Externals

Ma.gnolia

Sites we like. This page ain’t hardly maintained. Contents may shift during handling. For fresh links, please see or subscribe to my bookmarks.

On this page:
blogger nation
A far from exhaustive list of worthwhile personal sites.
A List Apart by topic
Six years of ALA content categorized for your pleasure.
absurdly useful
“The world’s largest online library.”
accessibility & design
Opening your site to more people.
advocacy
Creative Commons and The Web Standards Project.
css, markup & standards
A far from exhaustive list of helpful sites, articles, and tools.
design (& other) magazines
Zines, portals, font houses, design/development periodicals.
design tools & info
Royalty-free photos, patterns, color pickers, favelets, more.
events
Meatspace meetups.
macintosh
Selected sites and pages.
odd lots & miscellanies
Loose threads from the sock drawer.

blogger nation

adactio: journal
Jeremy Keith’s stylish blog.
Adnan
“Adnan.org: good design, bad idea.”
Airbag
Greg Storey’s beautiful personal periodical. New look, new yet another new location.
alazanto
Kevin Davis’s lush blog in the ornate cream-on-cream school.
all in the head
Ponderings and code by Drew McLellan.
Brian Alvey Weblog, The
Thoughts from the CEO of Weblogs, Inc. and lead developer of Happy Cog Studios.
Authentic Boredom
The beauty of Cameron Moll.
Andy Budd
Guess whose blog this is. Nicely done, sir.
Anil Dash
A fine old log.
Antipixel
Jeremy Hedley’s weblog coming to you sort of live from Tokyo.
Asterisk
D. Keith Robinson’s weblog.
Backup Brain
Smith and Negrino.
Bionic Ear Blog
Adventures of a woman gaining a new and improved ear.
blather.org
PHP whiz and developer to the stars Mike Buzzard’s personal site.
Blog de Pfunder
Clean CSS design.
Blue Plaid Shirt
A nicely designed blog about design.
bluishorange
Alison, English major and waitress.
Brainstorms and Raves
Web standards, accessibility, and development tools.
Bryan Bell
Mainly design news.
ButtonMonkey
The life and times of Terry Eaton.
Caterina.net
Elegant online diary/blog.
Caustic Sense
Anhedonic for as long as we can remember.
chokespeak
Pretty-pretty blog.
delete.me.uk
Homepage of Paul Sowden, the lad who invented the Style Switcher.
Design by Fire
Not-to-be-missed personal site of Andrei Herasimchuk and Donna Driscoll, dedicated to the broad and fine points of interface design. (Redesign in progress.)
Design Dojo
Sam Royama’s tight, beautiful site devoted to design and discourse
Design Meme
Stuart Robertson on web design.
dollarshort
The lovely blog of Mena.
Fawny
Personal blog of Joe Clark.
Fontmonster
Fonts and such.
frownland
Was gone. Is back. Is gone.
Heather Champ
Self-explanatory.
hebig.org/blog/
“The greatest thing since bread came sliced.”
Hicks Design
Stuff for designers. Happy and poppy.
Historical Present
Leslie Harpold dot com.
Hivelogic Narrative
Appliances and meanderings.
I Me Michael
Interesting personal site with switchable look and feel.
Inflight Correction
CSS and stuff from author, designer, and WaSP steering committee member Owen Briggs.
iWalt.com
Crisp, clean blog with G5 metal vibe.
Kapowaz
More metal for your metal-viewing pleasure. Online since 1997.
Jason Santa Maria
The most beautiful site in the world.
JD on MX
