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The Web itself has a huge number of resources about Web page design and Web graphics. Here are just a few of the best ones I’ve found over the years:
Once known as ‘The Mining Company’, about.com has deep resources on a wide range of topics. It has more help for creating Web pages and using Web graphics than we can describe, so go to the home page and search for topics such as ‘Personal Web Pages’, ‘Web design’ and ‘Web graphics.’
If a topic in Web design or Web graphics is puzzling you, amazon.com is a good place to go to find out more about it by seeing what books are available and what’s in them. And the comments on each book are a valuable, if sometimes simplistic, guide to the good and bad points of the books on offer.
Dummies.com is a great place to research Web design and Web graphics topics. Just visit the area called The Internet for Internet- and Web-related books or the Everyday Computing area to bone up on those all-important basic computer skills. Each book description includes a table of contents, giving you a quick overview of the topic.
http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/0-3883-8-4892140-1.html
Builder.com, which is a somewhat high-end Web-building site, has a good beginning graphics tutorial on their site. They feature Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, same as in Web Graphics For Dummies, and even point visitors to download.com, one of our favorite sites, to look for image editing tools.
This is a fairly technical site with a ‘non-technical’ introduction to HTML located prominently on their home page.
A confession: When I’m writing Web pages, I often have HTMLhelp.com open on my desktop, using it as a quick reference to find that weird attribute or missing tag. Highly recommended. (However, you won’t find some common older tags in there, because it’s been updated to the more modern style of HTML 4.0.)
This is the best way I know to get HTML forms to actually do something in your Web pages without writing your own CGI scripts (assuming your Web host even allowed you to!). Not real easy to get going with, but the best alternative I know of.
TinyURL converts long, clumsy URLs to short codes that are easy to e-mail and share – and it’s free! It’s a bit hard to explain, but once you’ve used it a few times you’ll be hooked.
Jakob Nielsen’s site has more good advice about Web design, including how not to overuse graphics, than you can take advantage of in a whole career. Take the advice with a grain of salt or two, though; if you follow the advice on this site to the letter your site will be highly usable, but boring. (Note that the useit.com home page is ugly and hard to read.)
Clever, accessible, opinionated, complete – yet with one of the uglier page designs on the planet. WebMonkey is a bit of an acquired taste, but is an extremely useful and interesting site for Web site design, graphics and more.
The World Wide Web consortium is the umbrella organization for the Web’s underlying technical standards, and it’s always good to “go to the source” when you have a question. However, message boards were added to the site a while ago, so your query will often lead you to an inane posting rather than the technical gold you want. Still, often worth a look.
Zanzara, a leading usability company, has archived their old Web site for you to look at as an example. It has graphical navigation, interesting use of graphics with text, and more. This is a great demonstration site for any small business that wants their site to look big. (For a more advanced example, check out the main Zanzara site, designed by my co-authors for Creating Web Graphics For Dummies, Peter Frazier, and for Web Usability For Dummies, Richard Mander).
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