MacTheWeb » Resource Links

The Freelancerâ€™s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need

michael — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:28:25 +0000

I love resource lists, good ones, of course. The idea that somebody has done the research and taken the time to organize it in a usable format and shared it with the world renews my faith in the web.

Here’s a great list of web based resources that any web designer should find useful. Some are services, some free, some not. Some, like Wordpress, are applications. They all look interesting. Whether I’m better served by an application on my Mac rather than a web one is an interesting question but still, its worth checking out The Freelancerâ€™s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need.

Learning Flash

michael — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 17:54:30 +0000

I wish I knew Flash better. While, it is often misused to create meaningless, worthless and annoying distractions like intro pages, it is also an incredible tool for offering interactive multi-media. It is like a sharp knife that can slice your food or your finger. Used carefully and appropriately it works better than any other tool.

There are many, many sites offering Flash instruction. On that I look too often is:
Informit. Many of the articles are excerpts from books they sell but still good stuff.

Typotheque Graphic Design and Typography

michael — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 04:45:49 +0000

If you are interested in typography, a bug that catches most designers sooner or later, there is a great source of serious information. Font house Typotheque has a number of in-depth articles covering a wide range of subjects. From design and typography history to philosophy to niche markets, you should find something of interest. They offer some good fonts, too.

Designers Who Blog Features MacTheWeb

michael — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 03:42:47 +0000

It’s a shock to go to a blog you like and see your picture across the top of the page. If I had known that that photo would get made into a banner I would have gotten a better picture than the PhotoBooth one from the lab computer at WSU.

Designers Who Blog featured Mac The Web in the July 10 Entry. I’m glad to be included. When I need a shot of inspiration I like to look at other designer’s blogs and Designers Who Blog is a great place to find interesting people.

Five simple steps to better typography

michael — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 04:40:44 +0000

Other than choosing font size and face, typography is often forgotten in web design . But use good typographic principles and you will make your site better. People won’t know why because much of good typography is subliminal. It will just look better and be more readable.

While a deep understanding of typography requires lots of study and probably a little bit of obsession, not that a bit of obsession is necessarily a bad thing, learning a few simple rules can make an immediate improvement in your work.

Fortunately, Mark Boulton has given us Five simple steps to better typography, to make the process easier.

Software Wars – Microsoft Against the World

michael — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:54:33 +0000

Steven Hilton has a fun map that shows the Empire of Microsoft against the world. It’s laid out like a military campaign.

Yahoo Photos a new service

michael — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 08:22:52 +0000

When Yahoo purchased photo-sharing site Flickr last year, the speculation about how the acquisition would affect the impending re-launch of Yahoo Photos immediately began. Now, the new Yahoo Photos has been unveiled â€” the beta went live Thursday afternoon (June 7, 2006).

Mike Arrington has a Yahoo Photos review up at TechCrunch. At first glance, it looks like Yahoo has taken the best bits of Flickr and rolled them into Yahoo Photos. The community features like commenting and voting are all there, as are tagging, organization with sets, and easy uploading via a browser-based tool. The big news is unlimited uploads and bandwidth, all for free. Another new feature is the inclusion of “Smart Albums” that update automatically based on tags, popularity, or date. Users can keep a “Latest Photos” set that gets populated when new photos are uploaded. These dynamic sets can also allow friends’ photos.

Yahoo Photos also appears to be able to display more photos on a single gallery page, though I’ve noticed some recent changes on Flickr that show movement in this direction â€” Flickr photostreams display as two columns now instead of one, and sets have more display options available. The usability of Yahoo Photos looks to be an improvement over Flickr, which is not to say that Flickr is difficult to use. Rather, Flickr might be too “techy” for some users, and Yahoo Photos looks to make things as easy as possible. Grandma won’t have any difficulty ordering prints.

You need to get a Yahoo account to use the service but your existing login will work if you have signed up for any Yahoo service in the past.