Here’s a select list of my favorite technical writing resources. I use these all the time: Web Programming and Design

• HTML Entities, and URL encoder/decoder; HTML Entity Conversion Tool (i.e., for displaying XML code).
• Web browser user statistics; See Wikipedia’s background page describing data from more than one service.
• Free Online Font-Converter. For converting formats. See also font-forge.
• Google font directory. Tutorial on how to use them. Recommendations about suitable pairs of Google Fonts to use.
• Typekit font directory. Requires a subscription fee.
• HTML Color codes. List of Color Scheme Tools. Kuler color scheme picks, Combo Library (with URL Color grabber),  Color Pilgrim (Pallette directory, login required), ColourLovers; Intro to Color Schemes, HTML Color Chooser Tool and definition of color schemes.
• Web Accessibility Guidelines.
• Web Design for Colorblind people . Graphics: How colorblind people perceive different colors and good color palettes for all types. Test web pages for colorblindness.
  • What colors should I avoid for accessibility? There are several color combinations that you should avoid when designing a website with color-blind users in mind, including green & black, blue & gray, green & blue, green & brown, green & gray, blue & purple, light green & yellow, and green & red.
  • Is red a bad color for accessibility? With red-green color blindness being the most common, red is a color that should be avoided where possible, especially in conjunction with green. For people with this type of color blindness, red can look green or black. When used with white, red and white will appear black and white. 
• Browser Statistics and Browser Display Dimensions
• CSS Examples and online testing tool and CSS-Discuss wiki. Also, a listing of browser support for new web standards and a listing of CSS support for mobile devices.
• Elements of Typographical Style applied to the web by Richard Rudder. Here’s his archive of typography posts.
• Embeddable Web Fonts Wiki and how to embed fonts. See also Fontsquirrel’s embeddable fonts which are free for commercial use and Kernest fonts (which seem to be web-embeddable; doublecheck). See also this thread and this guide to different kinds of embedding. This is mainly for web-embedding. See more about using fonts with ebooks below. League of Movable Type, a “hall of fame” for open source fonts.
• Interesting research about serif vs. san-serif fonts.
• Section 508 Compliance and W3 Web Accessibility Guidelines

Tools

• Zamzar free file conversion wizard.
• Utilities: winmerge, Tortoise SVN, filezilla, putty
• Snagit (online demos & online help), a $49 screen capture utility with extra features.
• Open Source Publishing: scribus, gimp, inkscape
• Freeware utility index
• Screencasting programs: Camstudio (Windows only), Wink
• Notetab Light, main text editor I use (Windows only).
• Sigil ebook creator. Here’s the Sigil manual and a how-to on converting from MS Office/PDF/OpenOffice.
• Oxygen XML Editor. Full-featured commercial xml/xslt editor (with forums). See also XML Mind (also commercial) which is targeted towards documentation.

References

• Microsoft Writing Style Guide (Online)
• Technical Forums: Writers, Ebooks, Stack Overflow,Pro Webmasters,Superuser, Server Fault,
• Subversion Book
• Typographic Design Patterns and Best Practices and 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines. By Smashing Magazine.
• Simplifying Complexity is a 15 part series by Tom Johnson about the challenges of information architecture and usability. Highly recommended.
• CSS Wiki and CSS Mailing list
• Managing Technical Writing online book
• Indoition has a good index of technical writing resources, including a review of Help Authoring Systems, Screencasting Tools and a Documentation Quality Checklist.
• Reference Cards: restructured text
• S5 Web presentation reference guide. Fascinating single-source solution for presentations.
• Klariti information re technical writing. They sell excellent-looking MS Word templates of assorted project/planning documents which technical writers usually have to submit to project managers.
• Agile Documentation, Scott Ambler’s summary of how documentation interacts with project management.

Freelance Writing Resources

• Who Pays Writers. Online crowd-sourced reports by individual about compensation. Listed by periodical.
• Editing Rates from the Editorial Freelancers of America.  See also: About.com’s Freelance rate by project.
• Docracy Legal Document Templates and sample contracts for illustrators.

XML Flavors: Docbook and DITA

• Docbook Definitive Book, and Docbook XSL book
• Docbook-apps mailing list,
• Docbook HTML parameters reference (also the fo parameter reference).
• DITA: 1.1 Specification, DITA XML Wiki, Ditaworld, DITA Users Mailing List, Dita for Publishers epub plugin,
• Docbook Publishers Schema: Specification, Mailing List, Info

XSLT Tutorials & References

• (all my links expired. Removed and will update).

