CSSnewbie

The “Blog Design Blog” has pulled together a list of 25 of the best web and blog design books out there. They have divided the books into nine categories: Typography, CSS/XHTML, Design, Color, Usability, Logos, JavaScript, “Extras” (which just don’t fit elsewhere), and a Bonus section specifically for blog designers. If you’re looking to expand your knowledge in any of these categories, this would be a good place to start your browsing. I only own five of the 25 suggestions listed, so I might have a few more books to add to my Amazon Wishlist soon.

KlausKomenda.com has a nice roundup of over a dozen web developer tools (I counted seventeen) spread across four of the most popular browsers: Firefox, IE6/7, Opera, and Safari. They give a short description of each tool and what it does, and provide a link to download the tool. These tools can really help in debugging and testing code, so they’re worth a look. If you’ve never used a browser tool before, or if you’ve always just limited yourself to one browser’s offerings, it might be worth checking out this roundup.

Here, Antonio Lupetti reminds us that the best way to simplify your CSS is to take a top-down approach — planning your website out in broad swaths, planning the major elements that will go in those larger areas (headings, lists, etc), and then using those tags as “hooks” as often as possible in your CSS. This technique immediately reduces redundancy and keeps Classitis at bay.