Externals

Sites we like. This page ain’t hardly maintained. Contents may shift during handling. For fresh links, please see or subscribe to my bookmarks.

On this page:
blogger nation: A far from exhaustive list of worthwhile personal sites.
A List Apart by topic: Six years of ALA content categorized for your pleasure.
absurdly useful: “The world’s largest online library.”
accessibility & design: Opening your site to more people.
advocacy: Creative Commons and The Web Standards Project.
css, markup & standards: A far from exhaustive list of helpful sites, articles, and tools.
design (& other) magazines: Zines, portals, font houses, design/development periodicals.
design tools & info: Royalty-free photos, patterns, color pickers, favelets, more.
events: Meatspace meetups.
macintosh: Selected sites and pages.
odd lots & miscellanies: Loose threads from the sock drawer.

blogger nation

adactio: journal: Jeremy Keith’s stylish blog.
Adnan: “Adnan.org: good design, bad idea.”
Airbag: Greg Storey’s beautiful personal periodical. New look, ~~new~~ yet another new location.
alazanto: Kevin Davis’s lush blog in the ornate cream-on-cream school.
all in the head: Ponderings and code by Drew McLellan.
Brian Alvey Weblog, The: Thoughts from the CEO of Weblogs, Inc. and lead developer of Happy Cog Studios.
Authentic Boredom: The beauty of Cameron Moll.
Andy Budd: Guess whose blog this is. Nicely done, sir.
Anil Dash: A fine old log.
Antipixel: Jeremy Hedley’s weblog coming to you sort of live from Tokyo.
Asterisk: D. Keith Robinson’s weblog.
Backup Brain: Smith and Negrino.
Bionic Ear Blog: Adventures of a woman gaining a new and improved ear.
blather.org: PHP whiz and developer to the stars Mike Buzzard’s personal site.
Blog de Pfunder: Clean CSS design.
Blue Plaid Shirt: A nicely designed blog about design.
bluishorange: Alison, English major and waitress.
Brainstorms and Raves: Web standards, accessibility, and development tools.
Bryan Bell: Mainly design news.
ButtonMonkey: The life and times of Terry Eaton.
Caterina.net: Elegant online diary/blog.
Caustic Sense: Anhedonic for as long as we can remember.
chokespeak: Pretty-pretty blog.
delete.me.uk: Homepage of Paul Sowden, the lad who invented the Style Switcher.
Design by Fire: Not-to-be-missed personal site of Andrei Herasimchuk and Donna Driscoll, dedicated to the broad and fine points of interface design. (Redesign in progress.)
Design Dojo: Sam Royama’s tight, beautiful site devoted to design and discourse
Design Meme: Stuart Robertson on web design.
dollarshort: The lovely blog of Mena.
Fawny: Personal blog of Joe Clark.
Fontmonster: Fonts and such.
~~frownland~~: ~~Was gone. Is back.~~ Is gone.
Heather Champ: Self-explanatory.
hebig.org/blog/: “The greatest thing since bread came sliced.”
Hicks Design: Stuff for designers. Happy and poppy.
Historical Present: Leslie Harpold dot com.
Hivelogic Narrative: Appliances and meanderings.
I Me Michael: Interesting personal site with switchable look and feel.
Inflight Correction: CSS and stuff from author, designer, and WaSP steering committee member Owen Briggs.
iWalt.com: Crisp, clean blog with G5 metal vibe.
Kapowaz: More metal for your metal-viewing pleasure. Online since 1997.
Jason Santa Maria: The most beautiful site in the world.
JD on MX: Macromedia’s John Dowdell on news for MX and web developers.