Macromedia’s John Dowdell on news for MX and web developers.
jessey.net (si-blog)
Simon Jessey’s weblog.
JimFormation
“Making buttons from bones.”
Kottke
Not recommended at all.
Leaves Rustle
Noel D. Jackson’s blog.
Life Uncommon, A
Wonderful personal site, reviewed 28 May 2003.
Mark Simonson’s Notebook
New (summer 2004) blog by wonderful type designer/letterer/graphic designer.
Measure Twice
Kalsey Consulting Group’s weblog on design and web standards.
Meccapixel
Michael Cosentino’s photos. Nicely done, sir.
Meme Machine
Ever changing.
Meyerweb
Personal observations. CSS tips and tutorials. Home of the greatest CSS teacher/practitioner of them all.
Michael Pick
Design tips and insights.
Mikal in Philly
New! Michael Nolan, veteran editor and art director.
Mike Industries
Blog of Seattle-based art director/interactive designer Mike Davidson (ESPN.net).
Modulo 26
Smart and understatedly beautiful site.
Motor Skills
Jonathan Macy Biggs.
Nick Finck
Journal of Digital Web Mag founder.
No Sense of Place
Jens Christoffersen, live from Copenhagen.
Oblivio
Michael Barrish makes this.
One Point Zero
Awesome.
Ordinary Life
‘Design, life, and other odds and ends.’
ourcommon
Beautiful, elegant, minimalist blog in the pale-on-pale school.
Padawan.info
An apprentice blog.
Paul Boutin
Personal site of Slate, Wired, Salon journalist Boutin.
plasticbag
Who the hell is Tom Coates?
Powazek.com
Personal site of Derek M. Powazek.
Prolific
Superfine blog of Caro von B.
Rogue Librarian
Shooshin’ and stampin’.
Sandwich Project
What is the best sandwich? Since man crawled from the swamp he has asked himself this question. Finally a website has come along to answer it.
Scott Andrew
Scripting, standards, and urban acoustic pop.
Scripting News
Publishing technologies and personal asides.
sidesh0w
Ethan Marcotte on web design and life.
Signal vs. Noise
Musings and dialog on web design, entertainment, and politics.
SimpleBits
The tiny web design and development studio and digital sandbox of Dan Cederholm.
sixfoot6
It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.
stopdesign
Douglas Bowman’s worthwhile weblog.
Superfluous Banter
Smart content; crisp, clean presentation; subtly varied user selectable styles.
Surfin’ Safari
Dave Hyatt’s weblog (leader in development of Safari browser, former Mozilla engineer).
Tantek’s log
Web technologies and challenging assertions from the developer of the Tasman rendering engine.
Textism
Too clever by half.
textura design
The strange world of DL Byron.
Things I Learned the Hard Way
Female folks wisdom for life, love, work and play. Added Oct 17, 2006.
Tim Bray: ongoing
XML’s Daddy’s got blog.
Typographica
Typography blog at new, Canada-friendly URL.
vanderwoning.ca
Photography of Raymond A. van der Woning.
Vantan
Personal site of Vanessa Tan.
Veer: The Skinny
“Inspiration. Commentary. Design. Monkeys..”
Veerle
Graphic design and CSS (including tasty tutorials) plus thoughts about Apple, nature, and music abound in this nice blog by Veerle Pieters.
Vestige
“Crit my lit.”
waferbaby
Sui generis.
Walt Whitman Presents
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.
What Do I Know?
Pertinent personal periodical of Todd Dominey.
Where There’s Smoke
… there’s Smokler.
xBlog
The visual thinking weblog.
zlog
Nicely done, old bean!

