CSS Gallery is an app by Blackwave Creative aimed at web designers. Using the RSS feeds of various web showcase sites such as CSS Mania and Creattica, it displays the latest in well-designed and good looking websites. It works well as an iPhone app because designers can pull it out when they’re waiting in line and flick through a few designs for inspiration.

We really appreciate that the app requires only a tap to navigate the stream of designs, making it easy (and a little addictive) to browse through a lot of sites in a very short period of time. You also have the option to mark something as a favorite, view the site in the browser (letting you zoom in and pan around and see other pages), and email it to yourself or others.

There are a few interface quirks that we’d like to see addressed, though. First, there’s no progress bar when loading a website, making it tedious to wait. (Word is that an upcoming update will add this, so cheers!) Second, it’s annoying to have to open up a menu to choose between opening it in a web browser, marking it as a favorite, or emailing it – their icons could easily have fit on the main bar on the bottom, and the icons are clear enough to not require labels. It would make the application flow better and feel more snappy. One other change that would benefit the app is to allow small thumbnail previews or a list view of your favorites. Right now it’s hard to find something you’d marked a while ago, requiring you to flick through all your more recent favorites.

Lastly, we’d like more feeds in the options! There are currently 3 available, which will provide a good source of designs, if you wanted to manually add one of your own favorite showcase sites, you’re out of luck.

Overall, though, this is a well-executed $0.99 app, and will be great for any web designer.

CSS Gallery gets our AppSmile 4-Dimple rating: