I was already a fan of the PhotoShop Pattern Maker, but after that tutorial, I'll be looking at it from a new niewpoint. The use of it with the photo was interesting, but I loved the text pattern they created. I can see using some variation of this in print work.

A very simple web page where the text fades out at the bottom. A very simple effect, but very dramatic in the execution.

I've had the need to show and hide text using CSS and JavaScript on several occasions. While I found good solutions at the time, I've kept my eye out for alternate solutions. Jennifer Kyrnin at About.com: Web Design has a good article on the subject. It is a well written explanation of how to perform this task.

Seth Godin has some great thoughts on how to create a great website . A beautiful list. It's not just web design that would benefit from this approach, most of those items would apply to just about any type of design.

Baekdal is linking to Web Pages that Suck article called Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015. It's a great list. I think all designers fall short in some of these areas. For instance, I'm likely guilty of number fourteen: "Mystery belief in the power of web standards, usability and tableless CSS", though not to a great extent. As a designer, these are the things I control. The content of a site I work on is rarely up to me, that's the client's domain so to speak. So while I realize that content is king, all I can really do is present the content I receive in the most reliable and readable format I can. So if I err on the side of web standards, usability and tableless CSS, it's because I'm trying to do everything I can to present the content, in a clear and legible fashion, to as many people as possible. That's a mistake I think I can live with.