Web Design Resources
- Smashing Magazine publishes regular articles about the latest trends and techniques in web design and development. It's a great resource; add it to your RSS subscriptions to keep up with the latest web design buzz.
- A List Apart is a web magazine which explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices. It's another essential resource for web designers.
- ColourLovers is a design site that's all about color. You can also browse their library of color palettes to inspire your creative projects.
- Vitamin is a weekly webzine for web designers, developers and entrepreneurs.
- Alertbox: Current Issues in User Interface Design - a semi-monthly column on usability by Jakob Nielsen.
- Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design, by Alertbox author Jakob Nielsen.
- Web Page Design for Designers is full of good design info, with numerous articles on designing websites.
- The Web Style Guide is an online book that teaches you how to design and build your website.
- The Design & Publishing Center features design tips for various media, including the web.
- CSS is a way of controlling fonts, colors, and spacing in Web documents. Visit the CSS page for more links and resources.
- iStockphoto.com is a great resource for web designers, with royalty-free photography, illustrations and icons you can use on your website. Browse, preview, and order just the images you need; most web-suitable images are available for under $5.
- BgPatterns is a nifty web app that lets you design your own seamless tiled background patterns.
Web Design Software
If you want to design your site from scratch, you'll probably want to use a design program, such as:- Dreamweaver, a complete site design and management package. HTML editor with WYSIWYG and source code editing control, syntax checker, XML support, color picker, support for cascading style sheets and DHTML, and more.
- Coda is an elegant site design package for the Mac, with both graphic design tools and a raw code editor. Plus it comes with electronic versions of several reference books.
- Freewebs offers a browser-based site builder.
- Search Google for more web design software.
Forums and Discussion Groups
- Webmaster World has an excellent set of forums for web design, programming, e-commerce, marketing, and much more.
- There are a number of Usenet newsgroups (comp.infosystems.www.*) for discussion of web design.