1) Alertbox: Current Issues in Web Usability
bi-weekly column that discusses web usability. I’ve been a fan of his
for almost as long as I’ve been professionally developing websites.
Most of his recommendations makes sense and is backed by real-world
studies and carefully-constructed surveys.
His columns cover topics such as the merits of breadcrumb navigation to Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes. A great link to provide people when you’re asked about optimal web page design is the column on Screen Resolution and Page Layout.
2) TheBestDesigns.com
days when your creative juices don’t seem to be flowing as it should,
it often helps to look at other people’s work to help inspire you. TheBestDesigns.com
is a gallery site to visit on such days. TBD has a few things that
distinguish them from other web design galleries — among them are:
choosing quality over quantity, showcasing
flash-based as well as CSS-based layouts, and tagging each design with
relevant keywords so that users can conveniently find similar designs.
They showcase truly innovative and skillfully-crafted designs and
they abstain from showcasing the “yet another recycled web 2.0 look”
websites. It might not be updated with hundreds of websites everyday,
but having a strict guideline on what gets displayed on TBD ensures
that you don’t have to filter out the noise to get to the signal.
3) A List Apart
inspired me to become a proponent of web-standards and semantic code.
Starting out, most of us probably didn’t care about capitalized,
unclosed html tags (… that won’t validate with a strict doctype) or understood the real value of accessibility in web pages.
One of the major influences in my views on web-standards, best
practices, accessibility, and usability can be attributed to a
significant part… to A List Apart. ALA articles are high-quality and
they only come out with two articles a month, but they are worth the
wait. Articles are written by some of the leading experts in the
industry, and their staff include well-renowned pro’s such as Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman.
4) Getting Real by 37 Signals
is a book that’s available online, written by 37 Signals. It’s about
creating web-based applications in a productive and successful way. The
book covers topics ranging from philosophies that help push out quality
products to views on hiring the right people to do the job.
Favorite topics covered in the book are: asking users what they don’t want and dealing with problems only when there is one.
5) Digg / Technology
is a site where people submit links and vote which content is worthy to
be read by its users and which articles don’t deserve the light of day.
A large part of my ability to keep up with emerging technologies,
techniques, and new standards is because of frequenting Digg’s
Technology section. The community is picky of what is good news and bad
news, so it allows you to skip the junk and get to the good stuff right
away.
Other social-bookmarking sites that will help you stay sharp and current, and that should be mentioned here are: StumbleUpon , del.iciou.us, reddit, and popurls.
6) Web Design from Scratch
It caters primarily to web builders just starting out, but it’s always
good to “go back to the basics” and get a refresher on things that
you’ve taken for granted.
The section on Copy Writing
taught me that web developers shouldn’t be limited to the coding part
or the design part of the project; writing effective copy comes
naturally with the experience we’ve had with developing websites that
succeed and fail.
7) mootools
is a lightweight framework that simplifies the way you write JavaScript
and provides you with powerful AJAX classes, effects, and fuctions.
It’s helped with the development of complex web pages in a rapid and elegant way.
There are other JavaScript frameworks similar to mootools, and you
can’t go wrong with any of the popular ones, but a developer’s got to
choose his or her favorite — and for me, mootools is the one I’ve come
to love and use.
8) ReadWriteWeb
is a long-standing (five years and counting) weblog about web
technology news. It caters to web professionals that have a need for
knowing what’s up right now. It was founded by Richard MacManus, who also co-founded the Web 2.0 Workgroup - a network of blogs that cover the Web 2.0 generation.
It’s a website that allows you to keep your knowledge up-to-date,
and is a source I consistently cite when talking about current web
technologies with colleagues and fellow developers.
9) Zend Developer Zone
is a website written by some of the PHP core developers and they
provide news, articles, tutorials and other stuff related to PHP. If
you’re looking for a reliable source of information about PHP, there’s
no other place to look than the Zend Developer Zone.
Worth taking a look at is the five-part article series about the xdebug extension (here’s the link to Part One: Introducing xdebug), which is, as author Cal Evans puts it, “a free and open source swiss army knife tool for PHP developers”.
10) css Zen Garden
is an eye-opener for newer CSS developers. css Zen Garden explores the
power of external style sheets by showcasing a variety of designs
contributed by developers throughout the industry.