Education & Technical Writing Weblogs/Portals

• I‘d Rather Be Writing is Tom Johnson’s cutting edge blog about documentation, blogging, wordpress and tech writing topics.
• UX MAtters is a academically-oriented usability blog
• elearningpost , an outstanding site with links to usability, information architecture and instructional design.
• Content Wrangler, a good news site on new technologies in documentation.
• Elearningcurve, a blog about instructional technology and technical writing
• I Came, I saw, I learned is Iconlogic’s blog with tutorials, reviews about technical writing products (Adobe, Camtasia, etc).
• Just Write Click is a blog by Austin technical writer Anne Gentle.
• I occasionally write posts about technical writing on my idiotprogrammer weblog.
• Oreilly XML Weblog, a series of articles written by O’Reilly authors.
• Jim Thoughtspot, XML Technology blog, with emphasis on DITA and technical writing.
• Boxes and Arrows, a leading site for information architecture and user interfaces. They have sections for Findability, Usability, and Learning from Others, plus a lot more. No RSS feeds for each section, but lots of articles added weekly.
• TECHWR-L Forums, google group mirror of world’s largest mailing list for technical writers.
• Microsoft.public.word.docmanagement, a high traffic newsgroup for MS Word users.
• Daily Blog Tips

Houston/Texas Resources

• STC-Houston Forum
• Techblog, Dwight Silverman’s excellent technology blog for the Houston Chronicle. (I briefly wrote some guest articles for this blog).
• Idiotprogrammer Weblog. My personal weblog which covers a wide range of topics (not just technology). The weblog has a section specifically devoted to technical writing.
• Technical Writer Market & Salary Information: : 2023 Texas TW Salary, 2023 Texas TW Hourly Rate, , Texas 2020 TW Salary Information , Comparison of Salaries by Industry and National Data
• Write the Docs 2020 Salary Survey.
• Technical Writer Market & Salary InformationTexas 2017 TW Salary Information,  Texas 2014 TW Salary Information and  National TW Salary Data.  2017 Houston Rates for TW, Editors, Authors. 2016 Legal Range.

Epub & Ebooks Resources

• Oxygen XML: Oxygen-user mailing list; Latest user manual; video demos
• Epub Specifications: OPS, OPF
• Free & Budget Epub creation tools: Jutoh, Calibre (User Guide), Atlantis, (blog),
• Kindle formatting guide, Kindle Previewer tool and KDP community
• Pressbooks, a wordpress cms for outputting epub files.
• Epub Resources (collected by Keith Fahlgren); Epubcheck tool (and online version)
• Blogs: Epub books blog, Pigs, Gourds & Wikis ; Epubsecrets
• Formatting poetry for kindle and for epub
• MobileRead epub forum and Calibre ebook conversion software;
• Mobileread eproduction wiki for ebooks.

Podcasts

• SXSW Podcast, lots of podcasts from SXSW conference, with many topics of interest to technical writers.

Book Production

• Amazon Kindle Publishing guidelines (PDF). This link always goes to the latest document.
• a free download to people making print books on Createspace (with generally useful information). Also, Smashword Style Guide.
• Fonts for use with ebooks: Free Unicode Font Faces. For commercial use in epub files, they need to be OFL ,(more here), GPL with Font Exception or Public Domain. Open Font Library contains OFL fonts; not a lot though. Smashing Mag also has a regular column of free high quality fonts: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. These fonts, though nice-looking, may have restrictions; read the fine print.
• Nexus Font Manager, a free tool for viewing and comparing fonts. (here’s a long review of several others). Fount Identifier, a browser bookmarklet which lets you identify all kinds of embedded fonts.
• Fonts currently on Ipad/iOS.
• epubcheck error reference.

Practical Info about Book Publishing

• Online discussion sites: Ebook SE and self-publish reddit
• Publishing Gurus: David Gaughran, Derek Murphy, Joanna Penn, Nate Hoffelder, (Author Resources)
• Lowdown on Best Book promotion sites: PaidAuthor,
• Industry Book Review Services: Booklife (Publishers Weekly),
• Indie Ebook Distributors: Leanpub, Draft2Digital,
• Children’s Book Publishing: Brooke Talks Books, Planning Book Ilustrations,
• I have written several pieces about ebook publishing: Tips & Advice for New & Indie Authors. Chatting about Ebook Covers, Smashwords vs. Amazon: a comparison.
• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry. View other codes of best practices. See also: interview with Paul Rapp and StackExchange about Song Lyrics in Books. US Copyright Fair Use Index. Stanford summary of fair use cases,
• Publishing/Legal/Contracts: Sidebar Saturdays (publishing & the law), Stanford Copyright Renewals Database, Using Real People, Corporations in Fiction, Tips for Authors about Contracts, Reducing the Sting of Warranty/Indemnity Clauses in Pub Contracts, How to Avoid Unfair Delivery and Acceptance Clauses in a Publishing Contract, Negotiating Editorial Contract in Contracts, Definition of Publication Rights for Writers/Authors,
• Copyright Owners Watch Database, Author Guild Sample Contracts,
• Creative Law Center Blog. Helpful undated posts about topics.
• My article about submitting images to wikimedia commons (i.e., author photos).
• Saved Subreddit threads: