Resources
Our Tutorials | Design Ideas/Inspiration | Color/Graphics/Images | Coding | Writing
I have a constantly growing list of potentially helpful tools, tutorials, guides, and articles. Generally, I bookmark websites that I find helpful. I am sharing with you some of what I have found to be the best and most useful resources. I don't personally use all of these resources on a regular basis. But there are some that I almost always find myself turning to when writing for the web. I hope you'll find some that you really find helpful, and that you'll simply ignore those that aren't doing it for you. I'm always looking to add to the list, so send me good resources you find in your travels.
If you don't see something you want or need, check our Course Blog. There's a decent resources area there as well.
Resources are broken into categories. Select the category label listed below to jump down to resources in that category.
Our Tutorials
Basic HTML Tutorial - A Starting Point
15 Little Things to Know about HTML
Header Graphic - A Tutorial
Navigation Buttons - A Tutorial
Table Layout Tutorial
Storyboard Tutorial (of sorts)
Design Ideas & Inspiration
Cool Home Pages - a great place to see good designs of all stripes, divided into categories.
CSS Zen Garden - a
great place to see just how far one can take web design using CSS.
Web Pages That Suck - a great place to see bad designs of all stripes, including a daily sucker. (Quiz: What is MMN?)
Worst Websites - these guys aren't as dedicated to the mission as Web Pages That Suck, but you'll see some good, er, bad ones here.
The World's Worst Website - this horrid website is actually intentionally bad. It is a very effective demonstration of many of the major design mistakes you might make, so you won't make them. An intriguing little public service by a free web hosting company.
Color, Graphics, & Images
Web
Monkey's Color Codes - a great resource all around, but this link goes
to the Hex color chart.
WellStyled.com's
Color Scheme Generator - great if you want help on the color palette,
for your website or your livingroom.
Good-tutorials.com's
Photoshop Tutorials - I'd be surprised if a more comprehensive set of
Photoshop tuts exists. You NEED this!
Freefoto.com's Stock Photos
- with royalty-free photos on almost any subject, this is a good resource
when you need a photo.
Coding Goodies (guides, ready-made scripts, and validation)
W3Schools.com -
a great resource when you need help with some piece of HTML, CSS, or W3C
Standards. Somewhat dry, but easily navigable. Great little online tools
for trying out the code. I use this site all the time.
HTML Dog - another
good (X)HTML and CSS reference. Like W3Schools, but with a British accent
that makes it oddly less formal and more authoritarian in its treatment
of coding practice.
Hotscripts.com - if
you're looking to add a drop-down menu or a calendar of events to your website
and don't know javascript from Jabba the Hutt, visit HotScripts.com
DHTML Central - here's
another nice site for those interested in adding dynamic navigation to their
websites. Thomas Brattli does some really cool stuff with dynamic HTML!
W3C HTML Validator
- you should always use valid HTML markup, and this little tool tests your
code and shows you where you've got problems (if you have them).
Cynthia Says 508
Accessibility Engine - websites should be accessible to people with
disabilities. At a minimum, all images should have ALTERNATE Text descriptions.
Cynthia Says is a nice little program that gives you a report on your compliance
with federal Section 508 accessibility guidelines. Check it out!
Web Design From Scratch - this site is a kind of one-stop-shop for web development guidance. It's got some good stuff, though it doesn't specialize so you don't get as much depth in each area. If you feel like you're flying blind on some aspect of your web development, land here for 10 minutes and get your bearings.
Writing
A List Apart - this site is a like an online journal for web developers. It has lots of great resources on writing, on coding tricks, and even on design. It's funny that I slipped it into the writing category. If you click the Topics button, the topic with the fewest articles is the "Content" topic. Select "Content" and you get only about 15 articles on "Writing". But there is some good stuff in there. Check it out!
Useit.com - Jakob Nielsen's usability website. Nielsen wrote the book (ok, many of them) on usability, and this site is a treasure trove of goodies on productivity, usability, and writing. Though the site has little design sense, it is an important resource. The link here takes you to some important information about how people "read" webpages.
Quality Web Content - here is another resource like A List Apart. This one casts a wider net, and it is run by a company that does "training" for web writing. Hey, the articles are free, and there are some good tips in there. Check out the advice about composing e-mail.
Dartmouth Tips - Dartmouth has a brief guide to writing for the web. It covers some very important basics for the genre, and takes only a couple minutes to read. They have more to offer, but I think this little gem belongs in our writing category.
Pro Blogger's Blog Post Tips - struggling to get the blog genre? Check out this brief top ten list. While you're there, surf around a bit. Be careful. You might learn something.
APA Style Guide at Purdue's OWL - you need to cite sources using APA style. Get some quick, free help here. Scroll down for "in text citation" and "reference list" assistance.
Landmark's Son of Citation Machine - a more robust, complete, and accurate automated citation generator for APA, MLA, Chicago. Need a little help on your References page? This has to be about the coolest free thing going!
Daily Grammar - I'm not saying you need help with grammar, or suggesting that grammar lessons outside the context of actual writing really help. But this is an interesting little site that will send you a daily grammar lesson by email if you want it. Try it if you're not confident about your writing. What do you have to lose? A few minutes a day, I suppose.
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary & Thesaurus - here's a nice little tool all writers can use, myself included. I especially like the thesaurus feature because keeps me from having to walk across my office for the thesaurus on my bookcase.