A couple of weeks ago, two web based services launched that allow any web designer to add a commenting and rating system to any page they create. Both of these systems can be incorporated into your pages by adding a very simple snippet of JavaScript code to your page.

• Star It! is a star rating system that allows visitors to rate your content using a 5 star system.
• JS Kit if a fully featured threaded comment system.

Of course the upside of these tools are that they are simple to use. The downside is that your data is stored in somebody else’s database so you need to have some trust that these services will be around for a while.

Last December, 24 Ways launched a web developers advent calendar with excellent content added each day from December 1st to Christmas day. This year they’re back with more great content. This year Drew McLellan kicks off the series with aTasty Text Trimmer that uses JavaScript to emulate the ‘Article Length’ tool in Apple’s Safari RSS reader. Be sure to add this site to your feed reader and check it each day!

Just in case you need reminding - 11 Best Practices for URLs. It’s nice to see the SEO community giving some great advice.

Aptana is an Eclipse based web IDE that offers support for JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code hinting and completion. Even better, the code hinting and completion can be customized and extended for your own JavaScript libraries. There are already plugins for some of the more popular JS frameworks like Prototype, Dojo, MochiKit and YUI!

One of my favourite web design blogs - Fiftyfour Eleven - has a very good article that may help you Effectively Communicate with Users of your web projects. The article specifially discusses how we can write better error messages that will help users on their journies through our sites.

Veerle Pieters has a fantastic step-by-step tutorial on creating Header Backgrounds in Photoshop. She proves that inspiration can indeed be found in photographs as she creates an awesome header graphic by applying some Photoshop magic to an existing photo.

Mark Boulton offers his opinion on what design means in terms of Web 2.0. Turning the corner: Designing for Web 2.0 he suggests that design will be much more than simply aesthetics. Good design will incorporate user experience, usability, information architecture, accessibility and of course aesthetics.

Boxes and Arrows has an excellent article that discusses user journeys. Web designers often think of web site structure as being a heirarchy. This article introduces user journeys as a method for conceptualising and structuring a website’s content and functionality.

…Answering customer needs is the end point of our journeys through the structure and the starting point of our thinking about the journey itself.

Fellow Canadian Jonathan Snook has written a great article for Digital Web Magazine titled Internationalization Primer. The article will help you prepare for the day when your web application needs to be offered in a foreign language.

On another note, happy Canada Day to all you fellow Canucks!

There is a nice tutorial at the Erratic Wisdom blog that will show you how to take your PSD website mockup and coding it into a standards based layout.