Links

781.910.3694

Here are helpful links relating to web development:

3D Software:

Michael Kutsche: Talented 3D artist.

Papervision 3D: There's a Papervision 3D plugin for Flash, etc.

Strata 3D: "Strata - The Power of 3D"

Accessibility (see also: Usability):

Jaws: Jaws is currently (2011) the leading screen reader for Windows. They offer a free demo version of the software that can be used test a web site for ease of accessibility to blind people.

NVDA: NVDA is a relatively new screen reader for Windows, it's free and is open source, gaining in popularity.

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI): The official home page for web accessibility compliance. Ironically, neither the site nor the WAI document is easy to understand. Here's an example of criticism: To Hell with WCAG 2.

WebAIM: Web Accessibility In Mind: Expanding the web's potential for people with disabilities

Acrobat / PDF:

Acrobatusers.com

Acrobat, Javascript, and PDF development specialists.

Acrobat notes (under construction)

InDesign: Has some notes on re-purposing PDFs for InDesign.

Ajax:

W3 Schools: Ajax tutorial.

AAS Community Forum: AAS makes the Strum Acoustic Guitar Synth that I purchased from Cakewalk on 11-25-11

8notes.com: handy site to learn piano chords

Books:

Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL: "Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MySQL, 4th Edition is a practical, hands-on guide to learning all the tools, principles, and techniques needed to build a fully functional database driven web site using PHP & MySQL. This book covers everything from installing PHP and MySQL on Windows, Linux, and Mac computers, through to building a live, web-based content management system."

WROX Programmer to Programmer: Looks like a good place to ask questions about WROX books and related subjects

PHP & MySQL for Dummies: PHP & MySQL for Dummies (3rd Edition) — Companion site

Web Design for ROI: This is a good book: "Your web site is a business — design it like one. Billions of dollars in spending decisions are influenced by web sites. So why aren't businesses laser-focused on designing their sites to maximize their Return on Investment (ROI)? Web design can do more than make a site look good — it can be a powerful strategic weapon that enhances financial returns and creates competitive advantage."

oreilly.com

Amazon.com

Peachpit.com

wrox.com

Branding, Marketing, User Experience:

Aquent resources: Includes webcasts on design, marketing, business. Good source for learning "what's new".

iMedia Connection: Interactive Marketing News, Features, Podcasts and Video

eMarketer: Market research & statistics: Internet marketing, advertising & demographics (pay site -- pricey, I assume)

CMS (Content Management Systems):

Surreal CMS: A free and simple CMS, similar to CushyCMS.

CMS Matrix: Content management comparison tool. (page takes a few seconds to load)

Cushy CMS: A free and simple CMS.

Drupal: Drupal.org is the official website of Drupal, an open source content management platform.

Joomla! Official Documentation

Joomla!: The dynamic portal engine and content management system.

Joomla getting started FAQ

Joomla Knowledgebase Component: Article dated 10-06-09

LightCMS: "The friendly content management system." They market it to designers who don't want to have to hire a "web guy" (technical person).

Open Text Corporation: Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Sitecore: Sitecore Web Content Management System (CMS) software helps you create and keep up-to-date dynamic, full featured websites of all types.

Color:

Calibrating a monitor: How to calibrate a monitor without a Spyder or Colormunki.

Datacolor (Spyder): A color management solutions company, the Spyder is a competitor of Colormunki.

HTML Color Names: Color names supported by all browsers

HTML Color Names - abridged: Our own shortened list of HTML color names

Pantone to hex color conversion: Though not an official chart, this is a handy Pantone / RGB / Hex color table.

Rods and Cones: Experts in color, they offer learning, products and services.

X-Rite Photo - Color Management for Photographers: They sell the Colormunki monitor and printer calibrater. They also have tutorials and sell other products related to color management.

Cross Browser Compatibility/Testing:

W3C Markup Validation Service: Use this to get the "official word" on what syntax errors, if any, your HMTL has.

W3C CSS Validation Service: Use this to get the "official word" on what syntax errors, if any, your CSS has.

Old Browsers

Virtual Box: You can run Windows XP and IE6 on the Mac.

IE Tester: Free windows software that simulates older IE browsers.

6 Reasons Why IE6 Must Die: IE6 lacks PNG transparency support, it has margin/padding issues, it does not support CSS pseudo classes, etc.

BrowserLab: "BrowserLab provides web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand. Adobe Dreamweaver® CS4 software users have access to additional functionality such as testing local and active content." Currently available for free, will charge customers starting in 2011.

