Computers and Computing

Understanding computers and computing is your first order of business. Here are some open courseware classes that can help give you a handle on computers:

1. Introduction to Computers: This course from the University of California Berkeley offers you the basics of computers and how they work.
2. The Anthropology of Computing: MIT looks at the importance of computing and computer developments and how they influence our society.
3. Computer Networks: Another MIT course, this class helps you learn about the global network infrastructure of the Internet, and offers basic design principles.
4. Computers and computer systems: The Open University offers you a look at how computers and processors work, and how they affect us in every day life.
5. Data Mining: MIT provides useful information about data mining and how it can be used.

Programming

An essential skill of the web designer is the ability to understand and use programming languages. Here are some helpful open courseware classes on computer programming.

6. Basic HTML: The University of Washington presents a helpful course on HTML, which is one of the most important languages in web design.
7. Programming Languages: Get an overview of different program languages and learn about Scheme+ especially.
8. Java Programming: Sofia provides a look at using the programming Java.
9. XML Foundations: Berkeley offers a course on the basics of XML.
10. XML with Java: Learn how to combine XML with Java, and get a handle on JavaServer and XQuery from Harvard.
11. Server-Side Web Development Distribution Lectures: Indiana University provides a helpful look at server-side programming.
12. Flash: Learn how to use Flash in web design, and how to use ActionScript, from Utah State University.
13. Introduction to Multimedia Programming: Monash University looks at the basics of using programming languages with multimedia.

Web Design

These web design classes can help you learn about how design works on the Internet, and how you can improve your skills.

14. Web Design: Miami Dade College offers this course on web design and the principles behind creating online content.
15. Software Engineering for Web Applications: ArsDigita University allows you to focus on software for web applications.
16. Digital Typography: MIT offers this look at typography and how it functions as part of your web design.
17. Creating Interactive Multimedia: The University of Southern Queensland provides a look at how you can design interactive web pages.
18. Introduction to Web Design: Indiana University looks at the basics of web design and uses video to introduce you to a number of concepts.
19. The Future of the Internet: Stanford University offers a look at where the Internet is going, and what to expect in the future.

Graphic Design and Visual Elements

Learn about creating graphics and images, as well as arranging other visual elements on web sites.

20. Information Visualization: This course from the University of British Columbia helps you learn how to take information and then put it in an attractive visual form.
21. Art of Color: Learn about how color works, and how you can use it in the visual arts, from MIT.
22. Historical Foundations of Visual Technology: DePaul University offers a look at the history behind visual technology.
23. Survey of 3-D Animation: Another offering from DePaul University, this course looks at the basics of using 3-D in web design.
24. Algorithms for Computer Animation: MIT has another course for graphic designers — this one dealing with animation.
25. Graphic Design Basics: This course from About U looks at the basics behind graphic design.

Usability

One of the essential skills of a web designer is to make things accessible and usable for a wide range of people. Here are some open courseware classes that can help you create web pages that are more user friendly.

26. Designing the user interface: Get information on how text, sound, animation and other elements can be used to make a more accessible online experience from the Open University.
27. People-centered Design: This is another course from the Open University that focuses on helping you understand how to design web sites for people.
28. Human Computer Interaction: The University of Washington offers a class on the interaction between humans and computers, and how to make computer more accessible.
29. Foundations of American Cyber-Culture: Get a handle on cyber-culture and how people use computers and the Internet in this class from the University of California Berkeley.
30. Social Visualization: This MIT open courseware class focuses on social interactions online, and how you can make your web design more compatible with social media.
31. User Interface Design and Implementation: Another MIT course, this class can help you learn about interface design and provide practical methods for implementing your vision.
32. Advanced Internet and Web Services: This course from the University of Washington offers insight into how you can make web services and the Internet more useful to ordinary people. Includes information on search engines and how they work.

