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 Web
Developer Links
Blogs
and daily reading
Sitepoint
This publisher's home page is a great source of articles and comment, and there
are daily blogs by a variety of experts. The articles pages include a current
feature, recent articles and access to archives of previous articles. You
can also subscribe to their newsletters and get help on their very active
forum.
A
List Apart
The definitive web design blog for pros.
Digital
Web Magazine
Every
week, a new in-depth article on
a topical subject, plus indexed archives going back to 1999.
Meyerweb.com
CSS and HTML expert Eric Meyer shares
his thoughts, tips and tools.
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Blogging tools
Blogger
Free and easy-to-use weblog service now owned by Google. It's perfect for beginner
bloggers and is one of the most popular hosting services around.
With its quick sign-up process and set-up, you can launch yourself in minutes
with a ready-made blog template. It's simple to use and ideal for those who
don't want to bother acquiring technical know-how. Photo hosting and blogging
are supported by Picasa's Hello. The new interface enables users to post by
email, and it also supports
RSS feeds and group blogs.
WordPress
WordPress has a great interface with powerful features; and it's free.
TypePad
Three levels of service and customisable templates that support content beyond
simple blog postings, and produce some good-looking, easy-to-navigate blog
sites.
MSN
Spaces
A simple to use blogging tool, but it offers limited opportunities for customising,
so results can be rather dull.
Movable
Type
A popular PHP-based weblog platform for people who have their own web hosting
account. Requires some technical skills to install and run.
Yahoo!
360
This is a simple WYSIWYG blog with very little customisation available, but
it does allow you to pull in elements from the Yahoo! network.
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Colour
ColorBlender
This handy tool for colour matching and palette design allows you to save the
blends you concoct.
You choose a base colour and ColorBlender makes up the rest of the palette.
You can then save the palette as a named blend or save it out as a small file
(ACT or EPS formats available) to import as your colour palette in Photoshop,
Illustrator and other tools. And if you really don't know where to start with
your colour palette, ColorBlender will generate random palettes for you until
the cows come home.
Slayeroffice
Enter a hexadecimal colour value and this handy
tool will give you ten shades of the base colour at varying opacities.
Color
Palette Generator
This site creates a colour palette to match any image that you specify, enabling
you to harmonise your page colour scheme with your visuals.
100
Random Colors
Got web designer's block? Come here for some random colour inspiration plus
hexadecimal values.
Chromoweb
Check out the Chromoflash which simulates a web page with up to five colours
of your choice.
CSS
Color Chart
Click on a colour code to select it, then simply copy
and paste it into your code.
Kaliber10000
Gazillions of groovy pattern backgrounds here.
Squidfingers
Background
patterns from art director Travis Beckham.
The
Inspiration Gallery
Bit of a classic look to these backgrounds; definitely inspired by nature,
the Arts and Crafts movement and designer William Morris.
Colorcombos.com
Great facility for grabbing colour palettes from other web sites, plus the
Combo Tester, which shows you how your colours work on screen.
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Graphics and
multimedia
Fonts
MyFonts
With a staggering 45,699 fonts to choose from, it's just as well they've made
it a doddle to search this font database. You can search for fonts by category,
foundry, using descriptive keywords and even popularity.
Search for more elusive fonts using the Detailed Search mode. If you know exactly
what you want, but haven't a clue what it's called, use the What the Font?!
recognition system, which enables you to upload a scanned font sample or supply
the URL where the file can be found, then survey the closest matches available
in the MyFonts database.
Web
Type Primer
Daniel Will-Harris's web site is a great intro to the art of using typefaces
correctly on a web page.
Identifont
Helps you to identify fonts via a simple series of questions.
Goodfonts.org
300 free TrueType fonts, plus tips on calligraphy and logo design.
Fontleech
Insider font tips and discussion, plus links to free font sites.
Fonts
for the Web
Want to know which fonts will work best on the web? Here they are.