Browser Shots: Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test. It shows a screen shot of your web site in the specified browsers.

Browser Statistics: Market share for the most popular browsers.

CrossBrowserTesting: Paid service provides you with live testing of various browsers.

Install multiple versions of IE on your PC: If this software is trustworthy and works, it might be worth installing, but do so at your own risk.

Quirks Mode: "QuirksMode.org is the prime source for browser compatibility information on the Internet."

Can I use...: "Compatibility tables for features in HTML5, CSS3, SVG and other upcoming web technologies"

CSS (see also: Drop Down Menus):

All you ever needed to know about CSS3: As of 3/8/2010, site was under development, but it already has some stuff.

CSS3 Selectors - W3C

50 New CSS Techniques For Your Next Web Design: has a bunch of stuff, include one on the Safari font smoothing hack

CSS Differences in Internet Exporer 6, 7 and 8: Smashing Magazine

CSS Zen Garden: What's cool about this site is you can choose among various totally different designs to view the same content

CSS2 Selectors spec from W3C: This is the official source for CSS documentation.

CSS Newbie: "Learn HTML, CSS and jQuery with Tutorials, Tips and Reference Articles"

Web browser CSS support (www.webdevout.net/browser-support-css): Has a comprehensive list of features in CSS2 and CSS3.

(tjkdesign.com/articles/one_html_markup_many_css_layouts.asp)

(css-tricks.com/the-perfect-fluid-width-layout)

(www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp)

CSS Tricks: A web design blog.

CSS Troubleshooting: Wordpress Codex/dd>

Max Design: CSS resources and tutorials for web designers and web developers.

Position is Everything: "I'm Big John, and here I attempt to describe and demonstrate some of the bugs found in web browsers, and to show advanced CSS methods that work across all browsers."

Position is Everything: How to Clear Floats: How to Clear Floats without Structural Markup. "When a float is contained within a container box that has a visible border or background, that float does not automatically force the container's bottom edge down as the float is made taller."

HTML and CSS table border style wizard: This handy page automatically shows you the table and source code as you try different table layouts.

TJK Design: Building Standards Compliant Web Sites.

Smashing Magazine: CSS Float Theory: Things You Should Know. Also, Table Layouts vs Div Layouts

W3C: W3C Cascading Style Sheets home page.

W3 Schools: W3 Schools CSS tutorial.

Why tables for layout is stupid: Problems defined, solutions offered.

Design:

Your Inspiration Web: "The community of inspiration dedicated to web design"

Colour lovers: A bunch of color palettes, including people's votes on how much they like it, etc.

Cool hex color mixer (check it out!)>

Font Smoothing Explained

DotNetNuke:

Code Endeavors: DotNetNuke templates (skins) and more.

CodePlex: My textbook kept mentioning the DNN-Blue skin that shipped with DNN, but I assume that DNN no longer ships with the skin, because I don't see it. So this website has the skin available for download presently (April 2011).

http://www.datasprings.com DotNetNuke form generator

DNN Covered: DNN skins, modules, forum, service that converts PSD to skin, etc.

DNNCreative: DotNetNuke training site, it has a lot of video training and articles

http://www.dnn4free.com

dnnskin.com: DotNetNuke skins

DotNetNuke: The Leading Open Source Web Content Management Platform for ASP.NET

http://www.dotnetnukepodcast.com/

DotNetNukeTraining: A small training site for DotNetNuke, looks like it's growing

http://www.howtodotnetnuke.com/

max.exionyte.com: DotNetNuke skins

PowerDNN: A hosting provider that specializes in DotNetNuke support.

r2idnn.com/: DNN skins, modules, consulting.

http://www.ralphwilliams.com/ blog relating to DotNetNuke, has article on how to use DNN and JQuery to make an "accordian"

SnowCovered.com: A small training site for DotNetNuke, looks like it's growing

thinkofdesign.com: DotNetNuke skins and information about skinning, including actual code.

xhtmlskins.com: DotNetNuke skins

Dreamweaver:

BrowserLab: "BrowserLab provides web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand. Adobe Dreamweaver® CS4 software users have access to additional functionality such as testing local and active content." Currently available for free, will charge customers starting in 2011.

Dreamweaver Drop Down Menus: Dreamweaver Tutorial

Dreamweaver Forums: Adobe Dreamweaver Forum.

How to Create a Website with Dreamweaver CS4 (includes tutorial for creating drop down menus): Adobe Dreamweaver Forum.

