Web Design CSS Bookmarking List Summer 2008

This quick how-to, written by Chris Coyler, explains how to resize a background image. It sounds like something that is extremely useful. While I haven't had much experience manipulating images in the past, I see this being a very useful tool to have.

This is a pretty useful horizontal list posted on Listomatic by John Siegel. When hovering over list items, the font fades to white. I'm pretty sure I'll use this on a site somewhere, manipulating the colors to fit my desired design. I found this through a google search: "css horizontal lists"

This page is linked from Jakob Nielsen's website. Nielsen is an expert on Web Usability. He has much to say about what works in a website, and what does not. His book, Prioritizing Web Usability, though pricey, is worth it for anyone interested in making their site more usable. I plan on using Neilen's suggestions for my own work.

Tripoli is a generic css standard for HTML rendering. Tripoli resets and rebuilds browser standards and allows you to create dynamic pages without interfering with Typographic measurements. It streamlines the readability and usability of your HTML content. It also allows for full control over all css rules and has been tested of IE 5. Here is an example of a layout pulg-in on the tripoli website... http://devkick.com/lab/tripoli/layout.php?lay=l1&width=wide&style=equal I am not too sure if I will be able to use this for my professional site but maybe when I learn more about HTML and css, I can take advantage of this site.

More cool icons. I want to try using some on my first page we design.

If you would like to play around with an HTML document without damaging your own, check out the W3C Schools CSS Guide where you can edit text on one half of the screen and watch the results unfold on the other. I am using this in the lab now so I can get some practice without exchanging files and refreshing the page constantly.

Free themes for blog pages. They have a bunch, sports, kids, healthcare, political, etc.

This is a really cool way to cheat. You can type in any information you want to be added to a list where a small empty box appears to the left. Here, the viewer of your page can check which ever open box they want that appears on your site. It does it all for you! Just copy and paste the code into your html.

Free icons that are pretty cool looking for web pages

Cool free fonts to help design your page.

Has anyone seen the shorthand feature on the HTML-kit Tools site? See the video on http://www.chami.com/html-kit/tools. After writing a tag, press Ctrl "J" - it's like the predictive text feature on cell phones. This should be useful when writing html elements becomes more familiar. The Atari voice on the video is annoying, though.

"Faux Columns" by Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits discusses "[a] simple way to make CSS columns appear equal in length, regardless of the content that they contain." This technique requires a good amount of skill in positioning elements on a page and understanding the nuances of the background image. Found at: Zeldman and A List Apart I'd like to try it, but don't anticipate using it any time in the near future..