Where do they get all those wonderful and colorful buttons, icons, horizontal rules, backgrounds, and animations you've seen on other people's Web pages? Here are some sites we like with free-for-the-asking (or in some cases, just free) images you can involve in your Home Page Wizard wizardry; in each category, we've included a link to the Yahoo catalog page that lists many more sources.
Many of these sites load a considerable number of images on their pages, so it may take a while for any one page to load completely. Also note that the management at many free-art sites requests that you provide a reciprocal link to their page in exchange for your digital pilfering. It's an honor system, so please honor it.
Ball Boutique
If you're looking for nifty colored orbs to use as list-item bullets, you
couldn't do much better than stopping by this collection of raytraced balls,
available in metallic, two-tone, multicolored, and other color schemes. Also
check out Alphabet Aisle, with its marbled and wood-block drop characters
great for use as drop caps (the oversize first letter of an opening
paragraph), and Cube Corber, a collection of gradated-color six-sided page
markers. The page's "Graphics Cupboard" serves up an impressive array of
other free-art sites on the Web.
Jim's Cool Icons
No junky paint-program icons here, just dazzling professionally produced
light-emitting diodes, neonlike "phongy tube" lettering and bars, metallic
nameplates, colored "chiclet" buttons, floppy diskettes, raytraced
translucent marbles, and renderings of the planets. Everything's done with
cool 3-D shadows, and author Jim Evins even provides a collection of
low-contrast background textures against which the shadows will really pop
out.
The Icon and Image Bazaar A collection of non-copyrighted images gathered from other Internet sites, grouped into Orbs and Globes, Dots and Bullets, Arrows and Pointers, Flags, People, Backgrounds and Textures, Banners and Bars, Fractals, Signs and Logos, Stars and Suns, Computers, Symbols and Gizmos. You can use up to 20 without permission or attribution. A convenient ZIPped Files Archives lets you download entire groups of images at once.
Icon Depot A serviceable collection of balls and separator rules. Also has better-than-average icons and backgrounds.
Karawynn Long's Original Web
Art
A novel idea similar to the desktop themes available in Windows 95:
"packages" of coordinated background, lines, bullets, and images, all
original designs. We wish there were more here (available themes include
"Jalapeno," "Pawprints," and "Beachcomber"), but we couldn't find anyone
else on the Web working along these lines. The author requests only
non-commercial use and a link to her page, where you can suggest ideas for
her next "ensemb."
Buttons, Cubes and Bars
A very stripped-down Web melange of 3-D spheres, square bullets, and colorful
horizontal rules, all created using Macintosh workhorse design programs
Adobe Photoshop, Aldus Superpaint, and Kai's PowerTools.
Creating Great Web Graphics Samples
This promotional site for Laurie McCanna's instructional book Creating Great
Web Graphics offers some free samples of great-looking 3-D buttons and beveled icons.
Another page within the site offers more free art: stylized musical notes, business and recycle
icons, arrows, and floral page dividers. McCanna requests reciprocal links
with reuse of her images.
Iconz's
Line-art icons on the Web are quite often lifted from actual Windows
programs or, having been drawn hastily in a paint program, look extremely,
well, cheezy. For the most part, the 780 or so icons at this site,
distributed across 10 pages, aren't guilty of either of these
transgressions. You'll also find bars, bullets, backgrounds, arrows, and 3-D
versions of popular Web-page phraseology such as "back," "links," and "new"
in various colors. There's also a links page to other clip-art collections.
A+ Art
"Working to become the largest collection of free art on the Internet." Sure
looks like it. GIF animations, clip art, icons, 26 pages of horizontal bars,
and the coolest collection of marble "orbs" we've seen (right).
Texture Station
Whoa! Choose from 391 background textures collected from
public-domain sources around the Web, arranged into "families" of general
colors or materials such as stone and wood.
Julianne's Textured Background
Gallery
These background JPEG "swatches," grouped by dominant color, will make Web
users think they've surfed right into a Monet painting. They'll make your
page a lot harder to read, too, but to each his own. One site feature
missing from other texture galleries: click on a texture panel and you'll
get to see what a fully tiled browser page using the design looks like.
3D WebScapes
These Webscapes are backgrounds textures that are also stereograms, those
images from which many people think they see 3-D patterns emerging. Many
of the textures here are simple surfaces; others are more complex and "can
be categorized as Multi-Dimensional Stereograms which have two or more
basic image depths." Suddenly your Web page has a science all its own, huh?
The stereograms won't interfere with text or images "as long as you choose
appropriate colors and contrasts."
Iain's Textures Textures from the popular background texture packages released as Macintosh freeware. The Australian author notes that "You can also use them as wallpaper, desktop patterns, etc. privately, but you may not redistribute them in any other way (e.g. toilet paper, selling them on the streets, or CD covers) unless you ask."
NetCreations Pattern Land Several hundred patterns browsable by file name (much easier on the loading time, but a bit of a guessing game) or image. Images swatches are displayed a dozen or so at a time.
WebDesigns Backgrounds 12 tasteful backgrounds that won't interfere with text readability, plus links to many of the other major background sites on the Web.
ProMotion Stock Gallery
Unfortunately, the world of GIF animations, like that of icons, is
cluttered with art you really wouldn't say you're proud to have on your
page: loud colors, horribly pixelated paint-program graphics, and unsmooth
animation make this the most mixed bag of freebie offerings on the Net.
This site makes available what are probably the best-looking GIFs out there,
and the dozen-plus animations here are functional as well as striking: "e-mail,"
"FAQ," "Free," "Hot," "New," plus a globe, guestbook, and a few others.
The page is worth investigating if you don't mind its achingly slow server.
Mikey's Collection of Animated GIFs One hundred animated GIFs on one page (every last one loads and runs), from the fantastically lame to the moderately impressive (namely, the compass and odometer simulating a web-counter rollover).
GIF Animation Station Your free time will survive this text-only index of animations much better than Mikey's Collection. File sizes are quite managable, but you'll have to download each animation and view it in your browser (using the Open File option) to get a feel for how it runs. All GIFs, gathered from other Web sites, are in the public domain.