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- all - Suitable for all devices.
- braille - Intended for braille tactile feedback devices.
- embossed - Intended for paged braille printers.
- handheld - Intended for handheld devices (typically small screen, limited bandwidth).
- print - Intended for paged material and for documents viewed on screen in print preview mode.
- projection - Intended for projected presentations, for example projectors.
- screen - Intended primarily for color computer screens.
- speech - Intended for speech synthesizers.
- tty - Intended for media using a fixed-pitch character grid (such as teletypes, terminals, or portable devices with limited display capabilities). Authors should not use pixel units with the "tty" media type.
- tv - Intended for television-type devices (low resolution, color, limited-scrollability screens, sound available).
Just in case you were wondering the media types you can target your Stylesheets to. Labels: css, design
Rich-Text Editors, inline content editors, WYSIWYG editors – or whatever you want to call them – are web applications that enable users to enter, edit and manipulate alphanumeric characters while visiting your website. Wherever you have a textarea form input on your site, chances are good that its usability could be improved with a Rich-Text Editor. Been using CKEditor, which used to be FCKEditor, for years in my projects. Link: http://sixrevisions.com/user-interface/...Labels: design, development
Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products -- as well as new Docs and Sites features -- won’t work properly in older browsers. Hopefully this will push it over the edge so Veign will no longer have to design websites with IE6 in mind. My stats still show enough usage that I have no choice but to support it. IE6 = frustration
Link: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/...Labels: design, development, google, ie
 Color in design is very subjective. What evokes one reaction in one person may evoke a very different reaction in somone else. Sometimes this is due to personal preference, and other times due to cultural background. Color theory is a science in itself. Studying how colors affect different people, either individually or as a group, is something some people build their careers on. And there’s a lot to it. Something as simple as changing the exact hue or saturation of a color can evoke a completely different feeling. Cultural differences mean that something that’s happy and uplifting in one country can be depressing in another. This is a great article that every web designer should read and have a basic understanding of. Link: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/...Labels: design, graphics
 OpenFaces is an open-source library of AJAX-powered JSF components, an Ajax framework and a client-side validation framework. OpenFaces is based on the set of JSF components formerly known as QuipuKit. It contains fully revised codebase of QuipuKit and introduces many new components and features. Link: http://www.openfaces.org/Labels: design, development, open source
With basic HTML tables, the structure and the way the table are presented inherits the native html style. And if you like to change it then you need to change the underlying HTML code or spend time in adding attributes to all tables tags, in order to style it with CSS . But what if you want to make the tables more interesting, more dynamic, more visual appealing without spending so much time. Yes you can certainly use JavaScript for this, but coding it from scratch will be time consuming and it’s not worth. But JS libraries/frameworks will allow you to add a range of dynamic behavior to your tables and manipulate it for better presentation on a webpage without spending much time. We decided to list a few for the benefit of those who intend to use tables with JavaScript(JS). Most of these are for the popular jQuery, MooTools and Prototype/script.aculo.us JS frameworks. Since most of the JS frameworks mentioned below are plug-ins that work on top of existing JS frameworks, it is recommended that you take a look at those base frameworks first. But there are a few others that do not require an existing JS frameworks. Link: http://www.thepixelart.com/...Labels: design, javascript, jquery
What makes a design look coordinated, planned and professional? The answer is: ‘color’.
Not every project needs bland corporate blue to look professional. Planning color means creating a framework that describes which colors to use and how to use them.