If you haven’t seen the website before, the concept is: using the same html mark-up, CSS developers submit external stylesheets and images to style the web page into beautifully-looking designs.
It’s a great place to inspire you to push your limits and knowledge regarding CSS.
11) CSSplay: Experiments with Cascading Style Sheets
wonderful website about CSS. It features demos of CSS-based solutions
such as image galleries, drop shadows, image maps, etc.
The website is authored by a married couple, Stuart (Stu) and Fran
Nicholls, who have been in the computer industry since the 1980’s. Most
of the demos are (or were) cutting edge; the examples are practical and
easy to follow and the website’s easy to navigate.
It’s a commendable resource to check out when you want to gather information about CSS-based solutions.
12) W3Schools Online Web Tutorials
is an amazing center of knowledge for all things web development,
covering topics such as JavaScript, HTML, PHP, SQL, and more. At the
bottom of their logo, they quote, “The best things in life are free” -
this is indeed true in their case.
The website is a great starting point towards learning about web
development and design topics and an effective online reference for
those who know about the subject but need a quick refresher.
13) Books24×7.com - ITPro Collection
features digitalized versions of the top IT books. It’s a fee-based
website, but if you’re able to afford it (or can convince the boss to
get you a subscription), it’s the best way to access quality literature
through the convenience of your computer.
It will also allow you to select the books worthy of buying and adding to your collection.
14) Drupal
All projects had bloated PHP and CSS, poor HTML mark-up (default
layouts used tables, little care for semantic mark-up, amongst a few
things) and were designed with little usability/accessibility in mind.
Drupal’s code — in contrast — was clean, modular (but not excessively so), had a robust API so that you don’t have to tinker with the core files, and most importantly,
the community’s willingness to help out, share information, contribute,
and commitment to quality is my vision of the “Utopian” open-source
community. Since then, projects like Wordpress, Magento, and Joomla!
re-assures us that effective quality solutions don’t come from shelling
out the cash, but rather promoting and contributing as much as you can
to these remarkable communities.
15) Webmonkey: The Web Developer’s Resource
older/more experienced developers that the site is still up and
running. It was, during their time, a place to visit and learn about
web development, covering topics such as web programming, E-business,
and page design. It also has a “Quick Reference” section on the sidebar.
I remember being amazed at how their “folder navigation” on the
sidebar worked — ever since then, the functionality can now be achieved
quite easily using the DOM and/or a JavaScript framework like mootools.
16) Meyerweb.com: Eric’s Writing
is a collection of Eric Meyer’s writings, an accomplished author on the
topic of CSS. Not only is he a CSS expert, but also an advocate of
semantic code. His work was, and is, truly revolutionary. I attribute
my appreciation and understanding of “resetting CSS” to him.
Eric Meyer is one of the key influential people that I truly find to
be talented and knowledgeable in the field of web building. His current
and previous works are worth the time to read.
17) 456 Berea Street
Some pages worth bookmarking are Efficient CSS with shorthand properties (which can be used as a reference to writing “shorthand” CSS - reducing file size and page length) The CSS and XHTML Lab (which features some demonstrations as well as a list of works translated into other languages) and Accessibility myths and misconceptions (a helpful resource to link to when asked about the value of accessibility in web pages).
18) The Web Standards Project
that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the
accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web”.
Whether it’s suggesting correct mark-up or rallying web browser developers to render styles/html a certain way, The Web Standards Project
aims to help web developers reduce the amount of time committed to
troubleshooting browser-display issues. The website features articles,
tutorials, and the Acid3 Browser Test (visual rendering tests of your browser).
19) Fiftyfoureleven.com
Aside from the Web Development Resources sidebar, there’s also a list of the author’s most recent Web Development resources that’s worth a bookmark.
20) SitePoint
is one of the older websites that has survived the constantly-changing
tastes of web developers and designers. A co-founder of the website,
Matt Mickiewicz, first had a website called Webmaster-Resources.com Community Forums launched in 1999.
SitePoint had a bit of a lull for a period of time in terms of
popularity; the site’s prominence was replaced by newer, more
“forward-thinking” web development sites.
The site has found its “second wind” with it’s young and modern web
developer audience with an updated design/user interface, frequent
updates, and a new and notable” CSS Reference” section.
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