Blender is free, open source 3D software. It's known for a difficult learning curve, but if you're not sure if you'll use a paid product, might as well try Blender out first -- why waste money on software you don't end up using.
There's a Papervision 3D plugin for Flash, etc.
"Strata - The Power of 3D" (I purchased this software some years back -- that's why I include the link here.
The Accessibility Project: A community-driven effort to make web accessibility easier.
Jaws is currently (2011) the leading screen reader for Windows. They offer a free demo version of the software that can be used test a web site for ease of accessibility to blind people.
NVDA is a relatively new screen reader for Windows, it's free and is open source, gaining in popularity.
The official home page for web accessibility compliance. Ironically, neither the site nor the WAI document is easy to understand. Here's an example of criticism: To Hell with WCAG 2.
Has some notes on re-purposing PDFs for InDesign.
"Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MySQL, 4th Edition is a practical, hands-on guide to learning all the tools, principles, and techniques needed to build a fully functional database driven web site using PHP & MySQL. This book covers everything from installing PHP and MySQL on Windows, Linux, and Mac computers, through to building a live, web-based content management system."
This is a good book: "Your web site is a business — design it like one. Billions of dollars in spending decisions are influenced by web sites. So why aren't businesses laser-focused on designing their sites to maximize their Return on Investment (ROI)? Web design can do more than make a site look good — it can be a powerful strategic weapon that enhances financial returns and creates competitive advantage."
Includes webcasts on design, marketing, business. Good source for learning "what's new".
Where are the Mobile First Responsive Web Designs?
presentation on "Pragmatic Responsive Design"
This site automatically adapts itself to the type of computer or mobile device viewing it, and they share some tips on how to do so.
Jakob Nielsen, known by some as the father of usability in web design, discusses repurposing (reusing the same content on all platforms so that you don't need a separate mobile site) vs optimized design (having a separate mobile site designed especially for mobile users).
This is the site of Ethan Marcotte, who wrote a book on Responsive Web Design.
Ethan Marcotte's article on Responsive Web Design, that led to his book on the same subject.
A free and simple CMS, similar to CushyCMS.
A free and simple CMS.
Drupal.org is the official website of Drupal, an open source content management platform.
The dynamic portal engine and content management system.
"The friendly content management system." They market it to designers who don't want to have to hire a "web guy" (technical person).
Sitecore Web Content Management System (CMS) software helps you create and keep up-to-date dynamic, full featured websites of all types.
How to calibrate a monitor without a Spyder or Colormunki.
A color management solutions company, the Spyder is a competitor of Colormunki.
Though not an official chart, this is a handy Pantone / RGB / Hex color table.
Experts in color, they offer learning, products and services.
They sell the Colormunki monitor and printer calibrater. They also have tutorials and sell other products related to color management.
Use this to get the "official word" on what syntax errors, if any, your HMTL has.
Use this to get the "official word" on what syntax errors, if any, your CSS has.
You can run Windows XP and IE6 on the Mac.
Free windows software that simulates older IE browsers.
IE6 lacks PNG transparency support, it has margin/padding issues, it does not support CSS pseudo classes, etc.
"BrowserLab provides web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand. Adobe Dreamweaver® CS4 software users have access to additional functionality such as testing local and active content." Currently available for free, will charge customers starting in 2011.
Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test. It shows a screen shot of your web site in the specified browsers.
Market share for the most popular browsers.
Paid service provides you with live testing of various browsers.
If this software is trustworthy and works, it might be worth installing, but do so at your own risk.
"QuirksMode.org is the prime source for browser compatibility information on the Internet."
"Compatibility tables for features in HTML5, CSS3, SVG and other upcoming web technologies"
To use a special character like an m-dash with the CSS "before" pseudo selector, that is, to automatically place an m-dash before all paragraph tags or h1 tags for example, using CSS instead of HTML, you can't put the unicode symbol of &#8212; in the CSS rule -- you need to convert the 8212 to hexadecimal. Websites such as this allow you to easily convert decimal to hex.