Color is the slipperiest design element. “Good” color is so closely tied to elusive things like personal taste and intuition, as well as technical considerations such as contrast and monitor calibration. Link: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/...Labels: design, graphics
GIFs of spinning @s on the “Contact us” page. Common usability mistakes for the sake of visual appeal. Splash pages. Fancy search box. No whitespace. Music on page load. Home page banner of a jigsaw-puzzle globe with a piece missing. Sometimes you just know that what a client is requesting is wrong and that you have to find a way to tell them. But how? Sometimes you just can't and you have to weigh whether you want the client. Personally I find it very hard to do things which I know are an incorrect move for their website which could lead to a negative impact on their business. When this comes up I usually turn a project down. Link: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/...Labels: business, design, development
 PicPick is an all-in-one software for software developers, graphic designers and home user. It has an intuitive interface and simple, elegant operation. After starting the software, you simply select one of the tool from the PicPick Tools trayicon menu when you want. It features a powerful capture tool, image editor, color picker, color palette, pixel ruler, protractor, crosshair, whiteboard and etc. You can use all these tools freely. Link: http://picpick.wiziple.net/featuresLabels: design, graphics, software
Volusion: Starting an online business has never been easier. The experts at Volusion have done the work for you by compiling all of the tools you need to sell online into one search engine friendly shopping cart software solution. Volusion’s user-friendly ecommerce software gives you the power to start, grow and manage your online business with ease. Yahoo Merchant Services: Create a store with easy-to-use tools. Labels: design, development, ecommerce
One huge list of courseware geared towards web developers / designs / freelancers. Link: http://www.webhostingunleashed.com/...Labels: business, design, development
 On the left is the new homepage. Read up: http://www.techcrunch.com/...Labels: design, google
In this post we have put together a useful collection of new web development tools to save developers and designers time, energy, and headaches. Let’s take a look at 40 new useful web development tools and resources in a goodie bag for you, including easy and fast tweaks to forms, snippets of code, documentation at your fingertips, fonts, and cheat sheets. Link: http://www.noupe.com/tools/...Labels: design, development
 FontStruct lets you quickly and easily create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern, like tiles or bricks. And if you want to manage your existing font check out Cfont Pro - my tool. Link: http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/Labels: design, graphics
So what makes something pretty? It is not Flash. Not to say that Flash has no merit, but Flash alone doesn’t make a design good; some nasty Flash websites are out there. Also, one doesn’t have to be a great illustrator to make appealing designs. Instead, look at Web design as a symbiosis of different elements. No single element counts the most; rather, the sum of the elements makes a design look good.
These elements are the 7 key principles that make a Web design look good:
* Balance,
* Grid,
* Color,
* Graphics,
* Typography,
* White space,
* Connection. Link: http://www.noupe.com/how-tos/...Labels: design
Welcome to the IE6 CSS Fixer: starter kit page. A tool specifically designed to ease the pain of the ie6 css debugger. If you want to read up on all the specifics, I advise you to check the articles on the ideology, the specific fixes and the scope of this tool. Every little bit helps even though a true understanding of CSS and XHTML can make working with IE6 not too bad. Link: http://www.onderhond.com/tools/ie6fixerLabels: css, design, development, ie
Selling online can open up huge new markets for many businesses. When your store can be open 24/7 and you can reach a global market without the costs of mailings and call centers, it can be a huge boon to your business. But there are plenty of things to consider when designing an ecommerce site. It’s not as simple as throwing up some shopping cart software and plopping products into a database.
There are tons of mistakes that online retailers make every day, all of them avoidable with a little careful planning. And even if you’re already committing some of these mistakes, most of them are easy enough to fix. Avoiding them will greatly improve the experience of your customers. Link: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/...Labels: design, development, ecommerce
Smush.it uses optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files. It is a "lossless" tool, which means it optimizes the images without changing their look or visual quality. After Smush.it runs on a web page it reports how many bytes would be saved by optimizing the page's images and provides a downloadable zip file with the minimized image files. Who knew Yahoo had such a tool. Every image I tried it was able to optimize, even if it was just a little. Link: http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/smushit/Labels: design, graphics, yahoo
The amount of Wordpress Plugins available for download are endless, to sift through them and find one or two that you can actually use can be horrendous. Quite often you can find, like a Flickr Plugins, hundreds that do the same function. Others are far too complicated for the designer as well as the user to be useable. Some are even just pointless, and use up design space. How do you test all of them? Do you rely on word of mouth? Do you ask someone to write a plugin for your tailored needs? Link: http://speckyboy.com/...Labels: design, development, wordpress
Your website is designed, the CMS works, content has been added and the client is happy. It’s time to take the website live. Or is it? When launching a website, you can often forget a number of things in your eagerness to make it live, so it’s useful to have a checklist to look through as you make your final touches and before you announce your website to the world.
