ThemeForest.net is now completely up and running, and I have had a chance to take a look around. If you are unaware, ThemeForest.net is a website done by the Collis Ta’eed and the Envato Network, who also brought you the popular FlashDen website for stock flash. ThemeForest.net specializes in selling premium themes for many of the popular CMS systems used today, such as:Wordpress, Joomla, Forums etc. They also offer XHTML templates. In addition, there is an authoring system which allows you to submit the templates you have made, an earn some cash from them. Today, I will briefly describe some of the features, as well give away a $25 voucher to one of my readers to use towards ThemeForest.net (see more below). Read more »

Every designer is familiar with ColourLovers.com. Whether you are looking for a color palette for a new design or a pattern for a header or background, ColourLovers has a lot to choose from. Today, we will have a look at 10 great hand picked patterns from ColourLovers. All links point to the original page where you may download the pattern for virtually any software (photoshop, gimp, zip file etc). Use these patterns with a simple overlay and opacity adjustments, and you can create some very attractive effects. Read more »

I’m a Firefox guy at heart but as you’ve heard, Google has released it’s BETA version of its new broswer, Chrome. Excited as ever, I ran through some of the new features and videos of what to expect and went to download it. Bummer, there is no Mac or Linux version available yet. Though I havent been able to test it, I am really looking forward to some of the new features as noted below. Read more »

How many times have you seen a great looking Photoshop tutorial and wished that the it existed for the GIMP? Luckily, fellow gimpers have made plenty of helpful and great looking tutorials for us to follow. Below, we will take a look at 10 Fantastic GIMP Specific Tutorials
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*Note: SingleWrench is now offering CreatingDrew readers a discount on their products, initially 20% for 3 months, then 10% after that. You may use this link. A big thanks to SingleWrench.com for offering this discount to my readers.

So what is SingleWrench.com?

SingleWrench.com is an FTP Replacement Tool created for businesses and companies (small or large) to make file sharing easier and more proficient than FTP. The first thing I noticed was that the site was very easy to navigate and easy to use. Below I will go through some of the features of SingleWrench compared to FTP and my thoughts on the overall site. Read more »

Although you may not have known it, PHP comes equipped with many functions and library’s that allow the developer to create images using the popular server side language. In todays post, we are going to cover the basics of creating and drawing images using PHP. Drawing images in PHP is not as difficult as you might think, in fact it can be used to do all sorts of cool tricks such as bar graphs and pie charts. You will need to be sure you have all the necessary updates and versions, which I will touch on briefly in the beginning. You can view the demos first: Demo 1, Demo 2, Demo 3
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If your are experienced with CSS or have coded a website before, you have probably heard of CSS resets CSS resets are chunks of CSS code designed to make life easier on the coder/designer when coding the website. CSS resets are an extremely useful tool in making your site cross browser comptaible. Today, we will have a look at 6 popular CSS reset techniques.
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If you are considering buying a new laptop, there are many things to bring into account besides your budget. Today we will have a look at some tips and advice before purchasing a new laptop.

1. What do you need to do?

What you will be doing with your new laptop is probably the most important thing to figure out while deciding on a make and model. How will you use your new laptop? What goals do you have to accomplish with your computer? If your a gamer, your choice of laptop may be much different than say a stock broker’s. Ask yourself what you three main thing you will use your laptop for.
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Every web designer knows how helpful quality brush sets can be. The “Grunge” style seems to be a very popular one at this point in time. Today, we will have a look at the 10 great free grunge brushes. Most are made for Adobe Photoshop, but if you use GIMP remember you are able to download and install Photoshop brushes easily. Read more »

Note:Unfortunately, reports are that the offer is over now.

Today, while attempting to reach my daily stumbling goal for the day, I found this site. The website claimed GoDaddy.com ™ was running a promotional campaign and giving away free 1 year domain registrations. I nearly just kept stumbling, just assuming it was a scam or you would need to do all kinds of things in order to receive it. Maybe I was feeling especially sassy, or maybe I just hoped it was true, nevertheless, I followed the instructions (signing up for a mailing list, I used a special email account for such things), and here I sit 5 minutes later with my free 1 year domain registration.

Before going any further, I would like to say I am not in any way affiliated nor am I receiving compensation from GoDaddy or any sites or companies noted in this article. Read more »