As of 3/8/2010, site was under development, but it already has some stuff.
This is the official source for CSS documentation.
"Learn HTML, CSS and jQuery with Tutorials, Tips and Reference Articles"
Has a comprehensive list of features in CSS2 and CSS3.
CSS resources and tutorials for web designers and web developers.
"I'm Big John, and here I attempt to describe and demonstrate some of the bugs found in web browsers, and to show advanced CSS methods that work across all browsers."
How to Clear Floats without Structural Markup. "When a float is contained within a container box that has a visible border or background, that float does not automatically force the container's bottom edge down as the float is made taller."
This handy page automatically shows you the table and source code as you try different table layouts.
Building Standards Compliant Web Sites.
W3C Cascading Style Sheets home page.
"The community of inspiration dedicated to web design"
A bunch of color palettes, including people's votes on how much they like it, etc.
DotNetNuke templates (skins) and more.
My textbook kept mentioning the DNN-Blue skin that shipped with DNN, but I assume that DNN no longer ships with the skin, because I don't see it. So this website has the skin available for download presently (April 2011).
DNN skins, modules, forum, service that converts PSD to skin, etc.
A hosting provider that specializes in DotNetNuke support.
http://www.ralphwilliams.com/ blog relating to DotNetNuke, has article on how to use DNN and JQuery to make an "accordian"
DotNetNuke skins and information about skinning, including actual code.
"100% Pure CSS Menu (Visual / SEO / Fast / Full Featured!)"
A cross-browswer compatible free dropdown menu.
This is one of many pages in PayPal's developer section, which discus how to set up programming code to process payements, verify transactions, and in this case, generate a password that the buyer can use upon successful payment, to download whatever digital media they purchased, such as a PDF, video, software, etc. Also, click here for the Subscriptions and Recurring Payments manual.
It can play MP3s too. Has a lot of configuration options, but the vanilla version is pretty easy to set up.
SWFObject loads alternative content for iphones, etc.
Flash sometimes generates code containing the embed tag, but SWFObject does not use the embed tag. Instead, it uses nested Object tags. This article, though not related to SWFObject, describes this technique.
This site has good examples with working code.
flashbanneronline.com - what is this?
Colin Moock is a leading author of Flash books, his book "ActionScript for Flash MX, the Definitive Guide" is hard to top for thoroughness. This web site has updates, interviews, and samples.
Adobe's site where people can suggest improvement to Adobe products. This is a good place to get confirmation about shortcomings of products. For example: I see that I'm not the only person who wants Flash to make it possible to underline static text. Duh -- ya think?
A good Wikipedia history and description of ActionScript.
Many in-depth posts relating to Flash.
Has courses in CSS, PHP, mySQL, ActionScript3, etc.
Flash Develop is a free and source code editor.
"Everythings Air, Flash, Flex, Illustrator and Photoshop"
Flash Media Server. The author, William Sanders, is also author of my "Macromedia Flash MX Actionscript" book.
Documentation for Flash transitions such as Blinds, Fade, Zoom, etc. The classic transitions are the cut and the dissolve or fade out/in, so make sure not to overuse these transitions, or the movie could get a "corny" look to it.
"Adobe has partnered with leading content delivery network (CDN) providers to offer hosted services for delivering on-demand video for the Adobe Flash Player runtime across high-performance, reliable networks."
Buttons, components, animations, scripts, etc.
Flashloaded -- plug-ins such as "3DPlane"
An article discussing the downside of ActionScript3. This site has a lot more advanced articles.
Flash tutorials, including to integrate with PHP/MySQL. Also tutorials in 3DS Max, Illustrator, etc.
YouTube is a handy place to view videos people have posted for Flash training, etc.
High touch and special effects Flash site, plenty of bells and whistles to give it a Myst feel.
A web design site that has a few games on it.
