Category: Useful Links and Resources

We’ve talked before about using content management systems, whether database-based or flat-file. As you may know, some of the CMS’s out there are very powerful and can be used to create some amazing websites and communities. In a previous post I talked about the simplicity and ease of using a flat-file CMS.

Another option for creating a website, apart from hand coding it yourself, is to use templates and build on them. To this end, I want to share with you two wonderful resources I discovered the other day. I am going to be exploring and using these resources myself and you may see me mention them again, but in this post I just want to introduce them.

The first is the Open Source Web Design project. Open Source Web Design is a site where you can download free web design templates and share yours with others. The goal is to help make the internet a prettier place, and the templates you find there are really nice to look at, and can inspire you with a slew of ideas. As of this post, there are currently 2080 free designs for you to download and play with. If you download and use one of the templates, make sure you read and adhere to the Usage Agreement and the copyright information of each template.

The second resource that I want to share with you today is the Dynamic Drive DHTML and Javascript Code Library. This is one of my favorite places to find and download free, original DHTML (Dynamic HTML) and Javascript scripts to enhance your web site. Some of the scripts you will find on this website include:

* Calendars
* Date & Time
* Document Effects
* Dynamic Content
Iframe & Ajax,
* Form Effects
* Games
* Image Effects
Galleries, Mouseover, Slideshows
* Links & Tooltips
* Menus & Navigation
CSS Based, Multi-levels
* Mouse and Cursor
* Scrollers
* Text Animations
* User/System Preference
* Window and Frames
* XML and RSS

and others.

Between these two resources, you may be able to come up with some ideas for projects in the new year.

That’s an ambitious title, isn’t it? Well, I hope my recent discovery can live up to it. A while ago I introduced you to #develop, an open source development environment for .NET.

Today I want to point you to Microsoft’s own free development and learning tools for those who want to delve into Windows and Web development. It’s called the Beginner Developer Learning Center. Here, you can download all the tools you need to start developing Windows and Web applications on your desktop, along with tutorials that walk you through the learning process. This is excellent because it gives you a well developed and professionally laid out guide to programming, using the very same tools you would use in a professional situation.

I definitely recommend that you check and make use of the Beginner Developer Learning Center as a resource to get you on your way to becoming a professional programmer, if this is your platform of choice.

I was recently looking for a tutorial on some basic javascript stuff, and while searching I found a website that has some great tutorials and articles on web programming and more stuff.

The website is http://webmonkey.com/,  check out the Programming section for some interesting reading.

Happy Coding!

My friend Bo recently pointed me in the direction of a cool great app, it’s “The Open Source Development Environment for .NET”, aka #develop, and what it does is allow you to create .NET applications in a free open-source environment. #develop (short for SharpDevelop) is a free IDE for C#, VB.NET and Boo projects on Microsoft’s .NET platform. It is open-source, and you can download both sourcecode and executables from the sharpdevelop website. For those of you who program in the .NET framework, this is definitely worth a look.

I haven’t made the move to .NET yet, so this might just be the impetus I need!!

Happy Coding!