A List Apart publishes articles written for working web professionals, but we appreciate the predicament of new web designers and builders who aren’t sure where to begin. As we promised in our primer for readers new to ALA, we’ve collected a set of starting points for the next generation of people who make websites.
But before we jump into the lists, a personal note. Early in my career, I found myself at a crossroads: I had to decide whether I should finish my design degree or to go the route of self-education.
I’d been e-mailing Carole Guevin, the founder of Netdiver, with questions about the design industry and about her site — and she was always warm, receptive, and patient with my myriad of inquiries. When I asked her about my educational dilemma, her reply was one of the most memorable of my career to date: “The formal education is good for teaching you the basics, but your real design education begins once you leave the university.”
“Web design” is a much more complicated profession than it was ten years ago, but we still believe in the ability of the self-taught professional to develop top-notch skills through immersion in the kinds of resources and communities we’ve collected below.
ALA peanut butter sandwiches#section2
The following websites comes from ALA staff recommendations. Many of these are the sites that we’ve used—and still use—to improve our own skills. We hope this list can serve as a starting point for a larger collection of resources for fledgling web designers and developers.
Where to begin: essential reference and tutorials#section3
We think these articles, tutorials, tools, and reference guides will help you build a bookmark collection that’s vital to your everday work.
Web design#section4
- “A Design Process Revealed,” from Douglas Bowman: for non-designers who need to design
- “Developing with Web Standards and Best Practices,” a practical primer on web standards from Roger Johansson
- “Style vs. Design,” by Jeffrey Zeldman (pdf)
- Typetester: screen-type comparison tool
- Web-safe fonts page and font samples from The Browser News (more on this from an MIT student’s web fonts page)
Information architecture#section5
- “Information Architecture Tutorial,” an old-school Webmonkey article from John Shiple
- An information architecture glossary (PDF) from the Argus Center for Information Architecture
- “Introduction to Information Architecture,” Chapter two of Rosenfeld and Morville’s foundational Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
- “What is Information Architecture on the Web?” by Iain Barker
Markup, CSS, and scripting#section6
- Cheat sheets on CSS, PHP, JavaScript, and much more — an invaluable resource from Dave Child (see also Brett Merkey’s CSS Cheat Sheet with examples)
- CSS and web standards tutorials and resources from Westciv
- CSS 101, a “self-paced tutorial site for learning the basics of Cascading Style Sheets” from Makiko Itoh -->
- CSS Basics: just what it sounds like, in 18 chapters, all online
- “CSS From the Ground Up,” from Web Page Design for Designers, is a perfect place to begin if you have graphic design training, but no web design experience
- “CSS No Crap Primer,” from Wendy Peck
- CSS Panic: a guide for the unglued from Owen Briggs
- CSS tutorials from Max Design: Listutorial, Floatutorial, and Selectutorial, plus the mighty Listamatic
- “Designing a CSS-Based Template,” a five-part series from Veerle Pieters
- Designing for print style sheets, from Mark Boulton
- Dev Guru, reference guides on markup, style, and scripting languages
- “Learn CSS positioning in ten easy steps,” from BarelyFitz Designs
- The New York Public Library XHTML Style Guide (see also Dave Shea’s short Markup Guide)
- “On having Layout,” from Ingo Chao offers a fix for troublesome IE behavior — a little advanced, but worth bookmarking
- Step-by-step immersive CSS redesign from Albino Blacksheep
- “Ten good practices for writing JavaScript in 2005,” from Bobby van der Sluis
- Web browser standards support, a resource on the level of support for web standards and maturing technologies in popular web browsers, from Web Devout
- The Web Form Factory automatically builds PHP forms for you: use it wisely
- XHTML Character Entity Reference from Digital Media Minute
- The z–index explained (“rp” stands for “relatively positioned” and “ap” for “absolutely positioned”) -->
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Sites that grow with you: magazines, communities, and portals#section7
While the above sites will help get you up to speed to begin with, the following sites will help you keep learning, stay inspired, and join the global network of web professionals. Most of these sites are updated frequently, and several contain forums or e-lists where you can ask questions that even the strongest Google-fu can’t find answers to.
