Now we have something else to be thankful for. Nathan Smith of Sonspring has created a library that gives designers and developers “some measure of control over form elements, without changing them so drastically as to appear foreign in a user’s operating system.” Smith calls his new library Formalize CSS:

I’ve attempted to bridge the gap between various browsers and OS’s, taking the best ideas from each, and implementing what is possible across the board. For the most part, this means most textual form elements have a slight inset, and all buttons look consistent, including the button tag.

For more, including demos, options, screenshots, thanks, and the library itself, read Smith’s write-up at SonSpring | Formalize CSS. Hat tip and happy Thanksgiving to my good friend Aaron Gustafson for sharing this gem.

Vincent (no last name given) has designed a beautiful, extremely useful, feature-rich interface design framework for web designers who create their initial design mock-ups in Adobe Illustrator. And it’s free for personal or commercial use (credit link required).

The set includes:

GUI library – Hundreds of vector elements for interface design
Minimal UI icons set – 260 vector icons for Illustrator
Styles library – 200 styles to apply in Illustrator

I’d pay cash money for the color schemes alone: 330 swatches harmonized with graphic styles for backgrounds, typography and other GUI interface elements.

The back-link requirement may be a deal breaker in some situations. I’d happily use these GUI icons on a personal project, but I might refrain on a client project if it seemed awkward to include a widget credit on the site. (It all depends on the client.)

That possible caveat aside, this is an extraordinary set of widgets and gizmos many web designers will want to have in their tool kit.