Two Exhaustive Free Tools for Web Developers

by Sam Dean - Aug. 13, 2008Comments (6)

If you're a developer, or would-be developer, working on any type of web-based project, there are a couple of free resources that I recommend for following web application standards, and mastering cutting-edge web development languages. Open source developers and proprietary developers alike can benefit from Opera Web Standards Curriculum and W3 Schools. Both sites are extremely rich in resources for building best-of-breed online applications. Here's what's under the hood.

Opera Web Standards Curriculum was produced by the folks behind the Opera browser in association with the Yahoo! Developer Network. It's designed as a complete course to teach standards-based web development, including HTML, CSS, web design, and JavaScript. It's a work in progress consisting of 23 current articles, with 30 more to come by late September.

The articles are very in-depth, and cover esoteric topics such as beautifying typography and color theory, in addition to more basic articles about web applications should interact users. Check out this detailed lesson on working with images.

W3Schools has a very exhaustive set of free, hands-on tutorials on both mainstream and esoteric web development topics. You can brush up on CSS, publishing your experiments to actual pages, or walk through examples of how to use everything from AJAX to PHP. Take a gander down the left rail of the home page for how complete the lesson coverage is.

Check out this example of an AJAX task being scripted on the left, where you can make edits and see your published results on the right. This beats books any day.

For more useful tools to use during your web development sojourns, see our popular post More Than Five Top, Free Tools for Web Developers and the useful comments from readers there. Finally, copied below is just a short snippet from one of W3Schools' many reference guides to tags, scripting conventions, and more (this one pertains to HTML and XHTML:

 


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6 Comments
 

w3schools is really excellent resource. it has everything you need for quick referencing.

1 Votes

While there are a lot of new AJAX libraries that are widely used, nothing beats YUI in terms of developer documentation. Sample code, object models, examples, live demos - you name it. That is the gold standard currently, since they have delivered comprehensive resources. All documentation should be benchmarked against that!

0 Votes

I agree. I've used YUI and having easy access to sample code made all the difference. The documentation within the library (in the files) is excellent too.

0 Votes

What we really need is the 'Cliffs Notes' equivalent for every piece of technology that is out there. Wait - isn't that what Wikipedia is aiming to do?

0 Votes

What is YUI?

0 Votes

The tutorials are great. w3shools gives a very very neat guide for CSS.

If you are using JSF for development of web applications, incorporating AJAX into your app is really simple with Richfaces and AJAX4JSF.

You need not know all the boring details of cross-browser Javascript quirks. All of them are handled by Richfaces and AJAX4JSF really well.

But the CSS is needed anyway. ;)

1 Votes
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