jessey.net (si-blog): Simon Jessey’s weblog.
JimFormation: “Making buttons from bones.”
Kottke: Not recommended at all.
Leaves Rustle: Noel D. Jackson’s blog.
Life Uncommon, A: Wonderful personal site, reviewed 28 May 2003.
Mark Simonson’s Notebook: New (summer 2004) blog by wonderful type designer/letterer/graphic designer.
Measure Twice: Kalsey Consulting Group’s weblog on design and web standards.
Meccapixel: Michael Cosentino’s photos. Nicely done, sir.
Meme Machine: Ever changing.
Meyerweb: Personal observations. CSS tips and tutorials. Home of the greatest CSS teacher/practitioner of them all.
Michael Pick: Design tips and insights.
Mikal in Philly: New! Michael Nolan, veteran editor and art director.
Mike Industries: Blog of Seattle-based art director/interactive designer Mike Davidson (ESPN.net).
Modulo 26: Smart and understatedly beautiful site.
Motor Skills: Jonathan Macy Biggs.
Nick Finck: Journal of Digital Web Mag founder.
No Sense of Place: Jens Christoffersen, live from Copenhagen.
Oblivio: Michael Barrish makes this.
One Point Zero: Awesome.
Ordinary Life: ‘Design, life, and other odds and ends.’
ourcommon: Beautiful, elegant, minimalist blog in the pale-on-pale school.
Padawan.info: An apprentice blog.
Paul Boutin: Personal site of Slate, Wired, Salon journalist Boutin.
plasticbag: Who the hell is Tom Coates?
Powazek.com: Personal site of Derek M. Powazek.
Prolific: Superfine blog of Caro von B.
Rogue Librarian: Shooshin’ and stampin’.
Sandwich Project: What is the best sandwich? Since man crawled from the swamp he has asked himself this question. Finally a website has come along to answer it.
Scott Andrew: Scripting, standards, and urban acoustic pop.
Scripting News: Publishing technologies and personal asides.
sidesh0w: Ethan Marcotte on web design and life.
Signal vs. Noise: Musings and dialog on web design, entertainment, and politics.
SimpleBits: The tiny web design and development studio and digital sandbox of Dan Cederholm.
sixfoot6: It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.
stopdesign: Douglas Bowman’s worthwhile weblog.
Superfluous Banter: Smart content; crisp, clean presentation; subtly varied user selectable styles.
Surfin’ Safari: Dave Hyatt’s weblog (leader in development of Safari browser, former Mozilla engineer).
Tantek’s log: Web technologies and challenging assertions from the developer of the Tasman rendering engine.
Textism: Too clever by half.
textura design: The strange world of DL Byron.
Things I Learned the Hard Way: Female folks wisdom for life, love, work and play. Added Oct 17, 2006.
Tim Bray: ongoing: XML’s Daddy’s got blog.
Typographica: Typography blog at new, Canada-friendly URL.
vanderwoning.ca: Photography of Raymond A. van der Woning.
Vantan: Personal site of Vanessa Tan.
Veer: The Skinny: “Inspiration. Commentary. Design. Monkeys..”
Veerle: Graphic design and CSS (including tasty tutorials) plus thoughts about Apple, nature, and music abound in this nice blog by Veerle Pieters.
Vestige: “Crit my lit.”
waferbaby: Sui generis.
Walt Whitman Presents: I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.
What Do I Know?: Pertinent personal periodical of Todd Dominey.
Where There’s Smoke: … there’s Smokler.
xBlog: The visual thinking weblog.
zlog: Nicely done, old bean!

