Web-Sites of the Month: Best of February 2007 November 3, 2007

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/03/08/best-of-february-2007/

This is a great site!!! So many things I’ve wanted to learn how to do, are all right here! I could spend days going through this site. So, I’m basically bookmarking here what sites I want to go back and view, so I can apply them to my final project and my employer’s website. The other ones are things I didn’t find too interesting.

IMified - Instant Productivity- not really useful to me personally, since I don’t use IM, but may be to a lot of people. I’ll note this page, in case I ever start.

MiniAjax.com- I’m having a little trouble understanding what Ajax code is, so I’m posting the definition in which Wikipedia provided (I know they’re not always reliable), so I can read it over and over to try to getting a better understanding. “Ajax, or AJAX, (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a web development technique used for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. This is intended to increase the web page’s interactivity, speed, functionality, and usability.

Ajax is asynchronous in that extra data is requested from the server and loaded in the background without interfering with the display and behaviour of the existing page. JavaScript is the scripting language in which Ajax function calls are usually made.^[1] Data is retrieved using the XMLHttpRequest object that is available to scripting languages run in modern browsers. There is, however, no requirement that the asynchronous content is formatted in XML.”

                - This site I found to be extremely useful! I really like the reflections site, I think it really makes images stand out.    http://cow.neondragon.net/stuff/reflection/

                - I really like the pop-up slideshow effect in Roll-your-own AJAX Slideshow.  I’m looking for new, fun ways to view photos in my galleries.

                - I like the carousel component, however the directions look very complicated.  Carousel Component - Demo.

                - I’ve been want to learn how to do a hover slideshow for sometime now. And here it is, even more professional looking then I imagined. Suckerfish HoverLightbox

                - I also like Highslide JS thumbnail viewer as a way to view photos.  Also, while browsing this site, I discovered I like the bubble over, Bubble Tooltips - Demo, but does it work for general info or do you have have a link in the bubble?

http://www.systemsevendesigns.com/ (I’m just bookmarking this site b/c I like the header)

               - More cool way to view photos, JonDesign’s SmoothGallery - Demo and FrogJS Javascript Gallery

My Hourly Rate Calculator- helpful but takes time to figure out expenses.

Upcoming Events in 2007- useful for finding upcoming conventions.

Job Pile - Aggregating the Best Job Boards on the Web- job postings, always helpful! However, I wish they had the city & state listed under the job title (on all listings).

Creating a 3D effect- cool way to create a 3D effect, but I don’t think I’ll be using it in my final project.

How Web 2.0 Logos are drawn (Adobe Photoshop)- Nice to have some tutorials on logos. Logos are not my strong point, and being a designer, I really need to work on them more!

Papervision3D- one of the features in this site is panoramic interactive rooms. I’ve always wanted to learn this.

Logo Design Trends 2007- great site to research & help me with my logo design problem.

Internet marketing videos from Tubetorial- some tips to help spruce up your WordPress blog.

frevvo - web form builder- good way to incorporate forms, especially if your setting up an eCommerce site.

Mini tabbed pages- very cool tabs that give bits of info before clicking into the page.

Vertical Bar Graphs using CSS and PHP- if you ever want to create all types of graphs.

Flexible fixed layouts- tutorial for CSS

Even More Rounded Corners With CSS- single-image, PNG-based, fluid rounded corner dialogs with support for borders, alpha transparency throughout, gradients, patterns and more.

Ajaxload- different ways to display “loading”. But, how do you know when to use these and how do you incorporate them into your site?

Plotr- another tutorial for displaying charts & graphs.

swfIR: swf Image Replacement- awesome way to add shadows, rotate, borders, & change corners to text & images.

15 CSS Properties You Probably Never Use (but perhaps should), CSS techniques I use all the time articles I want to read again, so I can get better at CSS.

Color Tools- to learn more about color.

Free Photoshop Brushes- Awesome!!!

LogoSauce - Logo design, inspiration and information.- Because I need some logo inspiration!

Freebies | BittBox, Freefont: 5 More Freefonts- more fee stuff!!