Multi-subject resources#section8
- Digital Web Magazine: articles, columns, interviews, and reviews on a wide range of web topics
- The University of Minnesota Duluth’s extrordinary collection of web design and development reference material
- Web Design from Scratch: oodles of reference material on web design topics
Design#section9
- AIGA: the professional association of the design industry
- Brands of the World: logos, logos, logos
- Colour Lovers and More Crayons: color reference and inspiration for webby folk
- Communication Arts, Computer Arts, and How Design magazines
- css Zen Garden and cssBeauty
- Design Addict, a resource on modern, post-modern and contemporary design
- Design is Kinky, design magazine and community
- Design Meltdown: design elements, problems, and trends in web design
- Design Observer: writings on design and culture
- Netdiver: digital culture and new media design magazine
- Thinking with Type, the online companion to Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students, by Ellen Lupton
- Typographica, a journal of typography -->
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IA#section10
- Boxes and Arrows magazine
- The IA Institute, information architecture’s professional association; see also the “Introductory sources” section of the Institute’s library
- The Information Architecture mailing list for ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science and Technology) and the IA Institute’s Members’ Listserv (members only)
- The IAWiki, the information architect’s wiki
- Info Design blog and newsletter
Markup, style, standards, and accessibility#section11
- Bite Size Standards, web tutorials, tips, and tricks from standards lovers, frequently updated
- Community MX, Macromedia-centric content and community support, with free and paid membership options -->
- CSS-Discuss Wiki, an invaluable resource and home of the storied CSS-D mailing list
- HTML Dog, HTML and CSS resources from Patrick Griffiths
- Position Is Everything, home of the piefecta and so much more -->
- The “Starting Off” section of Your HTML Source, a friendly and very intro-level guide to the world of web development
- WaSP, reference, news, and advocacy
- Web Standards Group
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Your turn#section12
New web folk, what resources would you add to these lists? Advanced readers, where do you send your new colleagues when they have questions? Tell us what’s missing in our discussions.
Although the CSS gallery thing is starting to get out of hand, viewing “real-world” examples have always been helpful to me. I learned to code by reverse-engineering other people’s code, and it’s inspiring to see how other designers solved practical problems. “CSS Beauty”:http://www.cssbeauty.com has been a consistently strong resource for me.
Thanks for the great collection of web resources. Although I knew some of them it’s always good to have a few more.
For your international readers there might be another great resource: “http://www.selfhtml.org/”:http://www.selfhtml.org/. It covers almost all topics of HTML and CSS in brief. Currently it’s available in German, French, Spanish and Japanese. English translation is on its way.
I’ve been trying my hardest to learn design skills, but coming from a programming background it’s a bit daunting; especially if your girlfriend is a designer herself it makes it out into something like a dark art which you can only be born with.
Something which you can imagine is pretty off-putting at first, but can be challenged with hard work and determination and these articles and links you’ve posted will help a lot in furthering my skills.
The hardest thing i think is just coming up with ideas, I mean when you come home from work tired and drained it’s hard to muster up ideas for your personal site but lately i’m finding inspiration with my flickr pals and the groups i’ve joined and made a few long-term friends along the way.
What can i say, the ALA will always be a site for inspiration and these sources help out a lot.
If anyone’s got any more things they think i should read, let me know, appreciate it.
All the very best.
John.
Thanks dudes, what a great bunch of cool site where to learn from. I also would recommend to visit “Stu Nicholls Site”:www.cssplay.co.uk. He is a well known _CSS_ Artist, who makes extraordinary things *just with css*.
I’ve always found “Brainjar”:http://www.brainjar.com/ to be a valuable resource.
Just what I’ve needed. Thanks!
I’m also doing web design and I’ve been accustomed to using Dreamweaver, Photoshop & Flash. I have to admit though that they are expensive. Are there any free or inexpensive alternatives to these 3 that you guys from ALA use?
“http://tacoma.web.design.googlepages.com/#everything”:Tacoma Web Design For America
“tacoma web design for america”:http://tacoma.web.design.googlepages.com/#everything
I wrote something similar a while ago “here”:http://www.badboy.ro/articles/2006-07-23/index.php but Erin’s definitely covering more ground than me. Good job!
While a little basic, I still find w3schools’ CSS2 Reference page extremely helpful.
Thanks so much for that collection of links. If anyone ever tells me they want to learn how to web design from now on, i’ll be able to keep them busy for quite some time.
I also suggest this “Html Tutorial”:http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/ . It really got me a solid foundation of the what’s going on behind everything else.
Thanks.
There is a typo in “Designing a CSS-Based Template,” a five-part series from Veerle Pieters – the attribute HREF of A tag is “http://http://” which points to “http://www.w3.org/Protocols/” via Google redirect in Firefox.
Other than that, nice collection of resources! Thanks a bunch!
Great little list. I’d like to add my resource, Devlounge (www.devlounge.net). We try to provide original articles on web design related topics such as web standards, design, and code as often as possible.
That’s a very handy list, your site and many of the others you’ve mentioned have been scoured and many re-visited in my quest to improve my CSS and XHTML knowledge.
