Boulder Writers Alliance (BWA). www.bwa.org

[Well organized site for writers of all types; about half the site ("Resources", e.g.) is not Colorado-based. Employers/clients can post openings easily from homepage.]

International Organization for Standardization (ISO).  www.iso.ch

[Geneva-based organization promoting wide variety of cross-cultural standards. ISO 9000 and 9001 are of particular interest to documenters; SGML is ISO 8879. (Note "ch" country code in URL.)]

Rocky Mountain Webmasters Guild. www.rmwmg.org

[Denver-based diverse group of Website professionals. Compare more narrowly focused Web Designers & Developers (below).]

Soc. Technical Communication (STC). www.stc-va.org

[Predominant professional organization for Technical Communicators. Local chapters can be accessed from link on homepage; Rocky Mountain Chapter (centered in Denver) is at www.stcrmc.org]

Unicode. www.unicode.org

[If the ASCII character set is too restricting (i.e., if your Website must include non-Western support), familiarity with this site is a requirement.]

Web Designers & Developers.  www.webd2.org

[Boulder-based group of technically inclined Web professionals. Compare more diverse Rocky Mountain Webmasters Guild (above).]

World Wide Web Consortium.  www.w3.org

[The Consortium sets the standards for nearly everything on the Web: markup languages, style sheets, graphics, etc. Left-hand column of homepage contains links to its subsites for HTML, CSS, PNG graphics format, XHTML, XML, many others.]

Topics

Web (General)

Webmonkey.  //hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey

[Huge site, with something for everyone: managers, writers, scripters, graphics artists, etc. Browsing takes time, but worth it.]

Usability

Alertbox.  www.useit.com/alertbox

[Jakob Nielsen's biweekly newsletter. More than half the time worth your time -- a high usability rating.]

Nielsen, Jakob.  Designing Web Usability (2000). ISBN: 1-56205-810-X.

[Content designers (such as Scribble & Count's owners) need to be able to recite chapter 3 like an extended mantra.]

Content Design

Contentious. www.contentious.com

[Amy Gahran's very serious play on words: if necessary, she will get contentious on the subject of content. Tips and tricks for maximizing the meat (while minimizing the indigestibility) of a Website. Radical when it first appeared (about the time David Segal's glitz approach was at its zenith), Gahran's success can be measured by the fact that she is now fairly mainstream.]

Rosenfeld, Louis, & Peter Morville. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (1999). ISBN: 1-565-922824.

[The first good book on content design (written by librarians, who have been analyzing print and online content for decades).]

Uncle Netword's Editorial Content on the Net.   Http://uncle-netword.com/

["Uncle Netword" is a Northern California Web design and usability consultant; the Website is an extended (and extremely useful) writing sample. The style guide cited below is a subsite.]

Styles

Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web, 2nd. ed. by Håkon Lie & Bert Bos. (1999). ISBN: 0-201-596253.

[The CSS subject matter experts -- who can either write or know an excellent editor.]

"Graphic Considerations for a Corporate Style Guide." In Intercom 45:2 (Feb 98), pp. 4-9.

[Good advice, but almost entirely limited to logos.]

Scribble & Count. Company Styles: A White Paper for Small and Medium-sized Businesses. Avail. from Scribble & Count online (PDF 52K) or in paper (request by email).

[6-pp. monograph that introduces styles, describes what we and client must do to implement. Glossary and resources.]

Uncle Netword's Style Guide.  Http://uncle-netword.com/webstyle/index.html

[The first true online style guide -- and a good one.]

Color

"The Browser Safe Color Palette". By Lynda Weinman.  www.lynda.com./hex.html

[The 216 8-bit colors that IE4/Netscape4 can agree on, arranged by both color and by hexadecimal RGB. Our 140-color palette is a subset which is compatible with most PDAs and appliances.

Weinman, Lynda. Designing Web Graphics.3 (3rd ed.), 1999 ISBN: 1-562-059491.

[After an introductory book, you should never need more than this. 3rd ed. covers technologies advances through 1998, including CSS.]

XML

Dick, Kevin. XML for Managers. (2000) ISBN: 0-201-43335-4.

[Just what the title says it is: relatively brief decision making overview, not techie coding manual.]

Goldfarb, Charles; & Paul Prescod. XML Handbook. (1999) ISBN: 0-130-147141.

[Huge doorstop written in a jocular vein by the primary designer of SGML. New ed. due out in Nov.]

St. Laurent, Simon. XML: A Primer, 2nd ed. (1999). ISBN: 0-7645-3310-X.

[Good introduction for managers and techies alike.  2nd ed. much improved.]

XML.com Website.  www.xml.com/pub/

[Joint venture of O'Reilly Publishing & Seybold Publications. The "Cover Pages" (news by Robin Cover) is at ../coverpage/newspage.html. Newsletter subscription through xml-help@xml.com]