Drop Down Menus (see also: CSS, Dreamweaver):

CSS Menu Tutorial: Horizontal and Vertical CSS Menus

Designing Drop Down Menus: Examples and Best Practices

Dreamweaver Drop Down Menus: Dreamweaver Tutorial

DynamicDrive: Dynamic Drive DHTML Scripts

Mega Drop-Down Navigation Menus Work Well: Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox

OpenCube: "100% Pure CSS Menu (Visual / SEO / Fast / Full Featured!)"

Son of Suckerfish Dropdowns: A cross-browswer compatible free dropdown menu.

Email Forms

Email form generator for web sites hosted on ASP.NET servers

Encryption

MTOPSOFT.com - Web password protection, HTML encryption

PayPal - Subscriptions and Recurring Payments: This is one of many pages in PayPal's developer section, which discus how to set up programming code to process payements, verify transactions, and in this case, generate a password that the buyer can use upon successful payment, to download whatever digital media they purchased, such as a PDF, video, software, etc. Also, click here for the Subscriptions and Recurring Payments manual.

Firebug

Debugging Javascript with Firebug

Flash and Flex:

DevelopPHP.com: Looks like one of the better tutorial sites for Flash, PHP and other subjects

Adobe Flash player settings manager

www.devx.com/webdev/Article/27587: Flash and audio

bigresource.com/FLASH-XML-slide-show-wtih-sync-039-d-audio-setInterval-4B4smqGA3S.html: Flash and audio

edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Flash_sound_tutorial#Load_and_play_sounds_with_ActionScript: Flash and audio

publicdomain4u.com: music in the public domain

soundjay.com: one of the less nutty sound effects sites -- many of the other sound fx sites are loaded with ads and confusing "get nowhere fast" links

freesound.org: Flash and audio

freebyte.com/music: Flash and audio

apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/: the late Steve Jobs' thoughts on Flash...

code.google.com/p/swfobject/wiki/documentation: SWFObject loads alternative content for iphones, etc.

adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/swfobject.html: Adobe Developer Connection / Flash Player Developer Center / Detecting Flash Player versions and embedding SWF files with SWFObject 2

alistapart.com/articles/byebyeembed/: Flash sometimes generates code containing the embed tag, but SWFObject does not use the embed tag. Instead, it uses nested Object tags. This article, though not related to SWFObject, describes this technique.

I h♥rt actionscript. AS3 Tutorials, AS3 Articles, AS3 for Designers: This site has good examples with working code.

Free ActionScript -

Layers Magazine - creating your own custom video player skin

flashbanneronline.com - what is this?

Moock.org: Colin Moock is a leading author of Flash books, his book "ActionScript for Flash MX, the Definitive Guide" is hard to top for thoroughness. This web site has updates, interviews, and samples.

http://ideas.adobe.com/ - Adobe Lab Ideas: Adobe's site where people can suggest improvement to Adobe products. This is a good place to get confirmation about shortcomings of products. For example: I see that I'm not the only person who wants Flash to make it possible to underline static text. Duh -- ya think?

ActionScript: A good Wikipedia history and description of ActionScript.

ActionScript dictionary: A comprehensive alphabetical reference to ActionScript 2.0

ActionScript.org: Flex and ActionScript Community -- Tutorials, Support, Open Source and More

AS Gamer: Flash Game Development Tutorials

AS2 to AS3: dynamic instance names: uh-oh...

AS3 Apex

Cartoonsmart.com: Video tutorials for Flash, Flex, Illustrator, Photoshop, Toon Boom Animate, Blender, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Actionscript, iPhone, Mysql, PHP and more

David Stiller's blog: Many in-depth posts relating to Flash.

Develop PHP: Has courses in CSS, PHP, mySQL, ActionScript3, etc.

Differences between Action Script 2 and 3: Adobe Flex 2 Language Reference

Everything Flex: News and Information about Flex and AIR by Rich Tretola

Flabell -: Flash components, tutorials, etc.

Flash & Flex Developer's Magazine: Bi-monthly free e-magazine

Flash and Flex developer - Steven Sacks

Flash Creations: A Flash / ActionScript Resource Site

Flash Develop: Flash Develop is a free and source code editor.

Flash Developer Center - 3D Animation

Flash Enabled: "Everythings Air, Flash, Flex, Illustrator and Photoshop"

Flash for the masses: AS, JSFL, XUL, etc.

