Web Developer and Design Reference Book
Last modified: November 23rd, 2007
Daily Reading
- Computer Arts
- Smashing Magazine
- A List Apart
- Fiftyfoureleven.com
- Vitamin
- Sitepoint
- 456 Berea Street
- Lifehacker
- Freelance Switch
Web Design Explained
- Interaction Design Pattern Library
- 35 Designers x 5 Questions
- LukeW: Interface Design Articles & Papers - Also read this fantastic document titled “Best Practices for Web Form Design” (112 pages, 3.9 MB, PDF).
- Web Style Guide, 2nd edition
- Web Design from Scratch
- Information Architecture Deliverables and Diagrams - Examples of Wireframes, Site Maps, Story boards, Use Cases, Paper Prototypes
- Wireframes explained
- Denim - Sketching tool for designing user interfaces
CSS
- No More Tables: CSS Layout Techniques - Screencast, 1 hour 15 min.
- 70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding - Title says it all
- Position Is Everything - Explains and gives solution to CSS bugs in browsers, especially Internet Explorer.
Photoshop
- 60 Advanced Photoshop Tutorials
- PhotoshopSupport.com - Photoshop news & tutorials
- Photoshop User TV - Watch each week as “The Photoshop Guys” (Dave Cross, Matt Kloskowski, and Scott Kelby) share the hottest Adobe Photoshop tutorials, the latest insider tricks, and the coolest timesaving, job-saving shortcuts to make your time in Photoshop more productive, more efficient, and more fun.
Colors
- ColorJack - Highly configurable color tool. You can even export the colors to a custom color palette file for Photoshop or Illustrator.
- Kuler (Adobe Labs) - Explore, create and share color themes.
- Colortoy - Quickly find matching colors
- Infohound Color Schemer - Find matching colors.
JavaScript
- JSON Editor - Gives a good overview of a JSON structure and easily make changes. An offline version is also available of JSON Editor.
- XML to JSON converter - Also take a look at Converting between XML and JSON
- jQuery A very small and versatile JavaScript library which makes coding very easy and quick. Check also Learning jQuery [book and ebook], 15 Days of jQuery and Visual jQuery (visual documentation). Use the jQuery forum if you have any questions.
- JavaScript and Regular Expressions
- Prototype Window Class - This javascript class allows you to add window(s) in a HTML page.
- Lightbox JS v2.0 - Image viewer. Also look at ThickBox 3 wich is built on jQuery.
- Unobtrusive JavaScript - Separate JavaScript from content and presentaton
Web Tools & Services
- Montastic: free website monitoring - You can monitor a maximum of 100 servers.
- Browsershots - Test your web design in different browsers, operating systems, screen sizes, color depth and the option to enable/disable java, javascript and flash.
- MediaWiki - Watch this screencast “Explaining Wikis“. A Wiki has a lot of uses. Here is a list and here a more detailed list.
- Convert characters to Unicode
- Media Convert - Free online file conversion of video, sound, images, ringtones, vector documents, text documents, presentation and data. The format support is huge. For example, convert a WMV to FLV, a PDF to SWF and so on. Maximum file size is 150 Mb. Zamzar is another online file conversion service.
- Widgetbox - Directory of web widgets
- Add This! Social Bookmark and Feed Button - Saves the current page into your favorite bookmarking service. Also includes statistics.
- Travlang’s Translating Dictionaries - Translate a word in more than 30 languages
- What Search Engine Spiders See
- HTML Email Validator - Checks for compatibility with HTML email
- HTML Tidy
- MegaUpload - Upload files up to 500 MB. No registration required. At the homepage you can browse for your file, enter a description, activate option “i accept” and press “send”. After 21 days your file will be deleted. If you register for free, then your file stays for 90 days online. Download speeds are fast.
- DivShare - Upload files up to 200MB. No registration required.
- MediaMax - 25 GBs of free online storage. Free registration required.
Online File Storage
eCommerce
- Magento - Open source ecommerce platform with complete design flexibility, modular architecture, and rich functionality.
- eCommerce Optimization - Offers a variety of helpful eBusiness resources including free articles, step-by-step guides, eCommerce industry news, paid consulting services and other useful tips and tricks to help online merchants improve store visibility and sales.
Web Analytics
- Tapefailure - Records what your users are doing on your website as a movie file for 7 days. ClickTale also offers a free account with a maximum of 400 recordings per month.
- Crazy Egg - Get a clear picture of where your visitors are clicking.
- Google Analytics
- Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 1: Link Tagging
- Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 2: The EpikOne Link Tagging Tool
- Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 3: Reports and Analysis
PHP
- Practical PHP Programming - PHP Book (also checkout scribd)
Web Security
- OWASP Projects - Guides to building and testing secure web applications.
- Threat Classification - Web Application Security Consortium - Identify all known classes of attack.
- Chris Shiflett - PHP and web application security
- PHP Security Consortium: PHP Security Guide
- Computer Security: The Complete Story - Huge list of references and articles
Hacking
- Hacking challenges - A list of sites where you can learn and practice hacking
- Hack This Site! - A free, safe and legal training ground for hackers to test and expand their hacking skills
- What The Hack Videos - View all the What The Hack videos from july 2005.
