Useful Links for Web Development

Each of these links may be helpful in some way for anyone working on web development. Each one is annotated at least briefly to indicate why you might like to go there.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

  1. W3C Home Page The place to go for the very latest information on most web technologies and their standards.
  2. W3C HTML/XHTML Home Page The W3C home page for (X)HTML, where you can find both reference and tutorial material.
  3. W3C HTML5 Home Page The W3C home page for HTML 5, the latest and yet-to-be-accepted version of (X)HTML.
  4. W3C (X)HTML Markup Validator Service One place to go when you want or need to have one of your web pages "validated" according to one of the accepted W3C standards for HTML or XHTML markup.
  5. W3C CSS Home Page The W3C home page for CSS, where you can find both reference and tutorial material.
  6. W3C CSS Validator Service The place to go for validation of your Cascading Style Sheets.

W3 Schools

  1. W3 Schools Home Page A large collection of excellent tutorials and reference pages on many web technologies. In many cases the tutorials permit you to edit the code you are looking at and experiment with "what if" scenarios.
  2. W3 Schools XML Validator Service for Internet Explorer An XML Validator Service provided by the W3 Schools site, but it only works if you submit your code through Internet Explorer.

Additional Validators

  1. WDG (X)HTML Markup Validator Service Another place to go when you want a web page validated (if your usual validator is not available, let's say).
  2. STG XML Validator Service An XML Validator Service provided by the Scholary Technology Group at Brown University.
  3. Another XML Validator Service An XML Validator Service provided by www.xmlvalidation.com.

JavaScript | ECMAScript

  1. JavaScript Reference JavaScript does not appear to have an "official" home page, other than the ECMA home page (see below). This link gives a lot of potentially quite useful information, though it is in very succinct form.
  2. Another JavaScript Reference This one seems quite comprehensive.
  3. European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) Among other things, here is where you will find the ECMA standards, which include those for ECMAScript, better known as JavaScript.
  4. JavaScript Reference Card A quick reference card for JavaScript

PHP

  1. PHP Home Page This site contains both a comprehesive PHP reference and a tutorial on PHP.
  2. PHP Reference Card A quick reference card for PHP

MySQL

  1. MySQL Home Page This site has a somewhat commercial "look and feel", which may be an unfair or flattering observation, depending on your point of view, but you can get lots of information (a complete reference manual, for example) and free downloads here.
  2. MySQL Reference Card A quick reference card for MySQL
  3. A Database Normalization Tutorial A tutorial on the first three database normal forms

phpMyAdmin

  1. phpMyAdmin Home Page The official home page of the phpMyAdmin project, which provides a GUI front end for administering a MySQL database over the web.
  2. phpMyAdmin Tutorial Although this tutorial is superficially tied to a specific system, it appears to be a decent introductory tutorial of a mostly generic nature.

Perl | CGI

  1. O'Reilly's Perl Home Page This is the "official" home page of Perl, and is run by O'Reilly, an excellent publisher of books on all things computing.
  2. CPAN The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, the gateway to all things Perl. The canonical location for Perl code and modules.
  3. The CGI Resource Index for Perl This link takes you to a collection of Perl scripts for CGI programming, as well as a number of other resources.

Linux | Apache | Tomcat

  1. Alphabetical Listing of Linux Commands This page gives an alphabetical listing of 515 Linux commands, with command options and usage examples.
  2. Short List of Commands for the bash Shell This page gives an useful, though incomplete, listing of Linux commands (specifically, bash shell commands), though without options and without examples.
  3. Apache Home Page This is the home page of the most widely used web server on the internet. It's very good, and it's very inexpensive (as in free!).
  4. Tomcat Home Page This is the home page of the Tomcat "servlet container" that is used in the official Reference Implementation for the "Java Servlet" and "JavaServer Pages" technologies.

General Web Reference | Web Help

  1. Web Design Group A reference site and tool source for web authors.
  2. Website Tips A tutorial and reference site for (X)HTML and CSS.
  3. thesitewizard.com A tutorial and reference site for several different web technologies.
  4. HTMLSource Another tutorial and reference site, especially for HTML.
  5. O'Reilly's XML Site Another O'Reilly site that contains, if not all, then a lot of what you might want to know about XML.
  6. Documentation for Freely-Available Software A page at the University of Alberta that provides exactly what its title suggests, including documentation (sometimes for multiple versions) of (among others) Apache, LaTeX, Perl, PHP and HTML Tidy.
  7. Commentary by Eric Meyer This is a short commentary by Eric Meyer, a well-know authority on various web-related things, including CSS. Just some recommended reading.
  8. Activating Browser Modes with Doctype In order to deal both with content written according to Web standards and with content written according to legacy practices that were prevalent in the late 1990s, contemporary web browsers implement various "engine modes". This document explains what those modes are and how they are triggered.

Miscellaneous Web Development Tools

  1. HTML TIDY A good place to start if you want information on the HTML TIDY utility for "cleaning up" your web pages.<<>> You might also want to investigate "Slidey", a utility for creating Powerpoint-like presentations (horrors) that work through your web browser.
  2. CSS TIDY Analogous to HTML TIDY, but for CSS.
  3. HTML-Kit Editor Home Page This is the home page of a freely available HTML editor (at least "Bulid 292" is freely available) that appears to be an excellent choice for Windows web developers.
  4. Bluefish Editor Home Page This is the home page of a freely available HTML editor that appears to be an excellent choice for Linux web developers.
  5. FavIcon from Pics A free web service from www.chami.com, the folks behind HTML-Kit, which allows you to produce a "favicon" from an image file.
  6. Firebug for Firefox The Firebug plug-in for Firefox may be helpful for debugging. It will require downloading and installing the plug-in and probably reading the tutorial material.

General Web Info | Web Stats

  1. Web Browser Comparisons on Widipedia This page compares various browers on various platforms from several different points of view, including web technology and protocol support.
  2. W3Counter Keeps track of global web stats.
  3. Netcraft News A site where you can find up-to-date news and stats on various aspects of web usage (the "battle" between Apache and IIS, for example).