A List Apart by topic

Access @ ALA
Tips on making your site available to every device: from Palm Pilots and web-enabled cell phones to screen readers, text browsers, and alternative browsers and devices
Browsers @ ALA
Does your content travel well? Can your design and functionality survive from one platform to another, one browser to another, one configuration to another? Web standards and testing methods are included in this topic.
Business @ ALA
Surviving and thriving as a freelancer, employee, or small web business owner. Laws affecting web content and web business. Business basics and growth strategies. Working with clients and consumers. Web marketing and search engines.
Content @ ALA
Better writing and more effective web communication. Working with, and in some cases, building your own content management systems. Writing for the medium. Designing for readers. Web narratives and experience design.
CSS @ ALA
Using Cascading Style Sheets as part of standards-based web design. CSS layout techniques, tips, and tricks. Crafting a print style sheet. Emulating (and surpassing) traditional visual web design techniques. Separating presentation from structure. Style sheet switching for user customization, accessibility, and creative purposes. CSS support browser bugs and workarounds. Showing and hiding elements, replacing text with images. Fixed and liquid layouts. See also typography.
Culture @ ALA
This web life: emerging trends, thoughtful topics, insights and provocations, legal and social issues of web creation and publishing. Innovations and abuses, freedom and constraints.
Design @ ALA
Graphic design, interface design, user experience design. Creative and technical techniques for crafting great interfaces. Developing an appropriate look and feel. How web users respond to design. Visual styles, influences, and trends.
DOM | Scripting @ ALA
Building dynamic websites using JavaScript / ECMAScript, the W3C DOM, and other scripting languages and technologies, including server-side languages like ASP and PHP.
Flash @ ALA
Designing and programming in Macromedia Flash. Making Flash content accessible. Embedding Flash content while supporting web standards. Building games and applications using Flash ActionScript and server-side technologies.
HTML | XHTML @ ALA
Proper document markup. Building accessible, cross-platform, cross-browser pages. Using web standards correctly. Converting from HTML to XHTML. DOCTYPE switching and beyond.
Process @ ALA
Workflow, project management, keeping projects on target, brainstorming, scope creep, building and working with teams. The creative process. Ideas and inspiration. Communicating with clients and colleagues.
Server-Side @ ALA
Shaping dynamic user interactivity with scripting languages like Perl, PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, and Rebol. Database-driven projects and processes. Web services and .NET.
Tools @ ALA
From Photoshop to Dreamweaver, publishing tools to accessibility testing software.
Typography @ ALA
Controlling web typography: CSS methods, browser problems, user problems, and workarounds. Typographically correct punctuation. Unicode. Scalable text. Replacing text with images of text – CSS / XHTML methods, accessibility issues. Designing for readers. Legibility. Typefaces, graphic design.
Usability @ ALA
Creative problem solving. Designing for your audience. Contingency design, site mapping, information architecture. Conducting meaningful user testing.
XML & Pals @ ALA
Understanding and working with eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and the many applications and protocols derived from it, including SVG, SMIL, syndication formats like RSS, and more. Rolling your own XML language. Working with databases. Using XSLT transformations to publish – from print to the web.

absurdly useful

Questia
“The world’s largest online library of over 45,000 books and 360,000 journal, magazine, and newspaper articles.”

accessibility & design

Accessibility Unplugged
Online lecture notes from a presentation by Bud Krauss of TryNet.
Accessify
“Verb: to make accessible.” Tools, wizards, links, and tips.
Accessify Forum
Free to the public: talk about accessibility and design.
Anitra Pavka
Accessibility weblog.
Building Accessible Websites (serialization)
The excellent book online, one chapter at a time.
Cynthia Says™
Newish and interesting access testing tool.
Dive Into Mark
Blog of access guy Mark.
Government Requirements re: Web Access
Does the ADA apply to websites? And other questions.
Joe Clark Slashdot interview
Great Q&A on web accessibility.
Bob Regan: Accessibility
Techniques, examples, and resources (a Macromedia blog).

advocacy

Creative Commons
Create. License. Share.
Web Standards Project
Education and advocacy.

css, markup & standards

Accessible Image Replacement
Design meets accessibility: an alternative to Fahrner Image Replacement.
Box Model Hack
Working around browsers that misunderstand CSS.
Browser Specs
Browser upgrade rationales your accounting department will understand.
CSS Between the Style Sheets
Tantek’s portion of SXSW CSS panel covers principles of clean, structural markup.
CSS Panic Guide
First line of defense when CSS panic strikes.
CSS Tableless Web Sites
At Meryl.net, a listing of sites laid out with CSS instead of tables.
CSS-Discuss
Best mailing list for real world CSS design and development.
CSS Zen Garden
Highly recommended: a collaborative gallery showing what can be done with CSS-based design.
CSS Zen Garden Resource Guide
CSS resources for designers.
Layout Reservoir
Steal these CSS layouts! See also Little Boxes, Real World Style.
Listamatic
Deep walkthrough shows many ways to turn ordinary lists into fancy nav bars. Highly recommended.
List-o-matic
Does the work for you! This free online tool is highly recommended.
Little Boxes
Clickable CSS layout. See also Layout Reservoir, Real World Style.
Meyer Web
Personal observations. CSS tips and tutorials.
NYPL Style Guide
XHTML and CSS basics. Converting from HTML to XHTML.
Owen Hack
Hiding CSS rules from Opera.
Real World Style
CSS layouts, tips, tricks, and techniques – includes CSS layouts that work in Netscape 4. No, really.
SimpleBits: accessible image-tab rollovers
Like it says.
Tableless
Before and after: table-based sites get circumcised.
Taming Lists
At ALA: the little article that started it all, by Mark Newhouse.
Using Lists for DHTML Menus
A structural approach to dynamic menus.
W3 Planet
Tracks web-standards-related sites and blogs.
Web Standards Awards
Honoring excellence in standards-based design.
Web Standards Project, The
Education and advocacy.
Weekly Standards
Honoring excellence in standards-based design.
Westciv self-paced courses
Online courses on CSS, (X)HTML, etc. Some are free, others are paid.