Flash Function: blog of technical topics

Flash Kit: Flash Kit, a developer resource

Flash Lab - SwingPants: Flash blog

Flash Media Server and a related link by the author: Flash Media Server. The author, William Sanders, is also author of my "Macromedia Flash MX Actionscript" book.

Flash RIA's vs Javascript RIA's: A comparison of the pros and cons of Flash vs JavaScript for RIA's (Rich Internet applications).

Flash Transition Manager: Documentation for Flash transitions such as Blinds, Fade, Zoom, etc. The classic transitions are the cut and the dissolve or fade out/in, so make sure not to overuse these transitions, or the movie could get a "corny" look to it.

Flash Video Streaming Service: "Adobe has partnered with leading content delivery network (CDN) providers to offer hosted services for delivering on-demand video for the Adobe Flash Player runtime across high-performance, reliable networks."

FlashDen: Flash components

FlashDevelop.org: free ActionScript editor!

FlashExtension: Buttons, components, animations, scripts, etc.

Flashloaded -- plug-ins such as "3DPlane"

Foundation Flash: Free Flash/ActionScript Tutorials & Help

gotoAndLearn(): Flash forums and tutorials

gotoAndPlay(): Flash blog and some tutorials

InsideRIA: An article discussing the downside of ActionScript3. This site has a lot more advanced articles.

Kirupa.com: Flash, Blend/Silverlight, Blend/WPF, PHP and more

Marco Casario - RIAvolutionize the Web (AIR, Flex, etc)

Moto CMS a CMS for Flash sites, they have their own templates, fonts, and CMS

Ozzu.com Flash forum

Run-time errors for Flex and AS3

Say Web: Flash and ActionScript Tutorials, News, Interviews

Swinburne University of Technology: Flash tutorials, including to integrate with PHP/MySQL. Also tutorials in 3DS Max, Illustrator, etc.

The Flash Blog

TutCity -- Free Learning Resource

TutVid -- Free Flash, Photoshop and other tutorials

YouTube: YouTube is a handy place to view videos people have posted for Flash training, etc.

Zedia.net: zedia flash blog, Flash, ActionScript, SEO and everything in between

Flash Games:

Armor Games

2advanced.com: High touch and special effects Flash site, plenty of bells and whistles to give it a Myst feel.

AS Gamer: Flash Game Development Tutorials

De Mellows: A web design site that has a few games on it.

Flash Game University: "The web site for Flash ActionScript 3.0 game developers". There is also a book available.

Game Goo: Educational Games

GamesGames.com

Sadlier-Oxford: Educational Publishing from Prek-12+

GameDev.net: "All your game development needs"

http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/11/16/the_quest_to_stop_the_brain_drain/: Quest to stop the brain drain -- Computer exercises are being sold as an aid to the aging mind. Are they any good?

SoftSchools.com: Math, phonics and other online activities.

Untold Entertainment

Fonts

net.tutsplus.com demo of Cufón, a tool that lets you use any font on a web site.

Cufón: Cufón is a tool that lets you use any font on a web site (but make sure that the font license allows you to do this).

Dafont.com: Some free fonts, plus links to commercial fonts

Gaming (see also: Flash games, Apps)

Design3: information about how to create games for mobile devices

GoDaddy

Setting Directory Permissions on a Linux Hosting Account: They discuss a wizard for setting read, write, and execute access for the specified directory. You can probably also edit the .htaccess and .htpassword files directly instead.

HTML / XHTML:

Comprehensive HTML unicode characters

HTML unicode characters

HTML5 Rocks: "A resource for developers looking to put HTML5 to use today"

The HTML5 Test: Shows how well your browser scores out of a possible score of 300 for HTML 5 compatiblity.

HTML Cheat Sheet

HTML 5: HTML 5: the markup language. W3C Editor’s Draft.

HTML 5 — Wikipedia: "HTML5 is the proposed next standard for HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0 and DOM Level 2 HTML. HTML5 is expected to be a game-changer in Web application development, making obsolete such plug-in-based rich Internet application (RIA) technologies as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX."

HTML 5 Cheat Sheet: "Even although HTML 5 won’t be completely supported until 2022, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be widely adopted within the foreseeable future. So in the spirit of the upcoming change we decided to release a handy printable HTML 5 Cheat Sheet that lists all currently supported tags, their descriptions, their attributes and their support in HTML 4."

HTML Document Character Set: A table showing many ISO and Unicode characters, for example:
To display an em dash: —, use — or — in your HTML.

