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Smashing Magazine has become one of my favorite stopping points on the web to find quick and great information as a web designer. Today’s venture served no different as I was greeted with a great list of modern solutions for CSS Based Navigation Menus.

Navigation is one of the, if not the, most important elements in web design. Your navigation is used more often than any other portion of the site. Not to mention that the entry to the other pages on your site mostly relies on the ease of use of your navigation menu(s).

So how do other designers and websites attack the task of creating a navigation area that is both attractive and usable?

Well, Smashing Magazine has put together another great list. This time you’ll find 53 beautiful and user-friendly navigation menus that are using basic CSS styling (of course some can expect a little Javascript thrown in for cross-browser… ahem IE… support).

One important note to mention is that unfortunately all of the 53 menus are not purely CSS. Some are DHTML and Javascript based menus that were included by mistake.

This is a great tip of the day from Planet Photoshop. I couldn’t tell you the number of times it’s happened to me and I’ve been like, “What’s going on here!?!?”

This one gets more people because it’s a feature that acts like a bug. Has this ever happened to you? You’re working in Photoshop, you’re using the Brush tool (B), and everything seems fine. But a little later in your session, you get the Brush tool again, and it no longer displays the size of the currently selected brush tip. Instead, it displays a little crosshair cursor. So you go to the Preferences menu and choose Display & Cursors, and sure enough, you’ve got Normal Brush Tip chosen as your preference, but for some strange reason, it’s not showing your brush size; it’s showing that stupid crosshair. Here’s the problem: Check your Caps Lock key. It’s turned on, and turning it on changes your Brush cursor from displaying brush size to displaying the crosshair. This is actually a feature to be used when you need to see the precise center of your brush. The problem is it’s assigned to the Caps Lock key, so every time you turn on Caps Lock when you’re working with type, you just temporarily switched your Brush cursor (or any cursor for that matter). Does Adobe need to find a better key for this feature/bug? You betcha! Will it happen? Not as far as I know.

NDesign Studio has a great post that covers some great Illustrator Tutorials.

These step-by-step Illustrator tutorials include the original source file for download. The tutorials go through a great range of skills and is perfect for users who are new or are just looking to brush up on their Illustrator skills.

Here’s a list of just a few of the Illustrator tutorials covered:

• 3D Logo - Learn how you can quickly create a 3d logo with Illustrator CS2.
• Envelope Distort - Make a trendy fashion ad with Illustrator Envelope Distort tool.
• Abstract Background - Learn how to make a hi-tech style abstract background.
• Tracing Photos - Full detailed tutorial on how to trace from a photo.
• Graphs - Learn how to create 3D graphs at ease.
• Comic Style Strokes - Create comic style strokes with Illustrator Art Brush.
• Illustrator Template - Read this tutorial if you use Adobe Illustrator a lot.