This article reviews some important and necessary checks that web-sites should be checked against before the official launch — little details are often forgotten or ignored, but – if done in time – may sum up to an overall greater user experience and avoid unnecessary costs after the official site release. Link: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/...Labels: design, development
 Expression Web SuperPreview for Internet Explorer shows your web pages rendered in Internet Explorer 6 and either Internet Explorer 7 or Internet Explorer 8, depending on which version you have installed on your machine. You can view the pages side by side or as an onion-skin overlay and use rulers, guides and zoom/pan tools to precisely identify differences in layout. You can even compare your page comp to how the targeted browsers render the page. This is a free tool that every web designer should have. Link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...Labels: design, development, free, ie, microsoft, software
A large collection of some great Google Analytics tips. Google Analytics is a great way to track your visitors and how your visitors interact with your website. This collections some powerful features to your Analytics results. From tracking 404 errors to get full referral links to tracking outgoing links and downloads. Check it out... Link: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/...Labels: design, development, google
1. Giving out too much informationSome people are just looking for information on how to accomplish a project and not really looking to hire someone to do the project. Giving too much information in a proposal just feeds the people who are fishing for information. Proposals should outline what you will be doing and how this directly affects the client without revealing all the details about what it takes to accomplish it. Example: Don't say 'Setup a Joomla based website' when you can say 'Setup and configure a content management system (CMS) to allow full control over the websites copy and structure'. The second part states what will be done and what benefit the client gets without giving out the details of the CMS system that you recommend or have researched to fit their needs. 2. Not protecting yourself or your clientBoth you and your client should now how they are protected during the project. An example of some questions that should be answered in a proposal is; who owns the copy and graphics, when does the transfership occur, what happens if the project drags on too long (because of you or client delays), what is the payment schedule, how will reviews of the project be handled, whats included in the price and what may not be included. Most of these questions would be in a Terms of Service and becomes the legal contract, signed by both parties, that the project follows. Having this in place often prevents issues from coming up since the questions have already been answered. 3. Not including enough informationA well written proposal needs to define what the client is receiving and what benefits they will get by using you over your competition. Never think you're the only company they are talking to. Sure, you can leave them with a positive impression of yourself after the initial meeting but most likely the descision of who they will use will fall on the proposal. A proposal that best conveys the project to them and really hits upon all the benfits will do wonders in landing projects. Think of the proposal as painting a visual picture of the project without saying specifically how you will accomplish things. 4. Not presenting the information in a professional manorThis one is simple and sometimes most overlooked. The layout and presentation of your proposal, in the client's eyes, indirectly will represent the quality of the work you will be providing. Make sure the layout is clean, neatly organized, consistent in its styling and free of spelling or grammatical mistakes. For an even better proposal oragnize the information into sections like: quote, scope of work and terms of service. 5. Leaving money on the tableDon't undersell yourself. Alot of companies, especially freelancers, are afraid to price a project to its value for fear of losing the project. Sure its easy to undersell a project in attempt to get it but what you end up with is one of two situations: 1) The project cost is low enough that towards the end of the project you're working for peanuts and aren't happy. This results in a 'just get it done' attitude which affects the work or 2) By underselling yourself the client feels that your skills are directly related to the price you quoted them. Labels: business, design, development
 In a short, GUI Mags are small magnets of GUI components that let you lay out an interface on a magnetic white board. The idea is simple and, for those who like white boards, a great idea. If your interested in making your own GUI magnets its pretty simple: - Get some Printable Magnet Paper
- Use a tool like Pencil Project to get an idea of GUI components
- With your favorite paint program or sketching program print a sheet of GUI components onto your magnetic paper
That's all there is to it. Link: http://www.guimags.comLabels: design, office
 sIFR: sIFR is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems. It accomplishes this by using a combination of javascript, CSS, and Flash.  cufon: In reality the generator is little more than a web-based interface to FontForge. First, the generator builds a custom FontForge script based on user input and then runs it, saving the result as an SVG font. The SVG font is then parsed and SVG paths are converted to VML paths. Labels: css, design, development, flash
Give away is now closed - the winner has been selected (Jeff)
 Whether you're an expert or just getting started, building standards-based Web sites is faster and easier with Microsoft® Expression® Web 3. Expression Web contains flexible support for a wide range of essential technologies: PHP, HTML/XHTML, XML/XSLT, CSS, JavaScript, ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight, Flash, Photoshop files, and video/audio for webcasting. This is a great opportunity to get a free license for an up-coming-player in the web design application market. EW is hot the heals of Dreamweaver and is already converting many users. I have been using and testing EW since the first releases and each one moves it closer to a serious player in the web design game - still needs better support for PHP for my liking but I'm sure that's coming. Just download the trial to check it out. To enter leave a comment that either contains your email address or a link to your profile which contains your email address and say something that lets me know you want it. Thats it. Winner will be choosen at random in 24 hours. Link to Expression Web: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Web_Overview.aspxGive away is now closed - the winner has been selected (Jeff)
