Category Archives: Web Design

Picnik: Easy Photo Editing Online

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There’s nothing that enhances your library website more than photographs, and whether you’re taking them yourself with a digital camera, hiring a professional or using volunteers, or finding great shots on Flickr, you should have plenty to choose from.

But to make photographs look their best on your pages, a little editing can make a big difference. You really need a simple, quick way to do just a few basic things : resize a picture, crop a picture, and make simple adjustments to color and light. There are many commercial and free image editing programs out there, from powerful Photoshop on the high end to the free and easy Picasa.
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Firefox Extensions for Webmasters

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One of the great things about the Firefox browser is that there are so many great extensions to add all sorts of new features. Many of these can help you design, maintain and improve your library’s website. Here are a few of my favorites:

  • Web Developer Toolbar — This extension adds a large set of useful functions for working with your website, including the ability to outline or label various elements; to disable Javascript, images, etc.; to view and edit a copy of a stylesheet and see the results, and much more.
  • MeasureIt — This handy little extension makes it easy to measure any element or section of a web page
  • ColorZilla — This extension allows you to quickly identify color information about any point on your browser screen, create your own palette of favorites, and use other handy color tools
  • LinkChecker — Quickly checks and color-codes the links on the current page.
  • Fangs — If you’re working on accessibility issues, this extension shows you how a page looks when parsed by the JAWS program.