Web Development Rhetoric RHE 309K • Fall 2008

Doctypes

See also the DocTypes page.

Tools

Web Browsers

• Firefox
• Internet Explorer
• Opera
• Safari

Graphics Editors

• Paint.net (Windows)
• Seashore (Mac)

File Transfer Clients

• FileZilla
• Setting Up FileZilla

Text editors

• For Windows
  • Notepad2
  • SciTE (also available for Linux)
  • My own customized version of SciTE.
• For Mac
  • Smultron
  • Bluefish (also available for Linux)

Browser Extensions for Firefox

• Web Developer Toolbar, with all kinds of tools for fiddling with pages after they're loaded.
• Firebug (advanced; for debugging JavaScript and lots of other things).
• HTML Validator which checks the validity of your code and offers detailed error messages when you view the source code.
• ScreenGrab, a tool for taking screenshots of complete web pages, including the parts off screen.
• ColorZilla, adds an "eyedropper" tool for picking up colors from a web page.

Utilities

• W3C HTML Validator
• W3C CSS Validator
• Color Filter (simulates how your site appears to people with the three most common forms of color-blindness).
• Cynthia Says, a tool for checking accessibility of your web page. Now slightly dated, and lots of things need manual checking anyway (e.g., color contrast and so on).
• Bradicon favicon generator (requires Flash)

Articles

Statistics and Audience

• Mid-2007 Broadband adoption report
• Browser and OS market share from hitslink.com, updated monthly.

Usability Articles

• Jakob Nielsen on usability
  • Eyetracking studies
  • Durability of Usability Guidelines
  • List of 10 Usability Heuristics
  • Guidelines for Visualizing Links (May 10, 2004)
  • Change the Color of Visited Links (May 3, 2004)
  • Reduce Redundancy: Decrease Duplicated Design Decisions (June 9, 2002)
  • Deep Linking is Good Linking (March 3, 2002)
  • Site Map Usability (January 6, 2002)
  • First Rule of Usability? Don't Listen to Users (August 5, 2001)
  • Is navigation useful? (January 9, 2000)
• Reading Design by Dean Allen
• Typography Matters by Erin Kissane
• Usability Experts are from Mars, Graphic Designers are from Venus by Curt Cloninger
• Sample Usability Test Scripts, Questionnaires, Checklists, and Forms

Design Articles

• Where / What Vision Systems and Visual Design
• Preparing for Widescreen
• Current Design Trends from WebDesignFromScratch.com.
• WebCreme.com's list of beautiful sites (for inspiration)
• Type Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry

Accessibility Articles

• Photosensitive Epilepsy
• Making Prettier Accessible Forms by Nick Rigby
• The Accessibility Institute
• UT Accessibility Guidelines
• UT Designing Accessible Web Sites Page
• The Art of Alt. Lessons on creating accessible web sites.
• Evaluation, Repair, and Transformation Tools for Web Content Accessibility
• A List Apart on Accessibility
• Making Text Legible: Designing for People with Partial Sight by Aries Arditi
• Effective Color Contrast: Designing for People with Partial Sight and Color Deficiencies by Aries Arditi
• WebAIM
• IBM Accessibility Center
• Section 508
• The Access Board
• Web Accessibility Iniative

HTML Articles

• Martian Headsets by Joel Spolsky (An excellent description what standards are for, how they work, and why they don't always work)
• Nine Ways to Misunderstand Standards
• Getting Started with HTML and More Advanced Features by Dave Raggett (rather dated, but still useable.)
• Colors in HTML by UT ITS
• Special Characters in HTML by UT ITS

CSS Articles

• What are Web Standards and Why Should I Use Them? by Molly E. Holzschlag and Shirley E. Kaiser
• Why Browsrs Haven't Standardized by Eric Meyer
• A Beginner's Guide to CSS by Stuart Robertson
• CSS1 References with sidebar by W3C (with Eric Meyer)
• What Makes CSS so Great by Eric Meyer
• CSS Bugs in IE5 for Mac by CodeBitch
• Tricking Broswers and Hiding Styles by Eric Meyer
• CSS Tabs with Submenus by the Kalsey Group
• Rounded Tab Corners by Eric Meyer
• Containing Floats by Eric Meyer
• CSS Image Rollovers by Stuart Robertson
• The Sliding Doors technique, Part 1 and Part 2 by Douglas Bowman.
• Faux Columns by Dan Cederholm
• The One True Layout, and bugs in the One True Layout
• Seeking the Holy Grail Layout by Matthew Levine
• Multi-Column Layouts Climb Out of the Box by Alan Pearce
• Multiple Columns in CSS 3Cédric Savarese (prospective; browser support currently non-existent)
• CSS for Print by Eric Meyer
• Improving Print by Aaron Gustafson (uses JavaScript to insert footnote equivalents when document is printed).
• Hybrid CSS Dropdowns by Eric Shepherd
• Onion Skinned Drop Shadows by Brian Williams
• CSS Sprites: Image Slicing's Kiss of Death by Dave Shea. Highly recommended.
• Fix your site with the right DOCTYPE by Jeffrey Zeldman
• PNG tutorial by me
• A List Apart Web Development Primer with lots of useful links for new designers.

Web Design/Development Blogs and Magazines

• Jeffrey Zeldman
• Eric Meyer
• SimpleBits.com
• MezzoBlue
• Andy Budd
• Style Gala
• UseIt.com (Jakob Nielsen)
• A List Apart (actually a magazine, not a blog - and it's got an ISSN to prove it.
• Digital-Web.com (a magazine, but no ISSN).
• CSS3.info, a blog devoted to CSS 3
• Roger Johansson

References

• Holy CSS, Zeldman! A list of CSS related links.
• (X)HTML Character Entity Reference
• Google Cheat Sheet