Something Borrowed, Something New

This post is not about weddings.  (Although there's at least one wedding that I'm attending this summer. . . in under a month!)  It's about CSS3 and website backgrounds and free, internet-based toys. 

On my Google Reader I follow a handful of talented web designers and developers, who almost daily provide their readership with tips, tricks, and insights - guidance towards, for lack of a better phrase, prettifying the web in a usable manner.  Some of their posts I find entertaining, but not practical for me to put to use.  Every so often, however, they hand over a tool that I gleefully snatch up and tuck into my virtual toolbox.

I know that I've tweeted at least a couple of these, but here is a short list of some resources that make me smile every time I have an excuse to use them.   Some of them I've borrowed, and some I've found on my own (that'd make them "new,"  at least to me).

1. http://css3.mikeplate.com/ 
   This is a lovely start-point for playing with CSS3 to create backgrounds, gradients, transparencies and other such nifty effects.  The controls are pretty straightforward, and it generates the CSS rules that you need to duplicate the effects in your own project.  I do enjoy writing the CSS rules myself, however, as I'm the type that learns by doing.  So when you're ready to get a little more inventive, here's another playground.
2. http://css3please.com/
   This lovely little page lets you edit the rules yourself. Toggle them on and off.  Save snippets to your clipboard.  I love how basic it is, and how very organized. (AND it lets you toggle the interface between colored text on black, or colored text on white. Fun!) 
3. http://www.colorzilla.com/gradient-editor/
   Oh, Gradients.  How much-maligned and oft-abused you are by enthusiastic but un-experienced designers.  While I worry that we'll see a resurgence of Gradient-abuse in web-design, as CSS3 becomes more widely supported by browsers - I have to admit that gradients can be used beautifully - especially in conjunction with transparencies.  The concept that they can be used without having to resort to slicing and uploading images makes me almost sing for joy.   
4. http://www.stripegenerator.com/
   Stripes are abused in design possibly even more than gradients.  But . . . if you want to use them in your designs - why waste time creating and tiling those stripes yourself, when you can use this? 

Go forth!  Have fun!