There are scads of tutorials on how to get the web2.0 effect really easily in photoshop, illustrator, freehand … there are fewer tutorials on how to use Inkscape, one of the coolest programs ever for vector manipulation, and free to boot.
You know how illustrator is faster for vector stuff than photoshop? Well, harken back to your SAT days for this analogy: Inkscape is the illustrator of photoshops. If this tutorial takes you more than 10 seconds to master after reading it, you are overthinking things!
STEP THE FIRST
Download inkscape if you haven’t already got it installed. This baby will run anywhere.
STEP THE SECOND: your basic text
Create your text using the tool in your side menu or hitting f8.

STEP THE THIRD: duplicate and inset
Convert your text to a path with Ctrl + Shift + C. This important, so here’s a screenshot:

After making your text path, copy, and paste in place with Ctrl + Alt + V.
Inset your text with Ctrl + Shift + (. For ease of sight, go ahead and make this baby white right now. Use the stroke button, control shift f, or the color swatches.

STEP THE FOURTH: clip the top
Using the circle tool make an oval covering the top half or so

STEP THE FIFTH: color it up
You should already have only the top path selected, but if not, select that now. If you haven’t already for your sanity, change the color to white by stroking (Ctrl + Shift + F), hitting the stroke button, or using the color swatches at the bottom.
Now, using the gradient tool, create a gradient. Inkscape will automatically make this a color -> transparency gradient (no need for masking). If your gradient is going in the wrong direction, simply rotate the nodes around (Ie drag the top node to the bottom, and vice versa). Move the nodes closer to the object to make the whole thing more opaque, or vice versa.


Bingo, you’re done. Personally I think the glossy look is best with only one gradient at the top.
I’ve changed the color to green using the color swatch to show you all that it doesn’t need to look quite as rinky dink as it does on the default black.

OH. AND. Here’s the raw svg file in case anyone wants to take a looksie at the history. Please “save as” this svg file as I am currently too lazy to make the download work properly for a browser with marginal svg support.

A NOTE ON OPENSOURCE USABILITY, AND THE RELATIVITY OF BETTERNESS
Honestly, I can see why this program is confusing to some. The commands are consistent and macro based. The best feature is the ability to manipulate your xml data directly. Both of these things are inherently counterintuitive to the average user, who is used to clicking for options in one program and holding your click for another.

This is my first ever custom theme. It is optimized for kde with the transparent dock at the bottom. Seems to be passable for windows too.

1024×768, view image to download it. Let me know if another size is needed.

The One Story redesign focused on making a popular, well-worn website more usable. Instead of having to click on a parent-level category to see the interior navigation options, I decided to use drop down menus; the site sections were reorganized for maximum impact on the pages most valued by OS as well.

Following One Story’s clean and simple aesthetic, I aimed to mimize the art to sidebar elements and a few images of the One Story issue itself. In a perfect world, my excerpts from different site sections (recent issue on non-homepage, blog excerpts, events,) would be helping to unclutter the sidebar, but a designer can’t get everything she wants…

Rockmelon required a total blog overhaul: banner, CSS, and even a one-line drawing (my daily warm up this summer) thrown into the mix.