Brian Cook Presents

More people have websites these days than ever before. Blogs, family photo albums and online resumes are just some of reasons for this growth in web publishing. Fortunately, the proliferation of blogging engines, templates and apps has continued apace, meaning that virtually anyone who’s pointed in the right direction can make a website that is viewable and usable with relative ease.

For those wishing to delve more deeply into web design, there are plenty of applications to expedite the process. These nine resources cover the theory of design, provide tools for customization and offer the knowledge to continue one’s education.

Theory

A List Apart - An elegant site that consistently produces thorough, forward-thinking articles on many aspects of design.

Copyblogger - Featuring many topics of interest to bloggers, Copyblogger frequently discusses best practices and useful tips for blogging better.

Web Style Guide - A reference website that covers everything from layout to typography to graphics to copy. Good for finding the answer to a specific question.

Tools

Stripe Generator and Tartan Maker - These cool apps are beautifully designed and create great-looking stripes and tartans that can really dress up your website. Combined with Photoshop, they’re outstanding bases for backgrounds, with stripes for the Web 2.0 crowd and tartans for you Scots.

Brusheezy - A growing resource of Photoshop brushes, there are already a number of excellent ones to be had. It’s hard to believe that such great brushes as the Vintage Hand brushes and Indian Vibes brushes are free.

Phixr - Not nearly as powerful as Photoshop, but a good web-based photo editor nonetheless. The thumbnail preview helps make adding effects to Photos a cinch, and it saves your photo for 2 hours without you even having to log in.

Further Learning

Web Developer Toolbar - Only for Firefox, this handy toolbar gives you a wealth of data about any page you’re on, including page validation, document size and element information.

CSS Zen Garden - Revealing the true power of Cascading Style Sheets, this site is great for inspiration and study. It’s truly amazing how much these designers can change a page by only altering a style sheet.

Webmasterworld - With topics on e-commerce, robots.txt, Google search and every other aspect of webmastering, WMW is a great forum for asking questions, whether practical or theoretical.

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