(disclosure: Microsoft has not requested or asked me to do this. I contacted them to see if I could give a license away)
Labels: design, free, veign
HTML email inline styler will convert a webpage with CSS rules to a webpage using inline styles. This inline style format is what is required for sending email newsletters and this online tool can save you the headaches of manually converting. Link: http://inlinestyler.torchboxapps.com/Labels: css, design, development, website
 Veign's HTML5 reference Guide was featured on Smashing Magazine today. The guide is a work in progress (as the spec is changing) reference guide for the up-coming HTML 5 specification that someday will become the standard for the development of websites. Smashing Magazine is the top website design and development blog around and its a honor to have something of Veign's featured. Smashing Magazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/...HTML 5 Reference Guide: http://www.veign.com/reference/html5-guide.phpLabels: bigtime, design, development, veign
Today the Director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will not be renewed. By doing so, and by increasing resources in the HTML Working Group, W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C's position regarding the future of HTML. A FAQ answers questions about the future of deliverables of the XHTML 2 Working Group, and the status of various discussions related to HTML. Learn more about the HTML Activity. Link: http://www.w3.org/News/2009#item119Labels: design, development
Every once in a while we like to focus on different design elements and how to use javascript and ajax to make them more interactive and more flexible to the user. In this article we’d like to present a list of over 30 hand-picked Sliders, Scrollers and scrollbar techniques you can use to achieve some special visual effects in your designs. Link: http://www.noupe.com/javascript/...Labels: design, development, javascript, jquery
10 UI Design Patterns You Should Be Paying Attention To:In short, design patterns are solutions to recurring problems. By extension, UI design patterns are solutions to common user interface problems. This article goes over 10 interesting UI design patterns that you can use in your own projects. In fact, you may already be using them now without knowing it. Pattern Tap:Pattern Tap is here to satisfy and encourage the inspiration needs of my interface design peers and peeps. We aspire to be the one stop pattern shop for your next inspiration need. 40+ Helpful Resources On User Interface Design Patterns:In this article, we share with you the best of the best, cream of the crop sites, galleries, online publications, and libraries devoted to sharing information and exploring concepts pertaining to User Interface design patterns.
Flickr Design Patterns:A great collection of design patterns on Flickr that are organized by category. UI Pattern Factory:UI Pattern Factory is a mix of user interface design pattern library and UI gallery. It is a place to find user interface best practices, get design inspiration, and share design solutions with others Open Source Design Pattern Library:The Open Source Design Pattern Library is a place where individuals and organizations can share, collaborate, and discuss design patterns. Yahoo! Design Pattern Library:Welcome to the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library. We're thrilled to be sharing patterns and code with the web design and development community, we hope it's useful, and we look forward to your feedback. User Interface Design Patterns:Recurring solutions to solve common problems. 15 jQuery Plugins To Create An User Friendly Tooltip:Tooltip is a good way to show extra information when user hovers the cursor over an element. The “hover box” will appear when the mouse hover in, and disappear when the mouse hover out. If the tooltip is being used appropriately, it can improve our site’s user friendly level, and also save us a lot of spaces. Today, we are going to see 15 jQuery plugins to create an user friendly tooltip. 25+ jQuery Plugins that enhance and beautify HTML form elements:...collected over 25 jQuery plugins that enhance and beautify html form elements. Some of them add more capabilities that able to increase usability and user friendliness to a website. 20 Excellent JavaScript Navigation Techniques and Examples:In this article you’ll discover some terrific and unique JavaScript-powered navigation techniques and examples. Labels: design, development, javascript, jquery
I recently expanded the functionality of Quick Thumbnail to include a Quick Image Cropping tool. This tool lets you crop an image by uploading a file or by entering a URL to the image file. Once uploaded, Quick Cropping allows you to select the cropped area and each time you press the Crop button a new output is generated. No need to reload the image, simply adjust the selection area and press crop again. Active Cropping Window:
 Cropped Results:
 Link: http://quickthumbnail.com/crop/Labels: design, free, fun, graphics, veign, website
 Entirely customizable. Supports Zoom, print and download options. Can be configured either using HTML code, or via an external XML file. I tend to not like effects like this on a website but can see where some website may benefit from it. Link: http://page-flip.com/Labels: design, development, flash
Want to display your own logo on the browser address bar and browser tabs? Simply select a picture, logo or other graphic (of any size / resolution) for the "Image to Use" and click "Generate FavIcon.ico" A favicon is that small icon that appears in the address bar of a browser for the website your visiting. Link: http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/Labels: design, development
Add the Custom Search element, and let visitors search your site and other sites you choose using the power of Google Custom Search. If you like, earn revenue from your site with AdSense for Search. Try it out:http://veign.com/help/custom-google-search.phpLink: http://www.google.com/webelements/customsearch/Labels: design, development, google
 Using Balsamiq Mockups feels like you are drawing, but it's digital, so you can tweak and rearrange controls easily, and the end result is much cleaner. Teams can come up with a design and iterate over it in real-time in the course of a meeting.
