Do This First - Extraction Utilities, Free Virus Protection

Not a graphics resource but you can't live without these.


• Virus Protection, Mail Protection, Worm Protection

  You can download a trial version of Norton Antivirus or MacAfee for free.

• Extraction Utility

  The fonts (and some of the other downloads on this page) are in zip format. You'll need WinZip or PKunzip, or my favorites, Winace and WinRAR, to extract it.

Web Graphics and other Sights

• Graphics Tutorial

  You will find great graphics and an excellent free jumpstart Photoshop tutorial at
  DaVinci Graphics. Discusses lighting, reflection, text effects and more.
  More Photoshop tutorials here:
  Basic Photoshop and Graphics Tutorials
  Adobe's Photoshop Tutorials (not for the faint of heart)

• Art Passions

  Virtual bookstore and art galleries with works by Arthur Rackham, Gustave Dore, William Morris, Aubrey Beardsley, Maxfield Parrish, Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, Adrienne Segur, Sulamith Wulfing, Warwick Goble and others. Fairy, fairytale, Celtic, themes. Links to specialty fonts based on Arthur Rackham, William Morris, and Celtic script.
  Art Passions
  New! Recently added virtual postcards.

• Free Backgrounds and Wallpaper

  Free fairy and other art backgrounds / wallpapers by the same artists. With instructions
  Free Art Backgrounds and Wallpapers.
  Backdoor to the same backgrounds if the other site has gone over bandwidth.

Web Tools

• Domain Registration

  I have so much on the ins-and-outs of this that I have moved this section here. Cheapest that still gives service is godaddy.com. Before you register a domain name, review the Site Promotion tips

Color Selection Guide (Web Colors)

• CSamp

  This color sampler floats in your window and tells you the RGB value of the point under the mouse. Useful if you want to make a background or font match a color in an image. This version gives you a choice of the RGB value in hex or dec (Whew! Gone are those dec-to-hex conversions in my head...). It's free. And it comes in Slovenian and Polish, too! Csamp

• Hexadecimal and RGB Color Values

  Color Value Tables that you can't live without. Includes the web safe color palette, RGB and hexadecimal values for the named colors, and the Netsape- MSIE- recognized color constants (named colors). Definitely more than 216 colors.

  

• 216 Color Picker and Color Lookup Table

  A cute color picker for the 216 web safe colors, very visual and shows you some colors that ought to coordinate. (My preference: Be an outlaw!). I really like the pastels. You can also download a nice little color lookup table that works with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
  Visual Color Picker
  My daughter has the poster; it's nice.

• Optimizing Web Graphics

  Optimizing your images is the most effective thing you can do to speed download time of your pages. You can compare the filesizes and quality of the various formats at Adobe's online services page (it's free):
  Free Online Image Optimizer. (If you don't understand all the settings, just accept the defaults.)

Fonts

• Demo Fonts

  Another great font resource is
  Scriptorium font library (pricey but really high quality fonts). Demo font downloads that you can try out.

• Guidelines in Designing with Fonts

  Daniel Will-Harris discusses how to choose an appropriate font. Typeface tutorial. Fonts that go well with other fonts. Also some free fonts at Esperfonto.

• Freeware Fonts

  Free fonts without skulls, dripping blood, or other juvenalia. Don't miss the font of the week. Fontastic  - The Fontpool
  And then, ahem, sometimes you find a font you really want in someone's insecure font directory by going to google.com and typing in:
  

  "index of /fonts" + name-of-font-goes-here

  but I didn't say that. Don't forget the quotation marks.

Image Viewers, Icon Viewers

• Firehand Ember

  The best of all image viewers - also allows copying, moving, renaming, and organizing of images. Free trial and then small cost to register it.
  Download Firehand Ember

• VueIcon

  VueIcon creates icons for your image files so you can see a small version of the image from Windows Explorer. It caches the icons so there is no lag time when you read the drive. This is particularly useful when designing. Best, it's free.
  VueIcon 6

Sound and Flash

• Wav of the Day

  Several hundred downloadable wav files and links to other sound sites. Software links. People who embed long-downloading, cheesy music in their web pages have a covert or overt wish to crash the Internet by wasting bandwidth. They will be the first to go in the eugenic wars. Remember that.
  Daily .WAV
  Bird Songs
  Sound File Resources

• Make Your Own

  Sound Forge is a two-track digital audio editor. You need a Windows-compatible sound card to create, record, and edit audio files. It's the same old Windows interface, so there isn't that much to learn. Built-in support for video and CD burning and can save to a number of audio and video file formats, including WAV, WMA, RM, AVI, and MP3. Yes, I did spend money on this. In fact, I liked the product so much, I bought stock in the company. (Hint: A very bad way to choose a stock. Calibre of management counts. )
  Download the demo version of Sound Forge

• Quick and Almost Easy Flash

  You can make your own flash. The little Sothink Glanda is quick and easy, and while not free, will not set you back a lot either. Great for buttons.

