Grant Friedman is a designer, blogger, author, and teacher based in Louisville. He is also the founder of Colorburned - a website with brushes, patterns, vectors, tutorials and more!. His blog shares some amazing design related stuff and is growing every day.

I had the chance to "burn some color" (having a chat conversation) with Grant. You can read the full conversation here, sharing some personal and useful stuff with the rest of us.

Now, lets sit down, take a drink and chat with this creative man behind the scenes of Colorburned.

A while ago, an article called "A fancy Apple.com-style search suggestion" was placed here. Many people loved it and already used the search suggestion in their latest web project.

Still, readers gave some criticism about the script. According to Jape, Simon and others the script was missing one vital element which the Apple search does have: keypress navigation (keyboard accessibility). For that reason, I'm presenting you a way you can improve that script yourself using advanced keypress navigation with jQuery.

Check out the demo so you can try it yourself: There is a simple menu displayed which reacts to the Up and Down arrows, as well as Enter (or Return) to follow the link.

  

The script is (a bit) advanced because of the extra functionality when the user combines the mouse hover and keypresses. Want to know how to create it yourself? Check out the source code or follow these steps in this tutorial.

After releasing several jQuery scripts, I wanted to take the whole jQuery programming to another level. For that reason, I'm proud to release my first jQuery plugin for everyone to use.

The plugin called jSlickmenu, creates, well, slick menus with jQuery. Combined with some great CSS3 features likes rotation and shadows, this plugin can really lift up your design. It's fairly easy to use, highly customizable and pretty cool (and fun!) to see.

As usual, you can freely use and modify this script where you want and I hope it can be of use in your next (web)project.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
Sadly, CSS3 and HTML5 aren't the standards (yet) these days (when will it ever be?). Since this demo is using CSS3, not all browsers will be able to show off the full effect. Because of this, it only works on Apples Safari and Google Chrome as they are the only browsers supporting the Transform and Box-Shadow property of CSS3 via the -webkit- prefix. Mozillas Firefox 3.5 is getting these properties too (with the -moz- prefix). So, for now, this is just for fun - Other browsers will display the menu, but (sadly) in a whole different way.

  

The plugin has been made as extensible as possible, so you can also view a demo with advanced settings. Make sure you check out the video demo and how to use the plugin.

The winner of the 500 Business Cards giveaway was just announced, and today is the day for the next great contest on Marcofolio.net. This one especially goes out to all freelancers out there. Three lucky readers will be able to win a license for Fanurio - a time tracking and billing software for freelancers.

Fanurio is a time tracking and billing software application, highly appreciated by freelancers for its intuitive interface, flexible timer and ability to produce detailed invoices. Whether you need to round time, use multiple currencies or create invoices with your own layout, Fanurio has the right tools to help you get paid.

Read the rules below to find out how you can join this contest: it's pretty simple! If you're one of the three winners, you'll receive on licence for Fanurio, a great time tracking application for freelancers. Make sure you join this contest quick, since it ends on July 2nd and you'll automatically receive information if you have won a prize. Good luck to everyone!

Also, make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed or follow me on Twitter to get updates on more future giveaways.

Inspiration can be found everywhere. Whether it's the colour of toons or the colours of game heroes that can get your inspiration fluids flowing, the fact remains that you can get inspiration from them.

Today, we're looking at the animal kingdom to draw some inspiration from. Not the full animal kingdom, just a specified part: colourful insects. Some of these insects have amazing colour, while others like to keep it on a suble yet noticeable green hue.

Here are over 50 pictures of amazingly colourful insects! Other than the colour, sometimes the weird shapes of the animals can be enough for inspiration too. Bugs, butterflies, spiders and another colourful insects can be found right here.