Web Dev Free-for-All

Admit it.  Most of us who primarily write code for a living don't necessarily excel at creating gorgeous UI designs for our web applications.  It's not that we don't recognize good designs when we see them -- it's just that we usually can't sit down with Photoshop or some other graphics application and automagically put together the layouts and graphics that comprise an attractive and elegant look for the applications that we are much more adept at coding.  The answer to our problems, of course, is templates.  There are many sites where you can pay a subscription fee for some number of downloads or just purchase individual templates that strike your fancy (or that of your client).  Some of them aren't all that bad and definitely merit a review if you are in need of an interface design.  Many are specific to business types (legal, real estate, photography, "corporate identity", etc.).   Some free ones can be found here:  http://www.steves-templates.com/templates.html.    Admittedly, some of these are pretty bland and most are fairly simple, but you might find something useful.  You can subscribe to download more complex templates from this and other sites as well.

After a bit of searching, however, I have found some great open-source sites that have a good selection of templates -- for free, of course!  The designs range from simple to relatively complex.  Most include CSS files and many include graphics.  Usually the templates are released through the Creative Commons license and can be used for both personal and commercial websites.  Some ask that you retain the copyright notice or the link back to the designer's website.   In addition, downloading and studying the designs can provide great insight into the use of CSS for styling your own web applications.  Just browsing through the pages of templates will also give you some great ideas for color schemes you might use in your own designs.  Here are a few of the sites I found:  

http://www.opendesigns.org/
http://www.oswd.org/
http://www.openwebdesign.org/

In a future blog entry I hope to give you some ideas on just how you might incorporate one of these designs into your own Domino web application.