Web Design And Development Resources

[2notch]

This thread is to list resources for web design and development. To make it easier for someone to find a particular set of links, place the subject of the links in size 3 letters on the first line. I'll start it off...

Creative Commons - royalty free images and audio for your site

For those who would like to place audio, video, text and images on your site but worry about copyright problems, the Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/) is your friend. Many people publish their works under various CC licenses and most can be used on your site with merely an attribution to the author. You may also take their work and make it into something new as a derivitive work. There are several types of licenses so make sure you understand what you are using.

Go to the Creative Commons site and follow the links to audio, images, etc.
Flickr also has many CC images you can use on your site. Remember to read the license though because some of an author's images may be CC and some not.

There's also plenty of CC music to be found at Magnatune and DMusic. All of Magnatune's 128kbs MP3's are CC.

CC Links:

Creative Commons main site (http://creativecommons.org/)

Images:
Flickr CC images (http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/)
OpenPhoto (http://openphoto.net/)

Music:
DMusic (http://www.dmusic.com/)
Magnatune (http://magnatune.com/)
Jamendo (http://www.jamendo.com/)
Soundclick (http://www.soundclick.com/)

Text:
Eldritch Press (http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/)

Yahoo has a very good search engine especially for CC content:
http://search.yahoo.com/cc

[2notch]

The GIMP - image manipulation and creation

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.

Gimp Resources:
the GIMP home (http://www.gimp.org/)
Gimp Documentation (http://www.gimp.org/docs/)

The GIMP comes with a standard set of brushes, gradients, etc. you can find those here (http://www.gimp.org/resources/).

Of course you’ll want to extend GIMP’s abilities with more brushes. Some great brush sets can be found at the following web locations:
Deviant Art (http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/applications/gimpbrushes/) - contains hundreds of brush sets converted from Photoshop.
Cybia (http://www.cybia.co.uk/brushes.htm) - Hundreds of more sets converted by Ali Imran of GIMPTalk (http://www.gimptalk.com/).
PGD Designs (http://www.pgd-design.com/gimp/br.php) - Squares, angles, edges, etc.

The GIMP doesn’t let you resize a brush like Photoshop does. To overcome this shortcoming read this post (http://www.gimptalk.com/topic.php?a=v&t=1934&f=9) at GIMPTalk.

There are lots of GIMP tutorials, plugins and resources at GIMPTalk (http://www.gimptalk.com/)!

[2notch]

Graphics Software

Software for digital art creation comes in many flavors and prices range from free to wallet bleeding expensive. Some of these run on Microsoft, some on Mac’s, some on Linux and some on combinations of them.

This isn't all of them but it's a start.

Prices are approximate and you should check their site for current pricing.

Adobe Photoshop (http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/main.html) - Windows, Mac - $1,199.00 (CS Premium)
Adobe® Creative Suite 2 Premium software is a unified design environment that combines full new versions of Adobe Photoshop® CS2, Illustrator® CS2, InDesign® CS2, GoLive® CS2 and other titles.

Adobe Elements (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/main.html) - Windows, Mac - $99.99
Advertised as “photo” software but is very similar in its power and usefulness to its big brother Photoshop.

The Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/) - Linux, Windows, MacOSX - Free
Freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

Paint Shop Pro (http://www.jasc.com/products/paintshoppro/) - Windows - $129.00
The old JASC PSP. Owned and updated now by COREL.

Bryce (http://bryce.daz3d.com/55index.php) - Windows, Power Mac - $109.95 (boxed)
Powerful 3D landscaping and animation.

Terragen (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/) - Windows, Mac - Free for personal non-commercial use.
Very powerful scenery generator.

Vue 5 Esprit (http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Products/VueIndex.php) - Windows, Mac - $249.00
Professional Solution For 3D Environments. Vue Infinite sells for $599.00.

Poser (http://www.e-frontier.com/article/articleview/1597/1/281?sbss=281) - Windows, Mac OSX - $249.99
With Poser, you can design using the human form for art, illustration, animation, comics, web, print, education, medical visualization, games, storyboarding, essentially everywhere your creative mind may take you.

Blender 3D (http://blender.org/cms/Home.2.0.html) - Linux, Windows, Mac OSX, Irix, Solaris, FreeBSD - Free
Blender is the open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback.

GIMPshop (http://plasticbugs.com/?page_id=294) - Linux, Windows, Mac - Free
A hack of the original GIMP to make it more like Adobe Photoshop.

Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/) - Linux, Windows, Mac OSX - Free
Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Xara Xtreme (http://www.xara.com/) - Windows - $79.00
Great application for illustration, photo manipulation and web graphics. Linux and Mac versions are being developed.

Rhino 3D (http://www.rhino3d.com/) - Windows - $895.00
Rhino can create, edit, analyze, and translate NURBS* curves, surfaces, and solids in Windows. There are no limits on complexity, degree, or size. Rhino also supports polygon meshes.

PovRay (http://www.povray.org/) - Linux, Windows, Mac - Free
The Persistence of Vision Raytracer is a high-quality, totally free tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics.

Freehand MX (http://www.macromedia.com/software/freehand/) - Windows, Mac - $399.00
FreeHand MX is a vector-based drawing application. With FreeHand MX, you can create vector graphics that can be scaled and printed at any resolution. You can use FreeHand MX to create print and web graphic illustrations, such as logos and advertising banners. You can also use FreeHand MX to turn your artwork into Macromedia Flash animations.

CorelDraw (http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel3/Products/Display&pfid=1047024307335&pid=1047022690654) - Windows - $269.00
Ideal for both professional designers and business people, CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite 12 offer a comprehensive graphics solution. Featuring three industry-leading applications—CorelDRAW 12 for illustration and page layout, Corel PHOTO-PAINT® 12 for digital imaging and Corel R.A.V.E.™ 3 for motion graphics creation.

[Andy]

Free stock photos:
http://www.sxc.hu/

[BrandonK]

Great links guys....keep em coming!

I've never used gimp myself....not sure I wanna make the switch or if it'dbe worth it.... :p

[solarnexus]

This is pretty much a dump of my bookmarks; I've taken out the 20 or so hosting companies as that would be unfair, but to be honest, you wouldnt want them anyway :D

Development
PHP Documentation (http://www.php.net/docs.php)
Apache Documentation (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/)
MySQL Documentation (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/)

Learning resources
w3schools - CSS (http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp)
w3schools - xHTML (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/)

Stock photography (some free, some not)
iStockphoto.com (http://www.istockphoto.com/)
OpenPhoto (http://openphoto.net/) (free)
Stock Exchange (http://www.sxc.hu/) (free)
Fotosearch (http://www.fotosearch.com/)
Comstock (http://www.comstock.com/web/default.asp)
indexstock (http://www.indexstock.com/default.asp)
Stock Solution inc (http://tssphoto.com/)
stockphoto (http://www.stockphoto.com/)
MorgueFile (http://www.morguefile.com/) (free)
Acclaim Images (http://www.acclaimimages.com/)
Corbis (http://pro.corbis.com/) ($1 images)
CanStockPhoto (http://www.canstockphoto.com/)
Photos.com (http://www.photos.com/en/)
Dreamstime (http://www.dreamstime.com/) ($1 images)
Alamy Images (http://www.alamy.com/)


Website Validation
w3.org - HTML/xHTML validator (http://validator.w3.org/)
w3.org - CSS validator (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/)

Web Standards
Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) (http://www.w3.org/P3P/)

Freelancer websites (ok, I know, not development -- but I know people ask for it alot)
Get a freelancer (http://getafreelancer.com/)
Rent-a-coder (http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/default.asp)
Scriptlance (http://www.scriptlance.com/)
Programming Bids (http://www.programmingbids.com/)
Guru.com (http://www.guru.com/)
Projectspring - freelance (http://www.projectspring.com/freelance/index.html)
Freelance work exchange (http://www.freelanceworkexchange.com/work-at-home-jobs-for-programmers.html)

[dsch]

Ultimate webcoding resource (PHP, Perl, ASP, JavaScript, and much more): hotscripts.com (http://www.hotscripts.com)

[2notch]

The folks over at Coffee Cup have a load of free web design stuff including a WYSIWYG editor, 400 free templates, fonts and more. Get'em here:
http://www.coffeecup.com/freestuff/

[Necron99]

I've always found this site quite useful:

http://www.alvit.de/handbook/

Dave

[2notch]

I've always found this site quite useful:

http://www.alvit.de/handbook/

Dave

oooh...that's a good one! (/me has buffer overflow due to info overload)

[Necron99]

Here's another "All-In-One" site:

http://www.listible.com/list/online-tools2C-generators2C-checkers

Dave