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With all the less pleasant verdicts about Vista, Windows 7 is perhaps PC users’ next best news. Codenamed Blackcomb, this new Microsoft operating system is surely a successor over it’s predecessor Windows XP and definitely Vista. With Microsoft to end their support for Windows XP in 2014, we figured Windows 7 will be completely taking over things in the next year or so.

(Image source: Wikipedia)

If you are a Windows users it’s probably time for a change, or at least tryout this new operating system. Here are some shortcut keys to help improve your productivity and user experience with Windows 7. Full list after jump.

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Starter kits are great timesavers for web designers and they are particularly useful for those who often create mock-ups for project pitching on daily basis. If you are a designer-cum-programmer think of it as your code snippets

So what’s in a starter kit? We think it varies – depending on what each designer routinely worked with. For GUI designers, keeping a copy of form elements (buttons, checkboxes, tab, drop down menus, etc) helps speed up the process of creating screens and layouts; on the other hand, browser (IE, Firefox Safari) templates with web safe area keep web designers reminded how/where they should prioritize their contents. Experienced designers will usually customize and keep a personal version of starter kit, some might have few too!

In today’s article, we attempt to show you some of the best design starter kit we’ve come to know. You can download (for free) and use them right away, or customize your own copy that will come in handy in future, your choice. Full list after jump.

GUI, Form Elements and Web Components

From form elements like checkboxes, input fields, textareas to web design components like buttons, arrows, icons, badges and more.

Yahoo’s Design Stencil Kit
Probably one of the most complete kit for designers. GUI elements include calendars, grids, menus, mobile (general and iphone), navigation and pagination, tabs, UI controls and more! Comes in several format: OmniGraffle, Visio (XML), PDF, PNG and SVG.

Web Form Elements
With all these tabs, buttons, dropdowns in one single PSD file, it’s sure going to give you a kick start in interface design. Courtesy of sniperyu.

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Most textures and patterns don’t look attractive in raw or when they are standalone, and these metallic ones are certainly no exceptional. However, with the right mixtures (and some creativity), these raw materials could output you some of the nicest metallic-themed design. If you are looking to create some realistic metallic design, here’s a collection of Metallic Textures, Pattern, Brushes and Photoshop Tutorial that could come in handy.

Here are some related articles you might be interested:

• 28 High Resolution Wood Textures For Designers
• 40+ High Resolution Blank Template (Free) Stock Photos
• 30+ Websites for Stock Photos and Royalty Free Images

Full list after jump.

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Everyday, an average internet user is bombarded by advertisements, images, news, etc. With the booming number of internet websites over the years, it is not surprising for any internet user to be overwhelmed by such information overload. Online companies are competing with each other to attract more visitors to their site, and equally important, retain them. To achieve this, marketers online have to constantly come up with unique ideas to captivate viewers so that they can remember their website.

Designing a captivating logo or symbol is one way to leave deeper impression for site visitors. However, text logos or symbol logos are way too common for the vast array of websites on the net, so some marketers are resorting to using cute, catchy and adorable animals as mascots for their website. Mozilla Firefox, an internet browser, is one good example. The trademarked orange fox mascot is so popular that it is usually the first thing that pops into mind when we hear of the browser.

For those who are interested in finding more about using Animals as Web Mascots , here are 21 fine examples for your reference.

Mailchimp

Site visitors are bound to be attracted by this well-designed delightful chimp that greets them on the very first page. Apart from that, this chimp mascot is illustrated in such a way that it roughly represents what the website is all about (i.e. email marketing). This is an essential component since the impression made to one will also provide information on the website service. People will then effortlessly remember what the website is about upon recognizing the mascot.

Elune Art

Sometimes, simplicity is the best design. This website features a brown owl mascot with a soothing light blue background. Such plain design is pretty straightforward and therefore conveniently remembered by visitors. So long as people have no problem identifying what the mascot character is (in this case, an owl), they will be able to apply that character to represent a particular website, thereby forming an impression that lasts.

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If you are looking to buy a web hosting account to host your WordPress blog, you might wanna hold that thought first; Also if you are hosting your blog on a free Blogger, or WordPress.com, here’s an excuse to get yourself a self-host WordPress blogging platform. This week in our giveaway contest, we are giving out 5+1 hosting accounts (1 year) for free and you don’t have to pay a single cent for it.

This giveaway is a courtesy of WPWebHost, only for Hongkiat.com readers. And if you’ve observed closed enough, we are too hosted with WPWebHost. Details on winning the WordPress hosting account are as follows.

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Google is the most powerful search engine available, but when it comes to searching for something specific, Google may churn out general results for some. For instance, a search for a song in Google may return the singer, the lyrics and even fan sites – depending on the keywords you entered.

This is when niche-specific search engines comes into the picture. These search engines allows you to search for the things you’re looking for, and because they are more focused, their results tend to be more accurate.

E-books & PDF files, audio & music, videos, etc. are probably the most commonly searched items everyday and with this list, you’ll be able to locate them easily from now on. Enjoy!

E-Book & PDF Search Engine

PDF Searcher

Pdf Searcher is a pdf and ebook search engine. You can search and download every ebook or pdf for free!