Content Development

You will need to know how to develop content and create interesting visual, video, audio and text. These courses can help you learn about content:

33. Electronic Media: This basic course from Abilene Christian University offers a basic look at electronic media, and what people enjoy about it.
34. Information Security: Part of good content development is helping it remain secure. This course from the University of Bristol can help you learn about keep information safe.
35. Media in Cultural Context: Popular Readings: This MIT open courseware class helps you understand new media and the Internet in today’s culture.
36. Communicating in Cyberspace: Another MIT course, this one looks at how to develop content that conveys what you want it to.
37. Dynamic Content Development: Purdue offers a course on creating dynamic content that can help add interest to your web design.
38. Blogs, Wikis, New Media for Learning: Get a handle on how to use blogs, wikis and other development online from Utah State University.
39. Reading visual images: The Open University provides insight into how to make visuals part of your content.

eCommerce Design

More people are shopping online and making money online. You can use your knowledge to design web sites that are compatible with the new electronic economy.

40. Economics and E-commerce: This course from MIT focuses on the economics of the Internet, and how things are changing.
41. An introduction to e-commerce and distributed applications: The Open University offers insight into e-commerce and the applications that go with it.
42. Transaction Processing for E-Commerce: Learn about how transactions are processed online in this course from the University of Washington.
43. A new era?: Another offering from the Open University, this course looks at innovation in ecommerce.
44. Search Engines: Technology, Society and Business: This Berkeley course emphasizes the role search engines play in society and business transactions online.

Electronic Law and Ethics

Get a handle on the rules behind web design, content and what goes on over the Internet.

45. Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier: This course from MIT looks at how ethics and law apply online.
46. Introduction to Copyright Law: Another MIT course that can help you understand some of the fundamental issues associated with Internet content.
47. Communications and Information Policy: MIT offers a look at policy online and information that goes with it.
48. Online Media Law: This class from News University provides helpful information on the basics of online media law.
49. A Fair(y) Use Tale: This video presentation from Novell is short and to the point — and it teaches about fair use law.
50. Introduction to Ethical Decisions Making: News University offers another class on ethics and how to make good decisions with online content.

Favorite Color and Palette Tools

These are some of the best tools out there — they’re the elite. Choose any of these color and palette tools for ease of use and great results.

1. Color Scheme Designer: As you might imagine, this tool is meant to help you design a color scheme. This is extremely user friendly, with the ability to use the drag method to select different hues off a color wheel. You can also easily export the hex codes you need to use for text, xml or html. A handy preview feature allows you to see what the color scheme might look like on an actual web site.
2. kuler: This is one of the most popular color design tools out there. This palette tool is an Adobe product, and, as you would expect, is compatible with other Adobe design products. The color themes you create using kuler can be easily moved into other Adobe products. A desktop application provides you with the ability to grab swatches from kuler and then apply them to the other applications you might use in your web design efforts.
3. COLOURlovers: If you are interested in seeing what others are up to, you can use this palette tool to peruse the work of others. This is more of a color trend resource that helps you find inspiration from other web designers. You can also view themes used by actual popular web sites and even magazines.
4. Color Hunter: Do you like something you saw in a photo and want to recreate some of the colors? With Color Hunter, this is possible. You can enter a photo’s URL, or upload an image, and this neat tool will generate a palette for you, based on what is in the picture. It’s a great way to grab the colors you like.
5. ColorBlender: If you are looking for complementary colors, this is a good way to go. It’s fast and easy. You pick one color that you like, and then ColorBlender will help you generate a set of complementary colors. You can see a number of different blends and create a color palette based around the theme of a specific color. You can then import your color palette in Illustrator or Photoshop. ColorBlender will even email you a specific URL for your color palette.
6. Color Jack: The sheer number of tools available from Color Jack is a little staggering at first. However, once you get the hang of it, Color Jack becomes almost indispensable. One of the coolest features is the Color Galaxy. This tool lets you see which colors are recognized by different browsers and operating systems — quite helpful in finding colors that are compatible with the maximum number of systems used by computer users.
7. Unsafe Color Match Tool: If you are a coder, this tool could be for you. Many web design palette tools aren’t particularly coder-friendly. However, Unsafe Color Match provides you with a way to modify different aspects of your color design, including text, links and background, and then displays the code. The preview function allows you to get a taste of what your web site is likely to look like.
8. ColorCombos: This tool is meant to help you figure out color combinations and even search a special library. If you want to make your own color, or create a combo, you can do so with the handy “Color Tester” tool. You can use ColorCombos to make template consisting of hex codes, as well as download an image of your palette creation.
9. DeGraeve Color Palette Generator: This is a tool similar to the Color Hunter. If you want a better look at the colors available in a particularly attractive image, you can enter the URL and get a list. You can see what the colors look like, as well as get their hex codes. Colors are divided into “dull” and “vibrant”.
10. VisiBone Color Lab: If you are interested in web safe colors, this is the place to go. It’s all about making the fast grab of interesting colors. For the most part, this palette tool is actually rather primitive. However, it is a great tool for the beginning web designer, or the designer who is looking to do something quickly.
11. colr.org: This is another cool color tool that allows you to browse schemes created by others. It is a very simple tool that allows you to load images from different sites and get a color read-out. You can also use a random feature that will pull images from Flickr to give you some good color ideas.
12. ColorSchemer: Users develop the color and palette tools available on ColorSchemer. You can peruse the library to get some good ideas, and find tools that work well for you. If you want to create your own color palette, though, you will have to purchase the desktop application. But this can be a good tool for the regular designer.
13. Check My Colours: Want to know where to begin? This tool will analyze your foreground and background colors and check the combos on your web site. The idea is to help you figure out whether you have a good color scheme, and provide you with ideas of how you can tweak your site to be more attractive.

