a fantastic Monday morning geek-out opportunity!
One of my very favorite and, luckily, very useful activities as a Communications person is reading blog posts and articles by experts in my field. This article came through from Mashable – which, in my opinion, is one of the best online resources for our industry. I cannot recommend them enough and subscribe to their technology, social media and business feeds.
This article: 40+ Web Design and Development Resources for Beginners is a fantastic way to start your week. I think all of us, where ever we are on the development/maintenance scale of our websites, can use at least some of these links and resources.
I will take this moment to note a few awesome resources that I believe were overlooked – at least from my perspective:
Lynda.com – Seriously, the BEST online training resource ever born. About a year ago I decided it was time to learn how to build in Flash. In one day I went from “how do you open this bloody program?” to “Wow! Look at the cool Flash banner I just built for a client!”
Joomla – A great open source CMS for beginners, with a large network of plug-ins and support forums for beginning designers. The NWESD is preparing to launch a new web environment using Drupal (which was listed) but I have to admit that Joomla is certainly one of my top choices when I start building a site. This is a great one to consider while you evaluate Drupal and WordPress.
Firefox Extensions – A few of these were noted in the article, but I cannot function without SEVERAL of these web development tools. There is literally no web work happening without them. The ones I use the most are Measureit – where I can measure anything on the web in exact pixel dimensions, and Colorzilla – that allows me to get the exact RGB color match for any image or graphic showing in my browser.
So happy geeking on this Monday morning!
