If you are in need of a background pattern for your website, PatternCooler is likely to have what you want. There are thousands of backgrounds available for download and are freely available for your use: "All artworks on this site can be used freely on blogs, MySpace profiles, Twitter, mobile phone wallpapers, and non-commercial web projects" (PatternCooler).

The website offers the ability to customize the patterns and backgrounds to your liking using the Seamless Pattern Color Editor (example). This editor, as shown below, allows you to pick a pattern and change the colors using a color picker or hex codes.

Along with the available patterns for editing, there are over 20,000 prebuilt patterns available for download from the User-Colored Seamless Pattern Background Library. Technically you can edit these as well, but they probably have a pattern you like in this collection. Once you have decided on a pattern, you have the option to download and/or view the pattern.

You can get a glimpse of what the backgrounds that are offered will look like simply by viewing the front page. The front page uses one of their patterns as the background and changes with each refresh of the page. Along with the automatic loading of their patterns, you can change the background to whatever pattern you want to see. The view option allows you to see it on as the background on the current page or on a blank page.

Be sure to check out all of the patterns they have to offer. Chances are you will find one, probably multiple, that you like. If you like the service offered, consider donating to help out.

As many of you know Adobe launched it's CS4 product on September 23^rd. To help with the release of the product Adobe held a CS4 launch broadcast that is available from the AdobeTV website. If you missed the broadcast, you can still check out the hour long video to get some of the information surrounding the new release.

This release includes updates to well known products like Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, and Acrobat, but there are also updates to some products incuded that you may not know about like Soundbooth and OnLocation. You can get CS4 in six different versions:

• Design Premium - $1,799
• Design Standard - $1,399
• Web Premium - $1,699
• Web Premium - $999
• Production Premium - $1,699
• Master Collection - $2,499

Each version includes different combinations of applications. If you would like more information about CS4 or the products included within each version, check out the CS4 website.

Galleria is a clean and easy to implement image gallery based on jQuery. This is a great tool if you need to add an image gallery to your site and don't want to use a flash based gallery. I prefer JavaScript and CSS galleries over flash galleries because they are usually smaller and slightly easier to implement. This is a small (4K) script that doesn't add a lot of overhead to your page load time and is completely customizable to your taste. The images are preloaded individually. Some other features to note are the ability to your custom thumbnails, add a caption from image anchor title, and call events from the image onLoad event.

Implementing this gallery is, as noted earlier, very easy. You can have the whole thing up and running in only four lines of code. You need to add the CSS and JavaScript files to the header and then add the unsorted list that gets converted into the gallery. I have displayed the code that needs to be inserted into your header below. You can also get more help, checkout Demo1 or Demo2, and download the script.

 
<link href="galleria.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen">
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.galleria.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(function($) { $('ul.gallery').galleria(); });
</script>
 

More information about usage available at the Galleria website.

Do you accept credit cards through your website? It could be through any number of other third party processing companies like PayPal or Authorize.Net. If so there are some great looking credit card icons available for free. Fineicons.com offers a collection of 23 different credit card icons for download. Be sure to check them out and download for free if you like them.

The collection includes icons from: Visa, Visa Electron, Mastercard, Cirrus, American Express, Paypal, Moneybookers, Solo, Swich, JCB, Delta, Discover, Dinersclub, Easy Cash, E-gold, Western Union, Cash U, Laser, World Pay, Alipay, ICBC China, and Neteller.

I have only detailed the credit card collection, but Fineicons.com has other collections worth taking a look at. They also offer nice collections for Web Symbols, RSS Feed, Computer Micro Stock, File Types, and Flags of the World.

Other Credit Card Icons

• Icon Archive
• VirtualLnk
• deviantART
• Professional Icons
• Credit-Card-Images
• ToThePC
• Boxed Art
  

Here is a list of the best Web 2.0 Photoshop tutorials, for those of us who aren't natural geniuses with Photoshop. We've all looked at the beautiful buttons, badges, logo design, and other images that the Web 2.0 style has given us, and it's all about the glass/gloss-look in Web 2.0. A lot of the following tutorials cover the techniques that create the glass/gloss-look. I hope you enjoy!

• Web 2.0 Buttons
  • IRIS Design
  • TechTut
  • Free Your Design
  • Photoshop Support
  • As Button Generator (Free Service, Not A Tutorial)

• Web 2.0 Badges
  • Ajax Lessons
  • Free Photoshop Guides
  • Photoshop Candy
  • Photoshop Lovr
  • Web 2.0 Badge Generator (Free Service, Not A Tutorial)

• Web 2.0 Logos
  • Design Phase
  • FX Designing
  • Linkrain
  • Alleba Blog (Video)
  • Web 2.0 Logo Creator (Free Service, Not A Tutorial)

• Web 2.0 General
  • Web 2.0 Design Kit | Part 1
  • Web 2.0 Design Kit | Part 2
  • Software Box
  • Web 2.0 Color Palletes
  • Soft Floating Font

What are the best tutorials you've used to get the image/graphic you wanted? Comment below and let us know.