If you are a web developer, an interface designer, or a webmaster with a strong interest for CSS and web design issues, you must pay a regular visit to Vitaly Friedman' site, who writes, collects and selects the very best resources and tools on these topics.

Photo credit: Ben Goode

Vitaly has published in his blog a superb list of web design, CSS-related, font and typography resources and tools representing the very best of 2005.

I must say I truly like and value Vitaly's contribution to the community of online independent publishers as it provides high-quality picks selected from someone I consider a highly-qualified, expert advisor.

Here is Vitaly's selection of the best in web design for 2005. Check it out:

Photo credit: Ben Goode

"The year 2005 was rich on fresh, inspiring and useful Web-Development-Resources. Here is the list of the 25 sites you probably shouldn’t have missed in 2005.

The resources listed below are as useful as the resources listed on the top of the list."

1. DesignShack, Webcreme.com and ScreenSpire.com showcase beautiful web design and the Creme de la Creme of the web-sites.

2. Folietto, Markus Stefan delivers probably the most beautiful CSS-based web-design in 2005, showcased by almost all CSS-showcases and CSS-galleries in the Web.

3. FamFamFam Icons, license-free, fresh, beautiful icons, which can breathe a new life in every web-dev-project. Probably not license-free, but inspiring: 300 images from 1800 sites and Iconbuffe.

4. Creating Badges is a detailed how-to for creating star badges – a new brand in web-development.

5. Photocase.com: always fresh, inspiring and beautiful – unique database of creative license-free images. Not satisfied? Try out "Where To Find Free Images" article, presented by Masternewmedia.org.

6. Color Schemer Studio, one of the best tools for selecting harmonic color schemes for your web-sites.

7. CSS Based Navigation, one of the most beautiful navigation menus (and techniques) presented in 2005.

8. Trimming Form Fields, quality and beauty – CSS-based form, delivered by StuffAndNonsense.co.uk.

9. sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems. It uses a combination of javascript, CSS and Flash and is compatible with all the major browsers and standards.

10. Zebra Tables, usable and beautiful. It’s just what a visitor needs.

11. URLTrends and SiteScore analyze and rank your web-page, delivering information about its popularity, rankings in search engine and similar aspects useful for every SEO-expert and Web-Developer.

12. The Best Web 2.0 Software of 2005: among them del.icio.us, Digg.com, Flickr, BaseCamp and other resources.

Photo credit: Ben Goode

13. Xylescope for Mac web-developers, Aardvark Extension for Mozilla users: see how the page is created, block by block and how stylesheets describe specific parts of the page.

14. Javascripts Roundup, an article about useful javascripts you could use for every project. Among them – Moofx, Effectspack and other resources.

15. Ajax: A new approach of web-applications is definitely the article of the year. Learn more about Ajax on Step by Step to AJAX, Mastering Ajax and Wikipedia: Ajax.

16. 80×15 Brilliant Button Maker creates – maybe too popular – 80×15 buttons online just in few clicks.

17. Favicon Generator saves a lot of time, helping to generate favicons in few clicks.

18. Typetester compares screen types installed on your PC and helps to select the best font for a text-presentation.
Same idea, but different functions: Typewriter, Fontbrowser.

19. Technorati is the blog search engine of the year. Tracking over 24.2 million sites and 1.8 billion links, Technorati displays what’s important in the blogosphere — which bloggers are commanding attention, what ideas are rising in prominence, and the speed at which these conversations are taking place.

20. 25 best license-free quality fonts and Essential Fonts For Designers | 300 Free Truetype Fonts You Should Have and 15 Best License-Free Pixel Fonts present the best fonts a web-developer should have in his toolbox.

21. CSS Cheat Sheet is designed to act as a reminder and reference sheet, listing all selectors (as of CSS 2.1) and properties. It includes a visual example of the box model, unit reference for CSS units and the various media types CSS makes allowance for. Not satisfied? Try out CSS Panic Guide.

22. Cheat Sheet Roundup is Pete Freitag’s list of cheat sheets for every occasion – from XML to Ruby.

23. SEO Tools Directory – 143 free SEO Tools – all in one place.

24. Top 12 CSS Articles/Tricks of 2005, among them, "Turning a List into a Navigation Bar", "How To Clear Floats Without Structural Markup", "A CSS styled table", "Generating Dynamic CSS with PHP", "A CSS Framework", "Avoiding Classitis", "Architecting CSS", "Creating a Star Rater Using CSS", "Introducing the CSS3 Multi-Column Module", "In search of the One True Layout", "One clean HTML Markup", "Many Layouts", "PHP + CSS Dynamic Text Replacement (P+C DTR)".

25. Steps to Becoming a Freelance Web Developer: some ideas on how to become a freelance web developer.

Update:

0.1. Typography for Headlines: Christian Watson reviews the best examples of Header Styling – get some ideas on how to present the headers of your posts.

0.2. The Web Developer’s Handbook: creating web-sites, exploring own imagination.

originally written by Vitaly Friedman
and entitled
25 Sites You Shouldn't Have Missed in 2005
Jan 1 2005