One of the challenges of getting a Joomla template to release stage is deciding how to present the final result. There are often some solid and worthy ideas that get cast aside simply because they don't fit the final "feel" that we are trying to achieve - either that or - we run out of time.

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If you missed the announcement the other day you can see the Element template features, or view the live demo, read through the docs or just go straight to the Element download area.

I'm also hoping to release the Joomla 1.6 Template version of Cultivate later on today and also post a sneak peak of the July theme which will be released in the first week of July.

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If you have used any of our Joomla templates before, you may know that I am a massive fan of using jQuery. One of the things that we use it for is to equalise the height of certain divs so as to make certain design elements more uniform on the page.

As an example, in the powerplay Joomla template we use it to make the grid modules below the slideshow the same height regardless of your content on the front page. This makes it easier to have dynamic content there but still maintain the vertical separators between the module positions.

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My Music to Design to selections tend to be a little (and unapologetically) electro-centric but over the last few years I have been trying to widen my scope and one genre that listen to regularly are movie soundtracks. I love watching intense and intelligent movies and love them even more when they have beautiful, intense and sublime soundtracks.

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In addition to our avatar competition I would like to introduce the site of the year competition.

This one is pretty self explanatory and basically involves you nominating your "best" site that you developed in the last 12 months using a Joomlabamboo template.

Once again the Joomlabamboo panel will decide on the winner and we will use such varied criteria as:

• elegance of implementation
• creativity of implementation
• level of detail
• and also whim ...

The prize for this competition will be a twelve month developer subscription valued at $195 USD. To enter all you need to do is reply to this post with a link to the site and we will do the rest.

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Last year we had a little bit of end of financial year fun and gave away some free memberships to users who had the "best" avatar (as judged by our esteemed voting panel). This year I thought I would up the ante somewhat and give away developer memberships as prizes (worth $195 USD) for the best avatar.

Current, previous and free subscribers can enter the competition. You basically just need to update your profile with a new avatar of yourself that is either ...

• fun
• funny
• interesting
• strange
• or all of the above.

The avatar must also be of yourself and not one that is currently used in your profile.

Once again our panel of experts will judge the winner/s and they will be announced on the 30th June, 2011 Australian time - so make sure that you get your avatar in well before then.

If you want to enter the competition simply add a comment to this post and add your image as well as your username and we will do the rest.

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Element is a colourful and flexible Joomla template that combines subtle pattern textures with bold colour palettes to create a truly beautiful and versatile Joomla template. It comes with a stylish k2 Joomla template and an array of colour choices that make this one of the most flexible templates we have created.

For more information you can check out the feature overview, go straight to the live preview, read the documentation or if you have seen enough go straight to the Element Download area.

Please note that the Joomla 1.5 versions are available now and the Joomla 1.6 template and quickstart will be available tomorrow.

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I know that the whole one page parallax design meme is getting a little old and that there are certainly some great examples of the style implemented in live websites, but I really like the implementation here by Cultural Solutions.

Apart from the subtle and yet powerful way they have implemented the parallax I love the textures and judicious use of css3. This is certainly one of my favourite designs for the year.

There is a screenshot after the jump but it doesn't really do it justice - so make sure you check out the live site as well.

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If you are using Joomla 1.6 and want a twitter module you can grab it from the jTweet extension page.

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I have just released the Joomla 1.6 version of JB Type which in the end only needed a few lines of code changed in order to make it compatible with Joomla 1.6. I have also pushed through some additions to the styles that will be used in the upcoming Element Joomla template which is due for release in the next day or so.

As you can see from the screenshot above I have added some lovely coloured disc styling that should be useful additions and pretty additions to this plugin. You can see the updated style list on the JB Type extension page - I hope you enjoy the new additions.

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I have been using the Little Snapper screen capture app for well over a year now to capture screenshots of our Joomla Templates but for some reason I have never really looked into the options it provides for sharing images.

It's probably easily explained by the fact that I (like I assume most people do) form habits in their workflow that hard to break. My usual workflow for working with Little Snapper is to take all of the screen shots of the template once the local version has been finalised, and then export the images to fireworks where I crop and resize them.

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I have just pushed through a minor update to the Zen Grid Framework for Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6. The main feature is fourteen new fonts have been added to the google font list. Who would have thought that Google would have put together such a useful service?

One of the stand outs for me (as you can see above) is the Muli font. I featured it in the screenshot of the Element template posted here and over at Ember and think it's an awesomely elegant sans serif font perfect for the Element's simple block based design.

I've got a few other favourites in the collection - what are yours?

Members can download the framework updates from the Zen Grid Framework download page and check the changelog for Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6 to see what was added.

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