E-com DevBlog Spider-ball-vacuum

Summer 2009 LinkPost Extravaganza!

Whoa, what happened? I'll tell you what happened, I blinked and it was August! But fear not! I have kept the links that I was going to post and have compiled them into what I like to call the Summer 2009 LinkPost Extravaganza! Cheesy? Yes, a little absurd? Absolutely, but hey at least you're getting the links right?

This Post features plenty of images (icons, textures, etc.), a large selection of jQuery goodness, some php, fonts, and plenty of tools, resources, and tutorials. I even threw in a few links for our growing mac-user community (yeah, you can't see it, but I'm patting myself on the back).

Enough drivel, time to give the peoples what they want, the links!

-= Images, icons, brushes, tools ==-

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/01/clever-jpeg-optimization-techniques/ - Make your jpegs super awesome
http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/design/tutorials/design-your-own-icons-25-tutorials-and-articles-designers-must-have.html
http://pelfusion.com/freebies/30-free-resources-for-background-patterns-and-textures/ - Tile and textures and patterns oh my!
http://www.backgroundlabs.com/ - Backgrounds, patterns, and the like sorted by color (which is kinda nice)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/15/clever-png-optimization-techniques/ - Good read.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/25/png-optimization-guide-more-clever-techniques/ - PNG optimization part 2...
http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/30-awesome-textures-for-creating-subtle-grunge-designs - Nice texture packs
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/07/200-free-exclusive-vector-icons-primo/ - Free icons for personal and commercial use.
http://www.graphicfetish.com/37-places-to-get-free-stock-images/ - yep, 37 places to get free stock photos... booyeah!
http://www.softalize.com/2009/06/01/22-excellent-photoshop-brushes-to-spice-up-designs/ - Here's some more ps brushes
http://all-silhouettes.com/ - All the free sillouettes you can shake a stick at... trees, people, etc.
http://pelfusion.com/awesome-graphics/freebies-for-designers-icons-vectors-photoshop-brushes-stock-images-templates/ - Free stuff round-up!
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/07/50-fresh-useful-icon-sets-for-your-next-design/ - Who doesn't love icons?
http://www.noupe.com/photoshop/photoshop-brushes-and-how-to.html - ps brushes and how-to's, what's not to love.
http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/a-set-of-500-quality-icons-led-web-icons/ - 500 icons for you!
http://www.texturelovers.com/ - Textures and tutorials, good site
http://pixelmixer.ru/basic_set/ - More icons
http://www.colorexplorer.com/default.aspx - Color explorer a nice tool for color schemes, palletes and the like.
http://vectips.com/tutorials/turn-any-font-into-a-sketch-font/ - Some people are cooler than me and have illustrator, for those that are cooler than me, here's a fun little tutorial.
http://freestocktextures.com/ - Free textures for the taking.
http://www.minervity.com/features/photoshop/the-ultimate-collection-of-the-best-ornament-photoshop-brushes/ - Who doesn't need more brushes.
http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/80-fresh-new-textures-for-creating-web-site-backgrounds - More textures, cos textures are pertiful.
http://www.seeklogo.com/ - Almost every logo in ai, pdf, or tiff format for your medling

