Comments on: On Showcases/Galleries ~ Niche is nice

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 30 May 2007 21:43:47 +0000

I don’t visit Design Showcaes/Galleries any more. The market just became way too saturated (I even ran my own gallery at one point).

By: J Phill

J Phill — Wed, 30 May 2007 23:30:19 +0000

I visit Web Creme almost daily because they seem to have the most creative sites these days, that don’t all look the same, like a lot of other gallery sites. CSS Beauty is still a good one as well. Those are about the only ones I visit frequently.

Like Matt said, the web seems to be saturated with these galleries that all link to the exact same sites, so it got boring after awhile.

Of course the Zen Garden will always be classic, but is that site even updated anymore?

By: Jared

Jared — Thu, 31 May 2007 04:25:01 +0000

I think sites like CSS Green are unnecessarily specific. After all, you can sort by colour in many CSS galleries.

By: Tor Løvskogen

Tor Løvskogen — Thu, 31 May 2007 09:50:26 +0000

I really like Stylegala, but they’ve been better than they are now, back in the days.

By: Andrew Faulkner

Andrew Faulkner — Thu, 31 May 2007 09:58:12 +0000

Tor, I used to be a massive fan of Stylegala, but I think that the community is lacking of late.

By: Matt Davies

Matt Davies — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:01:11 +0000

Design Gallery’s play an important part in trend setting and the evolution of web design…

By: css gallery

css gallery — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:09:51 +0000

I run CSSElite.com, and t would be interesting to know what kind of need users have for a change in the same old gallery format. I remember the days of coolhomepages.com and cwd.dk and then the influx of css galleries that one-upped those showcase sites. Running CSSElite is enjoyable, but it’s time for a new twist… maybe we’ll get something new going soon, it would be interesting to know what people are like and dislike about the inspiration process when using CSS galleries…

By: Andrew Faulkner

Andrew Faulkner — Thu, 31 May 2007 18:48:05 +0000

As for CSS Elite, as it’s not niche I’d suggest focusing on either quality submissions (the word CSS in the title makes me expect beautiful CSS sites) or quantity. As well as doing this, I’d suggest building more of a community focus - the asides (Dev Resources) you have should be used more and maybe try to generate discussion around these. If you go down the quality route (and I’d recommend this), then maybe provide a brief review of each site in the gallery and get people to really join in saying why they like/dislike the site in question. I think CSS Beauty is the best at this format.

To really be innovative, why not take Jon Snook’s advice (linked from the article) and give different data to the user? Nearly all galleries give the same information and it would be refreshing to see something different. A new approach.

Feel free to fire me an email at contact(at)fadtastic(dot)net if you want to discuss any ideas in more detail.

J Phil, Re: CSS Zen Garden. I didn’t hear anything different, but maybe you’re right. It’d be a shame as creating sample CSS Zen garden submissions really helped me grasped the basics when CSS was new to me.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 03:53:42 +0000

Anyone find or know of a good Print/brochure Gallery?

By: Tadeusz Szewczyk

Tadeusz Szewczyk — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:14:38 +0000

I prefer Galleries that are not as strict in displaying only CSS though. screenfluent.com ist my favourite.
It’s more about “Web 2.0 webdesign” that a particular dogma.

By: Andrew Faulkner

Andrew Faulkner — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 11:55:06 +0000

Chris, I don’t know of any but would love to find one or two myself. Any help, readers?

By: Darren Hoyt

Darren Hoyt — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 01:40:43 +0000

Light on Dark is a niche gallery featuring only dark-hued sites with light text, and W3Csites focuses specifically on standards-compliancy.

I’d like to see more galleries like CSS Drive which feature specific categorization: “Two Columns”, “Clean”, “Liquid Layout”, and so on.

Agreed that the market is saturated; it’s becoming more about volume than quality.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 05:33:24 +0000

I have to agree with what a lot of these comments above say. Most of the gallery sites show off sites that yes maybe CSS based but lack design. Isnt a gallery not only supposed to show good code but good design as well. I mean if you go to a site that is a hair to the left of a stock wordpress theme would you want to look at the code. Whats to really learn or admire? Granted there are some great sites out there but it seems the majority of any galleries content is sub-par saturating the web with these vanilla sites. But yes I too am guilty of looking at these galleries, and to be honest the majority of the time I see what not to do, and where not to go with designs to stand out. My vote for galery site is Design Meltdown http://www.designmeltdown.com. Not a gallery site per say but an incredible resource.

By: Andrew Faulkner

Andrew Faulkner — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 07:49:10 +0000

Darren, thanks for the suggestion. Light on dark looks pretty cool and very niche.

Jeff, I totally agree. I like to see beauty and good code combined. That's why Web Creme is one of my personal favourites - beautiful sites that are often well coded. I think having a niche also helps to keep out all of the (bad) Wordpress templates etc and lets the gallery focus on what it wants.

By: Christian Watson

Christian Watson — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 11:14:24 +0000

I started a gallery of design elements because I felt that this was a niche that hadn’t really been addressed.If you want to design a headline or a comment form, wouldn’t it be nice if you could go to a place where a lot of good examples were gathered together? That’s what I’ve tried to achieve.

Any chance of a comment preview?

By: Andrew Faulkner

Andrew Faulkner — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:32:17 +0000

Christian, good example. I see what you're trying to achieve there.

As for the comment issues - it's on the to-do list. Thanks for the feedback.

Update: Links are now available on the comment WYSIWYG.

By: CSSArtillery.com

CSSArtillery.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:29:30 +0000

Hello, we run http://www.cssartillery.com We got around 50+ submissions every day. But we try to keep the quality high. And still update around 20 submissions/day.

By: CSS Loaf | Daily Slice of Design

CSS Loaf | Daily Slice of Design — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:46:23 +0000

I would love to have CSS Loaf added to the list. CSSloaf brings together designs from 35 other showcases so that you don’t have to go all over the place to see the latest designs. We feature large screenshots so that each design is visible; no need to strain your eyes on tiny thumbnails.