UK: HTML/CSS Training

I have a junior colleague who is increasingly required to maintain various
intranet (& internet) pages. He really needs some basic training to get him
started - so far he's just been copying my work and [optimistically] piecing
things together.

His bosses have suggested external training (since I dont have the time) but
I'm loath to let him sign up for some kind of bodge-fest using Frontpage or
Dreamweaver.

Do any of my UK peers have any recommendations for such training? [He's
Yorks-based, so the nearer the better, I would say].

I've tried to point him in the direction of some good online tutorials but
he really needs a good kick-start with some proper training.


Thanks in advance...

CJM

CJM wrote:

His bosses have suggested external training (since I dont have the time) but
I'm loath to let him sign up for some kind of bodge-fest using Frontpage or
Dreamweaver.

The best I've seen is CIW, and this was still so poor that I'm loathe
to recommend it. The others were worse though (OU and local college
being particularly bad)

Training is expensive and still costs time. I'd be inclined to blow
£100+ on the good books and ALLOCATE some time to him to disappear off
into a separate undisturbed office for a week and re-emerge with a real
mini-project developed properly (squeeze the size to get the
techniques and quality up). You'd also need to allocate an hour - hour
and a half of your own time each day for mentoring. This needs to take
place in the spare office too, with no disturbance from your mainstream
workload.

Or tell him to goof off and read Usenet. c.i.w.a.h is still the
highest level public discussion of HTML authoring that I know of.


Who wants a new booklist thread ?

<dingbat (AT) codesmiths (DOT) com> wrote

The best I've seen is CIW, and this was still so poor that I'm loathe
to recommend it. The others were worse though (OU and local college
being particularly bad)

...which is what I feared...

Training is expensive and still costs time. I'd be inclined to blow
£100+ on the good books and ALLOCATE some time to him to disappear off
into a separate undisturbed office for a week and re-emerge with a real
mini-project developed properly (squeeze the size to get the
techniques and quality up).

Unfortunately, this guy is more of a do-er than a thinker, hence I want him
to be dragged up to a minimum level before letting him loose. He's keen
enough, just not a natural academic, so until he has some momentum, this
route might be a false economy.

You'd also need to allocate an hour - hour
and a half of your own time each day for mentoring. This needs to take
place in the spare office too, with no disturbance from your mainstream
workload.

I actually work for his parent company and we're 2hrs away - so this isn't
possible. Which is a shame, because he does respond well to mentoring.

Or tell him to goof off and read Usenet. c.i.w.a.h is still the
highest level public discussion of HTML authoring that I know of.

Quite!

In article <48crlkFj22fdU1 (AT) individual (DOT) net>, CJM
<cjmnews04 (AT) REMOVEMEyahoo (DOT) co.uk> writes

Unfortunately, this guy is more of a do-er than a thinker, hence I want
him to be dragged up to a minimum level before letting him loose. He's
keen enough, just not a natural academic, so until he has some
momentum, this route might be a false economy.

In that case, you might want to buy him Eric Meyer's two "on CSS" books.
They are designed for do-ers, not thinkers. Each chapter is a mini
project that walks you through the steps required from a basic page to a
finished project. Reading the book in bed is largely a waste of time, it
was designed to be read in front of your computer whilst you play along
and tinker. Sounds like what your chap needs.

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

take a look at http://www.hwg.org/ they have been around since the web
began

<dwight.stegall (AT) gmail (DOT) com> kirjoitti
viestissä:1143079937.344924.209610 (AT) u72g2000cwu (DOT) googlegroups.com...

take a look at http://www.hwg.org/ they have been around since the web
began

Their pages might validate, but stuff like in their HTML

<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" width="100%"
summary="Table for layout">

would put ME off from any HTML/CSS training they offer...

"Alan Silver" <alan-silver (AT) nospam (DOT) thanx.invalid> wrote

In article <48crlkFj22fdU1 (AT) individual (DOT) net>, CJM
cjmnews04 (AT) REMOVEMEyahoo (DOT) co.uk> writes
Unfortunately, this guy is more of a do-er than a thinker, hence I want
him to be dragged up to a minimum level before letting him loose. He's
keen enough, just not a natural academic, so until he has some momentum,
this route might be a false economy.

In that case, you might want to buy him Eric Meyer's two "on CSS" books.
They are designed for do-ers, not thinkers. Each chapter is a mini project
that walks you through the steps required from a basic page to a finished
project. Reading the book in bed is largely a waste of time, it was
designed to be read in front of your computer whilst you play along and
tinker. Sounds like what your chap needs.

I've actually got 'Eric Meyer on CSS' myself... I might throw it his way
anyway....

In article <dvt4p6$fvb$1 (AT) phys-news4 (DOT) kolumbus.fi>,
Wÿrm <nomailstodragon (AT) north (DOT) invalid> wrote:

Their pages might validate, but stuff like in their HTML

table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" width="100%"
summary="Table for layout"

would put ME off from any HTML/CSS training they offer...

This as a religious argument that appears here on a weekly basis.

To me, there's little difference between <td> and <div>. Both tags
separate content into blocks. So what? At least the table layout
is compatible with MORE browsers than the CSS layout.

Typically I have a <div> header to my pages, a single two-column
table (for menu and content) and CSS for everything else. To me,
that's a good compromise that preserves the basic layout in all
browsers but still offers the efficiency and flexibility of CSS.

This layout philosophy harms no one, and it's easy for me and others
to maintain and understand.

-A

And lo, axlq didst speak in "bunchagroups":

Wÿrm wrote:

Their pages might validate, but stuff like in their HTML

table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" width="100%"
summary="Table for layout"

would put ME off from any HTML/CSS training they offer...

This as a religious argument that appears here on a weekly basis.

Sure.

Typically I have a <div> header to my pages, a single two-column
table (for menu and content) and CSS for everything else. To me,
that's a good compromise that preserves the basic layout in all
browsers but still offers the efficiency and flexibility of CSS.

This layout philosophy harms no one, and it's easy for me and others
to maintain and understand.

*One* table for layout is a semantic issue only. Use it at your own
discretion; I won't complain. Until a majority of user agents support
display:table-cell; properly, it can sometimes be the only cross-browser
solution.

It's *nested* tables which are the problem. Try it yourself. Nested
tables plus a few careless CSS rules can equal chaos in one user agent
while rendering perfectly fine in another. Such undefined behaviour
should be avoided by *everyone*, not just W3C zealots.

The fact that many WYSIWYG generators use nested tables as a matter of
routine just makes the problem all the more serious.

But just *one* table for layout? I like good semantics so it'd be my last
recourse, but if you have to, you have to.

Grey

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/orca#search - Orca Search: Full-featured
spider and site-search engine

GreyWyvern <spam (AT) greywyvern (DOT) com> wrote:

*One* table for layout is a semantic issue only.

Most tables used for layout use the (default) table-layout:auto mode,
this regularly causes content to jump all over the place as the table
resizes while its content downloads.

Tables layouts often don't linearize properly.

Then there is the fact that you cannot redefine or dissolve the fixed
grid that tables form for smaller viewport widths for IE because it
doesn't support the CSS table model.

--
Spartanicus