A List Apart by topic

Access @ ALA: Tips on making your site available to every device: from Palm Pilots and web-enabled cell phones to screen readers, text browsers, and alternative browsers and devices
Browsers @ ALA: Does your content travel well? Can your design and functionality survive from one platform to another, one browser to another, one configuration to another? Web standards and testing methods are included in this topic.
Business @ ALA: Surviving and thriving as a freelancer, employee, or small web business owner. Laws affecting web content and web business. Business basics and growth strategies. Working with clients and consumers. Web marketing and search engines.
Content @ ALA: Better writing and more effective web communication. Working with, and in some cases, building your own content management systems. Writing for the medium. Designing for readers. Web narratives and experience design.
CSS @ ALA: Using Cascading Style Sheets as part of standards-based web design. CSS layout techniques, tips, and tricks. Crafting a print style sheet. Emulating (and surpassing) traditional visual web design techniques. Separating presentation from structure. Style sheet switching for user customization, accessibility, and creative purposes. CSS support browser bugs and workarounds. Showing and hiding elements, replacing text with images. Fixed and liquid layouts. See also typography.
Culture @ ALA: This web life: emerging trends, thoughtful topics, insights and provocations, legal and social issues of web creation and publishing. Innovations and abuses, freedom and constraints.
Design @ ALA: Graphic design, interface design, user experience design. Creative and technical techniques for crafting great interfaces. Developing an appropriate look and feel. How web users respond to design. Visual styles, influences, and trends.
DOM | Scripting @ ALA: Building dynamic websites using JavaScript / ECMAScript, the W3C DOM, and other scripting languages and technologies, including server-side languages like ASP and PHP.
Flash @ ALA: Designing and programming in Macromedia Flash. Making Flash content accessible. Embedding Flash content while supporting web standards. Building games and applications using Flash ActionScript and server-side technologies.
HTML | XHTML @ ALA: Proper document markup. Building accessible, cross-platform, cross-browser pages. Using web standards correctly. Converting from HTML to XHTML. DOCTYPE switching and beyond.
Process @ ALA: Workflow, project management, keeping projects on target, brainstorming, scope creep, building and working with teams. The creative process. Ideas and inspiration. Communicating with clients and colleagues.
Server-Side @ ALA: Shaping dynamic user interactivity with scripting languages like Perl, PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, and Rebol. Database-driven projects and processes. Web services and .NET.
Tools @ ALA: From Photoshop to Dreamweaver, publishing tools to accessibility testing software.
Typography @ ALA: Controlling web typography: CSS methods, browser problems, user problems, and workarounds. Typographically correct punctuation. Unicode. Scalable text. Replacing text with images of text – CSS / XHTML methods, accessibility issues. Designing for readers. Legibility. Typefaces, graphic design.
Usability @ ALA: Creative problem solving. Designing for your audience. Contingency design, site mapping, information architecture. Conducting meaningful user testing.
XML & Pals @ ALA: Understanding and working with eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and the many applications and protocols derived from it, including SVG, SMIL, syndication formats like RSS, and more. Rolling your own XML language. Working with databases. Using XSLT transformations to publish – from print to the web.

absurdly useful

Questia: “The world’s largest online library of over 45,000 books and 360,000 journal, magazine, and newspaper articles.”

accessibility & design

Accessibility Unplugged: Online lecture notes from a presentation by Bud Krauss of TryNet.
Accessify: “Verb: to make accessible.” Tools, wizards, links, and tips.
Accessify Forum: Free to the public: talk about accessibility and design.
Anitra Pavka: Accessibility weblog.
Building Accessible Websites (serialization): The excellent book online, one chapter at a time.
Cynthia Says™: Newish and interesting access testing tool.
Dive Into Mark: Blog of access guy Mark.
Government Requirements re: Web Access: Does the ADA apply to websites? And other questions.
Joe Clark Slashdot interview: Great Q&A on web accessibility.
Bob Regan: Accessibility: Techniques, examples, and resources (a Macromedia blog).

advocacy

Creative Commons: Create. License. Share.
Web Standards Project: Education and advocacy.

css, markup & standards

Accessible Image Replacement: Design meets accessibility: an alternative to Fahrner Image Replacement.
Box Model Hack: Working around browsers that misunderstand CSS.
Browser Specs: Browser upgrade rationales your accounting department will understand.
CSS Between the Style Sheets: Tantek’s portion of SXSW CSS panel covers principles of clean, structural markup.
CSS Panic Guide: First line of defense when CSS panic strikes.
CSS Tableless Web Sites: At Meryl.net, a listing of sites laid out with CSS instead of tables.
CSS-Discuss: Best mailing list for real world CSS design and development.
CSS Zen Garden: Highly recommended: a collaborative gallery showing what can be done with CSS-based design.
CSS Zen Garden Resource Guide: CSS resources for designers.
Layout Reservoir: Steal these CSS layouts! See also Little Boxes, Real World Style.
Listamatic: Deep walkthrough shows many ways to turn ordinary lists into fancy nav bars. Highly recommended.
List-o-matic: Does the work for you! This free online tool is highly recommended.
Little Boxes: Clickable CSS layout. See also Layout Reservoir, Real World Style.
Meyer Web: Personal observations. CSS tips and tutorials.
NYPL Style Guide: XHTML and CSS basics. Converting from HTML to XHTML.
Owen Hack: Hiding CSS rules from Opera.
Real World Style: CSS layouts, tips, tricks, and techniques – includes CSS layouts that work in Netscape 4. No, really.
SimpleBits: accessible image-tab rollovers: Like it says.
Tableless: Before and after: table-based sites get circumcised.
Taming Lists: At ALA: the little article that started it all, by Mark Newhouse.
Using Lists for DHTML Menus: A structural approach to dynamic menus.
W3 Planet: Tracks web-standards-related sites and blogs.
Web Standards Awards: Honoring excellence in standards-based design.
Web Standards Project, The: Education and advocacy.
Weekly Standards: Honoring excellence in standards-based design.
Westciv self-paced courses: Online courses on CSS, (X)HTML, etc. Some are free, others are paid.

design (& other) magazines

Bitmap Mania: Lovely bitmap fonts.
Boxes and Arrows: Organizing information for the web.
Coudal: Design news and projects.
Design is Kinky: Design news and projects.
Design Not Found: The best and worst of contingency design.
DevEdge: Design and development tutorials and techniques, in a site that practices what it preaches.
Digital Web: Web design and development.
Dodge Magazine: Indie content by a ragtag assembly of designers.
Evolt: Web development and design.
{fray}: Among the web’s first and best independent sites.
GUI Galaxy: Stylish site with design-y downloadables.
K10k: Design news and projects.
linkdup: Latest design links.
Morning News, The: “A web-based broadsheet.”
Netdiver: Online design zine and resource.
New Riders: Publishing “voices that matter.”
Pirated Sites: Nice design. Haven’t we seen it before?
PixelSurgeon: Design news and projects.
reservocation: Elegantly designed zine.
Scene360: Film. Art. Music. Literature.
Soul of the Web: The web holds treasures. Soul of the Web celebrates them.
undesign: “A plan for all seasons.”
v-2.org: Design, architecture, and life.
Web Graphics: Design and development weblog.
Weirdsmobile: “A legitimate, if ill-advised, attempt at personal expression outside the boundaries of what is ‘hip’ or ‘popular’ on the web, yet hewing to certain conventions of the form in a shameful concession to the sensibilities of the ‘typical’ web reader, who may be alienated by unfamiliar or atonal forms of expression, and thereby lose interest.”

design tools & info

Airshare: Wireless community resource.
Box Model Hack: Working around browsers that misunderstand CSS.
Color Blender: Useful color tool by Eric Meyer.
Color Harmonizer: Create color harmonies, combinations, and themes.
Favelets: Essential tools for web designers. (See ours as well.)
Get Content Size: How fat is your page?
Icon Factory: Icons and software for Mac and Windows. Over 12 million pixels pushed.
iStockPhoto: Royalty-free photos, illustrations, and more. Community site.
iStockPro: Royalty-free photos for professionals.; Essential tools for web designers.
JavaScript and Links: Links and JavaScript living together in harmony.
K10k Patterns Gallery: Patterns for your pleasure.
More Crayons: 4096 “web-smart” colors in a 16 x 16 x 16 cube.
Safety Sign Builder: Fun for the whole family.
Saila.com: CSS layouts, web design tips, and Lorem Ipsum.
Veer: High quality stock photos, illustrations, and fonts.
Web Building Tips: As it says.
Web Writing Apple Scripts: Prepare typographically correct text for the web.
Young Pup: DHTML and such.

events

An Event Apart: Traveling, one-day seminar on designing and publishing with web standards.
Meet the Makers: Conferences and conversations: creative people in a technical world.
WebVisions: Low-key, non-commercial, creative conference held annually in Portland.

macintosh

Daring Fireball: Intelligent discussion of Mac stuff.
iBlog: Newhouse on web standards, access, and Mac stuff.
OS X Refugee Utilities: Restore missing OS 9 functions to your OS X environment.
Splorp!: Home of the Grant cam.
stevenf: Panic co-founder’s personal site.

odd lots & miscellanies

Available Domain Name of the Week: Like it says.
Clip ’n Seal: Very cool bag closer mfrd by designer and blogger DL Byron.
Coudal: Summer Reading 2003: Designers review their favorite summer reads.
Designers Network: Talent list.
Flyguy: Amazing little black and white world by Trevor Van Meter et. al.
Lost America Night Photography: The abandoned roadside west.
NYC Wireless: Free public wireless Internet service throughout NYC.
Strongbad: Animated series is loads of laughs.
Taken on the Road: American Mile Markers: 3,304 photos taken on the road between New York and San Francisco, one photo for every mile.
Tiny Pineapple: Postcards: When you care enough to send the very best.
What is My IP?: The easiest way to determine your IP address.