A web design trick I learned very early on in my career is “peeking under the hood”: glancing at another site’s source code to see how they pulled off some visual trick or another. I taught myself a good number of JavaScript techniques that way; granted, this was when the technology was being used solely for mouseover effects, pop-up windows, and the like. Anyway, I’ve come to discover that peering at another site’s source is not so much a trick as it is common design practice. Just as long as you’re not brazenly plagiarizing the source in the process. (more…)