I often realize how stretchy the word “design” is. You can module a site, you can design a dress, or you can module someone’s appearance online. This is probably one of the most popular trends on the Internet at the moment - the dress up dolls game. It’s a real craze. This theme was discussed in my design forum a few times so I decided to expand this subject on my blog.

Remember Zac Efron? Yes, the star of Hairspray, who played Link Larkin. Before you are going to see him again in the upcoming High School Musical 2, you can play with his doll online - dress him anyway you like and even email it to a friend or get a code and display your doll anywhere online, be it myspace profile or your blog. It’s absolutely free and this games site is open for anyone, you don’t even need to register; just choose a doll whose appearance you wish to customize, drag-and-drop the clothes on it, using your mouse and…You can even download the doll you have designed to your computer in just one click. Just imagine Zac Efron dressed the way YOU want!

This dolls designing game is truly fascinating, and can occupy anyone for hours, regardless age; no wonder that Cartoon Doll Emporium who is currently the biggest provider of dress up games online, has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal Online, and even ABC News.

We all want our blog to look fresh and sleek, and therefore we either need to design it ourselves, or download a brand mew Web 2.0 WP theme. Here is a list of 10 most beautiful (in my humble opinion) Web 2.0 themes, currently available for download.

1. WordPress theme by Web2Themes. Demo | Download

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Yesterday, nowg.net’s new design and logo went online…

I was thinking of some good logo (it’s about time to make one, and speaking of which toptut.com is in need of one too!) and wanted it to be both web 2.0 and memorable, not yet another bold text with a white stroke around it. I am really satisfied with the colors and the idea,it turned out just the way I wanted and hopefully will help me to establish NOWG’s name online. It won’t sound too modest, but I think this is one of the best logos I made to date…

The crime’s background: A couple of days ago a typical “justice case” took place - themes.wordpress.net blamed me for creating double accounts and uploading / sponsoring rip offs. First accusations is that I, Liza Kliko, and the owner of web2themes.com (who also wrote a comment on his blog about it), are the same person. The basis, however, was too blatant to miss - our themes, which happened to be uploaded on the same day - FeeltheFreedom (web2themes.com’s) and Bluewell (mine) were perhaps so obviously similar, that even blind could see these themes were created by the same designer. I must say I enjoyed reading Moderator’s furious public post in which he, with full confidence, throws his conclusions, and I think it’s really worth sharing:
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Since Lorelei Web Design is still under construction, I decided to offer a several of my recent designs on this blog.

How To Purchase?
You can purchase online using Credit Card via PayPal or direct PayPal payment.
Each logo’s cost is $ 25 USD, if you decided to purchase any of these, please click on the “buy now” button. Once you have made the payment, please email me to lorelei@loreleiweb.com with the number of logo you purchased and email address (paypal) you used for the payment, as well as name of the company and tagline for your logo. Please note that because of continuous rip offs of my work I do not provide .PSD files, however if you need any modifications of the logotype, I will provide them during 12 months after the purchase.

Please note: If you have not heard from me 3 days after the payment, please email me again or leave a comment on this thread, because your email could have been filtered to spambox!

1.

Price: $ 25

2.

Price: $ 25

3.

Price: $ 25

Yes, those of you who visit my blog on a daily basis must have noticed that the site is now using a new theme, fully designed by me. Also, I want to apologize for inconvenience you might have experienced yesterday due to upgrade to WordPress 2.2. It turned out that after the upgrade some things did not work properly, or rather not the way I planned so I fixed all th errors one by one without taking the blog offline, hence some pages were broken and displayed a bit wrong.

Anyway, now we are up-to-date on the new shining WP 2.2. It’s so much better than the older platform I used (never upgraded since December 2006) and to be honest more convenient and secure. The idea of making a new skin came spontaneously, as I heard the previous theme I was using, originally coded by th every talented Ghyslain Armand, was not compatible with 2.2. So it took me half a day to design a new theme that will be more or less in the same colors scheme, yet maybe a bit more clean and fast loading. I heard quite a few complains about the site loading slow, and even noticed it myself on T1 connection. Previous design was about 500kb while this theme is below 130kb, which means almost 3 times “lighter”. Also, it’s based on one .css file, unlike the previous theme that had to download 9 .css files in order to display the site properly. Coding of this theme is far cleaner and therefore will load properly in IE as well, so all the Internet Explorer users who used to think the design of toptut.com was crap can no longer say it (I hope…) because it displays properly in Firefox, Opera, Safari and IE 6+, on resolutions 1024*768, 1280*1024, 1400×1050 and 1600×1200 so if anyone notices a mishap or thinks something is not working, please, please, please let me know, I would really want to fix the problem, after all I only have one pair of eyes and you all, the visitors, have thousands.

So, I hope you like the new layout and will enjoy using this blog just as much as before.

Now that CSS has been taken to a new level and even a graphical graph can be generated in a cascading style sheet, Ajax and other web based applications compete with and against each other, showering us with impressive innovations.

Want to give your design some interactivity, without the knowledge of programming complicated Flash and Java applications? Here are 3 code snipets that will make your life easier, and your design funky and vivid.

swfIR - The best application I came across, ever. Easy to install, 4 steps only and you give your site a very dynamic, fresh look.
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