digg

They make it seam so easy! Great tutorial, as usual in psdtuts.com

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." - Einstein

Great tutorial, as we can only expect from psdtuts. It's very thorough. Though, I'd like to add that when mocking-up the content text (lorem ipsum's I call them), I prefer setting the text with no smoothing/anti-aliasing to simulate how it would look in a web browser (without ClearType or similar installed).

Awful. Fixed position and large images where text would do the job should be avoided at all costs. I would highly recommend learning the proper ways to do things from the very start. E.g. dynamic layouts and accessibility.

I get the feeling this will get dug because it looks nice (a fancy background and images will do that) but a fixed layout will infuriate users other that those with the exact same setup as the author, and waiting 5 secs for a background to load may not sound like a lot...

It's ok but not worth digging. Also I would never use text in an image on a website, best thing is to separate content and design.

trashcat: Part of being a good coder is being able to apply your code to make this design work on all platforms. It wouldn't be hard at all (not that hard, though a bit time consuming), furthermore, as a coder even I can admit that aesthetics are far more important than accessibility. What the person sees on the top is more important than the source code.

As a designer myself (no, I don't just claim I am), I can honestly say this is not a bad tutorial if you're looking to get into this kind of stuff. It teaches some of the fundamentals on colour matching and typography, and also to keep things simple.
But I really do hate fixed backgrounds. Those have to go.

This is actually a pretty good tutorial... except I hate black backgrounds with a passion. If there is going to be blocks of readable text anywhere on a Website, do not put a black background behind it! I can't believe designers, good designers, are still doing this. Other than that I like the design.

Sure there are better ways to do things as trashcat points out above, but it's just a basic beginner's tutorial so who cares?

great beginners guide - easy to follow and understand =)

Just out of curiosity, what do you web designers out there charge for a handmade design like this? Where I work we have this tool (I think his name is greg) that builds our designs in frontpage with a fully working table layout. I am wondering how much it would cost to do it right.

Great guide for developing a concept...however actually making this into a usable website might take some work.

A good quick and dirty guide to creating a very specific, even idiosyncratic web theme. Executing it as CSS or HTML and implementing it as a website - the most time-consuming part - is another story. By the way, terms like "gorgeous" and "clever" are subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Very time consuming, but worth while for the people that are into this kind of thing. I know I wouldn't be able to let go of it once I start it.. so I don't think it's a good idea for me to start a task such as this one. Maybe when I'm extremely bored and willing to sit at my computer for hours creating things like this. Love it though.. I just wouldn't know how to let go :)

This is a bit too much form over function for me...I prefer something like facebook or digg's design (at least outside of the comments :P)

Step one is important, gravity is needed to glue the header and site frame to the page's content, gradients are good and make most layouts acceptable.

Awesome tutorial...Love the Blue Energy look!

The positioning blows on the final site running at 1920x1200. Basically the main site is 1024 moved to the left, with another ~900 pixels of space to the right. Should be centered.

I think people are forgetting the purpose of the tutorial. It's not "how to create an accessible, code-perfect website from scratch". This site is all about creating gorgeous eye-candy in Photoshop. Taking that in to consideration, I think it looks great. I'm a web creative director, and not *all* websites need to be fully scalable, perfect CSS, etc. Sometimes you need to create a site that shows a little more visual impact. However, there's nothing in that design that couldn't really be done via CSS...

awesome!, I've always wanted to know how to make a web site that looked totally sweet, yet totally useless

It is easy to replicate something that is already made and being used, but making something unique is behind multiple iterations.

Bookmarked.

thats a lot of absolute positioning

While the layout is alright in the technical sense, I absolutely hate it when people call this web design when no mention of concept or purpose was introduced at all. Blatantly using something for no reason besides it "looks cool" is absolutely retarded and the reason why you see 8 billion copycat type of sites out there today. Teach some fundamentals or throw a link or two in there please.

This is a great tutorial for even a beginner in web dev. It is easy to do and is appealing

"You can easily use the technique to create your own unique designs."
Yeah? Who's actually going to make their own design from it/ I doubt many.. most will probly just change the header.
LOOK AT MY NEW SITE GUYS! MADE IT MYSELF!

dude wtf, how does this make front page?

Where do I find more stuff like this? I have been searching for a book that guides a person through web design (not an intro to HTML or CSS).

as a beginner, i don't wanna get deep inside.. this tutorial is the best match for people like me. thank you a lot!!

If you use photoshop to write your website code YOU"RE DOING IT WRONG.

This is pretty nice, though I'm not sure how useful it is... I mean, the entire layout is a giant picture. That's hardly good for loading times (btw, I'm referring to the continuation at NETTUTS at this point). Plus since the main content area is a pre-defined area of the background, you have to be extremely careful with your content. If a client wants more verbage, you're S.O.L.

They certainly got a lot of things right, here. A beautiful image matched correctly with simple, elegant typography is a great way to start a design. But, overall, I think this tutorial is more for visual effects rather than practicality. The way the layout is created and how the site is coded is just too limiting.

Interesting approach, but am I the only one who didn't like the end result?