SearchFreeFonts.com
Free fonts, font tools and links to font-related articles that provide a great
resource of other font sites.
The
Evolution of Type
Good introduction to type and how to maximise control over type on your site.
Includes samples of type layout and pedigree font resources.
SimplytheBest
Fonts
Large collection of mostly free fonts, which you can browse by name or by category.
Each font has a preview page.
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Sound effects and loops
Partners
in Rhyme
Free and royalty-free sound effects.
Sound
Effects
Links you to various sources of free sound effects for a comprehensive selection.
Shockwave-sound.com
Royalty-free tracks, loops and sounds.
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Stock photography
MorgueFile
Free raw photo materials.
iStockphoto
Affordable image library.
Design
Packs
Free image collections for designers.
Stock.xchng
Over 100,000 free stock photos to use.
Image
After
Large online collection of free photos and textures.
Unprofound.com
Small library of free images with quirky style.
YotoPhoto
Search engine for free stock imagery.
Blue
Vertigo
Links to lots and lots of stock photography, clip art and fonts.
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Online tutorials
Tutorialized.com
You will be by the time you've got through this lot; all 7,073 tutorials. Actually,
the pickings for web builders are a fraction of the total, but there's
plenty here to make it a very useful site.
The great thing about this site is that all the tutorials are submitted, and
rated, by registered users. So, you can share your skills and tips just as
much as you can gain from others;, which all adds to the fun, and that extends
to posting on the active forum.
WebSite
101
Everything you need to consider as a business expanding your presence onto
the web.
Pixel2Life.com
Links to all kind of tutorials available across the web, plus a lively forum
where you can share your web design pleasure and pain.
Virtual
Clues
Tutorials for Fireworks, Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator.
Computer
Based Training Cafe
Web-based tutorials covering the most popular web design and graphics software
applications.
Spoono
This playground and lively forum is also a classroom.
Webmonkey
Tutorials to suit designers at all levels, from beginners to all-conquering
masters of the web universe.
SmartWebby
The Free Web Development Resources pages of this web design enterprise offer
a range of free articles, tutorials and tools.
Phireworx
A rich vein of Fireworks and Flash tutorials for web designers.
JavaScript
Kit
General tutorial site, with a leaning towards JavaScript.
Flashguru
All things Flash, plus links to even more things Flash.
Dreamweaver
Support Centre
Straight from the horse's mouth.
Content
with Style
Articles that aim to solve day-to-day problems encountered by web designers,
and get jobs done to a deadline.
W3 Schools
Huge resource of free tutorials, examples, references and quizzes.
icant.co.uk
Christian Heilmann's articles about web development.
DevGuru
Under the Features menu heading, there lurks a long list of useful tutorials.
Zvon.org
News, tutorials and reference material for XML-based technologies (XSL, HTML,
CSS).
O'Reilly
WebDev Center
Big selection of free articles on web development, online web development courses,
plus a book store where you can view a chapter of a book before you buy.
PHP
Manual
It's all here. Look no further.
MySQL
5.0 Reference Manual
All the answers to your MySQL 5.0 queries and problems.
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Creativity
Kaliber
10000
There are two reasons it takes a while to unravel this site: first, they've
weasled lots of content on to it; second, the font;s so damn small; Lots of
uber-cool design inspiration: exhibitions of desktops and patterns, images
from design events, a major project every week, listings and a collaborator
matchmaker.
Design
Directory
Directory of inspirational resources created by designers, for designers.
Design
Snack
This site serves up fresh new servings of inspiration every day.
Scott
Berkun
Scott Berkun essays, including how to generate and pitch ideas.
OneLook
Reverse Dictionary
Ever stuck for words? This reverse dictionary will help you find them and explore
related concepts.
All
Known Idea Generation Methods
Quite a claim, but they really do seem to have covered everything.
Creative
Word Dictionary
Want to sound intelligent? You'll find words (plus definitions) here.
