At one time or another, we are all newbies. That’s right: you can deny it all you want, but not one of us got into this game with a full deck stacked in our favor. We entered as newbies, born fresh after the start screen loaded. However, unlike in a game, we are not immediately launched into a tutorial level to learn the ropes in this new world — what to avoid, how to progress, etc. And if we feel overwhelmed by our newbie status, we may not be able to find our way to the tutorials and guides that the community has put together to help us sort all of this out. So, feeling very alone in all this is easy.

read more: http://bit.ly/9imzB3

This is coolest thing for all web devs n designers.

http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/15-sites-web-developers-and-designers-should-know

The Deming Cycle - also know as the PDCA Cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act) - to web design. If you never heard of Deming Cycle, this model (made popular by Edwards Deming) describes an iterative process designed to drive continuous improvement typically used in business process reengineering and in quality management. This process has four main steps:

- Plan: establish objectives and define methods to reach them;
- Do: implement what you planned;
- Check: measure and compare obtained results against expected result;
- Act: take action to improve what you implement.

This circular approach can be very useful if applyed to web development expecially in order to:

- improve the quality of your work;
- organize your code in code snippets (or classes) to reuse in your projects in order to work faster and more efficiently;
- simplify and rationalize the workflow of activities during development process;

After reviewing website for a few months, I’ve begun to see general patterns emerge that make a site more or less usable. I would like to highlight some of the more common problems designers should address on their own sites in a Usability checklist before launching a site.

1. Site ID - A Sites ID is usually found at the top left of a page right next to navigation of some kind.
2. Page Name - Name of any page being browsed needs to be made very clear to the user.
3. Navigation by browsing - There are two primary ways a user can navigate a site, and it’s important to have both forms of navigation on almost every page. Primary Navigation is of course navigation to get to the main parts of the site. Secondary Navigation divides primary navigation into subsections. Utilities are parts of your site that aren’t really connected to the primary sections of your site.
4. Navigation by Search - The second form of navigation by searching. Some users prefer browsing, some prefer searching, so it’s usually wise to include both.
5. Tag line or site description - Taglines are a great way to explain the purpose of a site to a user quickly.

These are just a suggestion, as all items mentioned may not be applicable for all sites.

We have come up with 10 essential Firefox add ons, which will make graphic and web designing work easier. These are really easy to install and you also get notifications when the new version of a particular add on is launched.

ColorZilla 1.0
FireShot
FoxyTunes
GridFox
IE Tab
MeasureIt
Palette Grabber
Window Resizer