Resources for Web Development Students @ Robin’s Blog

SitePoint.com is offering a series of courses on JavaScript, CSS, and PHP. The courses are two to three weeks in duration and use video tutorials, written tutorials, chat, and message forums to deliver the content. The JavaScript Live class just ended, but you can still take the course for $9.95 at your own pace. David H. completed the JavaScript course [...]

A common question in class is “how do I overlap images and still see the background?” The answer, you use some type of transparent image. Traditionally we used a transparent GIF, but the quality isn’t so great. PNG has really become the preferred image format for transparency. PNG 8 gives you a transparent image, but you may see some white [...]

This is a roundup of wonderful articles that deal with coding Web pages. Most are tips on HTML & CSS, but there are also a few JavaScript and PHP resources. Remember, these are articles I “tweet” on Twitter. Click the @username to see the posts of some of the people who I respect and love to “follow” on Twitter, the [...]

Web Design Schools Guide has compiled a list of 100 Terrific Web Design Cheat Sheets that Will Save you Time, Money and Mistakes. Most web designers know that cheat sheets are incredibly useful. You can use them for quick reference, easy learning, and more. In this list, we’ve compiled an incredible collection of the 100 best and most useful cheat [...]

Due to negative student feedback, I have selected a new book for the JavaScript unit. We will now use JavaScript The Missing Manual, which includes more hands-on tutorials and was written by David Sawyer McFarland, the author of CSS The Missing Manual. Hopefully, students will be pleased with the new JavaScript unit – the explanations seem clearer and there are [...]

Firebug is a Firefox extension that helps to troubleshoot, XHTML, CSS, and other coding issues you may encounter while developing Web sites. The Firebug extension is installed on all workstations and can be accessed by clicking Tools > Firebug > Open Firebug from the Firefox menu.  Firebug Official Web Site Introduction to Firebug Build Better Pages With Firebug Firebug Tutorial: [...]

Cheat sheet is a reference tool that provides simple, brief instructions for accomplishing a specific task. We have collated a set of best cheat sheets for web developers. It includes some of the popular programming language, e.g. jQuery, Mootools, Prototype, PHP, MySQL and etc. Check out the cheat sheets at Web Appers

There is a terrific list of freeware software for Web designers over at TechnoTarget. There are descriptions and screen captures of each application. Smashing Magazine has links to 100 Excellent WordPress Free Themes including a screen capture for each theme. You should definitely bookmark this site since we discussed WordPress yesterday and will work with it more over the next [...]

When I met with our advisory committee earlier in the month we discussed teaching JavaScript in the web development program. Unfortunately, our course has a limited duration and we just can’t teach it all (don’t I wish). Since our course is designed to teach students entry-level web development skills I feel that we cannot delve too deeply into JavaScript. I [...]

Open Source Web Design is a community of designers and site owners sharing free web design templates as well as web design information. Designing a Rainbow – Sexy Hot Colors – Lorelle on WordPress has a wonderful roundup of color resources on her blog today. Yummy! graphicPUSH offers a Blog Icon Pack, a set of free icons for your blog [...]