I thought this was sort of hilarious and deserved sharing…

Flash Player 9 crashed… and crashed big – right in the middle of the Times Square.

Credit: Zoli’s Blog & Andy Flynn & Michael Krigsman

Another month goes by. Here are the updated Alexa rankings of 143 gallery sites.

2 New Gallery Websites were added since last time: Nice Stylesheet and LoopPress.

	Gallery Name	November	October	September
1	CSS Mania	8,920	8,621	9,583
2	CSS Zen Garden	13,020	12,245	10,847
3	CSS Beauty	14,797	14,041	13,889
4	Sig Share	18,537	1,219,249
5	CSS Remix	18,721	17,394	18,909
6	CSS Drive	20,347	20,583	20,372
7	Web Creme	20,417	20,045	21,700
8	Stylegala	22,430	21,716	21,906
9	Best Web Gallery	26,202	27,144	30,004
10	Art Netz	30,028	340,163
11	CSS Vault	30,489	31,710	36,215
12	Feed My App	39,293	38,328
13	CSS Elite	41,728	42,193	43,120
14	Net Culture	44,300	847,045
15	Cool Site Collection	44,667	408,102
16	Fave Up	51,566	41,018
17	The Best Designs	54,165	50,736	47,644
18	W3C Sites	55,200	53,681	47,501
19	Unmatched Style	55,877	51,310	56,845
20	Carted Up	56,051	5,393,601
21	Screen Fluent	56,317	54,168	51,412
22	Freesheezy	57,196	60,058
23	Web Digity	58,465	64,643	58,190
24	Design Shack	60,007	63,413	92,553
25	Screenalicious	61,062	52,525	46,156
26	CSS Heaven	72,458	72,122	66,010
27	CSS Based	75,414	68,428	62,831
28	CSS Import	76,406	67,423	66,398
29	CSS Clip	101,538	103,694	102,483
30	CSS Reboot	114,410	104,081	108,436
31	Absorb	122,158	1,148,599
32	Apps Mania	128,271	97,716
33	CSS Website	131,170	135,473	135,200
34	We Love WP	137,032	134,366
35	Daily Slurp	144,819	136,335	122,643
36	CSS Glance	154,432	177,086	225,532
37	Web Test	160,206	377,851
38	Light on Dark	160,715	149,623	140,371
39	CSS Tux	161,683	148,429	140,659
40	CSS Collection	170,336	166,410	145,783
41	Dark Eye	173,765	160,482	147,374
42	God Bit	176,588	113,275
43	CSS Liquid	185,439	185,612	177,022
44	Splench	185,942	298,390	369,052
45	CSS Impress	192,557	173,251	160,514
46	Website Gallery	212,608	204,689
47	css20	221,215	193,685
48	Inspiration King	245,559	225,576	190,652
49	CSS Fill	247,660	208,828	168,463
50	CSS Artillery	249,441	852,385
51	We Love TXP	250,239	188,991
52	CSS Gallery	250,258	273,061	253,375
53	CeeSeS	256,814	248,318	203,748
54	Style Crunch	259,343	195,441	161,245
55	Visual Safe	268,217	230,782	219,148
56	CSS Design Yorkshire	272,391	248,468	251,892
57	Full Single	274,566	281,879	300,302
58	Design By Grid	281,710	288,103	284,418
59	CSS Princess	287,855	300,055	312,419
60	CSS Hazard	293,145	228,026	237,297
61	CSS Nature	306,933	200,584	198,247
62	Joomla Beauty	319,042	979,962
63	CSS Dump	320,077	324,892	268,936
64	CSS Container	323,329	329,182	322,490
65	Design Elements	331,323
66	Defrost	331,998	1,541,185
67	CSS Blast	332,486	362,959	342,615
68	CSS Leak	336,072	238,105	240,941
69	Piepmatzel	341,478	449,476	542,934
70	3w CSS Website	347,144	311,747	256,287
71	Lookom	366,172	378,318	332,829
72	Web Test	370,027	377,851	460,049
73	Open Designs	370,027	19,631
74	Apps Pakistan	373,634	467,006
75	Css Showcase	374,575	42,477
76	Mini Ajax	380,345	41,560
77	CSS Galerie	380,461	407,418	453,148
78	Loop Press	382,174
79	Relogo Design	385,187	331,860
80	Creative Pakistan	389,515	328,774	322,130
81	CssGalerie	408,834	398,646	416,083
82	Naj Disajn	411,557	498,071
83	Css Sevban	431,918	353,192
84	Style Contest	438,338	369,588
85	EduStyle	440,324	502,390	605,018
86	Moderni Web	476,197	412,970	382,391
87	ALA Brazil	483,167	602,501
88	Epreo	486,366	384,166
89	CSS Coo Site	492,636	424,088	342,763
90	Genuine Style	494,599	1,060,874
91	Perfection	502,519	393,637	279,025
92	CSS Exchange	524,556	458,364	390,729
93	CSS Flavor	527,125	477,202	422,405
94	CSS 11	532,356	505,757	483,540
95	Web2null	542,829	28,662
96	brdcast	550,147	514,345	527,723
97	Church Beauty	553,383	575,661
98	Design Css	565,832	839,590
99	CSS Cool	582,786	494,644	436,914
100	CSS Showcase	589,116	631,256	1,596,766
101	Nice Stylesheet	602,005
102	Portfolio Base	609,057	471,596	414,099
103	CSS Love	624,650	474,206	471,704
104	Net Cocktail	643,548	525,534
105	App Junkie	645,992	643,952
106	One Pixel Army	685,979	605,865	566,337
107	CSS Galaxy	700,143	616,144	614,301
108	Submit CSS	715,080	584,774	511,843
109	Cssgallery	717,755	702,785	746,474
110	Well Done Sites	741,939	728,348	468,204
111	CSS Galerie	756,661	694,548	603,649
112	CSS Burst	757,914	1,029,537	845,281
113	CSS Hardcore	792,454	974,363	767,107
114	Word Press Garden	797,696	328,727
115	CSS Smooth Operator	824,452	791,177	705,308
116	Italian Web Gallery	832,127	697,875
117	ExploreWeb2	857,730	522,885
118	Easy Share	873,708	913,041	918,802
119	Refresh	885,491	842,976	1,021,688
120	WP Board	950,789	133,133
121	Css Ocean	981,991	1,005,479
122	Horizontal Way	984,164	515,722
123	Standards Reboot	997,729	903,552	743,530
124	Showcase GR	1,022,452	999,982	813,084
125	Style The Web	1,046,765	843,636	793,726
126	Designs Creme	1,088,018	937,878	938,957
127	Wake Up Gallery	1,100,700	1,102,577	796,907
128	Webdesign Inspiration	1,131,362	836,314	796,850
129	My Virb	1,172,034	1,441,872
130	Plastic Pilots	1,187,555	654,168
131	4EFX	1,353,226	1,117,428
132	Web Gallery	1,354,213	1,035,559	863,972
133	CSS Inspirace	1,462,560	1,247,869	1,017,124
134	CSS Blue	1,511,301	1,221,262	919,796
135	Web Galerie	1,525,229	1,736,258	1,454,864
136	iBlog	1,582,980	623,154
137	Design Beauty	1,613,547	1,453,588	1,716,579
138	Design Charts	1,639,484	264,645
139	CSS Demo	1,740,791	1,549,632	1,443,337
140	CSS Pinoy	1,744,276	1,611,109	1,088,381
141	Web Design Awards	1,783,178	1,599,202	1,526,734
142	Only Wii	3,062,484	999,321
143	Host Pattern	3,770,101	2,515,566	1,745,346

