Single page websites have been around for a while, but are a current trend in website design. The emergence of HTML5 and CSS3, along with the greatly improving effects available from jQuery libraries are enabling almost limitless creativity for single page websites without using Flash.

Take a look at the 30 single page websites we have selected for this round-up, most of which employ some open source mark-up elements, all of which are extremely creative and beautifully presented.

Beautiful and Functional Single Page Websites

A very well designed single page website that has vertical scrolling with some parallax effects.

Grind

Valerie Letens

A concise single page website with lots of white space whilst still managing to display all necessary information.

Wit Creative

A very bold and busy design using just black, white and yellow to create an eye-catching layout.

Free Range Designs

An organic design that includes many ‘in-vogue’ elements such as natural paper textures and ribbons.

House Creative

A stunning single page website that includes some open source mark-up effects such as background color changes, and no Flash in sight!

Matt Brothers

Another single page vertical scrolling site that includes some parallax effects.

Dangers of Fracking

A vertical scrolling single page website with some excellent open source mark-up effects.

iCode Labs

A beautiful and effective single page website that acts like a Flash site but uses open source mark-up for its effects.

Tiago Jose

An unusual design – when you land on this page you ‘dive’ straight to the bottom of the ocean! Clicking on any of the navigation tabs on the right will take you to the relevant part of the page. On first sight you may not notice the small + in the center of each page – clicking on this will provide information in the form of a semi-transparent fly-out display. Once again, this site does not use Flash.

John Reinhold

This site is stunning in appearance, and is the marketing tool for a song by John Reinhold called ‘Shoot Me Down’. The website is worth viewing and the song is also worth a listen!

Team Fannypack

This site gets into so many lists for one reason or another, so who am I to leave it out? Organically designed with a wood texture background, leather-effect tabs and a paper texture for the content area, the vertical scrolling includes some parallax effects and the content area includes open source mark-up effects. An all-round excellent example of a single page website.

22Mars

You have to wonder if this should actually be a single page website – you feel like you will never come to the end of this page as you scroll down. A lot of information presented in the form of mini-infographics.

Revolver Studio

A beautifully designed and laid-out single page website, again using open source mark-up for elements that not so long ago would have to have been produced using Flash.

Joao Oliviera

A beautiful example of a single page portfolio site – clean and concise and including all necessary information.

Bicho Malvado

A great idea for a site that has won a few awards, the rotating center circle displays the author’s last Tweet. Written using HTML5, the site owner is obviously more of a developer than a Tweeter as the last Tweet, at the time of writing, was 79 days ago!

Margot Tissot Portfolio

Daniel Martin

Xeeder

Tag Creative Studio

Luca Garbin

I Am Creative

Reverend Danger

Rodesk

Deen

Launch Factory

Redirect

Hatbox

Hyundai Veloster

Lipton Ice Tea

Acotel Interactive

Conclusion

There is no doubt that open source mark-up is fast replacing Flash for some website effects, and single page website designers and developers are making good use of all that is now available for improved presentation.

Please share your opinions in the comments section below.