My Favorite Webstylish Things
Proper Usage vs. Style
Proper use of the written word is sometimes a matter of opinion. If this were not so, books such as The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage and The Chicago Manual of Style would not exist. And William Safire would have to write about something else, and wouldn't have nearly as much fun. Grammar checkers can help you notice typos, but they are smiley-faced style-killers.
On the other hand, I love the W3C code validator service. Though there may be many ways to get the same result, bad code is bad code.
A good website should be a balance between style and function. Sound familiar?
Techie Chic
My very favorite inspiration for websites is CSS Zen Garden, which demonstrates how designers can use css stylesheets to achieve their designs. All the sites use exactly the same html markup and text, but each stylesheet is different. The stylesheets can be studied, but they are not to be copied, nor are the graphics.
A List Apart is "a web magazine for people who make websites." It is frequently updated with beautifully written articles on code, design and culture.
Technical Resources
Source Forge is a huge repository for open source programs. In my opinion, it is a difficult site for the non-techie-minded to maneuver. It's like having a card to check out books from M.I.T.'s library. It's not their fault Source Forge doesn't write for the masses. It's enough to be brilliant and generous.
Speaking of generosity, another resource is the "copyleft" license which grants freedom to use, modify and redistribute software programs and other intellectual properties as long as the same "copyleft" license is maintained.
For the people, by the people
A wiki is a collaborative website which allows many people to contribute and edit references related to its main topic.
MediaWiki is a free software package for creating wikis, which was originally written for the Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia (obviously, wiki plus encyclopedia) is available in a growing number of languages. It addresses, or may someday address, any subject one can think of. It can be freely edited by the public. Awesome.
The Encyclopaedia Gallactica is, according to the Wikipedia, "a fictional or hypothetical encyclopaedia of a future galaxy-spanning civilization, containing all the knowledge accumulated by a society with trillions of people and thousands of years of history."
Hypothetical? Hmmm.
And so it goes.
The Beginning
Sure, people have always collaborated, well, somewhat. But when did we really start believing "If you know something, tell somebody else."? And when did "somebody else" mean anybody, even if that person is not part of your inner circle? With the Whole Earth Catalog and the subculture that changed the world! Talkin' 'bout my generation.