"The web site for Flash ActionScript 3.0 game developers". There is also a book available.
"All your game development needs"
Quest to stop the brain drain -- Computer exercises are being sold as an aid to the aging mind. Are they any good?
Math, phonics and other online activities.
A free font that is similar to Adobe's Myriad Pro, that you can embed on your site as described here.
A paid service which allows you to include many non-web-safe fonts on your site. $25 or $50 per year depending on how many sites you have, the number of pageviews,etc.
net.tutsplus.com demo of Cufón, a tool that lets you use any font on a web site.
Cufón is a tool that lets you use any font on a web site (but make sure that the font license allows you to do this).
They discuss a wizard for setting read, write, and execute access for the specified directory. You can probably also edit the .htaccess and .htpassword files directly instead.
This one is less expensive.
"A resource for developers looking to put HTML5 to use today"
Shows how well your browser scores out of a possible score of 300 for HTML 5 compatiblity.
HTML 5: the markup language. W3C Editor’s Draft.
"HTML5 is the proposed next standard for HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0 and DOM Level 2 HTML. HTML5 is expected to be a game-changer in Web application development, making obsolete such plug-in-based rich Internet application (RIA) technologies as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX."
"Even although HTML 5 won’t be completely supported until 2022, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be widely adopted within the foreseeable future. So in the spirit of the upcoming change we decided to release a handy printable HTML 5 Cheat Sheet that lists all currently supported tags, their descriptions, their attributes and their support in HTML 4."
To display an em dash: —, use &#8212; or &mdash; in your HTML.
W3C XHTML2 Working Group Home Page.
An XHTML reference focused on best practices, plus articles and tutorials on CSS, XML, Web standards and accessibility.
"FindIcons.com - Search through 300,000 free icons in more than 2,000 icon packs"
Here's some InDesign notes including handy tips and keyboard shortcuts, courtesy of Kroll Web Design.
"Developed by page-layout guru David Blatner and 'DesignGeek' Anne-Marie Concepcion, InDesign Secrets is your one-stop shop for all things InDesign."
A source of time-saving scripts such as one to extract all text from an InDesign document.
I'm a Java developer who's passionate about lots of things. Oddly, actual technology is quite low down on that list.
Programming tutorials and source code examples: java, c, etc.
A comprehensive list of Java 2 Platform Packages, where you can drill down to see much more about each package. For example, if you click on the java.util package, you can see the Class Summary — classes such as the ever-popular ArrayList.
Your free guide to the world of java programming.
A text editor that is handy for coding Java and other languages, due to its syntax highlighting and other features.
There's also one called the Zapatec calendar, but looks like the web site is gone, so it might be harder to get support.
The computer technology documentation project.
some of my own notes regarding the Mac.
Highly advanced yet simple to use. That's what a Mac is all about.
Bare Bones Software develops and publishes software for OS X, including the very popular BBEdit.
Developer Kit, Vista P2P Toolkit, Windows Live Tools, Facebook Developers Kit, and more.
"Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft datacenters.
Windows Azure is a flexible platform that supports multiple languages and integrates with your existing on-premises environment. To build applications and services on Windows Azure, developers can use their existing Microsoft Visual Studio expertise. In addition, Windows Azure supports popular standards and protocols including SOAP, REST, XML, and PHP."
This photo gallery is free for personal sites, but for unlimited commercial license it's $179.
The photos at this site, it is claimed, can be used free of charge. However, I have no way of knowing with certainty that permission was obtained from each of the photographers, so I cannot be held liable if you use a photo from that site and it is later determined that the photo is not in the public domain.
Exchangeable image file format (EXIF) is a specification for the image file format used by digital cameras (including smartphones) and scanners. Some cameras store the GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken, which raises privacy concerns.
Stock images at low prices. Make sure to read the license agreement and other terms and conditions. For example, do they automatically sign you up for a monthly subscription? Find out before making your purchase.
Allows you to search from many stock photo sites at once.
