Top 10 Websites - 2007

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Top 10 Websites - 2007

11 March 2007 - 2:33pm

Once again, the editors of Planetizen are pleased to present our annual list of the 10 best planning, design, and development websites. These 10 sites (along with a few honorable mentions) represent some of the top online resources for those interested in planning, design, and development.

We've listed the websites alphabetically, with host organization listed in italics if different from the website name. This list is based on nominations by Planetizen readers and staff, and judged against a common set of criteria, including standards of web accessibility.

Please post your comment on this list below, or contact us if you have nominations for next year's list.

Active Living Network

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

www.activeliving.org

As the impact of urban form on public health is something that planners and health professionals are increasingly scrutinizing, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has sponsored the Active Living Network website to strengthen the links between planning and health. The network focuses on how the built environment—including neighborhoods, transportation systems, buildings, parks and open space—can promote more active lives. Users can browse news and resources by subject (development, transportation, environment), and read useful profiles of people, organizations and places working to change the built environment to encourage physical activity. The site also allows users to participate by adding their personal stories to an online "storybank", which can be explored using an interactive map.

BldgBlog

bldgblog.blogspot.com

While many have tried to characterize the astonishing range of subjects found on BldgBlog, creator and prolific blogger Geoff Manaugh probably sums it up best when he says the site features "architectural conjecture, urban speculation, and landscape futures." Once you read a few of the sites fascinating discussions on the myriad of topics, you'll likely understand how this is quite possibly one of the most read architecture/urban blogs on the planet.

Honorable Mention: Pruned -- the hottest blog on landscape architecture.

CommuterPage.com

Arlington County, Virginia

www.commuterpage.com

CommuterPage.com is designed to encourage the use of mass transit, carpooling and vanpooling, bicycling, walking, telecommuting/telework, and other alternatives to driving alone in the Greater Washington D.C. metropolitan area. The site offers area residents a one stop source for information on the region's transportation options -- and includes a daily email and blog. A valuable resource for transit neophytes and veteran straphangers alike, and an excellent example to follow for other regions looking to encourage use of transportation alternatives.

Louisiana Speaks

Louisiana Recovery Authority, Emergency Support Function (ESF) #14, FEMA

www.louisianaspeaks.org

Endorsed by the Louisiana Recovery Authority, a state planning and coordinating body created in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana Speaks is the name for one of the largest planning processes ever likely undertaken in the United States. The authority's website serves as a central repository for information regarding the effot -- which is simultaneously managing planning efforts aim at the building, neighborhood, parish, and regional levels. Residents can look at demonstration house designs, track the progress of neighborhood and regional planning activities (as well as participate via a statewide poll), and review the maps, plans, and toolkits produced by various government bodies and their consultants. Full disclousure: Planetizen's parent company, Urban Insight, was a member of the consultant team that developed the online survey for the Louisiana Speaks regional visioning poll.

Open Architecture Network

Architecture for Humanity

www.openarchitecturenetwork.org

"How do you improve the living standards of five billion people?" That's the question posed by the founders of the Open Architecture Network. Their answer? Get designers from around the world to share ideas and resources for solving the challenge of providing decent and affordable shelter to the world's population. The recently launched website (still technically in beta) invites architects to upload project materials (plans, images, etc.), contribute their knowledge, and collaborate with others, ultimately leading to solutions that can help build a more sustainable future. Since the site doubles as a project management tool, the founders believe that OAN will entice a large number of designers to participate. This site is definitely one to watch.

PlanNYC

NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy

www.plannyc.org

PlanNYC is a web-based tool designed to give citizens and organizations interested in housing and development in New York City easy access to facts, news, and events related to major urban planning projects and policy developments. Originally developed by Jordan Anderson, a master's in urban planning student at New York University, the site allows users to sort information by project or neighborhood, and doesn’t play favorites regarding certain perspectives -- all points of view are offered. Maintained by NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, PlanNYC is stands as an excellent model for local community planning portals.

Honorable mention: PlanPhilly: Planning Philadelphia's Future -- a project of PennPraxis, the practical arm of the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, also offers news and information about major planning issues impacting the city, and tracks projects in different neighborhoods. Designed to educate and engage residents, the site is focusing on the planning process around the city's riverfront.

SmartGrowthPlanning.org

Fehr & Peers

www.smartgrowthplanning.org

Developed by transportation consulting firm Fehr & Peers, this website describes leading-edge methods for evaluating Smart Growth policies and plans. The presentation techniques, effectiveness measures and case studies that are offered (including stream video clips) are designed to provide decision-makers and community members with a clearer understanding about the transportation effects of Smart Growth, and to help planners devise Smart Growth plans that improve mobility and measurably reduce transportation impacts.

Honorable mention: Urban Transportation Showcase Program -- this site highlights innovative sustainable transportation projects in Canadian cities, including searchable case study and image database.

SustainLane Government

www.sustainlane.us

Offering resources to help local governments move towards sustainability, SustainLane's website provides a rich repository of sustainability best practices submitted by practitioners and policy makers –- including a host of model plans. The website features a ranking of the 50 largest U.S. cities according to sustainability, and also hosts a blog from sustainability expert and chief strategic officer Warren Karlenzig.

Visualizing Density

Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

www.lincolninst.edu/subcenters/vd

An accompaniment to its forthcoming book, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has created a valuable online resource for anyone who is struggling with the issue of density in their community. Chocked full of photos and illustrations (which are searchable), the site addresses the myths and realities of housing density, and offers strategies for implementing sensible policies to encourage more sustainable land use. A density quiz and interactive game make the site particularly engaging.

World Changing

www.worldchanging.com

While not specifically urban planning focused, WorldChanging.com is an excellent resource for cutting-edge news, commentary and resources on many important planning issues -- including innovative housing design and construction technology, sustainable transportation, community development, and environmental justice. The site, which is supported by a small Seattle-based non-profit, has gathered a great deal of attention of late for its efforts to highlight the new technological trends and ideas holding extraordinary potential to create positive change in global society – and has even spawned a 600 book and 12-city tour.

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Its very easy to install - just choose one of the fancy PageRank image designs, grab the HTML code and paste it into your website, thats it. Please note that you need to copy the entire code in order to make the PageRank display to work properly.

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You can find many good free tools and resources for starting webmastering on the internet from these websites:

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http://www.bigwebmaster.com/





http://www.123webmaster.com/

Webmaster as a profession

Webmasters are practitioners of web communication. Typically, they are generalists with HTML expertise who manage all aspects of Web operations.
On larger sites, the webmaster will act as a coordinator and overseer to the activities of other people working on the site and is usually an employee of the owner of the Web site, hence webmaster can also be listed as an occupation. If the webmaster is hired by a larger Web site, or promoted to the position, they could do things from web design, to project management, or employee supervision.
In the early days of the use of the term "webmaster" (a take-off on the term "postmaster", the administrator of an e-mail system), this role encompassed all aspects of planning, coding, production, and user interface. The webmaster may have many of the duties of an information architect, including ensuring site usability, user experience and menu taxonomy.
However, since the late 90s, this type of webmaster role was typically only found working on small Web sites that could be managed by one person, or in environments where there was not a great deal of role definition. The current model tends to be more team oriented with a website manager or online producer leading a team consisting of web developers, designers, programmers, QA lead, Adobe Flash developers and often at least one usability expert or a UI/UE team. In established web development companies, especially those existing since the 90s, the term webmaster may be used by senior officers of the company, and may include usage such as "Webmaster-in-chief."
A broader definition of webmaster is a businessperson who uses online media to sell products and/or services. This broader definition of webmaster covers not just the technical aspects of overseeing Web site construction and maintenance but also management of content, advertising, marketing and order fulfillment for the Web site.
Core responsibilities of the webmaster include the regulation and management of access rights of different users of a web site, the appearance and setting up web site navigation. Content placement can be part of a webmaster's responsibilities, while content creation is typically not.
Typically, the webmaster is the agent who reads user feedback and complaints about site functionality.
The webmaster is actually in charge of the server more so than the actual web pages. The web pages are handled by the senior designer.

What is HTML?

What is HTML?

HTML is a computer language devised to allow website creation. These websites can then be viewed by anyone else connected to the Internet. It is relatively easy to learn, with the basics being accessible to most people in one sitting; and quite powerful in what it allows you to create. It is constantly undergoing revision and evolution to meet the demands and requirements of the growing Internet audience under the direction of the » W3C, the organisation charged with designing and maintaining the language.

The definition of HTML is HyperText Markup Language.

• HyperText is the method by which you move around on the web — by clicking on special text called hyperlinks which bring you to the next page. The fact that it is hyper just means it is not linear — i.e. you can go to any place on the Internet whenever you want by clicking on links — there is no set order to do things in.


• Markup is what HTML tags do to the text inside them. They mark it as a certain type of text (italicised text, for example).


• HTML is a Language, as it has code-words and syntax like any other language.

How does it work?

HTML consists of a series of short codes typed into a text-file by the site author — these are the tags. The text is then saved as a html file, and viewed through a browser, like Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. This browser reads the file and translates the text into a visible form, hopefully rendering the page as the author had intended. Writing your own HTML entails using tags correctly to create your vision. You can use anything from a rudimentary text-editor to a powerful graphical editor to create HTML pages.

What are the tags up to?

The tags are what separate normal text from HTML code. You might know them as the words between the <triangle-brackets>. They allow all the cool stuff like images and tables and stuff, just by telling your browser what to render on the page. Different tags will perform different functions. The tags themselves don’t appear when you view your page through a browser, but their effects do. The simplest tags do nothing more than apply formatting to some text, like this:

These words will be bold, and these will not.


In the example above, the b tags were wrapped around some text, and their effect will be that the contained text will be bolded when viewed through an ordinary web browser.

If you want to see a list of a load of tags to see what’s ahead of you, look at this tag reference. Learning the tags themselves is dealt with in the next section of this website, My First Site.

Is this going to take long?

Well, it depends on what you want from it. Knowing HTML will take only a few days of reading and learning the codes for what you want. You can have the basics down in an hour. Once you know the tags you can create HTML pages.

However, using HTML and designing good websites is a different story, which is why I try to do more than just teach you code here at HTMLSource — I like to add in as much advice as possible too. Good website design is half skill and half talent, I reckon. Learning techniques and correct use of your tag knowledge will improve your work immensely, and a good understanding of general design and the audience you’re trying to reach will improve your website’s chances of success. Luckily, these things can be researched and understood, as long as you’re willing to work at it so you can output better websites.

The range of skills you will learn as a result of running your own website is impressive. You’ll learn about aspects of graphic design, typography and computer programming. Your efficiency with computers in general increases.You’ll also learn about promotion and your writing will probably improve too, as you adapt to write for certain audiences.

Do I have to be online all the time?

Not at all. You can code your entire website offline, storing it all on your own computer, and then just transfer all the files onto the web. Then whenever you have new content, you just add that to the existing online version of your site. It’s really quite simple.

Is there anything HTML can’t do?

Of course, but since making websites became more popular and needs increased many other supporting languages have been created to allow new stuff to happen, plus HTML is modified every few years to make way for improvements.

Cascading Stylesheets are used to control how your pages are presented, and make pages more accessible. Basic special effects and interaction is provided by JavaScript, which adds a lot of power to basic HTML. Most of this advanced stuff is for later down the road, but when using all of these technologies together, you have a lot of power at your disposal.

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Why not get a quick view of times gone by with The History of HTML? If you think you’re ready to start coding, head over to the My First Site section and begin creating!

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Still using Internet Explorer? This site, and most others, look and perform much better if you’re using a modern browser like Mozilla Firefox instead. Using this browser means you’ll browse the web faster, more securely, with no popups, and you’ll be able to use sites that use the latest CSS and JavaScript. And it’s free! Get a better browser

Source: http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/

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What Is JavaScript?

JavaScript. It has all the hallmarks of "flavor of the month"—its name is appearing everywhere and there's panting and foaming at the mouth over learning to use it. So what is it? And why should you care?


First, a formal description:

JavaScript is an object-oriented scripting language that lets you build interactions between page content, the state of the browser, and the actions of the reader.

In other words, JavaScript is a language that lets you make your pages interact with your readers and respond to what they do.

It is a programming language that can make your pages feel more dynamic and give feedback to your user. This is a good argument for learning and incorporating it into your web techniques basket.

It is a programming language that also has a learning curve in order for you to use it well. But don't let this scare you away from it—if you aren't a programmer, you can start out by learning a few basic concepts and then adapt existing JavaScript scripts for your needs.

If you don't want to tackle JavaScript, that's OK too. You can still make attractive pages that your readers will like, using standard HTML. Don't let the "flavor of the month" mentality convince you that only programmers or big budget outfits can have a Web page. But take a look through this section—you might surprise yourself by knowing more about scripting than you think.

Read more...