With 75 pre-built controls to choose from....
Link: http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockupsLabels: design, development
Veign is now providing a service where we do a complete website check / analysis. From identifying website problems before your visitors do to search engine optimization guideline checks to ensure your site is ready for the major search engines, our report will give you the knowledge to fix those pesky problems that are often difficult to track down. Link: http://www.veign.com/website-check.phpLabels: design, development, veign
 You can easily add a rating system to your website with JS-Kit. This is a great way to get immediate feedback on your website products, listings or posts from your visitors. Also, if you haven't heard Google will be displaying Rich Snippets which may include ratings. So, get your ratings now and possibly enhance your listings in a Google Search Result snippet. From JS-Kit: The best content on most web sites and blogs gets buried as new content is added. JS-Kit's Ratings service solves this problem by uncovering and displaying your top content. It lets your visitors rate your merchandise items, services, pictures, blog entries, or any other objects on your site.
The service can be used in two modes, either as a 5-star rating widget or a thumb-up/-down widget and is incredibly easy to install on any static or dynamic web page. Link: http://js-kit.com/ratings/Labels: design, development, javascript, seo
 I feel better after running some of my CSS code through the CSS Formatter and Optimiser as there wasn't a whole lot that it did. Warned about using bold instead of a number, which is weird as I rather have it say bold as it better dictates intent. If your not familiar with optimizing CSS, you should run your code through just to check. Link: http://floele.flyspray.org/csstidy/css_optimiser.phpLabels: css, design
CSS Sprites: What They Are, Why They’re Cool, and How To Use Them:Do you really understand them? The name might be a little misleading, because sprites aren’t little images like you might be picturing, a sprite is actually one big image. Have you ever seen the CSS technique where the “on” and “off” states of a button are contained within the same image and are activated by shifting the background-position? Think of CSS Sprites as an extension of that technique. The difference is that instead of just two or three images being combined into one, you can combine an unlimited number of images into one. CSS Sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death:Specifically, we’re going to replace old-school image slicing and dicing (and the necessary JavaScript) with a CSS solution. And because of the way CSS works, we’re going to take it further: by building a grid of images and devising a way to get each individual cell out of the grid, we can store all buttons/navigation items/whatever we wish in a single master image file, along with the associated “before” and “after” link states. CSS Sprite Generator:This tool allows you to automate the process of generating CSS sprites. Simply give it a ZIP file containing 2 or more images (GIF, PNG or JPG) and it will generate a sprite image and the corresponding CSS rules to target and display each component image. Labels: css, design, development
 Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. Link: http://www.wordle.net/Labels: design, development
 Open Flash Chart is a dead simple way to add featrure rich Flash charts to your website, with your data through one of many technologies (like PHP). Open Flash Chart offers:- Tooltips
- Re-size the charts
- Save the chart as an image
- Highlight or emphasize one (or many) points
- Can be used with technologies like PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, .NET, Google Web Toolkit and JAVA
Link: http://teethgrinder.co.uk/open-flash-chart-2Labels: design, development, flash, php
Another great collection of free templates: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/resources/...Labels: design
 Yup, that's right, IE8 is available today and that means I have to support another browser when developing websites. I just wish IE6's market share would drop enough so I could drop it from my list of supported browsers. Labels: browsers, design, development, ie, microsoft
 The aim of this site is simple. We list a whole bunch of icons which are all great to use for your web development projects. But we are different to other icon-related websites because we only list icons which you can use for free on personal AND commercial projects AND without having to provide back-links/credit to the author. These types of icons can be tough to find, so here is a while list for your convenience! Some well designed icons can add so much to a design. So much so that Smashing Magazine recently did an article on this. Link: http://www.iconpot.com/Labels: design, graphics
cloc counts blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source code in many programming languages. It is written entirely in Perl with no dependencies outside the standard distribution of Perl v5.6 and higher (code from some external modules is embedded within cloc) and so is quite portable. Works great for comparing two projects. Recently I went through a code refactor on a project and I needed to give some information back to the client. CLOC made it simple to give a report as to the before and after counts. The before was approx 240K lines of code and the after was about 81K with zero changes to functionality. Link: http://cloc.sourceforge.net/Labels: css, design, development, javascript, open source, php
 JQZoom is a javascript image magnifier built at the top of the popular jQuery javascript framework.jQzoom is a great and a really easy to use script to magnify what you want. Link: http://www.mind-projects.it/projects/jqzoom/Labels: design, development, javascript, jquery
SitePoint is having a sale on their PDFs for website design and development that will let you choose 5 titles for the price of 1 ($29.95) with 100% of the proceeds going to a relief fund for the Australian fires. The reason is SitePoint is headquartered in Melbourne and they want to do what they can to help out. Here are the titles you can choose from:- The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
- The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques
- Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong!