I strongly recommend that you do NOT do business with Getty Images. Why? Because for example, let's say that you are working with a client on a website. They tell you that they purchased the photos from Getty Images, or perhaps you mistakely assume that they purchased the photos. So you do some HTML coding, you publish the site, and your name is the contact on the "WhoIs" database. You may find yourself in the highly stressful situation of receiving a demand letter from Getty Images, asking you to pay them approximately ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS per photo. This happens, and if you Google it, you'll see for yourself.
Stock images at relatively low prices, but their parent company is Getty Images (see above), so therefore I do NOT recommend doing business with iStockPhoto.
Product search, but has a lot of photos of non-products too. What's nice is that it has a lot less "false hits" than does Google image search.
Since Photoshop doesn't support the ICO format needed to create a browser tab ("favicon") image, here's a website that can help.
A video of some of Photoshop CS5's top features.
Galleries, articles and tips on motion and interactive design.
Adobe suite, web interactive, etc.
News Magazine for Graphic Designers and other Creative Professionals.
A website where you can edit photos instead of using a desktop application like Photoshop.
If you want to "Photoshop" a portrait to enhance beauty, this product will help you achieve that.
Has information on creating scripts for Photoshop, to help you automate Photoshop tasks.
"The leading IDE for web app development"
A handy article describing different kinds of SQL JOIN statements, with Venn diagrams to make it easier to understand.
Learn how to use PHP to interact with the free MySQL to make fully dynamic and database-driven sites.
"This is not an 'anti-MySQL' list, although it does contain critical comments."
"MySQL: The world's most popular open source database." This is the official MySQL site.
Mailing lists are a good way to ask a question and get a quick answer from another user, also, to read others' questions and answers.
"The best resource for PHP tutorials, templates, PHP manuals, content management"
PHP newsgroups can be accessed here.
This is the official PHP site.
One PHP programmer's interesting blog regarding PHP, software design and other topics.
PHP Tutorials. W3schools is a popular site. "The largest web developer site on the net".
PHP and MySQL Code examples, articles, classes, etc.
Wikipedia is a handy site for reading about most any topic.
A search engine that claims not to store IP addreses.
A search engine that claims not to track you like Google does.
A social networking site that claims to respect your privacy.
"How to Create an RSS Feed with Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer"
Ruby on Rails official site. "Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that's optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity. It let's you write beautiful code by favoring convention over configuration."
This is an intensive one-day overview of the fundamental concepts of the Ruby on Rails Web programming framework, presented by the UC Berkeley RAD Lab.
This page lets you try out various free or low cost internal site searches.
The most popular search engine.
An independent site that has helpful information about Google's capabilties, features, and services.
Search engines, reference, tools, and more.
Add search to a website, intranet or CD.
Better let a tool like this create it, because hand-coding it often results in errors, for example, the "lastmod" tag format is very finicky.
This YouTube channel has Google's official take on the subject.
Free web traffic metrics, top sites lists, site demographics, hot urls, and more.
Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you're more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.
Put your website to the test. Test which layouts, headlines, images and more convert the most visitors into customers.
Includes Google Trends, which shows the relative popularity of search keywords, the fastest rising searches in popularity, etc.
Competitive intelligence, Search intelligence for online advertising and search marketing.
Internet Marketing Software by HubSpot - Inbound Online Marketing to get more website visitors and leads in search engines (SEO), blogs, social media.
Webmaster help, HTML validation, online Web site tools.
Also has some helpful tools.
Search Engine Marketing Tips & Search Engine News.
Open source server software. "Since April 1996 Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the World Wide Web.", according to Wikipedia.
BitNami makes installing wikis, blogs, CRM systems a simple and enjoyable process. Get your favorite open source apps in ready to run packages.
Use this page to see if the server for the specified web site is Windows or Linux.