- Google Hacking Database
Ebooks
- eBookSpyder - Download and search ebooks instantly
- Scribd - View, download and search ebooks online
Regular Expressions
- Rex V: an AJAX Regular Expression eValuator
- The RegEx Coach - Interactive regular expression tester
- Regular-Expressions.info - Information, tutorials and examples.
- Regular Expressions Library - Search and test regular expression patterns.
- Learning to use Regular Expressions - Tutorial by examples.
(Open Source) CMS
Forums
- DMN Forums - An incredible big designers forum for Graphic/Design, Animation, Digital Video, Post Production, Platforms/OS and a lot more
- Webdeveloper.com
- Dev Articles Forum
- Developer Fusion Community Forums
- Web Design Forum
- Codingforums.com
Anonymity & Privacy
- Will Self-Destruct - Create secure anonymous emails will self destruct in a period of time that you can edit. You can set it to be viewed one time only for a number of seconds, a number of times or a number of days. The email message will contain a link to the secured message online.
- Hide My Ass! - An anonymous proxy which hides your IP address and bypasses web filters.
Anonymity & Privacy > Disposable email addresses
Disposable email addresses can be used to spare your real email address from spammers, when signing up for newsletters, forums and when you want to keep your identity private.
- TempInbox - Pick any @tempinbox.com address you would like to use. For example: test@tempinbox.com. You can also add RSS feeds from a custom email address you choose. View email for example from test@testinbox.com and click on the xml file at the top. Copy the url, go in Firefox to Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks > File > New Live Bookmark and paste the url in the field “feed location”. Now you can track all the messages that will be send to test@tempinbox.com.
- shortMail.net - Pick any @shortmail.net address you would like to use. For example: test@shortmail.net. Forwarding mail is also possible. You can for example forward mail from test@shortmail.net to your own specified email address and tell it when to expire.
- Wuzupmail - Pick any @wuzup.net address you would like to use. For example: test@wuzup.net
Software > Security /Anti-virus / Anti-spyware / Anti-rootkit
- Eicar - The Anti-Virus or Anti-Malware Test File
- AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition - Free anti-virus scanner
- AVG Anti-Spyware Free Edition - Free anti-spyware scanner
- AVG Anti-Rootkit Free - Free anti-rootkit scanner
- McAfee Rootkit Detective - Free standalone anti-rootkit scanner
- McAfee VirusScan Plus – Special edition from AOL - Free anti-virus scanner, spyware protection and firewall from McAfee. Register a free AOL email address to download the software.
- Secunia Personal Software Inspector - Scans for installed software and checks if they’re up to date. You can instantly download upgrades/patches if you’re using an old version.
Software > General
- PC Decrapifier - Removes all the crap that comes by installed by default on a new computer or laptop.
- JW MP3 Player - Supports a wide range of flashvars (settings) for tweaking both behavior and appearance and an extensive, documented javascript/actionscript API.
- Unlocker - Unlocker deletes files/directories that can’t be deleted because they’re locked.
- CrossLoop - Simple secure screen sharing.
- Sandboxie - Applications which are run and installed in Sandboxie are in a secured environment. Nothing is installed or copied to your hard drive. Great for testing and installing unknown applications or for secure browsing.
- SourceForge - The world’s largest open source software development website
- PC Repair System (USB) - File recovery, anti-virus, anti-spyware, system info & system maintenance
- Easy Flash Drive Data Recovery with PhotoRec
- PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives
- FileZilla - Fast and reliable FTP client
- uTorrent - Fast and small bitTorrent client (170 kB)
- Standalone versions of Internet Explorer
- 7-Zip - The alternative for WinZip and WinRAR.
- Putty - A client for SSH, Telnet and Rlogin protocols.
- PDFCreator - Create PDFs from any application
- InfraRecorder - A versatile open source burner application.
- Jeroen Wijering’ Flash Video Player - Embed Flash video in your website with this comprehensive player
- Zoomifyer EZ - Makes high-quality images zoom-and-pan for fast, interactive viewing
- AirTight SimpleViewer - Customizable Flash gallery. No programming or database is required.
- XnView - Very customizable, quick and user friendly image viewer. Choose the minimal version for speed benefits. Opens over 300 file formats. A cool feature is the possibility to use Adobe Plugins. To view PDF, install AFPL Ghostscript.
- Aptana - Cross-platform, JavaScript-focused development environment for building Ajax applications
- InType - A fast extensible and customizable code editor
- PSPad - Another editor
- Daemon Tools - Mounts images as virtual drives (CD/DVD).
- VMPlayer - Run any virtual machine on a Windows or Linux PC
- Cheat Sheet Round-Up - The most comprehensive list of cheat sheets that every web designer and developer needs.
- Google Guide - Interactive online Google tutorial and referencese for Novices and Experts.
- Free Online Graph Paper/Grid Paper PDFs - Generate paper as a PDF with a large variety of configurations: story boards, dots, squares, lines and more.