extra

The drawback of embedding fonts in stylesheet is again licensing and infringement issues which you can handle with the sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) method. There is a well explained article on sIFR implementing the core method, you can find it at Mike Industries’s Blog “sIFR 2.0: Rich Accessible Typography for the Masses“.
There are lots of websites where you can find Free and useful resources.

1. For @Font-face friendly fonts: Font Squirrel

2. Fonts available for @font-face embedding: Web Fonts

3. OpenType for your desktop and webfonts: Font Spring

Font resource Compilation:

1. 75+ Excellent Free Fonts For Professional Design

In this article tripwire magazine presents an overview of more than 75 excellent free fonts you should consider using for your designs. Not all free Fonts are worth using but the Fonts listed in this article have all been picked out because they are better than the rest.

2. 20 High Quality Free Fonts for Designers

Here are 20 high quality free fonts for you to use in your designs. In this selection, you will find a variety of styles.

3. 40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design

4. 50 Amazing Free Fonts For Designers

They have rounded up some of the top favorites of designers around the world. These fonts can fall in all categories when put to creativity by users with your wildest imagination.

5. 104 Free Fonts for Web Designers and Logo Artists

You’ll find Over 100 Free Downloadable Fonts for Web Designers and Logo Artists by which you can save money and focus on making great applications.

6. Top 20 Sites To Download Free Fonts

A list of most recommended and visited sites to download free fonts.

Customize Fonts through WordPress Plugin:

1. 10 WordPress Plugins For Enhancing Typography

2. AutoTTF WordPress Plugin for Rendering True Type Fonts

3. Custom Fonts WordPress Plugin (v 5)

Original article from wparena.

Geolocation is one of the most popular subjects for today’s web & there are many solutions that help geo-enabling web applications.

YQL Geo Library is an impressive resource for geolocation as it is totally free & JavaScript-based.

It has various powerful features like:

• detecting the visitor’s location with the W3C geo API and with IP as a fallback
• find geo location from text
• find location from lat/lon pair
• find locations in a certain web document (by URL)
• get the location for a certain IP number

The library is lightweight (4kb uncompressed) & non-complicated. It just works by calling a function like:

yqlgeo.get('217.12.14.240',function(o){
  alert(o.place.name + ',' + o.place.country.content +
        ' (' + o.place.centroid.latitude + ',' +
               o.place.centroid.longitude + ')'
        );
});

will get you the city, country, latitude & longitude of any given IP.

Website: http://isithackday.com/hacks/geo/yql-geo-library/

但凡看到有关图片秀的工具，都会多看两眼，虽然这样的工具真的很多。打算尝试一下SimpleViewer的方法，给自己的BLOG填上些图片什么的。

Original article from mashable.com.

Whether you’re an artist, designer, or photographer, your web portfolio is your calling card and your showroom. While the work should speak for itself, presentation is important. Modern style and clean functionality can be a great selling point.

If you’re looking for an alternative to hand-coding or DreamWeaving your ultimate gallery, check out these five great tools that should make maintenance a bit easier, and give you a stylistic leg-up on the competition.

1. SimpleViewer

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Simpleviewer is simply gorgeous, and can generate a stunning visualization of your portfolio that is sure to impress. It uses XML to pull in images from a web directory (or Flickr, if configured) and display them as a Flash presentation. You can incorporate captions and links for each image.

The viewer comes in a few impressive flavors, including the TiltViewer (my personal favorite), and thePostcardViewer, both shown below.

Pros: You can’t beat the design. The presentation is clean, artistic, professional, and unique. While there is a pro version, the free download is highly customizable and full-featured. The viewers are scalable to full pages, or embeddable as part of your existing website or blog.

Cons: It’s not so simple. There is no software or user interface for SimpleViewer. It is powered by one Flash file and one XML file, so you’ll have to know how to manipulate the code, and have access to dedicated web hosting where your files will live. The support area presupposes you know most of this, but is a good resource on how to set up and implement your viewer.

2. PhotoSnack

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PhotoSnack is a web-based solution that generates slideshows from photos you upload to your account. The free version offers clean, embeddable flash presentations. If you’re looking for a bit more customization, you don’t have to buy the farm to get a pro account. Additional features can be purchased a la cart through the website’s “points” system.