HTML Source: HTML tutorials

HTML Tutorials by John C. Gilson: 48 HTML lessons and tutorials

W3C: W3C XHTML2 Working Group Home Page.

W3 Schools: W3 Schools HTML tutorial.

Web Design Group: HTML help and discussion.

XHTML reference: An XHTML reference focused on best practices, plus articles and tutorials on CSS, XML, Web standards and accessibility.

Icons:

FindIcons.com: "FindIcons.com - Search through 300,000 free icons in more than 2,000 icon packs"

InDesign:

Copying/Pasting Text from PDFs to InDesign

InDesign notes: Here's some InDesign notes including handy tips and keyboard shortcuts, courtesy of Kroll Web Design.

InDesign Secrets: "Developed by page-layout guru David Blatner and 'DesignGeek' Anne-Marie Concepcion, InDesign Secrets is your one-stop shop for all things InDesign."

Rorohiko Workflow Resources: A source of time-saving scripts such as one to extract all text from an InDesign document.

Using Adobe InDesign CS4

Java:

Trisha's Ramblings: I'm a Java developer who's passionate about lots of things. Oddly, actual technology is quite low down on that list.

Code Style: Open standards web design with CSS, XHTML, Java servlets and Javascript.

Eclipse and Java for Total Beginners - Lesson 1: For instructions and additional lessons, see http://eclipsetutorial.sourceforge.net/instructions.html

java2s.com: Programming tutorials and source code examples: java, c, etc.

Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition, v1.4.2 — API Specification: A comprehensive list of Java 2 Platform Packages, where you can drill down to see much more about each package. For example, if you click on the java.util package, you can see the Class Summary — classes such as the ever-popular ArrayList.

Java Coffee Break: Your free guide to the world of java programming.

Java Interview Questions: Commonly asked interview questions about Java

Java.net: The Source for Java Technology Collaboration

Kode Java: Learn Java Programming by Examples

Notepad++: A text editor that is handy for coding Java and other languages, due to its syntax highlighting and other features.

JavaScript (see also: Ajax):

Tigra JavaScript calendar widget to choose day: There's also one called the Zapatec calendar, but looks like the web site is gone, so it might be harder to get support.

Dynamic dropdowns using Javascript: How to have the contents of a second dropdown list dynamically determined based on what the user chooses in the first dropdown. This is a site of Stephen Chapman, who is a Javascript expert and has a lot of helpful information whether in email subscriptions, on web sites, etc.

JavaScript: The computer technology documentation project.

JavaScript Kit: JavaScript, DHTML, CSS, and Ajax tutorials and reference.

JavaScript Mall: Free scripts, tutorials.

jQuery and other JavaScript libraries:

Dojo: "Dojo Toolkit is an open source modular JavaScript library (or more specifically JavaScript toolkit) designed to ease the rapid development of cross platform, JavaScript/Ajax based applications and web sites."

Ext JS: "Ext JS is a cross-browser JavaScript library for building rich internet applications."

jQuery: "jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript."

Learning jQuery: jQuery tips, techniques, tutorials

Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI): "The YUI Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX. YUI is available under a BSD license and is free for all uses. The YUI project includes the YUI Library and two build-time tools: YUI Compressor (minification) and YUI Doc (documentation engine for JavaScript code)." See also: yuilibrary.com

Mac:

Mac notes: some of my own notes regarding the Mac.

Apple

Highly advanced yet simple to use. That's what a Mac is all about.

Bare Bones Software: Bare Bones Software develops and publishes software for OS X, including the very popular BBEdit.

Mac Daily News: Apple and Mac news.

Macworld: Apple, Mac, iPod and iPhone News, Reviews, Help and Tips

OS X FAQ: Technical News and Support for Mac OS X

Microsoft Office (Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word):

Microsoft Office notes: Has a few tips.

Microsoft Office for the Mac: blog: http://blog.officeformac.com/

.NET and other Microsoft Solutions (see also: DotNetNuke):

ASPemail: ASP.NET email that is FREE, as long as you do the implementation and configuring yourself

ASP.NET Auto Email product

C# Corner

Academic Tutorials: Free Tutorials in HTML, XML, JavaScript, .NET and more.