Gaping
Void
Wanna be creative? Cartoonist Hugh McLeod tells you how in a mere 12,000 words.
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Online tools
Deja
Vu
Using the dejaVu site's Emulator, you can take a trip back in time to see just
what your site would look like through the eyes of an ancient browser; and
then say a little thank you for being alive and web building now! Practically
speaking, of course, it allows you to check how your site will appear to those
with old browser versions.
Also part of the Deja; Vu time warp experience is the Timeline; a look at the
history and the future of the web.
AnyBrowser.com
This site offers a screen size test, meta tag creator, site viewer, HTML validation,
and a link check; plus a useful esource directory.
SnipURL
Shorten long web addresses into
small, friendly ones.
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Search engines
Marketleap
Search Engine Marketing Tools
San Francisco internet marketing firm Marketleap offers some useful tools on
its site. The keyword verification, search engine saturation, and link popularity
checkers are a breeze to use; which makes it all the more surprising that Marketleap
doesn't always achieve the coveted placement within the top three pages of
search results itself; It's still a useful boost to your site presence.
Stepforth
Search engine news, tips, articles and white papers.
Seomoz.org
Free search engine optimisation tools, services, articles and news.
Crawler
Alert
Does what it says on the tin: you get an email when a search engine crawler
is scanning your site.
Digital
Point Solutions
This keyword suggestion tool will determine which phrases are searched for
most often and give a keyword ranking monitor.
GoogEdit
Software that cleans up a keywords list and applies Google keyword rules to
maximise its effectiveness in a Google AdWords campaign.
Ranks.nl
Keyword density analyser with many wonderful bells and whistles, plus links
to other tools.
Link
Hounds
Hub Finder is an open-source link analysis tool that looks for co-occurring
backlinks.
SEOBook
Download this free beta version of Backlink Analyzer link popularity software
to find out what anchor text is linking into a page or site.
SEO
Tools
Links to the best search engine optimisation tools on the internet.
Devtoolz.com
This web site offers handy network development tools including Google page
rank lookup, link popularity checker, and domain availability.
Search
Engine Guide
Great guide to search engines, their optimisation and marketing. If you're
a beginner, this is a great place to come for an understanding of how to steer
traffic to your site.
WebWorkshop
Use this calculator to predict the ranking Google will apply to your pages.
Poodle
Predictor
Check to see what your site will look like in search engine results.
SearchBliss
Comprehensive palette of services that includes search engine optimisation
tools.
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The Web
Robots
Pages
Get to know the web robots, crawlers, wanderers and spiders that search engines
use.
SearchEngineWatch
A lorra lorra information about search engines. In fact, everything you could
want to know, including all the latest news and trends.
Siteometrics
Keep an eye on how your web site is ranking in all of the top search engines
from this single site.
TinyURL.com
Another site dedicated to making long URLs usable.
Ocawa
Single-page accessibility auditor.
Onlinetools.org
Collection of scripts, tools and software add-ons from Christian Heilmann.
1-Hit.com
A web site load time checker that adds up all the files included in your
page, then assumes an average rate to calculate how long it will take to
load.
Delorie.com
A web page backward compatibility viewer that lets you specify features you
want browsers to display.
Online
Image Splitter
This tool slices large images into smaller parts so that they load, or appear
to load, more quickly.
Accessify.com
Not a legit word, but Accessify is certainly a useful site. Access five free
accessibility tools, plus even more general web developer tools.
My
SEO Tips
An informative blog on how to optimise your site for search engines.
Standards
Project
The latest on methods that will allow your site to function across browsers
and internet devices.
Clagnut
Richard Rutter shares his life along with his thoughts on web development.
Mezzoblue.com
Dave Shea, creator of the influential CSS Zen Garden, writes on all things
web and provides links to other topical articles.
Stylegala
News, features, resources and much more on standards compliant web design.