Search Engines / Site Promotion / Affiliate Programs

• Site Promotion Tools (mostly)

  SelfPromotion.com has a free submit function, unless you choose to contribute. You don't pay anything unless you feel the service is valuable. The amount is up to you. I like this. It is the true spirit of the Internet. I use the various tools to check standing in multiple engines, pretty printing, multiple submissions, evaluate and submit sites for awards (I have some!), and other things. Some sophisticated but comprehensive articles on search engine requirements, latest news on apparent changes in search engine algorithms and wait time after submitting, writing to assure high ranking, advice on affiliate programs and tools for monitoring the search engines. Online history of the sites you submitted (dates and keywords, for example).
  SelfPromotion.com

• More Site Promotion Tools

  I have so much on this that I've broken this section into two separate pages!
  10 Proven Site Promotion Tips
  Good Affiliate Programs, Bad Affiliate Programs

HTML Editors and Validation Tools

• Free HTML Editor

My favorite HTML editor is Wordpad. :) However, this free editor also incorporates web widgets for special effects (free HTML templates on this site also):
Free HTML editor with web widgets

• Doctor HTML

  Free and subscription validation tools. Free tools are adequate for most purposes. I especially like the "HTML Squisher". If you want Doctor HTML to check your entire site, there's a registration/subscription charge.
  Doctor HTML (Choose Single Page or RxHTML from the main page.)

Webmistress References

• Web Design Group

  Includes the HTML 4.0 Reference, HTML 3.2 (Wilbur) Reference, a Cascading Style Sheets Guide, and a Character Set Overview. Online tools include: HTML Validator; CSSCheck, a Cascading Style Sheets lint; cg-eye, a CGI test kit; and WiDGets, authoring tools and accessibility add-ons for Internet Explorer.
  Web Design Group

• Webmaster's Reference Library

  Original articles and exhaustive links. Spend the weekend.
  Webmaster's Reference Library

Web Programming: CGI, Java

• The Fine Manual

  Ever download a script and it's so poorly documented that you don't have a clue and feel like you need a computer science degree to install it? Tired of being told to RTFM when there isn't one? Here are the instructions to the other resources in this section:
  How to install cgi scripts

• CGI links and other

  FreeCode software archive: All of the programs found here are: •Free for personal and commercial use. •Compatible with Unix and/or Windows.•Written in C/C++, Java, Perl, or Visual Basic.
  FreeCode software archive (has links to Matt's Script archive)

• Java and Javascript Programming

  Extensive, I mean it, Java, Javascript, and related technologies.
  Gamelan

Web Design Downloads and Style Guidelines

• Design Guidelines and Many Resource Links

  Exhaustive list of design resources. She has a totally different style than mine -- Love me, love photorealism, love my cat. Page and pages of resources, which means it's there but you have to dig through stuff. Not for the fainthearted or those with 14.4K modems.
  Windweaver's Web Design Resources

• Latest Greatest

  More than you ever wanted to know about building web sites with all the bells and whistles.
  Builder.com

Books and Tutorials

• Web Designer's Bookshelf

  Favorite books and manuals for web design and web programming. In other words, books I liked enough to buy so I could refer to, rather than reading once during an afternoon at Borders, or books I wished I had the money to buy. Hardcopy References for Web Designers and Programmers. (I've spent a lot more money on books since I recommended these. I'll update it soon.)
  Designer's Bookshelf

• Finding the Book You Want

  My favorite bookstore is Powell's Technical Books in Portland. Is there anything else to do in Portland when it's raining? But even Powell's doesn't have everything. I know where to find the best deals on books online! I created the following page to search Powell's database, Amazon, and others - comparison shop several Internet bookstores for new, used, and hard-to-find books:
  Booksearch

Lonely Screen Pets and other Toys

These are self-extracting zip files in my public directory on lightlink. I guarantee they were safe and virus-free when I put it there. If you still want a screen pet, but don't feel safe downloading them (I'm not sure I would), contact the webmistress.

• Lonely? Windows got you down?

  Late nights working on web development. No social life. Even the cat shuns you. Adopt a screen pet! , put the executable on your desktop, and doubleclick for the number of pets you want. Except for those pesky alien abductions where the sheep are transported to a hovering spacecraft, you'll never be lonely again. Esheep run under Win95, 98, and WinNT. Like many of us, your screen pet will be happiest under Windows NT. You can run multiple instances of esheep.

  

• If it's a cat you must have . . .

  a friendly cat for your desktop (runs on Win95, 98, NT, 2000 - don't know about XP)

• Christine's Millennial Too Cute Award

  Okay, it's not a graphic resource. The Pink Pigs Page wins my "Too Cute" award. It's a French site, with some English translation. Just ask, and these precious pink pigs will wish you, or your true love, a happy birthday. How romantic! Be sure to visit the Pink Pig Musée.
  Etienne Bartholomeuf's Pink Pigs.