Good designers know that using the right tools not only increases their efficiency but also improves the quality of their work. Good tools can help reduce repetition and allow you to focus on what matters – the design.

Today we’re going to see 50 of the best tools for web designers – these have all received high acclaim in the design community, and for good reason.

If you’re ready to learn more about WordPress plugin development and continue your journey, you can be glad that there’s a lot more great resources out there.

In this final post of the series, we’ll take a look at a few carefully selected high-quality resources for learning more and then explore some of the best plugins from the repository.

In the first three parts of this series you learned theory – how the Wordpress plugin API works and how to use it. If you’re like me, however, you’ve been longing for a real life application – thinking, “That looks great, but how do I make the jump to using it in real life?”

Today, that’s exactly what you’re going to get. We’re going to delve in deep and tackle a real-life plugin (called WisdomDistilled) designed to allow easy placement and management of clever quotations. You’ll get to use the stuff you’ve learned – adding a widget and a settings page, saving options, and working with API hooks, plus learn some new techniques related to security, plugin structure, and working with the Wordpress database. Are you ready?

In parts 1 and 2 we explored API hooks, custom admin pages, custom widgets, saving plugin options and more. Today, I’m going to show you how to get your hands dirty with Wordpress’s write post page, which is where a lot of plugins output their main functionality.

We’ll be exploring how to add custom panels, create shortcodes, and interact with TinyMCE to add buttons and insert data. It’s time to dig in!

Yesterday we looked at the basics of plugin building – and found out how to define a plugin, use action/filter hooks, and add scripts. Today, you’ll  learn how to add custom widgets, create a plugin options page, and learn how Wordpress’s option-saving mechanism works.

Come check it out, and learn some more about how to build your own Wordpress plugin!

Wordpress plugins are big, and for good reason. Not only are they incredibly useful, they also are an excellent way to gain publicity and the real powerhouse of Wordpress’ flexibility and customizability. A good plugin can really make a difference, and there’s no reason why you can’t get in on it and learn to write your own.

This week, we’re going to be going all the way from the ground floor to the complex ins and outs of advanced Wordpress plugin development. Are you ready?

We’v just passed that time of year where we see a lot of blogs take a look back at the archives and produce some wonderful ”Best of 2009″ posts. These present a terrific learning opportunitiy, and an easy way to find your way back to the ‘cream-of-the-crop’ posts of ‘09. I like to bookmark these types of post and refer back to them a lot.

Today, I’m sharing the complete collection of 2009 round-ups – a super round-up that represents the very best from the blogging community. Come check it out!

Javascript has a lot of overlooked potential as an object-oriented language, but it deserves a closer look. Today, we’ll be looking at literals, prototyping to extend existing objects, and last creating our own Javascript class. Get ready for some client-side, object-oriented fun!

Even though Javascript is object-oriented, a lot of people don’t take full advantage of the powerful solutions objects can give you. And it’s easy to see why – it can be daunting at first to hear all these terms like prototyping and closures and literals. In fact, though, with a good explanation it’s not that hard, and since objects are the very building blocks of JS, it’s important for any web coder to have a grasp of how they work. Let’s start in the best place – the beginning!