If you are running Vista try IETester, which is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and JavaScript engines of IE8, IE7, IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP. I’ve been using this on my Vista machine, it crashes now and then, but it’s a great tool.

Both of these tools are free!

Portable applications are installed on Flash/USB drives and can be used on any computer; they allow you to carry software applications in your purse, backpack, or pocket. You can fully customize most of these applications to suit your own needs. There are applications for design and development, graphics, Internet, education, games, music and video, utilities, and even office applications. A majority of portable applications are “open source” which means they’re free.

When we temporarily relocated I created a Flash movie with instructions for installing most portable applications on a Flash drive and also a movie for running portable applications from a Flash drive. Both of these movies have sound.

Yesterday Smashing Magazine posted a great article 40+ Desert Island Web Development Tools which includes a lot of useful portable applications. You may also want to check out Wikipedia, Pendriveapps.com, makeuseof.com, and lifehacker for more portable applications.

Update 10/30/09 – 70 Free Useful Portable Applications You Should Know

There are plenty of open source applications that can help you tremendously as a web designer. Open source projects are great not only because of their price tag (free), but also because of the passionate community that typically forms around them. In these economic times, it’s often a worthwhile endeavor to see places where you can conserve, and open source alternatives are a good place to start looking.

In this article, you’ll find 30 exceptionally handy open source applications for web designers. There are a variety of tools here that include source code, WYSIWYG, and graphic/image editors, as well as useful software utilities that can improve your task management and production processes.

Continue reading 30 Useful Open Source Apps for Web Designers

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!

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.

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

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.

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.