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Publishing tools
Nameboy
This is a clearly designed site that not only allows you to register your domain
name, but generates available domain names and also gives appraisals of
names (for a price). These appraisals measure the popularity and demand
for words, phrases and markets on the internet and check for search frequency,
internet frequency and search term and keyword advertising values. Price
per word depends on the number of words you submit for appraisal.
FreeWebSubmission.com
Free submission to Alexa.com's highest-ranking free internet search engines,
plus other online tools for measuring your site's web presence.
Web
Announcer
Weballey's Web Announcer allows you to submit your site to about 70 search
engines in one go.
TrafficZap
Free search engine submission, optimisation and traffic builders.
SelfPromotion.com
All the information and tools you need to promote your own web site; and do
it properly!
Whois.Net
Search for available domains, search through available deleted domains or
look up registration data for
existing domains.
DomainIt
Easy-to-use domain registration and research site, plus plenty of other tools.
DNForum.com
It's not just talk here; you can get feedback on domain names, read the latest
domain news or research the legal issues relating to them. You can also
buy, sell, broker or auction domain names and follow tutorials covering
web design, SEO,marketing,
web hosting and more.
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Software sites
and applications
Torrentspy
There's lots of legal (and illegal; beware!) software, music, movies and games
available for downloading here. To download them, you'll need first to
install the BitTorrent co-operative distribution software on your PC, available
from www.bittorrent.com.
If you're new to this, Torrentspy's help page walks you through the basics.
Download.com
CNET's trusty download site, featuring average user ratings, number of downloads
and some editor ratings.
Tucows
The bovine arbiters of good software lend their likenesses to the software
that they favour, but also supply a user popularity rating.
Newfreeware.com
Helpfully organised site with software rated and download statistics listed.
Nonags
Large list of freeware and shareware with well-considered ratings.
Freshmeat.net
A great place to look for open-source software and tools.
5
Star
Loads of software, plus ratings, reviews, top picks and tips.
ZD
Net UK
One of the largest collections of free and trial software to download. The
user ratings and downloads listed are a dead giveaway of how useful a piece
of software really is.
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Site showcases
Favorite
Website Awards
Feast your eyes on some of the best design around over the last six years.
This site showcase is a particularly great resource if you're looking for Flash
inspiration. In addition to linking to cutting-edge sites, you can read interviews
with these creative genii, link to their sites and read their profiles. If
you're feeling bold and you reckon you've got what it takes, you could also
of course submit your own site for consideration. Let us know if you win!
Plasticpilots
Enjoy the sites that Plasticpilots have awarded for excellent design.
Zen
Garden
Zen Garden allows you to apply different CSS style sheets to a single page;
the code stays, the page is transformed, but only the external .css file changes.
VisualDesigner
This showcase categorises featured sites by subject areas and by CSS and DHTML,
Flash, animation, audio and sound.
Best
Flash V2
Nestling in this ample resource of Flash resources are the sites voted as Best
Flash Sites for the current week, plus the archives of previous weeks.
The
Weekly Standards
Highlighting web sites that take advantage of standards-based development techniques.
CSSBeauty
Another showcase for web beauties designed using Cascading Style Sheets, plus
CSS news and announcements.
Wellvetted.com
A fine list of very handsome sites. A visit here can't fail to inspire you.
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Reference
W3C
Schools CSS Reference
The W3C Schools e-learning portal is completely free and a fantastic resource
for training materials. Whatever aspect of web building you want to learn about
they cover it, and their tutorials are recommended reading at over 100 universities
and high schools around the world. So it's not surprising that their CSS reference
pages are the most comprehensive you'll find anywhere. In addition, you'll
find plenty more help on their very active forum.
CSS
Property Index
Alphabetical listing of CSS syntax and properties.
CSS
Guide for the Unglued
Links to every CSS resource you could possibly need.
Stylegala
CSS Reference
Alphabetical listing of Cascading Style Sheets syntax and properties, including
examples, browser support, possible
values and more.