Products include computer servers and workstations, storage systems, and a suite of software products including the Solaris Operating System, developer tools, Web infrastructure software, and identity management applications. Other technologies include the Java platform, MySQL and NFS. Sun is in the process of being acquired by Oracle.
The official Microsoft Silverlight site.
Facebook's portal for developers who wish to add functionality such as the "like" button to their site.
A large list of social networking sites, including reviews.
"Live Twitts [tweets] all over the world"
A good overview of the benefits of using Twitter, how to get the most from it, and it has some links for further reading.
Online survey software, enterprise feedback management.
Tools for creating web surveys.
A collection of over 200 free CSS templates (no html tables are used).
Explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.
The online home of Web usability consultant Steve Krug, author of best-selling usability book "Don't Make Me Think".
Some very technical stuff relating to loading pages faster.
Site by Vicent Flanders. Learn good web design by looking at bad web design.
Established design principles, covers all aspects of web design, from planning to production to maintenance. The guide also shows how these principles apply in web design projects whose primary concerns are information design, interface design, and efficient search and navigation.
"Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks."
Handy info on video embedding on web pages.
Perhaps the leading video editor used by professionals. Currently (March 2010) available in Windows only. Their flagship video editing solution, Media Composer, costs $25K, but Avid Xpress is now available for $1700, or $300 for students.
Tutorials, forums etc relating to AfterEffects, video, etc.
"Featuring Trusted Citizen Journalism, The Carol and Steve Show - 'Real' reality TV, and Vlog Soup - a free video tour around the vlogosphere."
It's main suggestion is to fool IE by setting line-height to zero for the problem element. Table-layout:fixed sometimes helps. If your div or table row is 900 pixels wide, and you have a 900 pixel wide image taking up the whole width, followed by some text with no "br" tag, that could push the width beyond 900 and break the format. So either shorten or delete the image, or add a br tag.
"Free help for Windows XP, Vista, 98, and more!"
Liquid XML Studio provides the ability to author, edit, transform, debug, and validate XML documents.
"Altova XMLSpy 2009 is the industry's best selling XML editor with powerful support for working with all XML-based technologies."
"Cooktop is an editor and development environment for XML, DTD, and XSLT documents. Cooktop is a Windows application. Best of all, it's free!"
"XMLmind XML Editor allows to edit large, complex, modular, XML documents. It makes it easy mastering XML vocabularies such as DocBook or DITA."
"Sample course content and tutorials for Computer Science (CS) students and educators on current computing technologies and paradigms. Google Code University (GCU) does not require registration and materials are free to use."
Tutorials in many areas of web development. Click on a subject area, then click a topic for that subject from the left nav.
Each month an updated chart shows which programming languages are rising and falling in popularity. As of March 2010 the top 6 were Java, C, PHP, C++, (Visual) Basic, and C#.
This gentleman has a lot of blog post on advanced programming topics.
"Community for technology professionals. Topics include programming, web, software development, IT and technology. Ask, contribute and network with IT professionals."
"Web coding and development forums"
"Programming and human factors". A lively blog with many comments from readers.
A chatroom where people who are logged on will hopefully be able to help answer our questions, and where you can help others out.
A paid service, one of the leading resources on the web for solving technology problems.
Get answers about computers and programming.
Tutorials and online training. Costs money, but has a lot of subjects.
A moderated forum for posting questions and answers to programming questions. They have an infraction system for people who don't follow the rules, but as with all forums, it can potentially be a helpful place to get help with a problem. Make sure to sure search existing posts first, and read their FAQ and rules before posting a question.
New Articles, Fresh Thinking for Web Developers and Designers.
"A collaboratively edited question and answer site for programmers — regardless of platform or language."
"Intelligent work forums for computer professionals"
Tutorials in HTML, CSS, MySQL and more.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.
Free online web tutorials. "The largest web developer site on the net".
Web Development and Design Tutorials, Tips and Reviews.
Web Design Tips, Web Page Design Tutorials CSS HTML Tutorials Website Design Tips - Web Site Resources.