Xenu Link Sleuth

If there is one piece of software I cannot live without (aside from a good text editor) it would be Xenu Link Sleuth--It is possibly the best link checking software available, and if configured correctly (via FTP) it can also detect orphaned pages.

Best of all its extremely fast!--I kulled over 800 broken (404) errors in a fraction of the time it would have taken me using either googles webmaster tools or the site checking reports in dreamweaver

Browser info

Here are a couple of tips you may find handy:

In Firefox you type "about:cache" in the address bar and you get info on cache usage displayed in the browser window. this also works on Google Chrome, however on chrome the files are in one long list.

using about: in the address bar has a few different functions, there is also "about:config", which has a long list of advanced options for configuring firefox--I wont go into them here. this feature is not in Chrome.

one that works in Chrome but not in Firefox is "about:memory" that givs statistics on browser memory usage:

you can also use the address bar to email a page to someone, just type this in front of the URL of the page you want to send: "mailto:name@domain.com?body=".

you can also whois from the address bar as well as a many other commands-too many to go into all here.

Web traffic resources

As 'Webmasters' its a good to have an idea about web traffic, not just to ones own site thru google analytics, but also potential traffic. One of the tools google offers is trends, for traffic on a particular keword. or there is internet traffic report, which has overall data info.

CSS tips for the experienced

For those feeling like jumping into the CSS deep end here is a link to some tips you cant live without.

Browsers

Browsers aint' browsers!. Each different browser handles code slightly differently and you need to take this into account when building your website or blog template. There are a few different browsers avalible, from Microsoft Internet Explorer, to the Mozilla based explorers like Firefox and the now discontinued Netscape 6. There Is Opera, that I used for a while. On operating systems other than Windows there is Safari (safari also works on windows) and Camino on the Apple Mac. And for linux users there is Konquror, a many more. So it is important to make sure your site is compatible accross multiple browsers.

Rendering colours can vary slightly with browsers so please be sure to use web safe colours when building your site--Please refer to Web Safe Colors post

The browser I use the majority of the time at the moment is Firefox, but not everyone uses it, so I test my site in Internet Explorer and Opera to see if there are any problems with how they render the layout. Most of the time there is no problems but its still good to check.

There are also speciality browrser for people with special needs, Like text only browsers so it is important to remember to add ALT tags to all your images (this is also good for your google rank). There are also mobile browsers to take into account as more and more people are using internet functions on there phone or PDA device.

So to be effective in producing your (or someone elses) website you should run it through a few browsers to see how it looks.

XML and HTML

XML and HTML are so similar that if you have learned HTML, then you basicly already know XML. The major difference is that in XML you can define your own tags--and the tags are defined in the style sheet.

Why its important to learn HTML first is that in some situations, like posting in forums for instance, we cant define our own tags so we need a predefine set of tags and HTML offers that. Being able to define your own tags also gives you an added flexibility that HTML does not offer, in that your not limited to the predefine set.

Unlike HTML, XML is used in applications outside the internet but this is not what I intend this site to be about.

Tools for HTML

To code in HTML you dont need anthing more than notepad, althou commercial products like Dreamweaver offer several useful tools that are used by serious web designers. You can build effective websites using these commercial products without too much knowledge of HTML, but the more understanding of it you have, the easyer it will be to build and maintain your web site or blog.

There are two basic types of tools used in web design, there are text editors and there are what is known as WYSIWYG(what you see is what you get) editors. I will be refering mainlt to text editors, but dont let that scare you!, everything I tell you do do in a text editor you can do in a commercial HTML application.

In this site I will however not be refering to commercial puoducts, and I will keep references to only freeware products that you can download. All products have been tested by me to run on Windows Vista and XP, and they have packages avalible for linux too.

The first tool I suggest you download is Notepad++. I wont say too much about this program now, only that it is similar to the Windows Notepad, thou it has added functionality that you will find useful when coding HTML and CSS.

The second tool I sugest you get, and will be refering to it on occasion if the free text editor HTMLkit. I have been using it for years, both by it self and also along slid Dreamweaver, and I find it to be a great little free tool for web designers. Many commercial designers I have put on to this pruduct love it, and still use it today.

Next there is Nvu, a WYSIWYG. I have only been using this product for a few months as a free replacment for Dreamweaver--and its not as functional as the commercial pruduct, ITS FREE and you cant beat that.

I will also refer to other tools and browser plug-int that you may find useful, so please check out each download as they will be usful.