Design links

•  Web Page Design for Designers - which used to be a thoughtful and nicely designed site. Much of the content is still there, but it's lot a lot of its sparkle. Search for articles by the original owner, Joe Gillespie.
•  Web Pages That Suck: a labour of love, hate and usability by Vincent Sanders. Learn how not to do it by some truly ghastly examples.
•  Bug Uglly - this hilarious site shows you how not to do it - a real snigger-fest for good web designers, but a blush-making experience for the bad ones (of which there are all too many).
•  superbad - a completely anonymous site that breaks just about every rule in the book - but it's a compulsive timewaster and has some "interesting" navigation ideas. Just don't use them on your site, OK?

HTML, CSS, and XHTML links

• I used to recommend the Internet Publishing (INETPUB) forum on CompuServe. This useful resource dwindled away to nothing under the relentless march of progress (i.e. advertising revenue over content) and closed in summer 2005, but if you are a former member who misses the help and cameraderie, please consider joining us in our new web home, at  http://www.desktoppublishingforum.com/bb/ - I am sure you'll find lots of familiar faces there. We have been made very welcome by the forum staff, who are also refugees from CompuServe.
•  W3C - the World Wide Web Consortium - the fount of all specifications for the web. The site is packed with (sometimes abstruse) detail, and can be confusing to navigate when you get into the deeper layers. But if you need to know the current state of play, or exactly how to code something, this is the place to start.
•  Index Dot HTML and Index Dot CSS - two well-thought-out sites that tell you all you want to know about individual HTML elements and CSS properties, without wading through the huge documents at W3C: both the syntax and a helpful narrative about browser peculiarities etc. A labour of love by Brian Wilson; sadly getting out of date.
•  CSShark Answers FAQs - nice clear CSS tutorials with practical tips.
•  Web Design Group - HTML and CSS reference, an HTML validator, and other stuff.
•  CSS Zen Garden - a real inspiration this: showing how the same content can be transformed at the click of a mouse by loading a new CSS style sheet. Thumbs its nose at old-school designers who say that accessibility and beauty cannot co-exist in the same site.
•  A List Apart - an online magazine full of - often opinionated - interesting and useful articles on all aspects of current web design.

Accessibility links

•  RNIB - the Royal National Institute for the Blind. The site contains various guidelines for web authors.
•  AgeLight - this page includes links to hints on designing sites for visitors with the visual and physical impairments typical of older people.
•  W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, the home of recommendations and standards to aim for. Two useful documents are  web content techniques and  web content guidelines. You can subscribe to their mailing list also to keep up with latest thoughts (needs a thick skin!)
• Diane Wilson's  colour deficiency page - a resource for understanding colour deficit (colour blindness) problems that users might have, and how to minimise the effects.
• Christine Rigden's Safe Colours site - a site explaining how the browser safe palette looks to people with various colour deficiencies, and how to design for accessibility. This page seems to move at regular intervals, so apologies if you get a not found error!
•  Vischeck is a tool that shows you what your page would look like to someone with typical red-green colour-blindness.
•  Access Adobe - tools for making PDF and Flash files accessible to everyone.

© L Wakeman 2008 email +44 (0)1297 444707 | technical writing | web design | photos | pottery | about | help