-=Tools & Resources & Tutorials=-

Fiddler2 now integrates with firefox (and the masses rejoice!)
http://astuteo.com/slickmap/ - Nice little stylesheet for sitemaps, me likey
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Noupe/~3/Q1PEz3CydLE/50-best-of-designers-free-resources.html - noupe saving the best for now.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/13/css-3-cheat-sheet-pdf/ - I've resisted the whole lets jump on the css3 movement, but now that multiple browsers support it. It's something that can't be ignored too much longer...
http://www.noupe.com/css3/css3-exciting-functions-and-features-30-useful-tutorials.html - 30 tutorials on using css3
http://www.onextrapixel.com/2009/07/15/the-importance-of-wireframes-in-web-design-and-9-tools-to-create-wireframes/ - I call it 'block level' design, but it's how I get things going even when handed a visual design, so here's a post about it.
http://www.webdesignbooth.com/15-useful-firefox-seo-tools-for-serious-bloggers-and-web-designers/ - SEO tools for everyone!
http://www.iepak.com/30/topicdetail.aspx - Useful, upload video, use php to run ffmpeg to convert to flv and then throw it on the page.
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/07/30-handy-cheat-sheets-and-reference-guides-for-web-professionals/ - I've probably linked most of these before, but always nice to have a list of cheat-sheets
http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/tools/tools/35-extremely-useful-free-online-tools-for-web-developers-and-designer.html - Explatives a'plenty, this list is useful, and I haven't even been through the whole thing yet.
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/07/massive-compilation-of-designer-tools/ - More of the same, but with some new content
http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/15-php-regular-expressions-for-web-developers - Yay for regex and people that understand it.
http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/css-text-rotation - wow... it's like the jQuery tutorial, only with css instead of jQ.
http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/5-tools-to-increase-accessibility/ - good tools for accessibility testing
http://creativenerds.co.uk/news/best-of-the-web-july-for-webgraphic-design/ - Someone elses link post
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/01/essential-guide-to-regular-expressions-tools-tutorials-and-resources/ - Regex'ing will save you time and lines of code, so brush up here.
https://browserlab.adobe.com/index.html - Awesome multi-browser rendering engine from adobe. It's screen shot based, so not wicked helpful, but shows you if you're lined up correctly.
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/other/10-essential-sql-tips-for-developers/ - Always nice to brush up on your SQL
http://ajaxian.com/archives/page-speed-new-open-source-firebug-performance-extension-from-google - The ajaxian article
http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/ - The official Google Code site.
- Google caught up to Yahoo on pushing out a web performance util. I wonder if I run both at the same time if worlds will collide and I'll cause a catastrophic failure, or maybe a headron collider, or possibly an event horizon.  UPDATE: Turns out that it just eats up more ram... a shame really I was looking forward to opening pandora's box.
http://webstandard.kulando.de/post/2009/04/30/best-of-parallax-effect - get your parallax on with these examples
http://tester.jonasjohn.de/ - Test everything (well just about) on a website, SEO, proxy, spell checking
http://supportdetails.com/ - Cool simple way to get lots of info about a compy you are sitting at.. (oddly enough I was building the same thing, and now I don't have too).

-=AIR=-

http://www.webdesignermag.co.uk/blog/build-an-adobe-air-rss-reader/ - Building an Air based RSS reader tutorial.
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/07/40-great-adobe-air-applications-for-designers-and-developers/ - Air apps for designers!
http://flexmonkey.gorillalogic.com/gl/stuff.flexmonkey.html - Flex/Air developers, this is a tool for you, it helps you test your apps before you release'm.

-=PHP=-

http://61924.nl/blog/e/00010-prevent-xss-and-sql-injections.html - A good article on stopping xss and sql injection (seems to be all about the php... so it may or may not apply)
http://designreviver.com/tips/php-security-guidelines-to-lock-down-your-website/ - always good to be reminded to lock down your xss.
http://dev-tips.com/featured/5-more-quality-sites-to-help-you-become-a-php-rockstar - Rock on you PHP Magician, rock on.
http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/how-to-create-an-api-10-tutorials/ - Mostly php, but there's some Ruby/Rails and a vb.net version in there too.

