Resources for Web Development Students @ Robin’s Blog

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Another weekend just flew by! While I was working on the classroom site this weekend I found a few resources that I thought you might find useful: Active Meter – tracks web site visitor statistics. There is a free, invisible version of this statistical service and you can track multiple sites. This service is very similar to StatCounter, but the [...]

Photoshop Elements 4.0 releases this week. You can read more at the NY Times or at Adobe’s web site. Phong.com has a variety of Photoshop tutorials including advanced techniques like masking, patterns, and photo stitching. Have you heard about BackPack yet? With Backpack you can: Organize to do lists, notes, images, and photos Plan a personal or business trip Keep [...]

Ok, the potluck food was scrumptious! I hope that you all will post your recipes in the comments below and I will add them to the recipe blog so that we can all enjoy the wonderful dishes at home. The recipe blog is here http://www.tinkertech.net/recipes/. Not to be outdone by Google, Yahoo launches Instant Search which displays results as you [...]

I have a teacher’s meeting today. I will be leaving around 3:30 p.m. and Carolyn will be subbing for the remainder of class. Standards-schmandards has an article on Methods for measuring text readability. The article discusses the importance of writing web site content that your visitors can understand. It also offers a readability index calculator, which is a form that [...]

How To Nail A Sexy Layout – Part One, Skeletize, Visualize, and Nakedize – Steps to building a sexy, standards based layout. 23 Photo Sharing – a new, free photo sharing site. The Aging Process – Most people want to make themselves look younger, but Worth1000 has a Photoshop tutorial on making yourself or someone else age. If you enjoy [...]

Quick Start Your Design with XHTML Templates – Just like the title says, a set of templates to help you to start web projects. PhotoshopSupport.com has a lot of quick tutorials and nice plugins and actions for Photoshop. Since we’ve been talking about digital photography, LifeHack has a Digital Photography HOWTO roundup of helpful links to resources and tutorials. LifeHacker [...]

Norman and I were discussing photography and the pro’s and con’s of shooting images in RAW mode. Most digital cameras output the images in JPEG format; this means that the camera processes the image in order to convert it to the JPEG format; this process often leads to a degradation of quality. When shooting in RAW mode, your chances of [...]