On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 1:23 PM, Nick Miceli wrote: Hey Dr. Chays,

Here's a few of the resources that have really helped me out during my projects.

• Web Design - CSS http://css-tricks.com/video-screencasts/1-converting-a-photoshop-mockup-part-1-of-3/ : An amazing video tutorial on how to layout a super professional looking webpage using only CSS and a mockup made in Photoshop (or GIMP). In addition, css-tricks has tons of great articles and resources in general. http://line25.com/tutorials/create-a-clean-modern-website-design-in-photoshop A fairly in depth tutorial on how to make a professional photoshop mockup http://line25.com/tutorials/how-to-convert-a-photoshop-mockup-to-xhtml-css A tutorial on how to turn that mockup into a webpage using only CSS. Not quite as in-depth as the first link, but still pretty good

• Web Design - Rails http://tryruby.org/levels/1/challenges/0 A fantastic, short, interactive lesson to introduce all the major programming concepts in Ruby. Moves pretty slow for a CS major, but you can skip parts. I did it in about 20 minutes. http://railsforzombies.org/ A free online class complete with video lectures and automated coding assignments for learning the concepts behind Ruby on Rails. Teaches the concepts fantastically, but doesn't tell you where to start http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book The free online textbook that I've been following for learning Rails. Goes through everything step by step, working through test-wise refinement and GIT, with full-functioning code examples and great explanations. By the end, you have a fully functional application that has multiple users interacting with a database, login states using cookies, encryption, and more. This book has saved my butt quite a few times. You can buy screencast video tutorials that work alongside the book but they're expensive and the book is pretty thorough. http://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html The ultimate article on Rails security, in case you're building a practical application that involves important data.

• Web Design - JQuery http://jquery.com/ JQuery is an amazing plugin for Javascript that makes it very easy to do infinitely many client-side tasks. JQuery itself can be added to your page by including it from the internet with a line like follows: and then you can download TONS of plugins from their website that do anything form client-side validation to advanced buttons to uploading files - any client side feature you can think of, someone made it real easy to do in JQuery

• Android Development: http://developer.android.com/index.html Here's where to begin. You can download the SDK and AVD (Android Virtual Device - the Android emulator) from here, and there's a good tutorial for installing and writing Hello World. (Suggestion: Installing this on Linux was much easier than Windows, seeing as Android is a unix based OS - I suggest a small Ubuntu dual boot partition) http://developer.android.com/guide/index.html Quite honestly, the most useful guides for Android was right on the Guide tab on the link above (or as seen here). They're broken down by category and fairly in-depth.

This is all I can think of off the top of my head, but I'll send you any more if I think of them. Hope these help!

Best, Nick