10 Free Online Tutorials to Boost Your Skills
Not long ago, in a meeting with Microsoft product managers, I saw some research on how most users of productivity applications use only a tiny fraction of the features available to them. In addition to that fact, many people shell out big bucks for expensive courses and books on the applications that they use most. You can beat all these problems, though, if you spend some time looking into the best application tutorials online. Many of them are very visual, and give you the opportunity to experiment with the lessons within the lessons themselves. In this post, I’ll round up some good examples for popular applications, and development topics such as CSS and JavaScript. Perhaps you’ll find time to brush up on your skills over the long weekend.
If you spend a lot of time in Microsoft Word, Baycon Group has a good free tutorial for older versions of Word, and Microsoft itself offers a big series of online tutorials for Word 2007. You’ll find lessons on using XML, and working with templates and document libraries.
For free tutorials on other Microsoft productivity applications, including Excel, Outlook, and Access browse the Office Online site.
If you spend your day using GMail, Google has a categorized set of tutorials online that allows you to brush up on any concepts you need to. The categories include instruction on organizing your inbox, finding messages, and much more.
Are you a Photoshop user? Luxa is an extremely rich—and fun–Photoshop tutorial site, and few programs have feature sets as deep as Photoshop’s, so spend some time there if you want to improve your skills. There are tutorials on everything from making good looking business cards, to how to work with special effects and filters.
Want to brush up on HTML? Take a look at the scads of free online tutorials at W3Schools. You can even work within an HTML editor on the site and use a test button to view how your published results will look.
W3Schools also has arrays of online tutorials on more advanced web development topics, such as CSS and JavaScript.
Do you know of any good online tutorials?
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Any other CSS tutorials you recommend? Thanks for the post!
Thanks for this great usefulls tips. Especially the w3c/css.
Wow, I remember using W3Schools when I was starting out, at least 6 years ago.
One site that HAS to be mentioned, is Lynda.com. Yes, not free – but the content is top notch, and the pricing is fair in my eyes.
Thanks for one of my daily must-reads, Web Worker Daily’s! Keep up the great work.
wow. absolutely right on time: I’m starting my new business, doing the site, and designing my business cards: so the CSS and Photoshop tutorials are exactly what I needed..
Thanks again!
W3schools is really good to quickly get up to speed with most techie topics.
Can you recommend some good tutorials for Adobe flash development?
Here’s some excellent Adobe Creative Suite tutorials. They’ve got me out of a couple of holes in the past.
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/
I found this site is particularly well written and has lots of good tutorials.
http://www.geekgirls.com/index.htm
Thanks for these wonderful links WWD, this is just what I need!
nhick
http://www.itrush.com
I agree. W3Schools has a ton of great tutorials.
I also really like the HP Learning Center classs. http://h30187.www3.hp.com/
Rather than just a tutorial, it’ set up like an online college. There’s a moderator/teacher that conducts each class. It’s also free, so it’s ok if you sign up for a class and can’t find the time to finish. (Which I’ve done more than once.)
These are great – thank you! Always excellent resources here!
I found this tutorial site recently:
http://www.techtutor.tv
It’s mostly Microsoft Office stuff but it’s all video and it’s done really well. They’re adding about 30 to 40 every week and even take requests. Might be some place to keep an eye on.