- The Art & Science of CSS
- The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks, 2nd Edition
- The Ultimate CSS Reference
- Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS, 2nd Edition
- The Ultimate HTML Reference
- HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS, 2nd Edition
- Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8
- Simply JavaScript
- The Art & Science Of JavaScript
- Build Your Own AJAX Web Applications
- DHTML Utopia: Modern Web Design Using JavaScript & DOM
- The Flash Anthology: Cool Effects & Practical ActionScript
- Simply SQL
- Simply Rails 2
- The PHP Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks, 2nd Edition
- Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL, 3rd ed.
- No Nonsense XML Web Development With PHP
- Build Your Own ASP.NET 3.5 Web Site Using C# & VB, 3rd Edition
- The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks
- Run Your Own Web Server Using Linux & Apache
- The Principles Of Project Management
- The Principles Of Successful Freelancing
- Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists
Link: http://5for1.aws.sitepoint.com/Labels: design, development
 So close to not having to support FireFox 2.0 in web designs. Every time I get to drop a browser from support its a glorious day. My general rule of thumb is once browser usage dips below 1% or security patches are no longer issued than I drop support. IE6 is the browser I am most looking forward to dropping. Link: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/...Labels: browsers, design
 Logo Instant is a collection of logos you can use and hack-up for your own needs. The collection isn't huge but its a good start and the logos they do have are of good quality. Link: http://www.logoinstant.com/Labels: design, graphics
Using a tool provided my Microsoft called ' Outlook HTML and CSS Validator'.
The Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 HTML and CSS Validator helps you check for valid/supported HTML before you send HTML-based e-mail.
Link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...Labels: design, email
 Awstats Awstats is a log file analyzer type of web statitics reporting tool. This means the data displayed will be the most accurate and complete than some of the other methods listed. Awstats can provide all the expected information (page views, visitors, hits) plus it can give you bandwidth used, and filesizes of downloads.  CrazyEggOne of the first to offer Heat Maps which shows where your user are clicking on your website. This alone makes Crazy Egg worth checking out.  FuseStatsAnother website offering Heat Maps, which is a color overlay so you can see where your users click, on top of the standard web stat information. They offer a free account, which is why I added it to the list, which can be used for very low traffic websites.  Google AnalyticsThis, in my opinion, is the gold standard for client side web tracking (not a server log analyzer). Google Analytics provides some of the most powerful tool for tracking your visitors, analyzing your websites traffic flow, checking on goals for your visitors and general overall information provided. Plus they are constantly pushing out new features and I'm sure real-time tracking isn't far behind.  HiStatsAnother great option which provides a very user friendly interface (and quite appealing) and provides a hit counter which can be added to your website so your visitors can see how many visits you get. Oh, did I mention they provide real time tracking? Very nice option.  StatCounterA very popular web stats choice where a small piece of code is embedded in your web pages that handles all the tracking for your visitors. Not as reliable as Awstats but easy to setup, not tied to a server (so you maintain your history) and you can access your stats at anytime from any computer.  The Hit CounterLooking for a simple, simple to install (2 steps) hit counter for your website? Then The Hit Counter what you need. They have made the creation of a custom hit counter as simple as it can be. Labels: design, development, seo, web server, website
The Google trick for converting a Word document to clean HTML also works pretty well for Excel documents and PowerPoint presentations. Much better than anything provided by Microsoft for saving Office documents as a webpage (HTML). Labels: design, google, microsoft, office
50 Excellent AJAX TutorialsThis post serves as a collection of useful tutorials on working with AJAX in a wide variety of ways. You’ll find tutorials on working with forms, building shopping carts, creating chat features, working with log-ins and usernames and much more. Link: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/...The Top 40 Free Ajax & Javascript Code for Web DesignersThe list below is made up of the best FREE scripts available, they are all of the highest quality and more or less easy to configure. Link: http://speckyboy.com/2008/...75 (Really) Useful JavaScript TechniquesHere are 75 more handy JavaScript techniques that have made websites much sleeker and more interesting. Link: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/...jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best PracticesThe article will explore what constitutes best practices with regard to Javascript and, furthermore, why jQuery is a good choice of a framework to implement best practices. Link: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/...Labels: design, development, javascript, jquery