-=jQuery=-

http://www.w3avenue.com/2009/07/01/list-of-really-useful-plugins-for-jquery-developers/ - More help for the jQuery file
http://www.marcofolio.net/webdesign/advanced_keypress_navigation_with_jquery.html - Handling keypress events with jQuery
http://www.happyworm.com/jquery/jplayer/ - a nice mp3 jQuery player (highly configurable, but docs are deplorable)
http://webdeveloperplus.com/jquery/15-jquery-tutorials-for-more-interactive-navigation/ - Navigation Tutorials
http://evanriley.xiaimix.com/using-jquery-to-play-media-files-mp3wmaetcetc/ - All your media, played with jQ and Flash
http://www.gcmingati.net/wordpress/wp-content/lab/jquery/minizoompan/ - Cool little zoomer util, no pre-loader.
http://boedesign.com/2009/07/11/growl-for-jquery-gritter/ - jQuery Growl like notifications
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/creating-a-keyboard-with-css-and-jquery/ - Awesome little onscreen keyboard with jQuery and some css.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-aj-advjquery2/index.html - Longwinded, but always nice to see a jQ tut on IBM.
http://speckyboy.com/2009/07/17/25-fresh-and-new-jquery-plugins-and-tutorials/ - Always nice to see new jQuery tuts.. some of them I have already linked to.
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/07/22/how-to-develop-a-jquery-plugin/ - Sitepoint takes a stab at making jQuery plugins
http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/tools/developer-toolbox/60-must-have-jquery-toolbox.html - Many of these I've linked to, but the page is good (thanks to the find feature in your browser)
http://css-tricks.com/date-display-with-sprites/ - Simple, but awesome, thanks jQuery
http://www.devirtuoso.com/2009/07/beginners-guide-to-using-ajax-with-jquery/ - jQuery and ajax...mmmmm
http://www.jankoatwarpspeed.com/post/2009/06/01/Advanced-docking-using-jQuery.aspx - Add docking to your project/webapp/site with some jQuery goodness
http://www.noupe.com/tutorial/drop-down-menu-jquery-css.html - Nice jQuery drop-down menu, it's very nice...
http://jquerylist.com/ - my new favorite jQuery hangout (:o) (mega props to umutm@twitter for this one!)
http://www.gayadesign.com/diy/puffing-smoke-effect-in-jquery/ - jQuery making animation and special effects wicked easy. Cool idea, nice execution.
http://flowplayer.org/tools/ - A pretty sweet suite of jQuery tools from the flowplayer developers
http://www.pierrebertet.net/projects/jquery_superbox/ - We had FancyBox, then nyromodal, is this the new jQuery modal window of choice? (nah, probably not, nyro is still king, but hey it's good to have competitors)
http://upsidestudio.com/web/splitcol/ - Have a list that is too long for a section, but would fit if you split it in two? With this and some jQuery goodness, you can do that.
http://www.distinctcorp.com.au/jquery/spritemenu.html - Normally I don't post links to things like sprite effects, but this is pretty good, and easy.
http://www.iofo.it/jquery/fonteffect/ - Some text effects with jQuery magic (I like mirror the most, but that's just me)
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/tutorials/53-jquery-tutorials-resources-tips-and-tricks-ultimate-collection/ - Still haven't tried jQuery? what are you waiting for! start here for lots of goodies, tutorials, and tricks

-=Javascript=-

http://sixrevisions.com/javascript/10-impressive-javascript-animation-frameworks/ - javascript animation libs (pretty cool, yo)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/glow/docs/articles/what_is_glow.shtml - Glow, the Official BBC js lib (like YUI, jQuery, etc...), nice idea, I mean, I'll stick to jQ, but hey if you ever need to build a site that works on pure chaos, I mean ie5 and safari < 2, this is the show for you.
http://www.webdesignbooth.com/14-javascript-resources-and-plugins-for-creating-a-stylish-chart/ - charts...nom nom nom

-=Misc=-

http://www.jolicloud.com/ - a replacement netbook os (for you netbook users)
http://listen.grooveshark.com - My new favorite of all online music listening/streaming services
http://code.google.com/p/safire/ - a framework for building iPhone apps
http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/14-most-visually-appealing-free-wordpress-themes - Some nice WP themes
http://www.pulptunes.com/ - Access your iTunes library from anywhere (in your web browser), works on mac, windows, and linux.

-=Mac=-

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/04/30-must-have-tweaks-for-your-mac/ - If I had known some of these tricks when I got my mac, the transition would have been soooo much easier. Although I did stumble onto many of these by myself
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/05/25-open-source-mac-apps-that-will-boost-your-productivity/ - Yay for free mac apps (because there seem to be so few...)
http://desizntech.info/2009/06/40-mac-freewares-and-open-source-softwares-for-web-designers/ - I have a mac, now I have free tools.

-=Fonts=-

http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/design/design/60-free-fonts-for-big-bold-and-beautiful-headlines.html - 60 fonts for your desiging happiness.
http://www.unionroom.com/blog/21-fonts-that-shouldnt-be-free-but-are/ - Some of these I've already linked, but an pretty good list
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/resources/52-really-high-quality-free-fonts-for-modern-and-cool-design/ - More fonts!
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/05/beautiful-high-quality-free-fonts-for-your-designs/ - Yay more free fonts!
http://www.webdesignbooth.com/60-awesome-grunge-font-that-every-designer-should-collect/ - more grunge fonts

One last thing.  I didn't really proof read this or check the links, so I'm sure there will be some that are wrong.  Let me know what needs to be fixed in the comments and I'll get it taken care of, thanks!  Happy Summer everyone!