I’ve been browsing through my collection of links, and I have found this website – A Portfolio Website of Ted Lermontov. I liked this website for several reasons…

First of all, the color choice is very catching and contrast is great. Personally, I like the combination of colors where black is a major part of it.

Secondly, graphics are clear and without pixelation.

Thirdly, clean layout.

What I would change is the font color of the footer links. At this point there are set to dark gray, which makes it hard to read against the black background.

Following Sean Voisen’s post, I am going to display a list of books I am currently reading as well.

As you can tell I read a great variety of books. I love reading and try to read any moment I can.

Here is a list of those books pictured above from the top to bottom:

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.
The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferris.
CSS Cookbook, 2nd Edition by Christopher Schmitt
Designing with Web Standards (2nd Edition) by Jeffrey Zeldman
Inspirability: 40 Top Designers Speak Out About What Inspires by Matt Pashkow
Codin’ for the Web: A Designer’s Guide to Developing Dynamic Web Sites by Charles Wyke-Smith
Computer Security for the Home and Small Office by Thomas C. Greene
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator Illustrated (Marketplace Book) by Edwin Lefevre
Simple Web Sites: Organizing Content-rich Web Sites into Simple Structures by Stefan Mumaw

UPDATE: View this Updated post for a full coverage of IE6 and Tranparent PNGs Issues

Update: A working example can be found here – IE6 PNG fix

Rogie over at komodomedia wrote an excellent article explaining in details how to make sure that IE6 displays transparent png images correctly. I have scanned over the comments and saw that somebody asked whether that technique worked with repeated background images, which it wasn’t.

So I have looked over that useful little snippet

#container {
width:780px; margin:15px auto 0 auto;
background:url(images/bck-content.png) repeat-y top left;
azimuth: expression(
this.pngSet?this.pngSet=true:(this.nodeName == "IMG" && this.src.toLowerCase().indexOf('.png')>-1?(this.runtimeStyle.backgroundImage = "none",
this.runtimeStyle.filter = "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='" + this.src + "', sizingMethod='image')",
this.src = "images/blank.gif"):(this.origBg = this.origBg? this.origBg :this.currentStyle.backgroundImage.toString().replace('url("','').replace('")',''),
this.runtimeStyle.filter = "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='" + this.origBg + "', sizingMethod='crop')",
this.runtimeStyle.backgroundImage = "none")),this.pngSet=true
);
}

and saw that if I change crop to scale,

#container {
width:780px; margin:15px auto 0 auto;
background:url(images/bck-content.png) repeat-y top left;
azimuth: expression(
this.pngSet?this.pngSet=true:(this.nodeName == "IMG" && this.src.toLowerCase().indexOf('.png')>-1?(this.runtimeStyle.backgroundImage = "none",
this.runtimeStyle.filter = "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='" + this.src + "', sizingMethod='image')",
this.src = "images/blank.gif"):(this.origBg = this.origBg? this.origBg :this.currentStyle.backgroundImage.toString().replace('url("','').replace('")',''),
this.runtimeStyle.filter = "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='" + this.origBg + "', sizingMethod='scale')",
this.runtimeStyle.backgroundImage = "none")),this.pngSet=true
);
}

the repeated background images would actually start displaying properly.

Here are some screenshots of what I am talking about.

repeated background image in IE6 without png fix

repeated background image in IE6 with png fix and crop setting

and Lo and Behold – repeated background image in IE6 with png fix and scale setting