For Chris and the other Mac users in class - Top 100 Essential Mac Applications

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.

Lynda.com is offering free access to this new Photoshop CS3 tutorial @ http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=327.

You can actually download Photoshop CS3 beta @ http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/photoshopcs3/. Note: In order to run this software for more than two days you must have a copy of Photoshop CS2, Creative Suite 2, Production Studio, Adobe Web Bundle, or Adobe Video Bundle.

We have ordered Creative Suite 2 for the classroom. We also purchased the upgrade insurance so we should have CS3 as soon as it is available!

This article has been updated to include more educational software resources on 11/26/06

http://www.sprysoft.com/shop/
http://www.studentdiscounts.com/
http://www.campustech.com/
http://www.ccvsoftware.com/
http://www.creationengine.com
http://journeyed.com
http://www.academicsuperstore.com
http://www.gotrc.com/
http://www.gradware.com
http://www.studica.com/products/index.cfm

In addition to the above vendors, About.com has articles on educational software limitations and additional vendors.

These sites are a great starting point for someone who knows nothing about building a web site with HTML/XHTML. While I would recommend that you learn to build standards-compliant web sites with XHTML and CSS, you will usually need to know basic HTML first.

Before you begin you should get some kind of HTML editor for writing your code. Notepad or any plain text editor can be used, but there are so many other free programs that are designed to write HTML. Here are a couple:

HTML-Kit
TextPad

You can find a variety of HTML Editors at C|Net Downloads or at NoNags.

HTML Dog - HTML and CSS Tutorials, References, Articles and News - Great resources for people wanting to learn how to write HTML and CSS. A great start for beginners.

DaveSite offers an interactive tutorial on HTML for beginners. This tutorial is broken up into mini chapters so that you can easily learn and review particular subjects.

HTML Primer @ HTML Goodies - A series of primers designed to teach you the basics of HTML.

Lisa Explains it All! is a wonderful HTML learning site originally developed for kids, but I think it’s a great learning place for any age.

Once you understand the basics of HTML I would recommend that you focus on learning XHTML and CSS. You can learn more about the basics of XHTML in Making Documents XHTML Compliant @ tinkertech.net.

XHTML Tutorial from W3Schools - In addition to the XHTML tutorials, the W3Schools also offers tutorials in HTML, CSS, and a variety of subjects.

About.com offers a free weekly course, XHTML 101 - Free HTML Course. This is an 11 week course.

Western Civilisation - offers a variety of courses and guides for learning HTML, XHTML, and CSS. They’re also the makers of StyleMaster, a great program for writing CSS.

These resources have been primarily posted for my friends in the hermit crab community, Stacy, Vicki, Kerie, Sue, and Vanessa. They are all working to build or improve their own web sites.

xhtml, html, css, learn, learning, tutorials, hermit crabs, hermit crab

I’ve come across some new (well new to me) Firefox extensions that I thought you might find helpful:

del.icio.us - the del.icio.us extension for Firefox offers everything you need to seamlessly integrate the del.icio.us service with your Firefox browser. This is very handy if you use del.icio.us to keep track of your favorite web sites.

SessionSaver - I love this extension! SessionSaver restores your browser -exactly- as you left it, every startup, every time, even if your browser crashes! I love this extension because I usually have numerous windows open at the end of the day that I want to continue to review; instead of having to bookmark all of the pages, they’re automatically saved by this extension. If you have upgraded to Firefox version 1.5 you can get the updated extension at the developer’s site.

Select Search - select any text on a web page, right click and from the menu you can search Google Maps, compare prices, shop, search jobs, read product reviews, look up definitions and acronyms, search health information, find movies and TV shows, look up music, and more. This is a very handy extension.

IE Tab - this is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your webpage displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.

OperaView - open pages in Opera from Firefox context menus.

Viamatic foXpose - click on the icon in the status bar to display a single page which includes captures of all the open browser windows. Handy!

For more Firefox tools, Finding the Good Stuff lists some of my favorite web developer extensions.

Some older Firefox extensions will not work with version 1.5, but I have read numerous blog posts with fixes for this issue. Check Scattered for instructions on how to modify Firefox 1.5 to work with all extensions.

Emily Chang - eHub - an extensive list of web applications, services, resources, blogs or sites with a focus on next generation web (web 2.0), social software, blogging, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, location mapping, open source, folksonomy, design and digital media sharing.

How to write a resume offers free tips on resume writing, interviewing, and writing cover letters.

ColourMod offers color pickers in various flavors; for Mac users there is a widget (small helper application), Windows users can use a Konfabulator widget, and for all platforms there is a DHTML plugin. I downloaded and tried the Konfabulator widget and it’s very nice.

Andy Budd has posted his top 10 Macintosh freeware and shareware applications.

CSS 2.1 selectors, Part 2 is now available. If you missed the first installment, read CSS 2.1 selectors, Part 1 first. Since so many of you are working on the CSS unit now, these would be great articles for you to review.

W3C Compliance and SEO - learn why W3C compliance can improve your search engine ranking.

Here is a terrific list of web related cheat sheets, be sure to bookmark this!

Web 2.0 is about… a very good, easy to understand, article by Kevin Yank of SitePoint.

Brainstorms and Raves has been a favorite site of mine for many years. Recently the article Behind the Scenes with Apache’s .htaccess was posted. This article provides a clean explanation of the .htaccess file and a lot of 3rd party resources. Excellent resource!

The list of Absolutely Free Software - Best Free Web Applications has been updated. It includes wonderful, free software applications.