design (& other) magazines

Bitmap Mania
Lovely bitmap fonts.
Boxes and Arrows
Organizing information for the web.
Coudal
Design news and projects.
Design is Kinky
Design news and projects.
Design Not Found
The best and worst of contingency design.
DevEdge
Design and development tutorials and techniques, in a site that practices what it preaches.
Digital Web
Web design and development.
Dodge Magazine
Indie content by a ragtag assembly of designers.
Evolt
Web development and design.
{fray}
Among the web’s first and best independent sites.
GUI Galaxy
Stylish site with design-y downloadables.
K10k
Design news and projects.
linkdup
Latest design links.
Morning News, The
“A web-based broadsheet.”
Netdiver
Online design zine and resource.
New Riders
Publishing “voices that matter.”
Pirated Sites
Nice design. Haven’t we seen it before?
PixelSurgeon
Design news and projects.
reservocation
Elegantly designed zine.
Scene360
Film. Art. Music. Literature.
Soul of the Web
The web holds treasures. Soul of the Web celebrates them.
undesign
“A plan for all seasons.”
v-2.org
Design, architecture, and life.
Web Graphics
Design and development weblog.
Weirdsmobile
“A legitimate, if ill-advised, attempt at personal expression outside the boundaries of what is ‘hip’ or ‘popular’ on the web, yet hewing to certain conventions of the form in a shameful concession to the sensibilities of the ‘typical’ web reader, who may be alienated by unfamiliar or atonal forms of expression, and thereby lose interest.”

design tools & info

Airshare
Wireless community resource.
Box Model Hack
Working around browsers that misunderstand CSS.
Color Blender
Useful color tool by Eric Meyer.
Color Harmonizer
Create color harmonies, combinations, and themes.
Favelets
Essential tools for web designers. (See ours as well.)
Get Content Size
How fat is your page?
Icon Factory
Icons and software for Mac and Windows. Over 12 million pixels pushed.
iStockPhoto
Royalty-free photos, illustrations, and more. Community site.
iStockPro
Royalty-free photos for professionals.
Essential tools for web designers.
JavaScript and Links
Links and JavaScript living together in harmony.
K10k Patterns Gallery
Patterns for your pleasure.
More Crayons
4096 “web-smart” colors in a 16 x 16 x 16 cube.
Safety Sign Builder
Fun for the whole family.
Saila.com
CSS layouts, web design tips, and Lorem Ipsum.
Veer
High quality stock photos, illustrations, and fonts.
Web Building Tips
As it says.
Web Writing Apple Scripts
Prepare typographically correct text for the web.
Young Pup
DHTML and such.

events

An Event Apart
Traveling, one-day seminar on designing and publishing with web standards.
Meet the Makers
Conferences and conversations: creative people in a technical world.
WebVisions
Low-key, non-commercial, creative conference held annually in Portland.

macintosh

Daring Fireball
Intelligent discussion of Mac stuff.
iBlog
Newhouse on web standards, access, and Mac stuff.
OS X Refugee Utilities
Restore missing OS 9 functions to your OS X environment.
Splorp!
Home of the Grant cam.
stevenf
Panic co-founder’s personal site.

odd lots & miscellanies

Available Domain Name of the Week
Like it says.
Clip ’n Seal
Very cool bag closer mfrd by designer and blogger DL Byron.
Coudal: Summer Reading 2003
Designers review their favorite summer reads.
Designers Network
Talent list.
Flyguy
Amazing little black and white world by Trevor Van Meter et. al.
Lost America Night Photography
The abandoned roadside west.
NYC Wireless
Free public wireless Internet service throughout NYC.
Strongbad
Animated series is loads of laughs.
Taken on the Road: American Mile Markers
3,304 photos taken on the road between New York and San Francisco, one photo for every mile.
Tiny Pineapple: Postcards
When you care enough to send the very best.
What is My IP?
The easiest way to determine your IP address.