Other Useful Color and Palette Tools

If you are looking for even more options for your web design needs, here are several more useful and applicable color tools:

14. EasyRGB: If you are interested in color technology and creating attractive sites, this tool can provide you with the ability to make harmonies, and use a helpful color calculator.
15. GenoPal: This tool is aimed at helping you find complementary colors that can help you find color harmony.
16. ColourMod: This is a dhtml color picker that can help you figure out which colors to use. There are different versions that can help you fulfill different design goals and functions.
17. Daily Color Scheme: Provides you with different color schemes each day. You can get the hex, rgb and hsb codes for the different schemes as well.
18. ColorMix: Provides stock images that you can use to integrate into your color scheme.
19. Palette Man: Color schemes and their palettes are offered. You can enter your own hex codes to tweak what’s already there, and see how different colors interact.
20. Jeff Minard’s Color Palette Generator: This is a tool that allows you to upload images and then create a palette based on the colors it contains.
21. Color Wizard: Submit a single color that is of interest for you. Then the color wizard will provide you with a matching color palette that includes hues, tints and saturation.
22. Colorspire: Using a color wheel and a web design template, you can see how different color schemes might working, using complementary colors and adjusting your position on a grid.
23. Gray Bit: This tool converts your color scheme to grayscale so that you can see whether or not it has good contrast between background and text.
24. ColoRotate: An interesting way to view colors — as they display in 3D.
25. ColorMunki: This is a tool that offers help for photographers as well as designers. It’s meant to help with workflow.

The following list is small, but it includes many free apps that have become known and trusted by designers. We included a variety of offerings, including some that will help you organize your projects. The list is categorized, and each link is listed alphabetically under those categories. This method shows that we do not favor one design app over another.

Editing, Uploading, Downloading

1. 7-Zip : 7-zip is a zip utility that completely replaces stalwarts like WinZip. It handles numerous compression file formats: arj, cab, gz, iso, lzh, rar, tar and zip to name a few. It also has its own proprietary format, 7z, which can squeeze a little extra out of a file when set to the “ultra” setting.
2. CSE HTML Validator Lite: Use this tool to create hand-coded pages and to catch coding errors before you publish. This validator will catch open tags and misspellings and it also will place quotation marks around attribute values as well as change all tags and attributes to lower case. If you don’t like to use it for coding, use it to save time on validation.
3. FileZilla : One of the best free FTP tools around. FileZilla provides unlimited uploads and downloads and supports resumption of transfers when your connection is broken. FileZilla comes in two flavors – full-featured FTP client, and FTP server. Both support FTP over open connections, SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH FTP.
4. KompoZer: KompoZer is a WYSIWYG Web-authoring system with built-in site management tools and CSS management system.
5. Texter: If you want a tool that can provide HTML tag shortcuts, you’ve found it. For example, tap “p” and hit Tab to open up a set of HTML paragraph tags. You also can develop your own shortcuts.

