1. There is a terrific list of freeware software for Web designers over at TechnoTarget. There are descriptions and screen captures of each application.
2. 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 month.
3. Smashing Magazine also offers Frameworks Round-Up: When To Use, How To Choose?. This article includes links to frameworks for JavaScript, CSS, PHP, Ruby, and more.
4. For those of you who would like to learn more about Photoshop, Smashing Magazine has the article Adobe Photoshop Tutorials - Best Of
   .
5. Don’t leave Smashing Magazine quite yet….While you’re there check out Smashing Highlights 2007 for even more terrific articles and resources.
6. Looking for more Photoshop? Try The Best 80 Photoshop Text Effects on the Web for tons of tips on creating cool text effects in Photoshop.
7. Tutorial Blog offers Links for Web Designers : December - A GREAT roundup of Web resources for designers. While you’re at Tutorial Blog check out the other terrific Web resource lists they have compiled. There are so many goodies on this page you could easily spend the day at their site.
8. Web Hosting Keys has numerous compiled lists including: Best Web Hosting, Web Hosting Coupons, Best Free Photo Hosting, Best Free Web Hosting, Best Free File Hosting, Best Free Forum Hosting, Best Free Blog Hosting, Cheap Domain Names, Best Online Backup Services, & Best DNS Tools.
9. Freelance Switch has an article on 7 Things You Can Do TODAY to Kickstart Your Freelancing Career - It’s a good time to start thinking about these things if you plan to start your own business.

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 discussed this issue with our advisors and they agreed that students should have a general understanding of JavaScript and what it accomplishes when they complete the course, but if they want advanced scripting skills they should take additional coursework online or at a school that offers advanced JavaScript training.

This morning when I was visiting Joshuaink, a great site that I like to read, I found that John Oxton had posted a similar question to his visitors in Is there a hole in my skill set?. This is a great “conversation” about the need for JavaScript as a front end developer.

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 or web site. Take a look at the graphicPush archives, there are a lot of interesting and informative articles.

WordPress.com is now offering free, WordPress based, blog hosting accounts to all; you no longer need an invitation to sign-up. Speaking of WordPress, WordPress 2.0 Beta 1 is now available.

Brothercake has a free CSS based simple website menu that you can download, customize and use on your sites. This zip package includes the necessary CSS, JavaScript, and XHTML to create both horizontal and vertical list menus.

In addition to validating HTML, XHTML, and CSS the W3C now offers an RSS/Atom Feed Validator.

php-editors has a list of PHP editors which includes licensing information, platform specs, and user rankings.

Do you want to see what people are viewing and bookmarking right this minute? Checkout LiveMarks - which displays what people are bookmarking on Del.icio.us in real-time. This is another Ajax demonstration. Pretty slick!

Next Up: Google Office? An interesting article on the possible joint venture of Sun and Google.

Treehouse, an online developer’s magazine, is now available. This first issue is free to all! (This is a 50+ page PDF file, please do not print it in the classroom.)

If you have an iPod, you may want to check out some of the Podcasts from the Web Essentials 2005 conference. Veerle’s Blog has an entry on some of the available topics and speakers.

I know that some of you would like to work on PHP/MySQL at home, here is a guide to Install & Configure Apache, PHP, JSP, & MySQL on Windows XP/2000. This guide is current as of this post.

Dynamic Drive, which is a great resource for JavaScripts and DHTML scripts, has a list of a few online web tools you may enjoy and find useful.

Lifehacker offers the Ten Must-Have Bookmarklets. David can you please add some other “must-haves” to this list?

PC Magazine has a short article on how to upsample your images. Good techniques if you need to increase the size of a jpeg image for printing.

Top 7 Tricks For Getting an Interview includes some interesting suggestions for how to get an interview. Since most of you are currently looking for employment, you may want to take a look.

JavaScript Fading Tooltips - CSS and JavaScript to create hyperlink mouseover tooltips. Pretty slick!

Do you enjoy reading (outside of class)? Try What Should I Read Next?. Type in the author and title of the last book that you read and you will receive reader recommendations for your next book. Of course you can use this for technical books tool.

PHP/MySQL Tutorial - For students who nearing completion of their XHTML books and are interested in learning about PHP/MySQL.

David just mentioned to me yesterday that he was looking for shopping cart solutions. SitePoint has a new article Put your Money where your Mouse Is: 6 Payment Gateways Reviewed.

