One of the questions that comes in fairly often is "How'd you do that?" and admittedly, it usually gets a rather rambling answer which usually consists of, "Well, when I did that I sorta did this, but for that, I kinda did this other thing, and for the other piece, I sorta just muddled through." In short, clarity has not always been a strong suit. Soooo, As your handy dandy webmistress, artist, sometimes writer, chief cook, and bottle washer, I thought I'd try and at least start gathering some info together to help folks. At some point, I've started a faq (just barely), and put up a few links to some excellent information that can help anyone put together their own site. If you have questions or info you're looking for, let me know at the regular Pink Rabbit addy: pinkrabbit@mailexcite.com

A lot of these references are from Educating.Net. 

| Writer's Guides and References | Graphics Tips, Tricks, & Libraries | Web Design & HTML | Software, Shareware, & Freeware |

WRITER'S GUIDES AND REFERENCES

GRAPHICS TIPS/TRICKS AND LIBRARIES

  • INFORMATION SOURCES

    • The HOW'D THEY DO THAT ZONE FAQ (or at least the very beginnings of one)

    • ADOBE.COM - Adobe is the leading creator of graphics programs (with many more than are individually listed here), and their site is always an excellent source of information, plugins, updates, and other much needed resources.

    • PIXART - Offers tutorials to help users of a wide variety of programs, including Photoshop, Painter, Freehand, Illustrator, and others.  Also has links, plugins, downloads, and a whole lot of information.

    • THE PIXEL PLACE A great place for downloadable graphics, how to tips, and an excellent page on software with links.

    • SCREAMDESIGN - Formerly Andy's Art Attack. Excellent free buttons, backgrounds, animations, tips and advice. They also have a pay service and a CD of their button vault. One of my favorite sites on the web.

  • CLIPART

    • BADGER'S MEDIEVAL CLIPART PAGE - Medieval designs and images.

    • PEGASUS' FANTASY GIF GALLERY - A wide array of fantasy images and animated gifs. 

    • SCREAMDESIGN - Formerly Andy's Art Attack. Excellent free buttons, backgrounds, animations, tips and advice. They also have a pay service and a CD of their button vault. One of my favorite sites on the web.

    • WEIRDCLIPART.COM - Definitely weird. Ever wanted the face on Mars, animated pills, or other assorted weirdness for your site, then this is the place for you.

  • ONLINE SERVICES

    • ADOBE'S ONLINE TOOLS - Create an animated banner, optimize (shrink for posting on the web) images, create an image, or save for the web with Adobe's free online toolbox.

WEB DESIGN and HTML

SOFTWARE, SHAREWARE, & FREEWARE
(shareware links for specifically for PC unless otherwise mentioned, but many of these programs also have Macintosh versions--if anyone has Mac links to share, please feel free to forward the info)

  • SOFTWARE LIBRARIES
  • HTML PROGRAMS

    • FIRST PAGE - Excellent freeware html coding program. Text based, rather than WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), it nonetheless is easy to use, intuitive, has a lot of extras and is an excellent choice for a webmaster who likes see their code or who is on a limited budget

  • HTML ACCESSORIES, & EXTRAS

  • FTP PROGRAMS (these allow you to upload your pages to the web if you don't have built in ftp)

    • CUTE FTP - my favorite shareware ftp program.

    • WSFTP LE - Simple, easy to use, freeware ftp program

  • PAINT PROGRAMS

    • ADOBE.COM - Adobe is the leading creator of graphics programs (with many more than are individually listed here), and their site is always an excellent source of information, plugins, updates, and other much needed resources.

    • ADOBE PHOTOSHOP 5.5/IMAGE READY 2.0 - Photoshop is the industry standard paint program, and now that Image Ready is included in the full package, it's a much more versatile web paint program (it can now do rollovers, slices, and assorted other tricks). It's also about $600 for the first time buyer. This page also has quite a few links for current users of Photoshop.

