Years ago, HTML tables were the standard for laying out web pages. CSS and semantic thinking changed that, and today CSS frameworks make designing relatively easy.

But they can also generate a surprising number of superfluous elements.

The 960 Grid System encourages the addition of <div> elements and class attributes, especially on complicated pages. Is this really an improvement over nested tables?

Creating cleaner code means going beyond the framework and thinking about what it really represents.

Read more

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.

The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.

These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.

So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons.

Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own… Read more

Today’s bridges not only symbolize our world’s advancement in design but its advancement in technology as well.

Consequently, architects and engineers have been able to merge design and technology together in order to create bridges that are bigger, better, and more spectacular than ever before.

Several of these are simply stunning – a true marvel of classic engineering capabilities and the outstanding achievements of modern engineering.

We’ve compiled a list of 50 of the world’s most amazing bridges, both young and old. If we’ve missed and of your favorites, please feel free to add them in the comments area below… Enjoy! Read more

Photographers, just like designers, often use the Internet to help promote their work.

Other than using mainstream photography and design sites such as Flickr, Behance and DeviantArt, photographers usually like to have their own portfolio. Not only is it professional, but it gives them an unlimited amount of options and ways to showcase their own work.

This compilation showcases some of the best photographer portfolio websites out there, including both HTML and Flash based portfolios.

Did we miss a photography portfolio out from this list that you feel deserves to be here? Be sure to drop a link in the comments area at the bottom of the post… Read more

There aren’t many articles covering incompatibilities, or CSS differences in Firefox alone — and for good reason.

Firefox has always done an excellent good job of supporting both CSS and JavaScript in a standards-compliant manner without too many awkward bugs.

There are, however, a few CSS properties and selectors that aren’t supported by one or more of the versions released since version 3.0., which I will cover here.

This article will cover bugs, inconsistencies, and nonsupport. So, if you’re having trouble with a CSS property or selector in Firefox and it’s not listed here, then you’ll probably have to rethink your layout and reconsider what the culprit might be. Read more

If you’re like me, you graduated from art school and had dreams of working as an art director at a small agency. You envisioned having your own office on the top floor of a loft with 30-foot ceilings.

Designers would play ping-pong below; people were allowed to drink beer at work; and brilliant ideas would flow effortlessly from your mind into multi-million-dollar campaigns for clients like Nike and Coca-Cola.

In fact, you got a job at a large corporation and were shown to a desk in a sea of light-gray fabric-covered cubicles. Instead of 30-foot ceilings, you have surprisingly low ceilings, covered with a substance that you could swear is asbestos.

You were given a 90-page handbook on how to create drop-shadows and sent off to populate templates for product brochures.

Sounds like hell. But outlined below are a few ways to improve your outlook on work life, foster creativity in you and the business and, most importantly, bring some fun into your corporate job. Read more

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out.

To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @DesignerDepot Read more

We all know that as web designers, we should market ourselves both online and offline.

For online purposes, a great portfolio website or blog is a perfect way to spread the word, but for offline purposes, nothing beats the traditional business card.

We’ve partnered with UPrinting to bring an amazing contest to WDD. One week from today, we will be awarding 10 prizes of 500 free business cards each!!!

You can choose from a variety of business card styles, such as the traditional US Standard, square, slim and specialty shapes. Let your creativity flow and design the cards any way that you want. We will ship them to you worldwide absolutely free of charge.

Read on for more details on how to enter this contest… Read more