I’m going to show you how to create a wordpress theme from scratch in these 3 parts of tutorial series. I will cover from Structuring, designing in Photoshop, slicing, coding into fully css based html, and finally wordpress implementation. Link: http://themetation.com/2008/07/14/...Labels: blogging, design
HowTo: Convert a Word document to clean HTMLEver have a need to convert a Word document to HTML knowing that Word itself produces some of the worst HTML code ever? There is a simple, easy trick to get this done. - Make sure you have a Gmail account
- Send the Word document, as an attachment, to your Gmail account
- Sign in to Gmail and view the email with the attachment
- Click the 'View as HTML' link at the bottom of the email
- With the page opened, 'View source' from your browser
- Copy the code
That's all there is to it. Google produces some pretty clean HTML from a Word document. It may have to be updated to XHTML 1.0 specifications (Google uses some deprecated tags) I had a pretty complex tabled document with lots of text styles and it did a very good job. Labels: design, google, microsoft
The Tabblo Print Toolkit (TPT) is a suite of developer tools for making websites more printable. With our first release you will be able to re-format a web page into printable templates through calls to our templating engine. Information may be a little dated but it does have some good information and the site contains links to other useful information about printing. The article at A List Apart is one I recommend to people all the time. Link: http://developer.tabblo.com/Labels: design
The competition to become the next markup language for the Web is heating up. This article takes a look at what's cool and what's uncool about the competing technologies. This is something that is progressively getting closer to a topic web designers / developers need to start thinking about. The article ' How HTML 5 Is Already Changing the Web' is what brought this back to focus for me. What the differences are:XHTML 2 is a bold step forward intended to create an architecture that will become the host language to many other W3C technologies already in use, or in the works. XHTML 2 is based solely on XML, a technology that most believe will enable the Web to reach its full potential. XHTML 2 is driven by how markup should be used, rather than by how markup is currently used.
X/HTML 5 is an extension of HTML 4 and XHTML 1. It is an incremental step forward rather than a grand leap forward in the style of XHTML 2. Working within the confines of HTML 4 and XHTML 1, X/HTML 5 has devised clever solutions to address some of the faults in HTML 4 and XHTML 1. X/HTML 5 can be also be served as HTML or XML. So, unlike XHTML 2, X/HTML 5 is influenced by the current state of the art (Web browser technology, etc.) and how markup is currently used. Who will win? I sure hope that it doesn't stay a split and one specification will become the standard. I think small steps forward at a faster rate of finalizing the spec is better than huge steps forward with long breaks between updates. Link: http://xhtml.com/en/future/...Labels: design, development
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A humorous look at bad web designers and developers. Link: http://blog.webbizideas.com/...Labels: design, development
Cheat sheets are helpful to have around because they allow you to quickly remember code syntax and see related concepts visually. Additionally, they’re nice decorative pieces for your office.
In this article, you’ll find 23 excellent, print-ready cheat sheets for HTML/HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (including MooTools and jQuery). Take a look at #11. Link: http://sixrevisions.com/resources/...Labels: design, development
So what’s hot now? Pencil sketches, handwritten notes, card stocks, watercolor effects, collage art, script fonts, grungy and splatter ink backgrounds (glossy gradients are not "in" this year). Another trend to be on the lookout for are the vintage and retro styles which I’ve posted earlier this year. Here is a list of 82 sites picked from Best Web Gallery that show the current design trends. Link: http://www.webdesignerwall.com/...Labels: design
Response times, availability, and stability are vital factors to bear in mind when creating and maintaining a web application. If you’re concerned about your web pages’ speed or want to make sure you’re in tip-top shape before starting or launching a project, here’s a few useful, free tools to help you create and sustain high-performance web applications.
