In the first part of the checklist, we looked at creating high quality websites from a client perspective and the tools that helps us do that. In this part we look at the (free) tools that will help us build high quality on the server side of the website.
Categorie: links
21 Stimulating Color Palette Tools For Designers
I’m always excited about the possibilities of a new design. At the very beginning, I never really know where it will end up, and I love that feeling. The whole process of choosing colors and creating a color palette for a site is usually one of my first (and favorite) steps. Even if I have the chosen colors from the client, I still use a series of color scheme tools to put together the final palette. It’s one of my design inspiration triggers.
SitePoint – 21 Stimulating Color Palette Tools For Designers
50 Useful Design Tools For Beautiful Web Typography | CSS, Fonts | Smashing Magazine
Typography is elegant when it is attractive and communicates the designer’s ideas. When chosen wisely and used carefully, it can be very effective in supporting the overall design. Designers are always exploring different techniques with type: some use images or sIFR to produce very beautiful typography, while others prefer CSS alone to get the typography just right.
Today, we will look at 50 most useful typographic tools, techniques and resources for creating effective and expressive designs. We will also look at some hands-on typography tools that help designers and developers learn how to style their Web content, test it interactively and see the changes instantly. These tools are great for experimenting with different font types for your website.
Below we cover typographic tools, useful typographic references, font browsers, typographic CSS- and JavaScript-techniques, hyphenation techniques, sIFR tools and resources, grids and related tools, free and commercial fonts, a guide to Web typography, examples of great Web typography.
Smashing Magazine – 50 Useful Design Tools For Beautiful Web Typography
A Guide to Learning ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate 1
Now that the ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate is available for download, how do you learn how to start using it to build applications? Here’s a guide to resources for learning about ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate 1.
Stephen Walter on ASP.NET MVC – A Guide to Learning ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate 1
Design for Developers
A few years ago I had the opportunity to sit down with a designer possessed of a rare talent. We were both part of the same team and he was creating some UI elements that I was to wire up. As I sat there (in awe) watching him work I realized that much of his considerable skill was rooted in fundamentals not unlike the art of programming. Of course, there are design skills that are intuitive that can’t be "learned." But, that can also be said of the logical clarity found in a really elegant data model or a brilliant inheritance tree. I am certainly no designer, but I have observed the more creative among us for several years and have gained some insight into their world. In this article I’ll share some basic principles that can help raise your design acumen and improve the experience of your users.
50 Extremely Useful And Powerful CSS Tools
We love useful stuff. For months, we have been bookmarking interesting, useful and creative CSS tools and related resources. We have been contacting developers, encouraging them to improve their tools and release their handy little apps to the public. Last year we prepared and published some of them in a series of smashing posts about CSS. Now again is the time to give these tools the attention they deserve. Big thanks to all designers and developers who contributed to the design community over the last months and years. We — our community and the design community — truly appreciate your efforts.
Below, we present 50 extremely useful CSS tools, generators, templates and resources. We did not include “traditional” CSS tools, such as Firebug or the Web Developer extension, but tried to focus on rather unknown tools that are definitely worth a look. Some tools are new and some are old, but hopefully everybody will find a couple of new useful or at least inspiring tools.
We strongly encourage you to develop these tools further, build on the ideas presented here, release new tools for the public and let us know about them. We would love to feature your handy tool in our next review.
Smashing Magazine – 50 Extremely Useful And Powerful CSS Tools
Opera: Web Standards Curriculum
As the most standards-compliant Web browser, Opera is dedicated to promoting Web standards across the globe. Web standards make the Web available to anyone, on any device, anywhere in the world.
Opera has created the Web Standards Curriculum (WSC) in association with the Yahoo! Developer Network. This tutorial course takes students from complete beginner to having a solid grounding in standards-based Web design, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript development. The course is supported by top companies and organizations such as the Web Standards Project (WaSP) and Yahoo!.
Split into more than 50 focused articles, students can follow the curriculum from start to finish or simply read articles that interest them the most. Each article contains essential theory, practical examples, and exercise questions. The first 41 articles are now published, and roughly ten ones covering JavaScript basics will follow ASAP, to complete the course.
Why should you incorporate the Opera WSC into your curriculum? Web standards in a Web site promote efficiency, ease of maintenance, accessibility, device compatibility, and search optimization. The Opera WSC features the most up-to-date practices in Web standards. Best of all, the course is free, requiring no expensive textbooks.
.NET Developers’ Reference Card Roundup | Alvin Ashcraft’s Morning Dew
I thought I would share this list of reference cards / cheat sheets that I have compiled over the last year or so. If I am missing any good ones, please post them in the comments.
Alvin Ashcraft’s Morning Dew – .NET Developers’ Reference Card Roundup
Emma Alvarez Site: Most Useful 50 CSS Tips And Tools For Webmasters
The style of a website is defined by the CSS. CSS describes text fonts, if images must have borders or shadows, etc. Simply changing the CSS styles, you can change the appearance of your website completely, without changing the contents (text, images…).
For changing the CSS styles, there’s no need to be an expert webmaster, as there are tips and tools that can ease this task.
Here you are a list of the 50 most useful tips and tools for customizing your website easily with CSS.
Emma Alvarez Site – Most Useful 50 CSS Tips And Tools For Webmasters
Fonts
Regular Expressions cheat sheets
Regular Expressions (RegEx) give me a headache most of the time. That’s where cheat sheets like these com in handy:
http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/cheat-sheets/regular-expressions-cheat-sheet/
http://regexlib.com/CheatSheet.aspx
http://www.funduc.com/regexp.htm
http://krijnhoetmer.nl/stuff/regex/cheat-sheet/
http://opencompany.org/download/regex-cheatsheet.pdf
Design Patterns and Refactoring
Design patterns
In software engineering, a design pattern is a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern isn’t a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations.
Antipatterns
The AntiPattern may be the result of a manager or developer not knowing any better, not having sufficient knowledge or experience in solving a particular type of problem, or having applied a perfectly good pattern in the wrong context.
Refactoring
Refactoring is a disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its external behavior.