Linkswitch: Coders FTW

So–you’re the kind of guy who knows AJAX is not just a household bleach. Or maybe you’re the kind of gal who knows CSS really stands for Cascading Style Sheets, not Cansei de Ser Sexy. You also know PHP is a scripting language, not a hallucinogenic drug, that jQuery is definitely not a rap artist, nor is Ruby on Rails the latest power-metal band to set public radio on fire.

No, you know the truth–you know it because you’re a coder. To say thanks, here are a bunch of nifty links for you (and a handful of equally awesome links for us proles everyone else).

• Learn how to craft a very nice image slider using jQuery at Help-Developer.
• Connor wrote a really good tutorial over at NETTUTS (geez, that’s an awesome site, who made it?) on how to build a sliding panel with jQuery. Yes, jQuery again, but only because you dig it.
• Discount offer: Creative Briefcase offers a library of resources and advice for new graphic design businesses. Mention Freelance Switch in the “How you heard about us” portion of the membership form and receive a 10% rebate on your membership dues.
• Carousels are way fun, but unfortunately, few of them fit adults. Luckily, they live on elsewhere: here’s a simple yet elegant image carousel built using Mootools. Our child-reader demographic (surprisingly large) can obviously have the best of both worlds.
• Scotty Iseri is a 7-year freelancer turned office job guy. He makes productive use of ‘down-time’ in this video diary, aptly titled ‘Scotty Got an Office Job‘.
• Adobe Air is a booming development platform. Check out these 10 excellent Adobe Air applications.
• Perhaps you’re a CSS white-belt rather than a black-belt. (FYI, white-belt is the beginner belt in Karate. I know that because I can use Google do karate all the time). Do not fear freelancer-san, you’ll be a CSS master someday, especially with the help of this anatomy of a CSS stylesheet. When you’re mastered that lesson move on to this one from Grand Master Smash: 7 principles of clean and optimized code.
• Here’s a gallery of some excellent single-page portfolio sites that will make you feel really inspired. Or the green eye of envy.
• Scott Gledhill recently quit his day-job to work fulltime as a freelancer. “Who hasn’t?” you might say, but the difference is that Scott is blogging his experiences day by day.
• Whether you’re a blogger or whether you’re developing web applications, you need to know what people are clicking when they get to your site. Here are 8 heatmap tools to satisfy your healthy (unhealthy?) addiction to stats.
• Rounded corners are soo out. OK, that statement is based on zero evidence, but it may make the following link more attractive: a short and to the point tutorial on creating rounded corners with CSS 3.
• Wanna know how to dynamically embed Flash fonts? Wanna no longer.
• UI design is definitely an art and a science (both subjects people totally fail at. Don’t be those people). Here are some great tips on using light, color and contrast.
• HostedFX web hosting will be donating 100% of its August proceeds to charity. Neat idea!
• Coded Preview is a very nice tool for designers who want to show design mock-ups to clients.
• If you think you’re an awesome web designer, here are 12 ways you can make your designs even better.
• Alex Charchar interviewed myself and the (much cooler) Traci Yau on the ins and outs of the home office experience.
• Brad Fitzgerald has written a useful guide on starting your own business as a young person.

Two new items for your web dev feed collection:

• Devsnippets (by Noura, who also runs Noupe.com)
• Script and Style (by Chris Coyer of CSS-Tricks.com and David Walsh davidwalsh.name)