Pros: The web interface is easy to navigate and use. Your photos live on PhotoSnack’s website, so there’s no need for web hosting or link pointing. Updating, changing, and reorganizing slideshows is a snap, and customizable embed codes ensure your presentation will fit snugly on your site.

Cons: While there are a few custom options, the presentation is fairly basic for free accounts, and the embeds contain links back to the main site. It is also worth noting that Flash is still not viewable on most mobile platforms and may leave a gaping hole for some users with outdated browser plugins.

3. ScriptOcean Accordion Menu

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If you’re looking to avoid Flash altogether, ScriptOcean has some handy JavaScript solutions that really look sharp. Among them is this accordion menu that unfolds — with optional captions and links — as you roll your mouse over it (click through to the website to see it in action).

ScriptOcean provides downloadable software with a user interface that makes compiling and customizing your menu quite simple. Add your images from a local directory, set the dimensions, colors, and animation properties, and the software generates a JavaScript file and some embed code. Upload everything to your website and embed as needed.

Pros: The user interface makes this otherwise daunting code project very intuitive. Customization is also very granular. You can control everything from the colors between the slides to the speed at which they snap together.

Cons: You must host the images and scripts yourself, and you should understand where to put them in your web directory so that the JavaScript file can reference them. The software interface makes this a bit easier to configure, but it may not be for beginners.

4. Carbonmade

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Carbonmade is an online portfolio community of sorts. It offers a really great-looking presentation that is sure to please the discerning eye of a graphic designer. It’s Flash-free, with a strict anti-clutter policy. A great drag-and-drop interface lets you organize, present, and share your work with ease.

Pros: Simplicity is the name of the game here. There is nothing to distract a viewer from your art. In addition to photos, you can also upload video and flash projects. Built-in metrics let you know who is viewing, and connecting with other artists is easy through the online community.

Cons: Carbonmade provides no viable way (that we can see) for embedding your portfolio on your own website. This may be a drawback for some professional users, who would rather people view their work on their own domain, rather than a third-party site.

UPDATE: Carbonmade does allow you to map your portfolio to a custom domain when you upgrade to a paid account for $12 per month.

5. Flickr Slideshows

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When all else fails, there’s always your Flickr account. If all of your artwork is already there, why not group the best of it into a set and embed the slideshow into your portfolio website? For a free service, the Flickr slideshow is surprisingly elegant and functional.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to generate embed code from Flickr itself, but there are a few handy tools that can do it for you.

FlickrSLiDR is a really simple web-based solution. Simply drop in the URL of the set, user, or group you want to create the slideshow from, set your parameters, and click “create” to get some code you can pop right into your website or blog.

Flickrshow is another easy and customizable way to embed Flickr slides. Simply reference Flickrshow’s JavaScript code as per the installation instructions, and tweak the parameters as needed.

Pros: It’s free, easy, and the social aspect of Flickr itself provides many advantages for hosting your content there.

Cons: A branded slideshow may not be ideal for a professional website or portfolio.

Original article from mashable.com.

SlickBoard is a simple, yet powerful tool for creating unlimited graphics, attractive interface elements (buttons, menus, tabs, drawers, etc.), animated slideshows, live dashboards (dials, gauges, ticker tapes, etc.), interactive presentations (drag, dock, etc.), dynamic web pages, and much more.

Create an XML source to describe your content, then pass it to this tool’s flash file to generate an attractive product. The XML source can be prepared manually or generated dynamically, using any scripting language (PHP, ASP, CFML, Perl, etc.)

SlickBoard makes the best of both the XML and SWF worlds. XML provides flexible data generation and Flash provides the best graphic quality.

Features:

• Endless designs and interactive graphics.
• Endless interface elements (buttons, menus, tabs, drawers, etc.)
• Endless dashboards (dials, gauges, ticker tapes, etc.)
• Flexible slideshows.
• Quick generation of graphics and interactive elements from static or dynamic data (any scripting language).
• Animated transitions and quality Flash graphics, including anti-aliased fonts, color blending, masks, transparency, shadows, bevel, glow, and blur.
• Updates without reloading the web page.
• Full screen mode, scalable boards, and printable boards.
• Web applications and support for Javascript communication.
• Unicode text, special characters, and multi-languages.

Visit SlickBoard Site.

MediaLoot is presenting a free set of user interface elements that can help designing/prototyping faster.

It has 3 distinct styles: glossy, satin/light gradient, and one-color which the satin/light gradient set is available in 7 different colors.

The set comes in both .PNG & .PSD formats and includes items like:

• control buttons
• info boxes
• breadcrumbs
• forms
• scrollbars
• & more..

Preview Image

You can go to the site medialoot.com to download the icons.

GetShopped is a free WordPress plugin for adding e-commerce capabilities into WordPress-powered websites.

It is a very easy-to-setup plugin which can work with any standards compliant WordPress theme (and WordPress MU).

The plugin offers a flexible pricing structure for products with features like:

• flexible coupon/discount pricing rules
• product specific sales
• quantity discounts
• free shipping options
• multi-tier pricing for quantity discounts

and supports multiple payment providers like Google Checkout, Paypal & Payment Express.

GetShopped makes it possible to complete the shopping process quickly with a one-page-checkout & optionally, guest checkouts is supported.

It is easy to manage orders with the help of a powerful admin interface, print invoices, packing slips & more.

The plugin also offers lots of other features from comments to new/featured product widgets.

Requirements: WordPress
Website: http://getshopped.org/
Demo: http://getshopped.org/showcase/

Original article from webresourcesdepot.com.

Forums are clearly one of the most standard ways of sharing knowledge on the net. With easy-to-use interfaces & strong community features, they are still very functional & popular.

They can be easily integrated into a website by customizing the look & feel or used as a framework which is sometimes a good idea considering the features they offer.

Here are 9 widely-used, open-source & free forum softwares, where most of them are built with PHP, that you may consider using:

phpBB (PHP)

phpBB is one of the oldest & widely used forum softwares around. It is being updated frequently with improvements in speed, security & features.

It comes with a powerful administrator panel where all aspects of the system can be managed & supports almost any database.

The software has a very crowded community which makes it easier to get support.

MyBB (PHP)

This free forum software works with MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite.

MyBB has nice features like calendar/events, mass mailing to members, a built-in theme editor & more.

Besides an admin panel, a moderator panel helps managing the system by multiple users.

Simple Machines Forum (SMF) (PHP)

SMF is the PHP successor of the Perl-based forum YABB. It comes with a comprehensive template system, polls, groups, calendars & more.

The software uses MySQL for storing data & has 40+ ready-to-download language files.

Vanilla (PHP)

Vanilla is an open-source, standards-compliant, multi-lingual, theme-able, pluggable discussion forum.

It is built on the Garden, a PHP development framework, which is easily extendible with a powerful plug-in architecture. And, there are already 450+ plugins that are ready-to-use.

Vanilla requires MySQL as the database.

PunBB (PHP)

PunBB is a fast and lightweight forum application which aims to be less graphically intensive compared to other discussion boards.

It supports with MySQL, PostgreSQL & SQLite. The design can be easily updated with the theming support. It is multilanguage & can be extended with the extension support.

FluxBB (PHP)

FluxBB is a fork of PunBB which supports both PHP4 & PHP5 with MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite.

It generates “XHTML 1.0 Strict” valid pages & can be easily translated into any language.

bbPress (PHP)

bbPress is a forum software from the creators of Wordpress which is plain, simple & fast.

It can be customized with templates & extended with plugins. And, it integrates perfectly with Wordpress.

Phorum (PHP)

Phorum is also one of the oldest forum softwares. It has support for theming & modules.

The software uses MySQL for storing data

YetAnotherForum.Net (ASP.NET)

YetAnotherForum is a free application that is built with ASP.NET (C#) & uses MSSQL as the database.

It has a feature-rich administrator panel, supports unlimited categories/user groups, templating & more..

Which forum software do you think is the best one, do you have a favorite?

Original article from webresourcesdepot.com.