Ultimate Web Development Cheat Sheets
September 3rd, 2007
JavaScript
Addison-Wesley’s JavaScript Reference Card
JavaScript and Browser Objects Quick Reference
JavaScript in 10 Minutes - Thanks Joseph
CSS
Design 215 CSS Quick Reference
HTML/XHTML
HTML Character Entities Cheat Sheet
Character Entity References in HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0
AJAX
Scriptaculous Combination Effects Cheat Sheet
Scriptaculous Cheat Sheet - Thanks Joseph
ASP.net AJAX Client Life-Cycle Events
MooTools Cheat Sheet - Thanks Joseph
Colors
Microformats
Microformats Helper Cheat Sheet
Jack Daniel’s Microformats Cheat Sheet
Browser Compatibility
Browser Compatibility Interactive Table
XML
XML TopicMaps 1.0 - Quick Reference Card
XML Schema - Structures Quick Reference
The 10 Biggest Mistakes Freelancers Make, and How to Avoid Them
September 3rd, 2007
Original Article : Freelance Switch
No freelancer is perfect — not me, not you, not even the best of us. We all make mistakes, all the time, and if we’re smart, we learn from them.
Some mistakes, however, are more crucial than others, and if we can correct or avoid those mistakes, we’ll survive. We’ll still make other mistakes, but they won’t hurt as much.
Let’s take a look at some of the most essential mistakes that freelancers, new and old, often make, and how to avoid them.
Missing deadlines. I wrote more on this topic in this post, but basically, your ability to put out quality work and meet deadlines is what makes your reputation. And as a freelancer, your reputation is all you have. If you miss deadlines too often, you will soon see your clients going elsewhere. How to avoid: Make deadlines one of your top two priorities (along with putting out great work), overestimate how long it will take you, break the project into smaller steps, and be accountable every step of the way.
Charging too little. New freelancers, especially, undervalue themselves and charge less than they’re worth. That’s OK if you’re just breaking into the business, and don’t have any previous work or reputation to point to. But once you’ve got some stellar work under your belt, don’t be afraid to ask what you’re worth, otherwise you are selling yourself short. And you’ll be working too much just to pay the bills. (See this article for more.) How to avoid: It’s good to find out what the market avergage is, and charge a little more. This tells clients that you’re good. A good way to do the math is to figure out how much you want to make, and how many hours you realistically plan to work. Then charge based on those numbers.
Lack of preliminary research. This is research before making your pitch, not before completing the assignment. Often a freelancer will contact a potential client and make a pitch, without really understanding the client or his needs, and without knowing how this project will add value to the client. This approach will get you very little business. How to avoid: Research the client thoroughly before making contact. The Internet is a great way to do that, of course. Know what the client does, the client’s market, what the client’s goals are (in general), and figure out how you can help the client meet those goals. How will you add value? Direct your pitch at those issues.
Choosing the wrong clients. The client-freelancer relationship is an important one, and there are many issues that can make a client the wrong client, or the right client, for you. Those include the market they’re in, they’re working style, how difficult they are, how likely they are to pay your rate, how much work they require, their ability to pay on time without hassle, and more. If you choose the wrong client, you will make less money, be unhappy, and work more. How to avoid: Select clients carefully. Again, research them, talk to other freelancers who’ve worked for them. When contacting a client, think of it as a two-way interview — they are trying to decide if you’re right for them, but you should also be trying to decide if they are right for you. Do your first assignment or three on a trial basis, to see how things work out. Every now and then, evaluate your clients to see if they’re worth the trouble.
Getting too personal. It’s good to be friendly with a client, but keep it professional. You don’t want to be best friends. You shouldn’t be too formal, either, but if you become personal, two things could happen: 1) one of you could get hurt or angry at the other based on a business decision; or 2) the client might think you’re unprofessional. Either one is bad for business. How to avoid: Start any correspondence on a formal basis, and then get friendlier depending on how the client handles communication. Don’t be afraid to be friendly, but at the same time, don’t go beyond business, and don’t cross the line into unprofessionalism.
Letting off steam. If there is a problem with a client, some freelancers have a tendency to vent their frustration — at the client. For example, if an editor decides not to run my article, I might show my frustration and displeasure in a very angry way. This is bad. It will harm your professional reputation, both with this client and with future clients. And it will lead to decreased business over time, if you continue this mistake. How to avoid: If there is a problem with a client, and you are angry or frustrated, do not communicate right away. Let your steam off some other way, through talking to a friend, through exercise, through eating a carton of ice cream. But don’t do it at your client, or anyone else in your professional world. Bite your tongue. Then, when you’ve calmed down, communicate with your client in a non-emotional, professional manner — preferably in a positive way, but clearly, so that future problems can be avoided.
Not proposing a follow-up idea. Often a freelancer will complete an assignment, and then move on to an assignment with another client. Perhaps the freelancer hopes that the assignment that he completed was so amazing, the client will be knocking down his door the next day. Unfortunately, that often doesn’t happen. If you don’t provide the basis of future business, you might not see it. How to avoid: when you complete an assignment, propose a follow-up idea for future work. If you don’t hear back, follow up.