I’ve tried to include a wide variety of tools that are easy to use, and have tried to keep them as OS and technology-independent as possible so that everyone can find a tool or two. Link: http://sixrevisions.com/tools/faster_web_page/Labels: design, development
 IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process. Link: http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/...Labels: design, development, ie, website
 How much do we really know about how people read news websites? We can track their behavior clicking through a site visit. We can collect personal information. We can ask them questions. But that presents a small part of the full picture. To get the rest, we need to climb inside their heads and look through their eyes as they view online news sites -- to peer into their minds and see patterns that even they don't consciously see. Might be old but interesting none-the-less Link: http://www.poynterextra.org/...Labels: design, seo
Google Doctype is an open encyclopedia and reference library. Written by web developers, for web developers. It includes articles on web security, JavaScript DOM manipulation, CSS tips and tricks, and more. The reference section includes a growing library of test cases for checking cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility. Link: http://code.google.com/doctype/Labels: design, development
 MachForm is a form building application that you can run on your own servers, totally under your control. What is does is take all the work out of creating, styling, processing and collecting forms and form results. After reviewing many like services, I must say MachForm is above them all and with the release of version 2 its only getting better. Whats new:- Email Autoresponder
- Better, Prettier Email Design
- Fully Customizable Email
- Revamped Entry Manager
- Columns Display Preference
- Entry Viewer
- Printer Friendly
- Forward an Entry
- Submission Review
- Full PHP Embed Code
- New CAPTCHA option
- SSL Support
Another thing that I use to judge an application is developer interaction. The developer for MachForm is a super nice guy that is highly responsive to his users and their issues and ideas. Link: http://www.appnitro.com/Also, check out the demo's: http://www.appnitro.com/demo/Labels: design, development, php
 Vista Buttons helps you create Vista/XP/Win98/Mac rollover html buttons and html drop down menus with ease. Well done, but the look is not a style I really like. I guess if you want a website to look like a desktop application running in Vista then it would be great but I have to ask. Why would you? Why have a website look like Vista (2nd behind Windows ME in acceptance). I will say they have done a great job capturing the look and if this is a look you want you will probably not find a better tool to get it done. Link: http://vista-buttons.com/index.htmlLabels: design, vista
Here’s a collection of 10 powerful – yet easy-to-implement — AJAX effects to supplement your web page’s interface. These were picked using a “bang for your buck” methodology; meaning that these effects were chosen specifically because they provide high-impact effects with very little effort in installing and using them. Link: http://sixrevisions.com/rapid-development/...Labels: ajax, design, development, javascript
Logos are the ultimate mark of distinction and everyone loves them. We see logos everyday - on the highways, on consumer goods, on the Web and in the institutions and organizations we support. Read about the different types of logo designs here and learn what principles and techniques are used to create them. Discover what the future holds for logo design! Link: http://www.logoorange.com/logo-design-08.phpLabels: design, graphics
 Establish Retrofitted Designs as a sustainable high-design decor and organization products manufacturer that balances its commitment to profitable growth and community focus. What a cool and innovative idea. Seems like more and more companies are offering means to make your electronic devices a bit more personal (check out ColorwarePc.com). Schtickers goes beyond the custom look by allowing a bit more 'feel' to your laptop with suede products available. I would use a black one with my tribal logo on it . Link: http://www.schtickers.com/Labels: design, hardware, marketing
Ever wonder how Google ended up with the logo that they did? The designer of the logo, Ruth Kedar recently talked about what went into the process and even shared some of her early ideas. Surprisingly it started out more complicated and ended up as the more simple logo that is known around the World today. Link: http://.../how-google-ended-up-with-their-logo/Labels: design, google, graphics
Our search quality and Webmaster Central teams love helping webmasters solve problems. But since we can't be in all places at all times answering all questions, we also try hard to show you how to help yourself. We put a lot of work into providing documentation and blog posts to answer your questions and guide you through the data and tools we provide, and we're constantly looking for ways to improve the visibility of that information.
Topics:- Googlebot can't access my website
- URL blocked by robots.txt
- Why was my URL removal request denied?
- Flash best practices
- The supplemental index
- Duplicate content
- Sitemaps FAQs
Link: http://.../7-must-read-webmaster-central-blog.htmlLabels: design, seo
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