Resources

General Web Design

• Wired Magazine's Webmonkey
  My favorite online resource for web design. You can find tutorials and articles about almost everything web-related.

• Web Developer's Virtual Library
  One of the oldest and most extensive sites for web designers at all skill levels. Well organized and well written.

• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
  W3C is the industry consortium that develops and promotes standards for the web.

Basic HTML

Introduction to HTML

• Webmonkey's HTML Tutorial
  A well organized guide to HTML tags, with lots of attitude.

• A Beginner's Guide to HTML
  Another good guide to HTML, put out by NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Administration), the people that developed Mosaic, the web browser that revolutionised the internet.

Color

Changing the color of text, links and background.

• How to Change Background Color
  An excellent WebMonkey tutorial explaining the HTML tags used to control background color and how to find the hexadecimal number of any color.

• Color Introduction
  A good explanation of RGB colors and the non-dithering palette. With excellent links to other resources.

• Web Color Wizardy by Lynda Weinman
  A good article explaining how to create images for the web that will look good on most monitors. From the magazine MacUser.

• Doug Jacobson's Color Chart
  Links to several different versions of the 216 colors that do not dither when viewed on the web. (browser safe colors). The RGB Color Chart - Hexadecimal link gives the hexadecimal numbers for these colors.

• Lynda Weinman's Browser Safe Color Palette
  The author of several HTML books explains browser safe colors and gives two different versions of the standard palette, with hexadecimal numbers.

• ColorMix
  A tool that combines two or three browser safe colors to create almost any color of your choice. A great way to extend your color choices without risking ugly dithered colors.

Images and Pictures

• Preparing Graphics for the Web by Douglas E. Gray
  A detailed explanation of how to prepare images for web pages, including when to use which image file format (.JPG or .GIF).

• HTML Writers Guild Graphics Libraries
  Several links to sites that have free images, backgrounds, and icons.

• Public Domain Images
  An index of a variety of images that are in the public domain (nobody has a copyright on them). The images are not indexed.

• Sources for Background Images
  • Founders Background Sampler
  • Netscape's Background Sampler

• IMG ALT recommendations.
  Recommendations for using the ALT attribute in the IMG tag. This is important for making your web pages accessible to all viewers.

Design Issues

What is "Good Design" of a web page?

• Web Pages That Suck
  Learn the basics of web design by looking at poorly designed web pages. This is put up by a web design teacher. You can decide if you agree with his judgements.

• Universal Design of World Wide Web Pages
  A good general guide to making your webpage usable by as many people as possible, including those with physical disabilities and lower end computers.

• Accessible Web Page Design
  More specific information about making web pages accessible.

• Web Page Design for Designers by Joe Gillespie
  An easy to read guide to basic design principles for web design. The section on images is especially good.

Tables

Tables are one way to organize text and images with HTML. A table is a grid made up of rows and columns.

• Webmonkey Table Tutorial by Derek Powazek

• Example of using a table to control layout of a web page.

Frames

Frames allow you to view more than one webpage at a time.

• Webmonkey Frames Tutorial by Jill Atkinson

• Webmonkey Tutorial -- using No Frames tag by Jill Atkinson

• Webmonkey Tutorial -- linking between frames by Jill Atkinson

• One of my favorite examples of a good use of frames is in the International Museum of Surgical Science website.
  Check out their Antique Illness interactive story, where you have to decide how to treat a stomach pain. They use frames to allow you to read the story and click on specific words to get more explanation.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a programming language that can be inserted into HTML files. It is used to create web pages that change or are interactive. Popular JavaScripts include ones that make text or images change as you move the cursor around the screen.

• Webmonkey's JavaScript Tutorial
  A nice introduction to what JavaScript is, what it does, and how to use it.

• WebCoder: Your home for JavaScript and Dynamic HTML
  WebCoder is a great resource for using JavaScript. The Scriptorium section has some scripts that you can copy and put into your HTML files. It is written by Nick Heinle, author of Designing with JavaScript.

• Fred Endsley's JavaScript Index
  This index has many JavaScripts that you can view and copy for your own use. Fred Endsley is a multimedia artist and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Putting it On-Line

If you want to make your web pages available over the web:

• Geocities (www.geocities.com)
  A free web server and e-mail service. You can put a web page (limit 2 MB) on this server for free, but you must put geocities logos and possibly advertisements on your web pages. Select the Join menu option on their main page to learn more about it.