Cheatsheet
Roundup
Over 30 quick references for web developers, no matter what format you're working
in.
Zvon.org
References
Comprehensive reference site for all things XML.
Devx.com
Project Cool: Web Development Basics is the title of this reference resource.
There's lots of help here if you're getting started in web design.
Stylemaster
CSS Podguide
Install Westciv's Complete CSS Guide on your iPod.
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Web authoring
and site design
WebDesigners
Bookmarks
The simple desire to keep web designers updated with current great resources
available on the internet is the motivation behind this site.
On its cleanly designed, easy to navigate pages, you'll find links to a variety
of excellent resources tailored for web site designers, grouped into helpful
categories; much as we've done for you in this bookmarks section. You don't
even have to type out the URLs yourself; just click and go!
The
Link Exchange
Free link exchange directory with categorised listing of sites that actively
exchange links.
Evolt.org
Created and maintained by volunteers, Evolt's ad-free pages collect the newest
news and the most technical advice for developers and designers. There
are articles and tutorials and great web resources. There's also the Browser
Archive, the largest archive anywhere for testing sites for browser compatibility.
Webmaster
Tools Central.com
On a mission to gather the best services on the web for designers.
FreeSticky
Great resource of free content and web design tools for your web site.
The
SiteExperts.Community
Lively forum and tutorials and demonstrations covering building, designing
and maintaining web sites.
Big
Webmaster
There are scripts galore in any language you care to think of at this web designer's
resource site.
WebmastersChannel.com
2,500 links to web design and maintenance resources.
Search
Bliss Web Tools
All the tools you'll need to build and improve your web site.
Webmasters
Den
A searchable database of internet resources with a diversified and well-balanced
outlook; along with a slightly oaky aroma!
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Usability and accessibility
Webxact
This site offers a free service that tests single pages for quality, accessibility
and privacy issues.
Advanced options include Section 508 and W3C WCAG compliance levels, collecting
code fragments for accessibility issues and scanning for broken links. Webxact's
help pages are there to make sense of all the data they report back to you,
so be sure you make the most of them.
Webusability
Accessibility and Usability Services
This is a great resource for understanding and creating accessible data tables.
Accessibility
Matters
Accessibility discussion, links and resources aplenty.
J*fly
Understand how to design for colourblind users.
Eyetrack
III
Eyetrack III researches results on web users; eye-tracking patterns across
web page.
The
Interaction Designer's Coffee Break
Discussion and tips on users; navigation blindness and other related topics.
Useit.com
Size limits for web pages to allow desired loading times at various connection
speeds.
Robert's
Talk
Robert Nyman explodes some myths and exposes accessibility charlatans he's
come across.
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CSS
CSS
Vault
The aim of this site is to be both inspirational and a fantastic resource.
To that end, there are articles, scripts, layouts and a gallery of great web
sites that are built upon every month. Many of these sites are suggested by
visitors to the site via the submit a link page you could even suggest your
own!
In addition there's a great set of links toCSS reference guides. If you can't
find what you're looking for here, you surely won't find it anywhere else on
the internet. There are also XML feeds to update you as news, web sites and
resources are posted.
Web
Standards Software and Learning
The complete guide to every aspect of Cascading Style Sheets.
CSS
Shark
The CSS know-how site answers your FAQs and explains the basics.
Real
World Style
CSS layout, tips and techniques.
CSS
Play
Experiments in what can be achieved with pure, unadulterated CSS.
Tanfa
CSS design, style, fun and articles by Claire Campbell.
CBEL
Style Sheets
Links you to 195 CSS-related sites. If it ain't here, it ain't anywhere.
The
Noodle Incident
The Noodle Incident is home to the indispensable CSS Panic Guide, and a comprehensive
list of links to CSS resources. It includes an insight into the effects of
different font sizing options
plus everything you need to know about creating boxes in CSS.
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