Graphics

6. FontForge: An outline font editor that lets you create and edit your own postscript, truetype, opentype, cid-keyed, multi-master, cff, svg and bitmap (bdf, FON, NFNT) fonts, or edit existing ones. Also lets you convert one format to another
7. Gimp: While not as powerful as Photoshop, Gimp is coming close. Gimp supports layers, filters, effects, brushes and textures and can handle any image file type imaginable.
8. Inkscape: This tool only gets better as the years go by. Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand and CorelDraw. It uses the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
9. Serif Draw Plus: Use this tool to create vector drawings and smooth animations. Their DrawPlus 4 is completely free, and it allows text manipulation, fill tools and is filled with filter effects. For personal use only.
10. uMark: If you sell your images online, use this tool to create a watermark. You can protect your images with a copyright notice or logo, and add this visible watermark to hundreds of images at one time.

Photographs

11. Easy Thumbnails: How many times have you searched for a way to scale images in batches? This tool provides eleven re-sampling filters, real-time previews and quality results.
12. Gallery: Manage your photos, including automatic thumbnail resizing, rotation and other tools with this free download.
13. JAlbum: Do you need a photo gallery? JAlbum consists of free album software, free hosting (or upload to your own site), skins, ability to customize and a creative community.
14. Picasa: You don’t need Photoshop’s Bridge to organize your images. Keep images private or use one gigabyte free storage for albums – enough space for 4,000 wallpaper-size photos.
15. Picnik: Tweak photos online, create galleries and use special effects. This app works with photos at various online venues such as Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket and more.

EZ-Design

If you’re creating a Web site, where do you begin? If you’re an HTML pro, you can use the editing resources listed above. But, if you want to create heavy-duty Web designs without hiring a full staff, then the following free apps may help.

16. Webs: Choose from one of 300+ templates to get started. You can change your template at any time. And, you can use advanced HTML mode to modify your site. You also can integrate Paypal or Google Checkout.
17. Wix: Create Flash Websites, design a MySpace page, control your portfolios and add widgets. Start with a blank page or choose among various designs and go to it.

Project Management

Web designers usually know that they work long hours and that they don’t keep track of their time and that they don’t get paid for that lost time. While some might consider this problem a ‘labor of love,’ others might take advantage of the tools below to streamline productivity.

18. Clocking It: Prove to your clients that you’ve spent ‘that much time’ on their projects. Time tracking can be simple or detailed. Enjoy flexible reporting, multiple ways to communication and an interactive gantt chart and scheduling.
19. DimDim: Dimdim lets anyone deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards and web pages and share their voice and video over the Internet – with no download required.
20. Google Calendar Invoice Creator: Use a Google Calendar to create appointments and this tool will read the RSS feed from that calendar, calculate the total hours and create an invoice. You will need to install Adobe AIR first.
21. Google Docs: We’ve met folks who still haven’t tried the Google Doc applications, and we don’t know why. Use their documents, spreadsheets, presentation and PDF utilities and organize them by user or topic. You can share everything or nothing with your team. Also integrates a chat feature.
22. Klok: You could purchase a chess timer to keep track of how much time you spend on a project (good for when you have constant interruptions), but why? Especially when Klok is free. Track time and clients accurately. You will need to install Adobe AIRfirst.
23. ProjectPier: Very similar to the popular Basecamp, this free, open source and self-hosted PHP application is perfect for managing tasks, projects and teams.

Miscellaneous

These two apps are great management flow tools…

24. Premier Survey: This survey tool requires a web browser and an Internet connection to manage surveys from anywhere in the world.
25. File Dropper: FileDropper.com was created as a fresh and fast alternative for file sharing up to five GB. Files are kept forever as long as they are being downloaded.