Web Design Resources

Ajax:

• GoldCoastDesign Ajax Tutorials

  Quick little tutorials and source code for ajax examples. Examples include basics: displaying dynamic content into a div; to more complex: collect form data, dynamically populate form select menus.

Browsers / Colors:

• Art Main's browser support charts

  Extensive browser support charts. Needs to be updated, but good resource for browser support up to 2003.

• BrowsrCamp

  Test your sites in multiple browsers. Produces screenshots.

• SitePro Central's Color Combination Chooser

  Oh man, is this thing ever cool. Want to get great automatic color schemes simply by selecting one base color? Choose from triadic, complimentary, contrasting, monochromatic, and more and you'll have an awesome instant color scheme. Only one drawback is that you cannot save your choice, so you best right down those hex codes before leaving the program.

• Webmonkey: Browser canvas sizes

  Older, but still very relevant breakdown on actual screen dimensions of different browsers at different resolutions. Gives safest recommendations taking into account scrollbars and other variables.

CSS:

• A List Apart

  Very good css resource. A must if you're serious about good css design.

• Index DOT Css

  Needs to be updated, but still has extremely well written CSS documentation. Easy to navigate.

• MaxDesign

  Very good, easy to understand css tutorials.

• positioniseverything.net

  Good css layout tutorials.

• Westciv

  Exhaustive css resource. It's exactly like having a very good css reference book in your hands. Breaks down each css item with thorough explanation of all the possible attributes and how to implement them.

HTML / DHTML:

• DHTML Utopia

  Link to one of the best books on DHTML.

• Index DOT Html

  Needs to be updated, but still has extremely well written HTML documentation. Easy to navigate.

• XHTML Character Entity Reference

  Full XHTML (and HTML) special characters reference.

IE fixes:

• Fix for :hover

  Fix IE so it will support the :hover pseudo-class on elements other than a:hover. Note, there is a png support fix also, but is more complicated than the one indicated elsewhere on this page.

• Fix png support

  Super cool and easy to implement fix for IE's bad png support. Automatically applies Microsoft's proprietary filter:AlphaImageLoader on all png images so now you don't have to in your css file. Uses IE's proprietary behavior property so is ignored by other browsers.

• Virtual PC

  Upgraded Internet Explorer to v7 and now can't test anything for v6? Guess what, in normal Microsoft fashion, you need to implement a complicated work-around. Love it. At least Microsoft is giving VirtualPC away for free. Install so you can run a 2nd version of Windows with IE6. What a big-ass pain.. BTW, those IE6 emulators out there actually don't work.

Image Resources:

• BigFoto.com

  Royalty free images

• Blue Vertigo

  Gobs of links to free photo sites.

• Stock.xchange

  Different levels of photos. Most royalty-free, some with special regulations.

• Yotophoto

  Great royalty free image search portal. Returns results from multiple royalty free sites such as stock.xchng, flikr, and Wikipedia.

Javascript:

• Ed Parrish Regular Expression Demo

  Interactive regular expressions interface. Test your knowledge and get instant feedback.

• irt.org

  Good DOM and Javascript object faq resource.

• Mozilla Core JavaScript 1.5 Reference

  Reference docs for JavaScript 1.5

• scottandrew.com

  Very good DOM scripting resource.

• W3Schools Javascript Reference

  Super good Javascript reference. Also has excellent DOM reference resources as well.

mySQL:

• mySQL Online documentation

  The mySQL online documentation

Perl/CGI:

PHP:

• PHP Resource Index

  Complete drop-in php scripts.

• PHP Smarty

  Site for the PHP Smarty template engine. Smarty completely seperates your php code from your html pages and vice-versa. Extremely good resource if you're serious about having very nice, clean code. Also, is very easy to learn. Highly recommended!

• phpDocumentor

  JavaDoc style php code documentor.

• www.php.net

  The full online documentation for PHP. Invaluable resource!

Security:

• Agnitum

  Very good firewall program. Cheap and easy to use.

• ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers)

  Use the ARIN whois service (top right corner of homepage) to narrow down where spam came from. If they can find it, with luck, they will provide you with the abuse email for the offending ISP. If the originating system is from another country, ARIN will guide you to the equivalent whois service of that country.

• Avast! Anti-virus

  Get rid of Norton and McAffee! Know all those viruses they couldn't do anything with?! Avast took care of them in 2 seconds of installing the program. Best of all, home edition is FREE! Yes, free.. and free does not mean you get a pared-down version. It is the real version.

• Cert advisories

  Very up-to-date security site. Covers every security issue you could imagine. Scary read sometimes.

• CluelessMailers

  Includes ISP blacklists as well as other good information.

• IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority)

  National whois service to get corresponding web address as well as ISP or hosting service for a particular IP address. Good for tracking down generators of spam email.

• SecurityFocus

  Very good resource for all things computer security.

• SpamHaus

  SpamHuas rocks. Includes ROKSO - the Register of Known Spam Operations. This is fun cause you get to see the losers that are generating most of the spam you get every day. Even provides you with their home addresses. :))

• SpyBot S&D

  If you don't have this for your computer, you're way behind. Perfect and free program to find and clear out all that crappy spyware/adware from your machine. Has many other advanced tools as well including controlling windows startup programs and a secure shredder module. A must. Cost is free, but if you got money to donate, this one is very deserving of support.

Server admin:

• Cygwin Unix terminal for Windows

  A must for Apache testing environments on Windows machines. Emulates unix terminal capabilities. You can even use it to run unix commands on your Windows files.

• Digital Media Developers

  Want to set up virtual hosts for your home testing environment on your windows machine? Setting up virtual hosts will allow you to have a seperate server root for each of your sites so you can reference say your css file like this: "/styles/style.css". Do away with a crap-load of relative links.

• Putty ssh program

  SSH/Telnet program for Windows. Free and work great. Note: All computer classes I've ever taken use this program.

• ricocheting.com

  Super good tutorials on how to install Apache, Perl, PHP, and mySQL on a windows machine. These are not the crappy tutorials you find on other sites that forget to tell you that one key component that will screw everything up. Step-by-step and very easy to follow. Build your personal web testing environment in under an hour.

Text Editors:

• TextPad

  Are you actually still using Windows Notepad for your hand-coded HTML? Get this free program for all your text-editing needs. Even lets you specify document classes by file extension which allows you to create special editing rules for different programming languages. Donation of $26 preferred, but there is no expiration on program use without it. Windows-only.

Web 2.0:

• How to Make a Web 2.0-Style Logo

  Tres' cool. Bring your graphics up to date. Put some depth to them. Hint: We redid our graphics after seeing their super easy tutorial.