ASP.net: The official Microsoft ASP.NET site. "ASP.NET is a web application framework developed and marketed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, web applications and web services. It was first released in January 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. ASP.NET is built on the Common Language Runtime (CLR), allowing programmers to write ASP.NET code using any supported .NET language."...Wikipedia

Microsoft Developer Network: Microsoft Development, MSDN Subscriptions, Resources and more

Microsoft Web Platform Installer: The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes it simple to download, install and keep up-to-date with the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer. In addition, install popular open source ASP.NET and PHP web apps with the Web PI.

Programmers Heaven: Ruby, .NET, C#, C++, PHP, Python, Java

Visual Studio Express Edition - Samples & Resources: Developer Kit, Vista P2P Toolkit, Windows Live Tools, Facebook Developers Kit, and more.

Web Matrix - weblogs.asp.net/: Web Matrix is a Microsoft tool that helps newcomers code simple pages in ASP.net

Windows Azure: "Windows Azure™ is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft® datacenters.

Windows Azure is a flexible platform that supports multiple languages and integrates with your existing on-premises environment. To build applications and services on Windows Azure, developers can use their existing Microsoft Visual Studio® expertise. In addition, Windows Azure supports popular standards and protocols including SOAP, REST, XML, and PHP."

PayPal

Photos:

Exchangeable image file format: Exchangeable image file format (EXIF) is a specification for the image file format used by digital cameras (including smartphones) and scanners. Some cameras store the GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken, which raises privacy concerns.

Exif.org: More info about exif data

Corbis

Dreamstime

Fotolia

Fotosearch: Allows you to search from many stock photo sites at once.

Getty Images

Google image search

iStockPhoto: stock images at relatively low prices

PublicDomainPictures.net: free photos

Shutterstock

sxriore.com: Product search, but has a lot of photos of non-products too. What's nice is that it has a lot less "false hits" than does Google image search.

Photoshop:

Adobe TV: A video of some of Photoshop CS5's top features.

Adobe Design Center: Galleries, articles and tips on motion and interactive design.

Digital Media Designer: Adobe suite, web interactive, etc.

Flaming Pear: Photoshop plug-ins.

Graphic Design USA magazine: News Magazine for Graphic Designers and other Creative Professionals.

Keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop

Photoshop Essentials: "Where anyone can learn Photoshop." - tutorials

Picnik: A website where you can edit photos instead of using a desktop application like Photoshop.

Portrait Professional: If you want to "Photoshop" a portrait to enhance beauty, this product will help you achieve that.

Fotoflexer: A website where you can edit photos instead of using a desktop application like Photoshop.

Lunapic: A website where you can edit photos instead of using a desktop application like Photoshop.

: A website where you can edit photos instead of using a desktop application like Photoshop.

Trevor Morris Photographics: Has information on creating scripts for Photoshop, to help you automate Photoshop tasks.

PHP / MySQL:

Aptana studio: "The leading IDE for web app development"

Coding Horror: A handy article describing different kinds of SQL JOIN statements, with Venn diagrams to make it easier to understand.

Develop PHP: Has courses in CSS, PHP, mySQL, ActionScript3, etc.

FreeWebmasterHelp.com — PHP / MySQL Tutorial: Learn how to use PHP to interact with the free MySQL to make fully dynamic and database-driven sites.

The future of MySQL in a post-Sun world: InfoWorld article, April 7, 2010

HotScripts.com: "The net's largest PHP, CGI, Perl, JavaScript and ASP script collection and resource."

HTMlite: Some nice tutorials for beginners in HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and more.

MySQL Gotchas: "This is not an 'anti-MySQL' list, although it does contain critical comments."

MySQL.com: "MySQL: The world's most popular open source database." This is the official MySQL site.

MySQL mailing lists and User Groups: Mailing lists are a good way to ask a question and get a quick answer from another user, also, to read others' questions and answers.

PHP & MySQL for Dummies: PHP & MySQL for Dummies (3rd Edition) — Companion site

PHP Builder: "The best resource for PHP tutorials, templates, PHP manuals, content management"

PHP Freaks: PHP help forums, resources and tutorials

PHP Help: Help for PHP programmers

PHP News: PHP newsgroups can be accessed here.

PHP Programming for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide: PHP Programming for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide (3rd Edition) — Companion site

PHP.net: This is the official PHP site.

Professional PHP Blog: One PHP programmer's interesting blog regarding PHP, software design and other topics.

W3schools: PHP Tutorials. W3schools is a popular site. "The largest web developer site on the net".

Web Programming CD Bookshelf, O'Reilly: Handy online books, including PHP, JavaScript, and more.

WeberDev: PHP and MySQL Code examples, articles, classes, etc.

