One is the heavy use of these drop-shadows that expand at the sides of blocks. This gives the object a feel like it’s raised up off the screen more than it is. I actually like this when it’s done in moderation.

Examples:

1. Check out the nav bar on Atlantis.com. Not extremely fond of the fact the shadow pulls up on both sides (almost as if the nav bar is curling up towards you), but it’s subtle enough not to look stupid.
2. Web Design Ledger makes obvious use of this effect on their post “thumbnails”. This effect is pretty exaggerated but it’s not done on both sides and therefore seems more likely to occur in real life (as opposed to someone holding a hair dryer to the middle of a gooey sticker).

Anyway, I totally approve of this new trend and plan on using it in the near future.

The 2nd trend I’ve noticed is cu3er. It’s been particularly popular since kriesi used it on his most recent template over at ThemeForest.

I don’t have a problem with cu3er. I actually think the creator, Stefan Kovac, did a great job and it’s wonderful for him to offer it for free. The problem I have is that it is quickly becoming the centerpiece of shitty themes and people are actually buying them up because of the super-cool Flash slideshow. This is a problem because I don’t want the web to travel in that direction.

I (and I’m sure Stefan) would really appreciate cu3er being used responsibly by being used a little more subtle. For instance, instead of it being huge and going through every hip transition known to man, why not make it small and just use 1 transition for each site? That would encourage re-usability of the slideshow as well.