http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/ - W3 HTML Tutorial
This is a tutorial teaching the elements of html. It introduces them slowly, one by one. Each building on the other. The first and last time I used html was in 1997. I had just stolen bits of code from other source codes on websites. This gives a clear example of what each piece of html is and does.
The article points out that upper vs. lower case letters are unimportant, but the WC3 thinks that lower case letters should be used, just in case they ever change their minds.
A lot of the commands in HTML are pretty straight forward, italics is represented by an "i", subscript is "sub" and so forth. I liked that "try it" editors were available to mess with the code in a hands on fashion.
HTML Cheatsheet - http://www.webmonkey.com/reference/HTML_Cheatsheet/
This document provided a list of easy to use HTML codes.
3.) Learning CSS: http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet, this coding was developed to take care of the problem with using font formats in html. Apparently this was expensive for web designers to use.
Using a style sheet seems to make the coding of colors and backgrounds easier. Instead of having to redo that code in every web page, these are files where they can be inserted, and will show the font how they want it to be displayed. This page is a good example of how this works.
It works like the HTML tutorial by giving specific examples to each element of a web page.
Beyond HTML
This articles looks at an academic library that let their librarians run free with Front Page to create web pages about their part of the library. I initially thought this would lead to creativity in each department. Everyone would have their own unique online voice. However, they were given little to no training. This lead to every page being different, which made it difficult for students to use the webpages to locate information. The new CMS uses CSS coding. This innovation led to a more uniform approach to the librarians web pages. It also made it easier for the students to navigate.
The way they went about implimenting it, I thought was practicle. It is hard to switch everyone over to a new system at once, so doing it piecemeal made sense. Also, they were training people how to use it, which was a step ahead of the old Front Page system.
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3 comments:
Jen,
In the beyond article I thought that in the beginning that people's creativity would be stimulated as well. On paper it seemed like a good idea...goes to show sometimes things on paper don't always translate well to reality.
Oh yes I remember the mid-90's and the prevelence of "stealing a bit of code from other source codes on websites"...I'm quite sure it was a common thing to do! I never considered it stealing though...typical mind of a teenager, right.
I agree, it was a great idea that the library let themselves to be switched over to the new system gradually, even though the librarians didnt really know what they were doing and it did cause problems with students accessing information, it still must of been a valuable learning experience for them.
I also agree that it's helpful to switch over to a new system gradually. There are problems doing things either way, but I think that training people on changes in smaller sections is probably easier overall than trying to learn everything at once.
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