Not having multiple income streams. Relying on one or two clients is always a bad idea. If your main client drops you, or reduces his freelancer budget, or goes out of business, you’re out of luck. And now you can’t pay your bills. How to avoid: Always have multiple income streams. You might start with one freelance client (we all do in the beginning), but don’t rely on that as your primary source of income until you’ve added more clients. And if you can get other sources of income streams (a full- or part-time job, another business, your spouse’s income, advertising on a blog, selling a product, Amway), you should work hard to do so. It will make your income much more stable and reliable.
Allowing yourself to slack. Let’s face it: some days, we don’t feel like working. And that’s fine, if we plan for that flexibility, and make up for it on other days. But too many days of slacking, and soon you aren’t getting any income. And you’re missing deadlines. Not good. How to avoid: It’s fine to give yourself flexibility, so that you can work when you feel productive, but if you have deadlines to meet, don’t let yourself slack off. Push yourself to meet the deadline, and work in bursts to motivate yourself.
Failing to be yourself. Often we take work because we need the income, but it doesn’t align with who we are. And we feel awful about it, and slowly we begin to hate ourselves. Until we no longer want to do the work. How to avoid: Seek, from the beginning, to find work that aligns with your values, that allows you to be who you are. Being fake and dishonest, to others and to yourself, gets you nowhere. Be sincere in your interactions with others, and don’t be afraid to say no to stuff that doesn’t fit who you are. Always strive to find work you love.
30+ Firefox Add-ons for Web Developers & Designers
September 3rd, 2007
Firefox has cool add-ons which make the job of website designers and developers much easier. Here is our list of 30+ excellent Firefox add-ons that every web developer and designer should know about.
CSS
Aardvark - A cool extension for web developers and designers, allows them to view CSS attributes, id, class by highlighting page element individually.
chromEdit - Alter the appearance of any page by editing CSS and Javascript files with this extension.
CSSMate - Firefox extension to edit CSS files.
CSS validator - Check the validity of your webpage using this CSS validator extension.
CSSViewer - See the CSS properties of page elements with this extension.
EditCSS - Play around with loaded CSS, Web Developer extension also provides this functionality.
IE Tab - Designers and developers can view their CSS projects on Internet Explorer using this extension.
Style Sheet Chooser II - Users can pick and choose alternate style sheets for a website.
Debugging and Analysis
FireBug - A console for debugging JavaScript, HTML, and Ajax code snippets.
HTML Validator - Cool extension to validate web pages with HTML standards of W3C.
JavaScript Debugger - JavaScript debugging extension enables a strong debugging environment.
Link Checker - Check the links on a webpage for validity. Color to each link explains its current status.
Load Time Analyzer - View detailed graphs of the loading time of web pages in firefox. The graphs display events like page requests, image loading times etc.
View Dependencies - Find out all files that were loaded in a webpage with the view dependencies tab in page info.
Others
Clipmarks - Easily save portions of webpage with this extension.
Codetech - Excellent extension for web page designers, codetech is a web page editor with the look and feel of Dreamweaver.
ColorZilla - A nice extension for web designers and developers. Colorzilla helps users to select colors which can be adjusted and put in any other program.
FirePHP - Find out what PHP code in the backend does to pages on display in Firefox browsers.
Flash Switcher - Use this extension to avoid reloading between flash plugins.
Greasemonkey - Control any aspect of web page behavior by adding Javascript code to any webpage using this Firefox extension.
Measureit - Users can calculate the measurement specifications of tables, paragraphs on internet.
Platypus - One of the best Firefox extensions for modifying a webpage. Users can modify a webpage, save their changes as a Greasemonkey script and their saved page would be loaded the next time they visit the page.
Poster - A must have tool for web developers enabling them to interact with web services and other web resources.
Professor X - Check out the contents of the head of page without getting into source code.
Screen grab - Capture screenshot of any webpage and save it as an image file with this extension.
TestGen4Web - Save the webpage activities users (entry of text, web page clicks) in xml file. These actions can later on be replayed and converted to scripts for automated test tools.
View Source Chart - View the source code of any webpage as Firefox sees it.
Web Developer - Add a menu of various web development tools with web developer extension.
X-Ray - Must have Firefox extension, it allows users to view webpage code with a right-click and shuffle between the webpage and its code easily.
Article from Mashable | digg story
HTML Beginner Tutorial | HTML Dog
August 13th, 2007
The Best Place for HTML beginners to kick start their web designing career
(Introduction - From the site)
The thing to keep in mind is that HTML and CSS are all about separating the content (HTML) and the presentation(CSS). HTML is nothing more than fancy structured content and the visual formatting of that content will come later when we tackle CSS.
If you have looked at other HTML tutorials, you might have found that they mention certain things that HTML Dog does not. This is because many methods are obsolete, non-standard or just plain bad practice. Getting into the frame of mind of doing things the right way from the start will turn in to much better results in the end.
Contents
- Getting Started - What you need to do to get going and make your first HTML page.
- Tags, Attributes and Elements - The stuff that makes up HTML.
- Page Titles - Titles. For Pages. Difficult to get your head around, I know…
- Paragraphs - Structuring your content with paragraphs.
- Headings - The six levels of headings.
- Lists - How to define ordered and unordered lists.
- Links - How to link things together.
- Images - Adding something a bit more than text…
- Tables - How to use tabular data.
- Forms - Text boxes and other user-input thingamajigs.
- Putting It All Together - Taking all of the above stuff and shoving it together. Sort of a recap thing.
Other useful tutorials from HTML Dog