TONI ZOVA

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A Design/Development/SEO blog with bits of randomness

The History of CSSDrive


I’m going to take you on a journey, a ride through time to see what CSSDrive once was, how it evolved and what it has now become. You will experience a great deal while reading this article, everything from nausea, thanks to the 2005 March redesign, to joy when George decided to bless us with a somewhat minimalistic redesign around February of 2006. Lots of highs and lows, and highs and lows, and some more lows thanks to this latest redesign, but all that aside this just shows you how much CSSDrive has done for us a readers, as a community.

Let’s start off with the 2004 CSSDrive design…early September (is the earliest I could get a hold of), while George the owner of CSSDrive was constantly attempting to find new members, sometimes offering ‘free gMail accounts - those were the good ol’days’ - this popped into existence;

css drive redesign

Yes, I screamed out in horror the first time i saw it too, but it really does bring a smile to my face. George is a great guy, and to think he came from that, to having a site that now ranks among the top 12,000 sites in the world on alexa is great, just inspiring. But, with every high note there’s a low one and when you thought that CSSDrive could only get better, ouch. It somehow managed to shake that year or so of online evolution and sink back down to an all time low…with this monstrosity;

css drive redesign

I know, so it wasn’t as bad as made it out to be, at least he had a proper navigation now, and…this just meant that CSSDrive could only do better here on in! And they did, it only took George around 8 months or so to realize the crime he had committed against humanity was unacceptable, and after having bricks thrown though his window, his mothers pet cat lit on fire and their homes chimney stuffed with 4week old diapers, he got rid of the hideous design, and came out with this soon after;

css drive redesign

Things were starting to look, as much as they could, and it looked like CSSDrive was slowly but surely picking up pace, growing, evolving into what would come next;

css drive redesign

and then shortly after;

css drive redesign

Which might honestly be one of my personal favorites. CSSDrive should have stopped evolving right there, and instead, gone on to adapt to the changes, it didnt in my opinion need another overhaul, I mean look at it. Simplicity at its finest. Sure it might have needed a new logo or at least a cleaner one, nip and tuck here and there but it looked solid. And I can’t say it got much worse, but in late 2007, yes, CSSDrive went ahead and transformed, again;

css drive redesign

At this point, you have got to stop and think, bloody hell, it’ll looking alright but it’s had far too many face lifts, or has it? 7 or 8 in all its years of being online can’t be too much, right? Well, Jocelyn Wildenstein wouldn’t think so either. Today, this is what CSSDrive looks like;

css drive redesign

That screen cap does it justice. Anyway, I’m not even going to get into what I personally thing of the redesign, as you can see, I doubt it will be the last, I just hope George gets it redesigned before his chimney starts filling up with 4week old diapers eh? ;)

Oh and I found this along the way, I have no idea what year this is from but I don’t think it was up for long;

css drive redesign

Ive been a loyal reader of CSSDrive for years, a loyal contributor for a few years too, and I will remain a friend to George, and a loyal member to CSSDrive for years to come. Ride is over, get gone now, that’s it.

CSS Gallery Roundup


CSS Galleries keep popping up all over the place, I mean, I probably run into a couple new ones every few days, it’s ridiculous. What’s worse is the number of decent, moderated, up to date CSS Galleries out there, there aren’t many. So instead of pulling one of those top 20 lists out of my ass and just shoving links for you all to follow, I’m going to share some of my personal favorites, a few I have bookmarked and i’ll comment on them and then throw in a couple that in my opinion, did you read that? IN MY OPINION…are way overrated, seriously overrated, you know what, a better term would be ‘crap’.

css drive
So to start things off, one of my personal favorite CSS Galleries has got to be, CSSDRIVE. Why? Well I don’t even have to be biased here, it’s frequently updated, has a mixture of featured CSS sites while also showcasing some nifty, unique menu designs and boasts a cool news section that I love to spam with controversial Bull when I can, just to get people interacting and venting a little. It’s run by a really nice down to earth bloke who truly cares about the design community, and also pays me for these kinds of posts, that’s a joke, come on, i’m not trying to say George paid me anything to mention CSSDrive as my favorite CSS Gallery, that would be wrong, and unethical, and just, dirty, and we all know I’m a saint eh?

