Visitas recomendadas:

Note: This page will be revised soon; some of the links that follow could be dead or might have changed.

This a list of resources to learn more, get programs and files of many kinds and improve our knowledge and skills. We didn’t want to include an unending list; in the internet it’s very easy to get lists of links. This selection is made with relevant links and sites with lots of contents. (Given the continuous change in the internet, some of the links might have changed).

Contents in this page:

Manage bookmarks / share bookmarks
Graphic design
Downloading programs:
Free services for a website.
Search engines.
Create logos, icons, titles and other graphics...
Mail list, blogs and forums
Optimize images and check pages.
Collections of services and utilities.
Free Elements for webpages.
Applets Java and Javascript code

Manage and share bookmarks

It’s very easy to share your bookmarks; you only need to export them from your favourite browser. This option is available in the File menu (Import/Export) in Internet Explorer. To export your bookmarks in Firefox and Mozilla, you only need to choose Bookmarks / Organize bookmarks. A pop up window will appear. Then select export... In both cases you will be prompted to choose a name for your bookmarks file; they will be saved in a normal html file, so it’s possible to further edit this file (for example, bookmark_1_2006.html) with any text or html editor. You could add your own comments and remarks, change some colours in the sections, or change it in any way you want. This saved file you can share with anyone you want, publish it on the internet or whatever, because it’s plain html understood by any browser.

We can search information and resources easily with Internet indexes and search engines. The best known are Yahoo, Altavista, Alltheweb, Google, Open Directory, ...) Each search engine has some kind of help page, where it explains how to fine-tune your searches, or how to perform specialised searches.

Graphic design resources

If you search something like "graphic design" or "illustration", or "typography" en about.com o About.com (a big collection of articles, tutorials and links) you will find resources about any of these topics and more. A recommendable portal with classified and commented links.
Deezin y Graphic-design.com, other link compilations about graphic design themes.
Designer-Info is a really huge collection of articles about graphic design and software reviews. A very recommended site because it deals with web design, page design, DTP, illustration... much the same topics we cover here. Tom Arah, the writer at designer.info, analyses programs in detail, and explains a wide range of topics.
Graphics unleashed used to offer more tutorials in the past, although there has been some trimming and the offer of free articles has dwindled. They used to offer many articles about CorelDraw. The series Logos for the design challenged and Makeover Maven are very good.
Mike's Sketchpad: another very interesting page with excellent explanations of vector drawing technique, and with useful templates and tutorials.
Freehand users should visit FreehandSource, and Xara users visit the Xaraxone although many techniques explained there can be used in almost any drawing application.
Colorize.com is a website devoted to the world of colour. Interesting content, with many links and, well, a colourful presentation.
The websites of the main software creators and distributors are a recommendable visit: Macromedia or Adobe, are well worth visiting, and they offer lots of resources, articles and advice. Corel developed a site called,Designer.com.
Some design Ezines: the listing you get from Yahoo. This is an instant way to save lists of relevant links about any theme: simply save the page with the search results.

Program download zone:

In those servers we find a huge variety of demos, freeware and shareware programs. They are arranged by categories and there is some kind of search option to easily find a specific program, with the kind of licence you wish. Some well-stocked servers: download.com softseek.com ,freeware32.com, Nonags, shareware.com, simtel.net/, tucows.com/, winsite.com and fontsnthings.com/

Web design:

Some of the graphic design links already listed provide tutorials and articles, and software reviews and links for web designers. Then there are some special reccomendations. One must-read is the Style Manual, formerly the University of Yale Manual of Web Style.
CoolHomepages, Linkdup and Coolwebdesign include screenshots showing websites which have a good design according to its colour, concept, technology, typography... Communication Arts is the digital version of the well-known graphic design magazine. They have a very interesting section, the Interactive (check out its Archive), where websites are analysed. It constitutes a true reference book for web designers. CA has also an interesting annual competition, and the winners are listed in a special subsite with the links to the originals.
But you can also learn what you must NOT do, with some sucking: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ In CoolHomepages, there is a similar section, called WorstHomepages.
The people at efuse has prepared a very comprehensive collection of articles, covering every bit of web building, designing and management: http://www.efuse.com The site was sponsored by Netobjects and some of the information is dated, but it’s still a very good resource, with good advice for both novices and professionals.
http://www.webreference.com/ is a compendium of resources for Webmasters; other similar resources: A list apart, http://www.stars.com, http://www.siteexperts.com/ , HTML writers guild. and webmonkey. But this merely scratch the surface. Not surprising... where should these resources be but in the net?