Neevia Document Converter eXpress makes it possible for anyone to instantly convert their files to PDF or Image without the need of installing special software.

Free AOL? Yes, it’s true, much of the AOL popular content that was once available to members only is now available to the rest of the world. Not only is the content going free, Google and Comcast want a piece of AOL.

Some of you have mentioned to me that the current class forum is difficult to navigate. I tend to agree, the forum itself seems to be a bit clumsy. Currently we are using a content management system called Xoops. I decided to test some of the different content management systems to see if another platform would meet our needs. I setup a Mambo site and I am not sure that the forum module is any easier to navigate (but I do like the administrative interface…very easy). I then decided to try Nuke Evolution, a content management system based on the popular PHPNuke and I think this is the forum we may use. The reason that I think this might be a better choice for the classroom is because the forum uses the popular PHPBB.

You can try out the “beta” forum at http://forum.robinsblog.com/index.php. This really is a “beta” site since both the Nuke Evolution application and the site layout are both still being tested and perfected. Please take a look at the forum and let me know what you think about the navigation and ease of use.

Edit: 10/17/05 - The beta forum is giving me trouble (is that why they call it beta?) This is on hold until I can figure out the problem or a more stable version of the software is released.

The nice thing about using content management systems is that they offer a lot of great features for communities. You can add your own recommended links, news articles, downloads, write reviews of software, hardware, book reviews, and web sites, and create your own class journal. There are a lot more modules that I can add to the site, but lets see how you like it first, so visit today. If you like it, we can move the forum posts from the old site to the new site.

More beta news from around the web.

Yahoo now offers Yahoo Podcasts Beta; use this tool to browse or search for podcasts. The site highlights new, noteworthy, and popular podcasts as well. Listeners can rate and review the podcasts. You don’t need special software to listen, so you should be able to check out some of the technology podcasts in class (there is also food podcasts). there is even a tutorial for creating your own podcast!

When CSS hacks begin to fail. The IEBlog requests a Call to action: The demise of CSS hacks and broken pages. If you have been using any of the following hacks in your sites you may want to read this article:

html > body - http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ChildHack
* html - http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=StarHtmlHack
head:first-child + body - http://centricle.com/ref/css/filters/tests/owen/
head + body - http://www.dithered.com/css_filters/css_only/head_adjacent_sibling_body.html
body > element - http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ChildHack

It seems that in testing the beta of IE7 many sites are failing because of hacks. Surprise, surprise. Besides CSS and IE7 you will also learn about the new browser features that look pretty good. Microsoft also has a “Team RSS” Blog that you may want to check out.

CSSTidy optimizes your CSS documents. It will convert color names to hex values (shorthand if possible), duplicate properties are merged, unnecessary white space is removed, missing semicolons are added, incorrect newlines in strings are fixed, missing units are added, bad colors (and color names) are fixed. I would recommend that you keep a copy of your original CSS document on your hard drive for regular editing, when you are ready to upload, make a copy and run it thru CSSTidy and upload the optimized version. I suggest this because optimized documents are not as easy to read because all extra whitespace is removed.

Remember the Milk - get organized, manage all of your todo lists.

Even with student discounts, when you’re going to school it’s really hard to afford all of the high-end software programs used in the web development field. There are many free alternative programs out there that you can use on your home systems. Vinterstille provides an excellent round-up of free, alternative programs with descriptions, that you can download and use instead of the expensive Adobe and Macromedia applications. Note: that not all of these programs will work on PCs (Mac and Linux applications).

Speaking of Macs, I got a “new to me” Mac last night that I had ordered from eBay. It’s a small grape iMac that will allow me to check web sites as I’m developing and try out all of these cool Mac only programs I keep reading about. The base price of the little, grape, iMac was $150 (no shipping charges) for a 400mhz G3 with 128 mb of RAM,. The iMac came complete with a DVD drive, cables, a keyboard, and mouse. I had the memory maxed out to 768mb and that little iMac is running like a champ. While this is not a “state-of-the-art” Mac, I think it will serve me well for developing web pages and trying out applications and the price was good.

So the first article that I read was How to switch to Mac, an informative short article for those of us who are attempting to switch from a Windows environment to a Mac environment.

I found MacCast, which has great editorials, podcasts, and resources for the Mac.

Creative Mac offers news, tools and techniques for Macintosh creative professionals.

Then I was off to find some software for my Mac (preferrably free). Here are a few sites that I found that list “must have” Macintosh programs:

Brilliant Ignorance - Essential freeware for the Mac user

Madsen Blog - Indispensable Mac OS X Software

MacZealots - Top 10 shareware apps of 2005

John Hoke’s Asylum - Must have software for Mac OS X
What’s In Your Mac? - Favorite Mac applications from The Daily Dish

Lifehacker - Essential Mac Freebies - check their OS X section for more goodies.

MacSpecialist - Essential Mac Applications - be sure to read the comments for updated applications.

Pure Mac lists tons of Macintosh applications.

Apple.com - Mac OS X downloads - freeware, shareware, demos, and widgets

Wikipedia has a huge list of Macintosh software. The list is categorized and clicking a link will bring up a description of the application and a link to the developers site.

PimpMySafari - Bookmarklets, plugins…all things Safari.

Here are a few Macintosh magazines and other Mac resources:

MacWorld - Online version of the popular magazine.
Apple Developer Connection - Resources for the developer and designer.

If you don’t have a computer at home, you may want to consider one of these iMacs for developing and home use. Remember, if you do decide to go out and get yourself a used Mac for testing purposes it’s a great opportunity to try out some of the free, open source software like OpenOffice.