As the popularity of Design Shack grows month on month, we have decided to expand it further and increase it’s functionality. As well as offering the same great CSS designs as before, Design Shack now contains tutorials, news articles and a whole new way of looking at our gallery.

You now search by how you would like to be inspired - by Colour, Layout or Category. This opens up a new realm of functionality for CSS gallery websites and enhances navigation greatly. It’s much easier to submit your website to us, and navigating around is a breeze. Designs load faster and are much more optimised than before.

We hope you enjoy it, and feel free to send us your feedback!

We came fourth! So close to winning a trip to San Francisco, but not quite close enough. It does mean that I’ll receive a Dell laptop which is reward enough for participating in such a great scheme. Congratulations to all those who took part, and I’d urge you to look into the competition next year if you are young enough to fit into the age boundaries.

Have a look at the ThinkQuest site for more information, and check out our entry which almost made the mark…

In 2006, I approached a student called Kishore from India about the possibility of joining his team for an international competition called ThinkQuest run by Oracle. They have won the contest in previous years, and it was something that looked really interesting.

We worked really hard for several months, spending a lot of time on the site and meeting to chat online every week. It took a great deal of time, and we finished the project a month or so ago. The results and winners are announced on the 14th June so I’m waiting for that date with baited breath.

If we come in one of the winning positions, we will receive a laptop and a trip to Think Quest live, an event in San Francisco later this year. It would be a really great honour and it’ll be interesting to see whether our site was good enough to come in 1st, 2nd or 3rd place.

You can take a look here and judge it for yourself! I’ll keep you posted on the outcome…

Something that has been on my ‘to do’ list for a while is to create a seperate site to differentiate this blog from my web design and portfolio work. I love blogging and writing online, but I think it’s important to seperate that from my professional work. With that in mind, I’ve launched my new portfolio which is a simple one page design, showcasing my most recent work and showing how simple it is to have a website created.

This also ties in with some promotion I’m planning to do over the next couple of months. I have what seems to be a vast holiday panning out in front of me over summer and I want to make sure that I’m not stuck for something to do. I imagine I’ll be getting a job as well as designing on the side - it should be a productive summer!

I’ve just upgraded and downloaded Mint v2 for a few of my websites. Whilst I don’t really agree with Shaun charging an extra $20.00 to upgrade, he has every right to and it’s a worthy upgrade. The look and feel of the design is much more refined and everything is easier to make sense of. The new graphs are greatly welcome, and some of the new pepper is excellent. I’m testing it on a few domains before making the decision to upgrade several as I’m not sure how absolutely vital it is at the moment. Once the Peppermill starts to fill up and the community kicks in it should be a great deal more worthwhile upgrading.

I like the new bolder look. It’s much easier to navigate around and different pieces of information are prioritised better. The preferences are also slightly easier to use now. I had a brief experiment with Shaun Inman’s new RSS pepper but couldn’t get it to work - I’m quite happy with my Feedburner pepper so am sticking with that for now.

I’ve been lucky enough to gain a President’s Award from Manchester University. I could go on further, but the press release from the University seems to From Manchester University

Students awarded £10,000 scholarships from The University of Manchester

NINE students have been awarded prestigious £10,000 a year Scholarships to study at The University of Manchester.

The awards are reserved for ‘the best of the best’. Only the very highest academic credentials are considered, with eligibility depending not only on at least three “A” grades at A-level, including grade “A” in every module, but also on the results of a “Thinking Skills Assessment,” a special examination and an interview.

In addition, the award holders have demonstrated personal qualities indicating that they have the potential to make distinctive contributions to University and the wider community.

The University of Manchester wants to strengthen its reputation as a preferred destination for many of the best and brightest students from across the UK and throughout the world. This new President’s Awards programme of up to ten generous, highly prestigious scholarships is one element in a range of programmes designed to encourage outstanding students to come to Manchester, irrespective of their capacity to pay.

The President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alan Gilbert, in congratulating the new President’s Scholars, said how important it was for one of the country’s foremost research institutions also to be seen to be investing heavily in creating opportunities for students. Professor Gilbert said: “We want the brightest young people in the UK increasingly to see Manchester as a logical and rewarding choice, just as we want a wider scholarship programme to ensure that no able student is denied a place in Manchester because of an inability to pay.”

Accompanying these Awards, Manchester has a multi-million pound programme of widening participation scholarships and bursaries reserved for able students from low-income families.

The University also invests very considerable time and resources into a range of widening participation initiatives concentrating on the needs of primary and secondary schools and their pupils in educationally deprived areas of Greater Manchester.

The nine inaugural Award holders are:

• David Appleyard, 18, from Skircoat Green in Halifax (BSc Management)
• Thomas Esler, 19, from By-Cupar in Fife (BA Classics)
• Katie Maltman, 18, from Ilkley in West Yorks (MB ChB Medicine)
• Philip Bull, 18, from Meir Park in Stoke-on-Trent (MPhys Physics with Astronomy)
• Rupert Gaze, 35, from Stalybridge (MB ChB Medicine with foundation year)
• Christopher Devlin, 19, from Limavady in Londonderry (BA Law with Politics)
• Ruth Watkinson, 19, from West Bridgford in Nottingham (BSc Biochemistry with industrial experience)
• Kiran Horwich, 18, from Ealing in London (BA History)
• Laura Roddis, 18, from Wrexham in North Wales (BSc Speech and Language Therapy)