30 Examples of Big Backgrounds in Web Design

Check out this showcase of full-screen imagery incorporated (beautifully) into web pages. A lot of different types of web-sites can utilize this design trend: retail, sports, photographers, designers, and probably others you can easily rationalize. Now some web designers starting out may be wondering, “How the heck do I get this effect?” Welllll there are a number ways that include both flash, javascript, and css3.

Since the background-size css property is still largely unsupported by some major browsers (only works currently in webkit and opera), that’s not much of an option. So what about flash? Do you know actionscript? I know I don’t. I’m a designer, not a developer.

That leaves us with JavaScript, and in this case, my beloved jQuery library. I recently made a posting on my personal blog covering a helpful jQuery plugin named “Fullscreenr.js”. This plugin is probably the quickest way to achieve the effect you desire. Check out the tutorial and let me know what you think of fullscreenr. Cheers,

-Alex

(Source: smashingmagazine.com)

ialreadydontlikeyou:

Your Web Page Needs More Velociraptor.

This is EPIC; you can have a big ol’ velociraptor zoom across your website’s screen by timer or click. Zurb Playground has released a seemingly useless jquery plugin called “Raptorize.js”.

But is it useless? Yes, I know this clearly reeks of win (especially since you can have it activate by typing the konami code while on the page), but just in case Jeff Goldblum’s worries were correct and that secret island of dinosaurs broke loose, I think you would want to know the sound and look of a creature smart enough to turn door knobs. Just sayin’.

While finding content for my own blog, I found this wicked-awesome jquery plugin and thought followers here might enjoy this easter egg as well.

-Alex

matthewb:

A selection of creative commons-licensed, base CSS templates from Russ Maschmeyer to get your web typography off to a great start. I’ll be contributing here as soon as I can.

Very interesting. Allows you to dynamically preview different custom web fonts (some by powered by the ever-popular Type-Kit.)
-Alex