If you are a web designer, starting out or a professional, you will know that the web is stuffed full of resource sites, many of which are old and outdated, and quite frankly, don’t keep up with the times. I know how hard it can be though, you get involved with work and simply do not have the time to keep your old sites constantly up to date.

One thing that I have found essential to a good web site design, is the menu. I won’t go into too much detail about position or style, as some of the most bitter arguments online have been about horizontal or vertical menus, graphical or not, lists or not, it’s a convoluted mess which you can make your own mind up about. But that doesn’t stop me from telling you about something that many designers consider a holy grail - the rounded corner (and *gasp* without graphics!).

I have been following the work of Stu Nicholls for quite some time now, and he has some great resources which you should avail yourself of no matter what skill level you are at. He recently updated his website to make use of these rounded borders, and lists the menu made from rounded borders here. The originator of these rounded borders is an Italian named Alessandro Fulciniti, you can find the website detailing the code and examples here.

So what is so special about rounded borders? Well, don’t they look snazzy? For a start, web design is all about rectangles or varying sizes, height and width. Writing circles into HTML is impossibleCircles are possible with SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), currently being compiled into Firefox 1.1, except for tricks of design by manipulating borders and adding small graphics to simulate the corner. But THIS useful trick only utilizes HTML, CSS, and a bit of DOM, and perhaps most importantly to the web designer and site owner, saves 6-8Kb in a page’s code.