PDFGeni

PDFGeni is a dedicated pdf search engine for PDF ebooks, sheets, forms and documents.

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Placing a Twitter “follow me” button on your website or blog is certainly one of the easiest way to convert visitors into Twitter followers. Designing a beautiful Twitter icon or badge can be challenging for those who know less about design, but the good news is – there are plenty of nice and high quality Twitter icons and badges available for free.

In this week’s post, we attempt to show you another 30 Sets of High Quality Twitter Icons associated with the blue bird.

If you are looking for more Twitter Icons, check out our previous post too.

40 Cute Free Twitter Graphics: Badges, Icons & Buttons
via wefunction
Title says it all, all in transparent .png format.

The Social Bird icon set
via inspiredm
Released by Inspired Magazine, consisted the work of Frank Chimero, Jeffrey Bowman, Mills, Dyna Moe, Alex Mathers, Divya Manian, Matt Joyce and more!

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It’s no surprise we’re all pretty much into the fantasy world of superheroes. As kids growing up, most of us had the chance to read and collect superheroes comics and perhaps had one or two superheroes who we aspire to be. The movie industry is also coming up with new superheroes film every couple of months. Spiderman is going into its fourth film in 2011 and Dark Knight (Batman) was one the most successful superhero film of all time that actually managed to secure two Oscar awards.

So to celebrate our love for superheroes, we present you 60 Marvelous Superhero Wallpapers to beautify our otherwise dull-looking desktop. Full list after jump.

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We are sucker for creative advertisements, particularly those that convey messages with sense of humor, or deliver ideas in ways we have never expected. Here’s something light to digest for the weekend surfers – 60+ creative and smart advertisements we’ve collected around the web. Some of these advertisements come in series, click on the #number to view more.

You might also be interested in these following articles:

• 28 Nice and Creative Tech Advertisements
• 70 Creative Advertisements That Makes You Look Twice
• 12 Creative Advertisements from Big Brands
• Pepsi ads, Pepsi vs Coke ads

Wonderbra – You have 918915 friend requests

Terra News – Be the second one to know
More: #1

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Most web designs starts off with a pen and paper before its taken over by Photoshop. However, we’ve noticed a new trend (probably not too new) where designers are bringing back sketches as a form of design. Without a doubt, hand-drawn art is one of the popular styles adopted into web designs. Nothing is better than using these sketchy designs to convey and reflect individual styles.

In this post, we’d like to show you 50 great examples of how hand drawing art and web design can fit beautifully together. Full list after jump.

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Tilt-shift photography is a method of photography that utilizes tilt-shift lenses to overcome the restrictions of depth of field and perspective that normal lenses provide. A tilt-shift lens allows for the rotation of lens against the image plane (tilt), as well as the movement of lens along the image plane (shift). By applying Scheimpflug principle, tilt-shift photography is able to obtain a very shallow depth of field using tilt and a large aperture.

(via wikipedia)

Tilt-shift miniature faking is one of the most popular applications of tilt-shift photography. This is a process in which a photographer manipulates the angle of a tilt-shift lens to distort the focus of a scene to be captured by the camera, thereby creating an illusionary depth of field usually produced by macro lenses. This makes the particular scene appear smaller than it truly is.

Due to the popularity of tilt-shift miniature faking, it is often misunderstood to be synonymous with the tilt-shift photography method itself. In reality, there are other effects that can be achieved from this method. For instance, tilt-shifting is widely used to capture architectural scenes because of its unique ability to remove perspective in photos and manipulate the plane of focus.

We present here 60 cool examples of tilt-shift photography for your reference.

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This week, we are giving away freebies that we thought should be pretty useful for graphic and web designers. You’ve probably have a rough idea from the title already, here’s a detail break down of what we are giving out at hongkiat.com, courtesy of Designious (also a sponsor of previous contest).

Included in this giveaway are:

• 15x Vector Packs,
• 15x Brush Packs, and
• 10x Font Packs.

Let’s skip directly to the chorus part.

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If you surf Facebook on daily basis or occasionally, chances are you’re already familiar with regular stuffs like add/delete friends, update statuses, walls and profile, add and explore pages & applications, etc, but there’s more..

This week we want to cover some interesting things you can do on (or with) Facebook; inclusive of tricks that are not documented or unknown to many, as well as tips to stay connected better with your friends. Without further ado, here’s 20 Facebook Tips/Tricks You Might Not Know. If you have interesting tips/tricks related to Facebook, please feel free to share in the comment box below.

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(by Carlos)

In this web roundup, we have handpicked some of the best free Flash photo galleries on the Internet. From web based scripts, to Flash components ready to be integrated on your website. And on top of that, we’ve also included some cool tutorials that will help you to learn how to create your own 2D and 3D Flash Galleries and how to turn it in a Flash Component.

Full list after jump.

FlashFlickr PhotoGallery

A gallery from Sephiroth.it, based on Flex and Actionscript 3.0 that uses the famous Flickr API.

Flashmo 3d Grid

Flashmo is a well known free flash templates site, where you can find several cool interfaces like this 3D Grid gallery.

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