css beauty
Next up I’d say has to be CSSBeauty, just because it’s honestly a great site, full of great CSS related news, announcements, a Gallery and more. It’s something I have fed into my own RSS Feed Aggregator but I do have a couple things to bitch about. The bloody adsense slots. I can’t count how many times I’ve accidentally clicked on those bloody ads, while that’s great ad placement on their behalf, it’s as annoying as fuck. So annoying I stick to the feeds and don’t visit the site itself as often, and the color, kind of annoying too. But other than that, content is well worth keeping an eye out for.

css creme
Ok, CSSCreme, creme de la creme, I’m sure I butchered that attempt at being smart but yeah, CSSCreme is a must bookmark or must have fed through your Aggregator. If you’re a nooblet, or not, CSS Creme has a pretty nice collection of tutorials, Inspirational articles, news posts and a relatively updated gallery. I also have to mention the new free to download font gallery they have, very cool stuff.

the design inspiration
The Design Inspiration is inspiring, buuuuuut it’s rather boring. I mean, they have some nifty sections, like inspirational articles, logo showcase, CSS Designs, Art, Fonts, and they even feature Photography and slip in a pattern download showcase, wait, ok i take the boring part back. Just typing all that got me excited, DOWN BOY, yeah, TDI is worth bookmarking too, damn it, another good site!

[[no banner...ha suck on that CSSMania]]
CSSMania, lame. While I know many of you have CSSMania tattooed across your ass, and that you have the cross out and are ready to crucify me, I gotta say, what a pointless site. A CSS Gallery should not ONLY showcase CSS Websites, but should really provide more, in my opinion, CSS Mania almost feels to me as if it leaches it’s featured content from somewhere else, not to spark controversy here, because, that would be like, the end of the world, but it really is a pointless site. Wow, I sound like a hater, I dont’ think i’m even going to link to css mania, not that they need my backlink, but the amount of respect I have for that site is far too little to get me to link to them. Yes, boycott CSS Mania. (they didn’t pay me enough to be nice, see, it sucks to be on my shit list…)

creattica
Creattica is S.E.X. Simple, Elegant and….Xylophone..? I don’t know it was either that or Xray, (and my attempt at humor fails again) but yeah, Creattica is a great source of inspiration and their CSS Gallery is unique enough to feel hand selected not randomly picked off other galleries to feature, so I give them a thumbs up! They’ve also featured some of my stuff in the past without me submitting it, so, I have to give them props for that, they obviously know their stuff, right? Because, well they could tell my work was too awesome to not feature. Yes that’s it.

css elite
Dear CSS Elite, your sites logo is crap. Please, hire a professional to redesign it, feel free to contact me, I’ll go easy on you and charge you the bare minimum. If you disregard their hideous logo, they’re just another CSS Gallery really, only difference is it’s constantly updated, so that’s 1point. Yeah, 1/10…

style boost
Last but not least, styleboost, Ive been checking them out for a while and am still on the fence about them. While some of their so called reviews are in place, for the most part, they’re just rants, much like this one, which honestly is a waste of time to read you know? SO yeah, check them out and decide for yourself.

With that, I hope you don’t hate me enough to hunt me down for wasting like 5min of your time, I just felt like sharing these CSS gallery resources/links with you guys and provide my honest, semi-biased opinion on them too. If anything, feel free to drop me a comment to let me know how much you hate my face, because really, any comment makes me feel loved :P

((any and all references to bribes received for noting the above galleries were jokes, I genuinely mean everything.))

A Quik Disclaimer

I can't get in trouble for anything posted on this site, even if I do post it myself knowingly breaking any law. This is a disclaimer; so really, you can't sue me, because I'm stating so, here, in my disclaimer.

Also, if I use you graphics, quote you and don't give you credit, post naked pictures of you drunk at some party or call you out on something, cry me a river, you should be honored I bothered with you in the first place.

Of course, it goes without saying that I curse a lot, so if you're fucking offended by words like shit, or fuck then you need to leave.

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If you're looking for passwords to some of the posts, don't. If you don't have the password then I prob don't want you reading the post, sorry.