Some useful services for your website.

There is a good offer of services which may provide interactivity to your pages, facilitate navigation or improve its look. Sometimes we don’t bother to include them because we think they will mean extra work or it will be too complicated. Reality is very different: some websites offer some free services (well, advertising paid in most cases), very effective and easy to use. Here is a short list; if you wish to reccomend something interesting to add here, please let us know and we’ll be pleased to include it.

Form management.

If you wish to add a simple contact form in a page, to receive feedback from visitors you may use some service such as Response-o-matic,Freedback or Formsite. These services take the form entries and they will send them to the indicated e-mail address; you can prepare a very professional-looking form, get as much feedback as you want from visitors and it works. Useful if your hosting doesn’t allow your own private web-based forms; an alternative would be a simple mail to: form to sent to your email via email client, but this option has many problems: if the visitor isn’t using his or her own computer, or the email client hasn’t been configured properly, it won’t work.

Search engines for your own site.

You might want to facilitate searches for your users adding a search engine for your own website. Again, this could be complitated to implement, and with some hosting programs you cannot use the necessary scripts and programming. Not to mention it would be very time consuming and difficult to write and manage. Some services such as Hitbox, Thunderstone o Atomz, or Freefind make this easy. You just have to sign up for an account, indicate your url or web address, and the server will read your site contents and create a database with them; then you receive a html snippet to include in whatever page you want to use to search your site. It just takes a few minutes, and it works very well. The reports you get in some cases are very useful, too, because they let you know what are the users searching for. You may use this valuable information to plan your new contents and the changes you could introduce in the website.

Create logos, titles and other graphics...

Some online utilities to create special effects graphics and texts: Cooltext, 3dtextmaker, Spinfrenzy, Zyweb.

Mailing lists, forums and other utilities

Managing a mailing list to keep visitors up to date, inform about what’s new, and offer other communitations is very easy with the services provided by elistas, Topica or egroups. You can also create a discussion forum online with most of these same services if you don’t want to take the trouble to manage your own php, asp or cgi-based discussion system.

Optimize images and check pages.

We must be sure our graphic files have a reasonable size so they travel fast through the net. We should aldo check out web pages for missing links and other possible errors. www.gifwizard.com: will provide a complete report. Do also check the web design resources listed above, because most of them provide web and image “clinic” utilities.

Services and utilities.

In the chami website, the creators of htmlkit, you will find an assortment of utilities such as:

Add special effects to images in seconds using the Image Embellisher.
Online JPEG Compressor with side-by-side previews of compressed images.
TextColorizer for creating HTML text highlighted in shifting colors.
Windows, Java and ActiveX versions of URL2File for downloading remote files.
Cookie Tester for verifying browser settings.
WhoIsNot Lite, a browser-like interface for querying domain names.
Internet, Windows and programming tips.

The danish website Freecentral provides links to any imaginable free resource, and so does Siteowner.

Elements for webpages.

Some free templates for your website: http://freesitetemplates.com/, http://www.webvoodoo.com/free/sets.html and http://elated.com/toolbox/pagekits/.

Java Applets and Javascript code

Webs such as Javaboutique, Javascriptsource , Dynamicdrive, Hotscripts.com, Freewarejava , Javapowered, or Brainjar offer a variety of Java applets and JavaScript code, ready to use with a minimum of customisation to your own needs. There is a lot of help, tutorials and related articles too. In the case of Java applets, some are free, but others are shareware; scripts are normally free, but in some cases you are asked by the author to include a link to his site or at least acknowledge his authorship. There is a lot of interesting effects and complements for your web pages. Use them with caution and do not overuse them.