Copy URL+ extension enables you to copy to the clipboard the current document’s address along with additional information such as the document’s title, the current selection or both. Speaking of extensions, we will take a look at the extensions mirror today and install some useful Firefox extensions on our systems.

Special: Lifehacker’s guide to weblog comments - I think these are great guidelines for commenting in blogs and on message boards.

I have a personal request. I am trying to setup a Mac at home so I can do web testing, etc., I ordered a part to allow me to hookup my PC monitor to the Mac, but I can’t seem to get it to work. If anyone in class is a Mac/PC guru, I sure would appreciate some help.

Always remember to play!

The Jackol’s Den has an htaccess cheat sheet that you may want to print and add to your resources. You can learn more about other ways the .htaccess file is used in the article Server Move. The .htaccess file can be used to prevent hotlinking as discussed in class yesterday.

Speaking of cheat sheets, Code by Matt, has cheat sheets for Photoshop, Illustrator, CSS, PHP, Dreamweaver, htacess, and more.

Great article at 43 folders on Writing sensible email messages. 43 folders is a personal productivity blog by Merlin Mann with a lot of excellent tips!

Typesetter - oh I love this new typeface comparison tool! You can select three typefaces, sizes, colors, etc., and they will display on the screen so that you can select the best font for your web pages. Be sure to bookmark this valuable resource!

Essential List and Resources on Firefox Extensions from Lifehacker. These extensions would fall into the category of personal productivity rather than web developer. I use many of these extensions and they’re great!

The Opera web browser is now free. That’s $$$ free and ad free!

Microsoft is now offering the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar (beta) - Here is info on the toolbar from the Microsoft site:

Overview
The IE Developer Toolbar provides several features for deeply exploring and understanding Web pages.

1. Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a web page.
2. Locate and select specific elements on a web page through a variety of techniques.
3. Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
4. View HTML object class names, ID’s, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
5. Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
6. Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links.
7. Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
8. Immediately resize the browser window to 800×600 or a custom size.
9. Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
10. Choose direct links to W3C specification references, the Internet Explorer team weblog (blog), and other resources.
11. Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align objects on your pages.

We will install and check this new toolbar out in class this afternoon.

Please don’t forget to vote in the Macromedia vs. Adobe poll that’s running in the forum.

ResumeWiki - Post your resume for peer review and editing. What a terrific idea!

Practical PHP Programming - This is a free online PHP book. It looks great, but you will need to read it online since there is now download/print version of the book.

StealDeals - Technology deals on the Internet.

CSS Hacks @ CSS Discuss - “CSS hacks take advantage of browser bugs to perform magic such as “hiding” CssRules from specific WebBrowsers, or kicking browsers that don’t follow the specs into line.”

Google Maps and Census Reports - Very cool!

NetCocktail - the “Get Color” project - “an online catalog featuring color combinations … perspective on what works, by studying how others are using color to create vibrant, and attractive websites.”

Steps to Becoming a Freelance Web Developer -an article by Garrett Dimon.

Web 2.0: The Power Behind the Hype - I think this is a great article for students to read who want to learn more about some exciting web technologies that are the buzz around the Internet.

Project management for the freelance designer

I hope that you all had a wonderful August; while I’m not feeling so rested, I am feeling refreshed and happy to be returning to school. I just really hope that there aren’t any boxes waiting for me to unpack.

Here are a few resources to start the school year off right:

Cheat Sheet Roundup - Over 30 Cheatsheets for developers - JavaScript, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), Hex Codes, XHTML, HTML, HTML Entities, MySQL, PHP, htaccess, and lots of other subjects.

.htaccess tips and tricks - an introduction and tips and tricks for creating and editing an .htaccess file.

Digital Web Magazine has a new article on Writing Semantic Markup.

Extending Firefox for Web Developers - extensions that web developers should install and use.

Character Entity References in HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0.

Wallpaperstock.com - a variety of very nice, free wallpapers for your desktop.

9 JavaScripts you had better not miss!

The Horizontal Looper/Repeat Region PHP Dreamweaver Extension - As mentioned in class! This would be one to bookmark for students who have completed the PHP/Dreamweaver book, it will create horizontal repeating regions that loop down the page.

Between boxes, I will continue to update this blog over the next month. I will be monitoring the forum for the next week, so if you really get stuck on one of your assignments, post a message on the forum.

I’ll also let you know the exact dates and times of the garage sale; all I know right now is that it will be sometime over the weekend of the 20th.

Have a terrific August!