Webucator — PHP Tutorial: Free PHP tutorial

Wikipedia - PHP: Wikipedia is a handy site for reading about most any topic.

Pixelmator:

Pixelmator: One of the up and coming alternatives to Photoshop. (Mac software)

Privacy:

Adobe Bridge Cache Must Die

RSS:

AddToAny: Share / Bookmark Button, Email Button, Subscribe Button Widgets

Feed Validator: Feed Validator for Atom and RSS

How to Create an RSS Feed: "How to Create an RSS Feed with Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer"

Ruby on Rails:

Aptana RadRails: they offer a Ruby on Rails development environment

Ruby on Rails: Ruby on Rails official site. "Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that's optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity. It let's you write beautiful code by favoring convention over configuration."

Ruby on Rails Intensive 1-Day Course — Part 1 — Hello World: This is an intensive one-day overview of the fundamental concepts of the Ruby on Rails Web programming framework, presented by the UC Berkeley RAD Lab.

Search Engines and Site Search:

About.com - Search engine examples: This page lets you try out various free or low cost internal site searches.

About.com - Searching your site: Searching Your Site - Adding Search Functionality to Your Web Site

AOL: A popular search engine.

Ask: A popular search engine.

Google: The most popular search engine.

Google Guide: An independent site that has helpful information about Google's capabilties, features, and services.

Fagan Finder: Search engines, reference, tools, and more.

MSN: A popular search engine.

Yahoo: A popular search engine.

Zoom search engine: Add search to a website, intranet or CD.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization):

Google Analytics Subdomain Tracking: The ROI Revolution blog

Is your Google Site Map Working

Google Site Map generator: Better let a tool like this create it, because hand-coding it often results in errors, for example, the "lastmod" tag format is very finicky.

Syntax for creating a Google Site Map

Google ranking factors and other webmaster help: This YouTube channel has Google's official take on the subject.

Google ranking factors: a big list of possible factors that Google cares about in ranking pages

Alexa: Free web traffic metrics, top sites lists, site demographics, hot urls, and more.

Google Analytics: Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you're more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

Google Analytics help forum

Google Website Optimizer: Put your website to the test. Test which layouts, headlines, images and more convert the most visitors into customers.

Google Zeitgeist: Includes Google Trends, which shows the relative popularity of search keywords, the fastest rising searches in popularity, etc.

Hitwise: Competitive intelligence, Search intelligence for online advertising and search marketing.

HubSpot: Internet Marketing Software by HubSpot - Inbound Online Marketing to get more website visitors and leads in search engines (SEO), blogs, social media.

Net Mechanic: Webmaster help, HTML validation, online Web site tools.

Search Engine Genie: Also has some helpful tools.

Search Engine Watch: Search Engine Marketing Tips & Search Engine News.

SEO Traffic Spider: "Affordable SEO Services"

Server-related:

Apache Software Foundation: Open source server software. "Since April 1996 Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the World Wide Web.", according to Wikipedia.

BitNami: BitNami makes installing wikis, blogs, CRM systems a simple and enjoyable process. Get your favorite open source apps in ready to run packages.

Search Engine Genie - Check Server Headers: Use this page to see if the server for the specified web site is Windows or Linux.

Sun Microsystems: Products include computer servers and workstations, storage systems, and a suite of software products including the Solaris Operating System, developer tools, Web infrastructure software, and identity management applications. Other technologies include the Java platform, MySQL and NFS. Sun is in the process of being acquired by Oracle.

Windows Server: Internet Information Services (IIS)

Sharepoint:

Sharepoint tools available within Visual Studio

Silverlight:

Microsoft Silverlight: The official Microsoft Silverlight site.

Social Media:

Facebook Developers: Facebook's portal for developers who wish to add functionality such as the "like" button to their site.

Niche Social Networking Sites: A large list of social networking sites, including reviews.

SinglePlatform.com

Top Twitter-related Sites: Lists 23 interesting Twitter-related sites

TwittEarth: "Live Twitts [tweets] all over the world"

Twitter: Why It's So Great and How To Effectively Use It: A good overview of the benefits of using Twitter, how to get the most from it, and it has some links for further reading.

Surveys:

Qualtrics: Online survey software, enterprise feedback management.

Survey Monkey: Tools for creating web surveys.

Templates, Portfolios, Do-It-Yourself Web Sites:

FolioSnap: FolioSnap: Customizable, Editable Portfolio Websites for Creative People - doesn't use Flash

Free CSS Templates: A collection of over 200 free CSS templates (no html tables are used).

