Resources for Web Development Students @ Robin’s Blog

Since we just discussed using frameworks in class I thought Frameworks for Designers was a good article for you to review. It discusses the benefits of developing a framework and goes into some detail on how to develop your own.

Vitamin, a site for designers and developers, has a great feature article on Creating Sexy Style Sheets which outlines 10 tips for writing well structured and easy to understand style sheets.
While at Vitamin, take a look at the article Make Your Site Mobile Friendly which offers great tips for writing and testing CSS rules for handheld devices.

Tom asked about making the Google logo. Here is a tutorial for making the plain Google logo using bevel and emboss techniques:
Your Own Google Logo from LOGOogle
You can view all of the different Google Doodles at Google’s Web site.
Happy holidays to all! See you in Antioch in 2007!!!!

Gradients are used a lot on Web sites to create the illusion of 3D or depth. Here are some tutorials for creating gradients in both Photoshop.
A Gradient Tutorial from the 9rules.com Blog – Simple method for creating a realistic looking gradient. Note: If you print this article, please print only pages 1-5 since the rest of the [...]

Today we will work on creating simple vertical, horizontal, and diagonal striped background images in Photoshop. These background images can be used as backgrounds for pages, paragraphs, headings, and other elements.
Creating horizontal stripes
In Photoshop click File > New
Set the Width of the image to 1 pixel
Set the Height of the image to 4 pixels (the height controls the [...]

Grid systems allow a Web developer to layout pages in an organized and easy to read manner. There are many articles on the Web about using grid systems and also many tools for designing with grids. I thought I would outline some of the articles and tools that you might find useful:
A good place to start learning about grid [...]

PSPad Editor is a feature rich text editor that can be used to write XHTML and it will install and run on a Flash drive. PSPad integrates well with TopStyle Lite CSS editor (download link) which can also be installed to a Flash drive.
If you’re looking for additional portable applications try The Portable Freeware Collection or Pendriveapps.com. [...]

Don’t: Overlook the Power of the Web to Sell Yourself
There are numerous options available on the Internet for promoting yourself to employers. Don’t overlook blogs and your own resume web site as unique ways to reach out to potential employers.
“Every job seeker should have a blog and a keyword-rich resume on their own web site,” says Montford. “You can [...]

While newspapers and networking still play an important role in looking for work, the Internet is now a vital component in any job search.
According to a Gad Levanon, economist at the Conference Board, “The Internet has become the most popular method of job searching.” A recent survey by the Conference Board, the world’s leading business membership and research organization, [...]

There is an interesting article at Yahoo Hot Jobs on why now is the prime time to step up your job search.
According to conventional wisdom, there’s no worse time to search for a job than when the year is winding down. But sometimes conventional wisdom isn’t entirely accurate.
The truth is that the end of the year may be the [...]