The Web Design Card Catalog (Part I: CSS, HTML, Javascript & PHP)
So one day you decide that you want to learn something about web design. Where do you start? What are the best tutorial sites on the net? Where can you find the tools and code you need? This is my personal collection of favorites. Whenever possible I’ve used the site designers own words in the descriptions:
The Absolute Basics:
First of all, you’re going to need to know what all those web design acronyms mean in the first place. About.com can help us with that one: What do all those Web Acronyms Mean?
Next you’re going to need some sort of editor to create web pages. Now you could design pages in a simple text editor. But if you’re just getting started, and you need some sort of visual affirmation I would recommend Dreamweaver. Of course Dreamweaver only works for Windows, and it’s rather expensive. It is, however, a decent, WYSIWYG editor (see the wki entry for HTML Editor if you’re confused). If you’re using Linux, I would recommend Bluefish. It’s not as visual as Dreamweaver, but your average Linux user is probably not going to need as much hand-holding anyway.
CSS:
CSS Navigation Techniques (37 entries)
- CSS Showcase is a gallery of css-based navigation menus, tabs and css navigation techniques. Compiled and updated by Vitaly Friedman.
Designing on a Dime: 100 Freebie CSS Resources - Software Developer
- As the title suggests, this is a page that has a list of resources for the beginning web designer.
Master Stylesheet: The Most Useful CSS Technique
- A Master Stylesheet is used to remove the default browser styling. This allows you to have a uniform look between different browsers.
- This Page has tutorials about creating CSS based lists and teaches you how to use floats properly.
Open Source Web Design - Download free web design templates.
- Download and upload free web designs.
- Explanations of 15 CSS properties that aren’t used much in web development.
- A description of how different browsers treat float/non-float behavior.
DHTML, JavaScript & Ajax:
A library of DHTML and Ajax scripts - DHTMLgoodies.com
- DHTMLgoodies.com, a site with DHTML and Ajax scripts, demos and tutorials.
A Mootools Tutorial :: The “Mootorial” » Clientside Examples & Tutorials » Clientside
- Mootools is a very popular JavaScript Library.
- Ajax demos and examples.
- An overview of various Ajax/JavaScript libraries.
- Ajaxlines provides Asynchronous JavaScript and XML Resources, Tutorials, Websites and Toolkits.
DHTMLSite - Ultimate Resource on DHTML/AJAX Scripts and Tutorials
- Ultimate Resource on DHTML/AJAX Scripts and Tutorials.
Dynamic Drive DHTML(dynamic html) & JavaScript code library
- A comprehensive DHTML site featuring DHTML scripts, tutorials, and more.
- JavaScript Horizontal Image scroller.
Interactive DOM scripting - DHTML demos
- Interactive DHTML: a collection of programmatic artwork, interactive experiments in dynamic HTML and DOM scripting.
JavaScript Kit- Comprehensive JavaScript, DHTML, CSS tutorials and over 400+ free JavaScripts!
- Comprehensive
JavaScript tutorials and over 400 free scripts. Also features DHTML,
CSS, and web design tutorials, and a large developer’s help forum.
- A simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page.
- moo.fx, a superlightweight JavaScript effects library
- mootools, a super lightweight web2.0 JavaScript framework
- This is a very quick guide to the Prototype library.
- Prototype is the framework on which a lot of other JavaScript libraries are built.
- Yet another JavaScript library.
- Another add-on to the Prototype framework. This is a collection of user interface JavaScript libraries.
- JavaScript Dropdown Menus.
- ThickBox
is a webpage UI dialog widget written in JavaScript on top of the
jQuery library. It’s function is too show a single image, multiple
images, inline content, iframed content, and content served through
AJAX in a hybrid modal.
- A
set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building
richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM
scripting, DHTML and AJAX
HTML:
HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide
- O’Reilly’s book of the same title.
- From the ILoveJackDaniel’s website. This is a printable cheat sheet.
- Free html tutorials and help, images, color codes and more for the web developer. Featuring tutorials on HTML tags, programming, basics, JavaScript, frames, hex codes and more.
- HTML XHTML CSS tutorials, references, code examples. This site actually allows you to play with code to see how it works.
- Free HTML XHTML CSS JavaScript DHTML XML DOM XSL XSLT RSS AJAX ASP ADO PHP SQL tutorials, references, examples for web building.
- HTMLforums.com offers free HTML and web development help to webmasters, web developers and small business owners
- A large site of web design tutorials.
- The W3Cs specifications for XHTML 1.0.
PHP:
- Freecodemama’s huge collection of PHP resources.
- Programming Resources & Code Examples
- HotScripts.com is an Internet directory that compiles and
distributes Web programming-related resources, geared toward
webmasters, developers and programmers looking for enhancing their Web
sites and intranets with dynamic development tools.
- This is…. the PHP Manual.
- O’Reilly’s PHP Cookbook.
- A PHP Wiki.
- O’Reilly’s Programming PHP