Survey Monkey: Tools for creating web surveys.

Templae Monster: Flash, Joomla and other other templates

WIX: Free website builder

Text editors:

Notepad++: A popular and free text editor for Windows

Trends, Future-related:

Future Vigil: all things future

Survey Monkey: Tools for creating web surveys.

Usability (see also: Accessibility):

A List Apart: Explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.

Advanced Common Sense: The online home of Web usability consultant Steve Krug, author of best-selling usability book "Don't Make Me Think".

Steve Souders - High Performance Web Sites: Some very technical stuff relating to loading pages faster.

UseIt.com — usable information technology: Jakob Nielson on Usability and Web Design

User Interface Engineering: UIE — Usability Research, Training, and Events

Web Pages That Suck: Site by Vicent Flanders. Learn good web design by looking at bad web design.

Web Style Guide: Established design principles, covers all aspects of web design, from planning to production to maintenance. The guide also shows how these principles apply in web design projects whose primary concerns are information design, interface design, and efficient search and navigation.

Video:

ffmpegx: ffmpegX a DVD, SVCD, VCD, CVD, VOB, DivX, XviD, H.264, PSP, iPod, MP4, MOV, FLV encoder for Mac OSX

avidemux: "Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks."

Hunlock.com: Handy info on video embedding on web pages.

Avid: Perhaps the leading video editor used by professionals. Currently (March 2010) available in Windows only. Their flagship video editing solution, Media Composer, costs $25K, but Avid Xpress is now available for $1700, or $300 for students.

Creative Cow: Tutorials, forums etc relating to AfterEffects, video, etc.

Steve Garfield's Video Blog: "Featuring Trusted Citizen Journalism, The Carol and Steve Show - 'Real' reality TV, and Vlog Soup - a free video tour around the vlogosphere."

Sorenson Media: Platform for video content and encoding

Videomaker: "Learn Video Production, Digital Video Editing, Camcorder Reviews, Videography" (they sell a magazine)

Web 2.0:

ThemeTation: Free. Premium WordPress Themes and Resources

Web Design companies and related:

Business Pro

GetVerve.com: "We design and develop web sites, internet mareting programs, creative advertising, business collateral (brochures) logo identity and branding for small business." Mike Ciolino - founder and creative director

Needham Newton Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce

Web Design for ROI:

Web Design for ROI: This is a good book: "Your web site is a business — design it like one. Billions of dollars in spending decisions are influenced by web sites. So why aren't businesses laser-focused on designing their sites to maximize their Return on Investment (ROI)? Web design can do more than make a site look good — it can be a powerful strategic weapon that enhances financial returns and creates competitive advantage."

Make Millions and Make Change! by Mike Mann: Secrets to business and personal success

White Space Problems:

Table2CSS: It's main suggestion is to fool IE by setting line-height to zero for the problem element. Table-layout:fixed sometimes helps. If your div or table row is 900 pixels wide, and you have a 900 pixel wide image taking up the whole width, followed by some text with no "br" tag, that could push the width beyond 900 and break the format. So either shorten or delete the image, or add a br tag.

Windows / PC:

Tech Support Guy: "Free help for Windows XP, Vista, 98, and more!"

XML / XSLT:

Adobe Dreamweaver: Adobe Dreamweaver validates XML: from menu click File / Check Page / Validate as XML

Altova XMLSpy: "Altova XMLSpy 2009 is the industry's best selling XML editor with powerful support for working with all XML-based technologies."

Cooktop — XML editor: "Cooktop is an editor and development environment for XML, DTD, and XSLT documents. Cooktop is a Windows application. Best of all, it's free!"

DevGuru: Tutorials and reference material on XML, PHP, JavaScript and more.

Tizag.com XML Tutorial: XML Tutorial

w3schools: XML Tutorial

w3schools XML Validator: "To help you syntax-check your XML, we have created an XML validator." I tried this page in IE7 and it gives me a JavaScript error. It worked fine in Firefox 3.6.6

XML Visual Quickstart Guide: Companion site for XML Visual Quickstart Guide — 2nd edition

XMLmind XML editor: "XMLmind XML Editor allows to edit large, complex, modular, XML documents. It makes it easy mastering XML vocabularies such as DocBook or DITA."

Kroll Web Design Needham, Massachusetts 781.910.3694 davidarthurkroll@verizon.net