One you missed – CSSPlay by Stu Nicholls http://www.cssplay.co.uk
Probably not for beginners, but Stu’s experiments have been very helpful in giving me some new ideas as to what’s possible.
Although some aren’t cross browser or accessible – there’s some great (and fun) ideas on here. Check it out.
Note to self: Check out a List Apart code to work out how they do that nice comment preview thing!
I know that books are rather ‘old media’ but since I usually end up printing out destructions having them pre-printed can be useful. Here are some that I like:
* “Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML”:http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-HTML-CSS-XHTML/dp/059610197X/sr=8-4/qid=1161033278/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4/002-7035573-7884056?ie=UTF8 *the* best introduction I have come across. Tackles syntax, with examples and gently introduces _theory_ (that’s right — what is elements, how inheritance?) as you go along. Totally brilliant — I am using with a class of n00bs and they love it!
* Eric Meyer’s “On CSS”:http://www.amazon.com/Eric-Meyer-CSS-Mastering-Language/dp/073571245X/sr=1-1/qid=1161033412/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-7035573-7884056?ie=UTF8&s=books and “More Eric Meyer on CSS”:http://www.amazon.com/Eric-Meyer-CSS-Mastering-Language/dp/073571245X/sr=1-1/qid=1161033412/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-7035573-7884056?ie=UTF8&s=books are well worth shelling out for.
* Dave Shea & Molly Holzschlag’s “The Zen of CSS Design”:http://www.amazon.com/Zen-CSS-Design-Enlightenment-Voices/dp/0321303474/ref=pd_sim_b_4/002-7035573-7884056?ie=UTF8
and there are lots more goodies. I do find Zeldman’s “Designing with Web Standards”:http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Standards-Voices-That-Matter/dp/0321385551/sr=1-1/qid=1161033556/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-7035573-7884056?ie=UTF8&s=books rather preachy and over the top. Not one to buy if you’re wanting to do CSS rather than read about how upstanding you are to want to do CSS.
Thanks for the great list of links. There are several blog posts out on the internet of this very theme, but this ALA post is my favorite so far. I’ll be sure to send it to anyone coming to me interested in web design. 🙂
I’d also like to second the recommendation above: http://www.cssplay.co.uk
A few links I’d recommend for building accessible web sites.
“Accessify”:http://accessify.com – general accessibility discussion, hints & tips.
“Building accessible websites”:http://joeclark.org/book/ – Joe Clark’s book.
“Bruce Lawson”:http://brucelawson.co.uk – Bruce Lawson’s blog.
“Clearleft”:http://www.clearleft.com/ offers up “this Client Survey”:http://www.clearleft.com/worksheet/survey.rtf to help identify site goals, audience, establish desired look and feel, etc.
Sometimes it’s more important, when starting out, to know what _not_ to do on your site. So I’d add http://webpagesthatsuck.com/ to your list.
Some useful links for those who provide web page content or design to the U.S. government.
U.S. Government Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards (Section 508) http://www.access-board.gov/508.htm
Final Standards – http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/standards.htm
Preamble (published discussion of the standards) – http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/preamble.htm
Subpart B — Technical Standards (in both Final Standards and Preamble) contains the following:
Section 1194.21 Software Applications and Operating Systems is most applicable to web page applications.
Section 1194.22 Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications is most applicable to web page design.
These standards have a requirment for any work done for any entity of the federal government since June 21, 2001.
Great links. What about resources for those who have to write for the web?
I’m thinking articles like those from Erin Kissane on “incisive.nu”:http://www.incisive.nu/articles What other good reference or magazine sites might compliment ALA’s Content > Writing category?
Ok, I have BA in English and decided that I didn’t want to teach (which is sort of like flushing 4 years down the toilet, but iambic pentameter is pretty). I got a job answering emails at my college and then next thing you know, I’m doing design work and discovered 1) I’m not too bad at it and 2)I love IT!
So my question is: do I need a “degree” in order to be a web designer or should I just take some classes to learn things I have difficulty teaching myself like PHP (I already taught myself HTML and CSS)? Does the market require a degree or just a good portfolio?
Why is there no section on typography? What The Font should be helpful to some and definately Typophile, among others.
Also listing forums for designers would be useful I think. Maybe Kirupa or Yay hooray or Designers Talk to name a few.
Incorrect URL:
http://http//veerle.duoh.com/blog/comments/designing_a_css_based_template_part_i/
Correct URL:
http://veerle.duoh.com/blog/comments/designing_a_css_based_template_part_i/
Just wanting to help out your other users as Stefan Isarie did some time ago.
If anyone has a good web design, please let me know, I am collecting them at webdesignrank. 🙂