Westciv free courses

Redesign inspiration

Well fancy that, both mezzoblue and stopdesign redesigns launched in the same week. I'm not going to pass judgment on either of them in fact because, well, to be honest, Bono-esque, "we are not worthy". One thing I am in admiration of about Doug's redesign though is the fact that his HTML was so nicely marked up that he seems to have been able to do the redesign pretty much only by changing the CSS: something we've all been extolling as one of the virtues of CSS for some time now, but speaking for myself at least, only now getting to the stage where this can be a reality. Bravo to both though: when you have such a high profile site this is actually a really brave thing to do, as explained by D. Keith Robinson here.

One question though........why did Doug get rid of all uses of FIR and its cousins?

Week 5 of HTML and XHTML for CSS available now

I've just posted Week 5 of HTML and XHTML for CSS at the site. This week we look at naming and organising all the files in your site.

Web Standards recommendations and best practices

Developing with Web Standards from 456 Berea St is the most thorough and well organised resource I have seen on this subject. Covering it all from why you should be using web standards to methods, guidelines and best practices this document is a fine example of one of my favourite mantra: why would you go and spend money on a book when so much good stuff is available online.

Week 4 of HTML and XHTML for CSS now available

Sorry to be a bit late with this, but as you'll see below, things ahve been pretty busy round these parts.

Week 4 of HTML and XHTML for CSS is now at the site: learn all about structural markup, block and inline elements.

Don't forget to reload the page in the browser if you're having trouble viewing the most recent materials.

And now for something really exciting........

Standards based web development conference in Sydney Australia

Web Essentials 04: September 30 October 1

Be inspired by the world's leading web standards gurus. Be motivated by the meeting of minds of hundreds of web developers sharing their ideas, techniques and accessibility goals. Gain practical skills and knowledge in web coding, CSS and accessibility.

Sydney will be the focus of the web development world when it hosts the world's first web standards conference this September. Bringing together some of the biggest international names in web development and accessibility - Joe Clark, Dave Shea, Doug Bowman - as well as all the local talent - Web Essentials 04 aims to break new ground in inspiring web developers, designers and decision-makers to embrace web standards.

And all this for just $AU650 if you register before July 1 >> Register Now

CSS support in Safari

Straight from the heart of the empire: Apple Developer Connection has posted a neat listing of CSS support in Safari, including which version first supported the feature. I can't believe those idle loafers didn't build in support for multiple text shadows!

Week 3 of HTML and XHTML now available

I've just posted week 3 of HTML and XHTML at the westciv free courses site. This week we finally cut to the chase and create our first HTML elements.

If you're new to Redemption through standards and want to know how to get started with newsreaders and RSS feeds, do check out my quick tutorial on the subject: you won't look back. If you sign up for the RSS feed, you won't need that reminder email anymore clogging up your inbox.

Excellent CSS-from-scratch course

A Style Master customer who teaches a CSS course at a local public library sent me a link to his teaching materials, which he makes available for free online, yesterday. While the styling may not be cutting edge, the content of this course really is top notch. Nicely structured and comprehensive: if you haven't got $29.99 to stump up for a westciv course, I recommend this one highly :-)

Web standards, Microsoft

Will there come a day when we can say these two things in the same sentence? Kirk Biglione at Alt Tags says that day certainly isn't here now in his recent Does Microsoft Care About Web Standards, but for myself I would like to think it's at least possible. My optimistic logic being as follows: Microsoft play to win, web standards are becoming more and more apparant as the winning horse, ergo..........?