Great Resources Elsewhere: June 20 to June 26

It’s a funny thing: two or so years ago, AJAX was still predominately just a buzzword thrown around by people in suits who wanted their table-based sites to be more “Web 2.0,” and JavaScript was a minor ancillary portion of my daily work. But JS generally and AJAX specifically are fast becoming a major portion of what a web designer does. To that end, the ever-informative Noupe has pulled together a list of 23 or so tools to speed up your JavaScript development.

If you’ve never maintained or redesigned an entire website before, it can be overwhelming at first trying to figure out where to devote your energies. What are the priorities when you’re taking the big-picture view of a web site? ViperChill has pulled together what they’re calling a “Health Check” that might help you make some sense of the mess. They outline several elements that are critically important to improving a website’s “health” — and by that they really seem to mean it’s search engine optimization.

A great philosopher once asked an important question: if a blogger writes to an empty audience, does anyone hear them cry themselves to sleep at night? Nobody likes spending hours crafting an article only to have it fall on deaf (or worse — nonexistent) ears. Most bloggers also need to promote their work in order to be heard. To that end, CSS Leak has put together a list of 19 websites that are useful for promoting design-related news articles. I’d heard of most of the website on this list before, but I found a few gems in here you can bet I’ll be trying out in the future!

I have a soft spot for minimalistic designs. In my opinion, flashy menus, weighty gradients and gratuitous image use is far too prevalent in modern web design. Luckily, there are still a few fantastic designers out there who build for the minimalistic lovers out there. Here’s a list of 25 websites that manage to be beautiful without being overdone.

Not every web developer out there can also be a Photoshop guru. Trust me on this one. Luckily, there are kind souls out there that create PS tutorials for those of us who struggle a bit from time to time under the yoke of the Adobe Gods. Design Reviver has collected 20 such Photoshop tutorials that will be of specific interest to those of us who do a lot of web design. The tutorials range from narrow scope (specific navigation bars) to wide (building “grunge” websites), and many of them lean towards the glossy and 2.0-esque, but many of them could come in handy if you’re looking to learn more about PS development.

The always excellent NetTuts has released an amazingly comprehensive tutorial this week on web design. They build four pages of a website template, from Photoshop to CSS, in 26 or so generally digestible steps. This tutorial isn’t intended for the skimmers out there — only start in if you have a couple of hours to devote to the cause. But if you do, I think you’ll learn dozens of invaluable tips and tricks along the way.