    • ADOBE PHOTOSHOP LE (Limited Edition) -  Clocking in at roughly $100, this is a full featured paint program. It doesn't have the full array of web oriented extras that 5.5 has, but it's an excellent program for someone who wants to paint, or who wants a really solid hobby level program.

    • COREL.COM -  Makers of Wordperfect, CorelDraw, PhotoPaint, and has recently acquired, the complete line of Metacreations software (including Bryce, Kai's Power Tools, and others).

    • COREL PHOTOPAINT 9.0 - Photopaint is another solid paint program. It comes with more freebies, filters, and such, than Photoshop and is, in some ways a better layout program. For simply painting, though, I must admit, I prefer the Adobe.

    • CORELDRAW 9.0 LE FOR MACINTOSH - Download the beta for free for a limited time. This is a vector based image program, not a bitmap (paint program), but any Mac users who work in vectors should take a look. CorelDraw has some very nice functions.

    • DEEP PAINT - Technically, they've been calling this a plug in and you can use it that way, but it's also a fully featured standalone paint program which allows you to create what looks like the depth and texture of real paint on real canvas. You can download the free trial if you want to give it a whirl. 

    • IMAGE FORGE 2.7 - Very simple, basic image editing program. It can't do a whole lot, but it's got some nice features, can do text and titles, and it's freeware.

    • JASC PAINT SHOP PRO - PSP has grown into a fully featured, very capable paint program (and now includes an animation program), and at $100 for the registered version, very reasonably priced. You can download the shareware version to take a look.

    • PAINTER -  A full featured paint program. I haven't used it in several years, so I don't have any strong opinions on the current incarnation, but it was pretty impressive when I used it before.

  • SINGLE PURPOSE ART PROGRAMS

    • BUTTONZ & TILEZ - Freeware program for making 3D buttons and tileable backgrounds for webpages.

    • GIF CONSTRUCTION SET - Simple, easy to use program for assembling animated gifs. Shareware.

    • ICON EASEL - Create and edit icons for Windows.

    • MICROANGELO & GIFTED - Downloadable shareware programs for creating icons, and animated gifs.

    • REPTILE - A wonderful little freeware program specifically for creating tileable background images. Anybody can use this one, and it's not only really cool, but fun too.

  • 3D ART PROGRAMS

    • BRYCE - A simply wonderful 3D program for creating some of the most incredible landscapes. It's easy to use as such things go, and the results can be spectacular.

    • POSER - Excellent 3D program for the human figure. If you're interested in working with the human body, this one is for you. Set body type variable, change positions, add clothes, facial expressions, even animate the figures you design. The newest version also includes several animal figures.

  • PLUGINS

    • KRUSTY'S PLUGINS - A really nice collection of free plugins for Adobe Photoshop. I haven't checked its compatibility with PhotoPaint and Paint Shop Pro, but they claim they're compatible with Photoshop plugins. 

    • EXTENSIS PHOTO BEVEL SOLO & PHOTO TEXT SOLO -  Freeware standalone plugins from Extensis available as introductions to their larger packages for sale.

    • KAI'S POWER TOOLS - Excellent plugin package for Adobe Photoshop (I haven't checked the compatibility with PhotoPaint or Paint Shop Pro, but they claim to be completely compatible with all Photoshop Plugins).

    • UNPLUGGED - A nice set of totally free Photoshop, PhotoPaint, & Paint Shop Pro Plugins.

  • MISCELLANEOUS, ODDBALL, AND FUNSTUFF

    • SETI@HOME - From Berkeyly U (of course), this little freeware screensaver lets you participate in the Search for Intelligent Life on your home computer.

    • SOPHOCLES - Nice shareware screenwriting program. Simple and easy to use. The registered version allows you to export scripts to html.

    • QUICKNOTES - Freeware program which allows you to create sticky notes on your desktop.

    •  
 

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