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Review: Create Stunning HTML Email that Just Works

vdebolt — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:06:06 +0000

product

A review by Web Teacher of Create Stunning HTML Email That Just Works (rating: 5 stars) Create Stunning HTML Email That Just Works by Mathew Patterson is from Sitepoint (2010).

I have opted in to quite a few corporate emails. They all come to my inbox in HTML. Some are more effective than others. Some get me to click through. Some I delete without even opening. This slim book talks about how to create an effective HTML email that will get clicks and will be effective.

The chapters include

Why Email?
Planning an Email Campaign
Design for the Inbox
Coding Your Emails
Understanding Permission
Selling Email to Your Clients

The author, Mathew Patterson, works for Campaign Monitor, and he does draw from that background. He isn’t knocking you over the head with Campaign Monitor, however, and gives credit to other email campaign services like MailChimp. What he does represent is the idea of legitimate business email as opposed to spam. He talks about how to get permission from people to opt-in, how to let people unsubscribe with ease, and the legal requirements of email campaigns. He spends quite a few pages detailing the capabilities of various email applications and explains carefully what will and won’t work in most email clients.

I was most interested in what he had to say in the chapter on coding email. No surprise, that. If you learned to make a web page 10 or 12 years ago, you are in great shape to market yourself as an email designer. If you are learning HTML now, you aren’t learning the old school coding techniques needed for email. Some of the tools of the email coder:

600 pixel layout tables of one or two columns
presentational attributes in the code for things like cellspacing, cellpadding, bgcolor, and borders
inline styles for things like fonts and line-height
reduce reliance on images
always use alt text
caption images
store images permanently on your web server
use target="_blank" for links

In spite of the fact that some pundits have declaired email to be dead, it’s actually the most used protocol on the Internet. People who don’t do much of anything else on the Internet do use email. Companies and nonprofits rely on email for newsletters, announcements, calls to action, sales, and press releases. I think HTML email skills will be needed for a long time to come, and I think there is a niche market out there for people who can create well designed and effective email for a living.

This book opened up an educational can of worms for me. Do you think that an educational system should include the old school HTML techniques needed for effective email campaigns as a part of the curriculum? Should they be offered as a separate class or maybe a brief workshop, not a whole semester? Should the InterACT Curriculum include a module for HTML email?

Summary: A guide to the ethics and coding of HTML email.

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InterACT Summit video now available

vdebolt — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:19:53 +0000

The InterACT summit can now be viewed online by all, thanks to the fantastic efforts of Environments for Humans (e4h). The event was a book launch celebration for InterACT with Web Standards and featured top notch presentations about

Learning More Effectively on the Web – Denise Jacobs
Content Strategy – Glenda Sims
HTML5 – Chris Mills
CSS3 – Aarron Walter
Accessibility – Derek Featherstone
InterACT in the Classroom – Leslie Jensen-Inman

Every presentation was excellent. A few high points. Glenda Sims presentation on Content Strategy featured innovative slides that set a new standard in what is possible with Powerpoint. Derek Featherstone’s talk garnered the most interest and questions from educators who want specifics about teaching accessibility. Leslie Jensen-Inman knocked it out of the park by explaining how busy and overworked teachers can save themselves time and work with the InterACT book and curriculum.

If you couldn’t attend or get a seat during the original broadcast, take advantage of this terrific opportunity from e4h.

It requires the download and installation of Adobe Connect to view, so allow some time to futz around getting that done if you don’t already have it installed. I couldn’t get the download button to work from the link e4h sends you to, but I found it another way by searching adobe.com.

Useful Links: SVG, BAM, InterACT

vdebolt — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:39:41 +0000

Doug Shepers from the W3C put together a slideshow in SVG, HTML, CSS and JavaScript that is worth your time. It’s an SVG demo. Play with it. View it in the latest Firefox.

BAM or Blog Accessibility Mastermind is a six lesson course offered by Glenda Watson Hyatt of Do It Myself Blog. I haven’t looked inside the course, but I suspect it’s a good one.

Based on the interest and number of questions Derek Featherstone got during his accessibility presentation at the recent InterACT Summit, I’d say interest from educators about accessibility is very high right now. There’s a free online course from the Web Standards Project (WaSP) InterACT curriculum about accessibility. The course is a perfect resource for teachers. It’s a stand alone course. If you are teaching with InterACT with Web Standards and its chapters on accessibility, the online material a great time saver. Online materials such as exam questions, grading matrices, assignments, objectives, and resources go hand in hand with the material in the book.

The InterACT Summit

vdebolt — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:53:40 +0000

The InterACT Summit: Virtual Book Launch and Conference, June 11, 2010.

Along with members of the Web Standards Project, we are proud to announce the launch of InterACT With Web Standards, a book that brings all aspects of web design together for teachers and students. To celebrate the release of the book, several of the expert contributors come together online to give mini-tutorials in their fields of expertise.

It’s a free event and we expect tickets to go fast. So, reserve your space now!

Learning More Effectively on the Web – Denise Jacobs
Content Strategy – Glenda Sims
HTML5 – Chris Mills
CSS3 – Aarron Walter
Accessibility – Derek Featherstone
InterACT in the Classroom – Leslie Jensen-Inman

Details and registration information here. Space is limited.

Now Available! InterACT with Web Standards: A Holistic Approach to Web Design

vdebolt — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:05:56 +0000

InterACT with Web Standards: a Holistic Approach to Web Design is available today.

This announcement is a BIG DEAL.

This book puts everything you need to teach a class in web design or development with web standards into your hands. The book is easy to use in connection with InterACT’s 17 courses in 6 learning tracks making it the perfect tool and resource for teaching or learning contemporary web design best practices.

If you are a student who wants to learn about building a web site with web standards, this book will lead you there.

For educators, your semester will be a snap to plan with this book. It’s all right there for you.

The book is published by New Riders (2010). There are 10 authors. The major contributor being Chris Mills, with additional expertise from Erin Anderson, Virginia DeBolt, Derek Featherstone, Lars Gunther, Denise Jacobs, Leslie-Jensen-Inman, Christopher Schmitt, Glenda Sims and Aarron Walter. I’m really proud to have been a small part of making the book a reality, because I think the book is going to be very important to students and teachers who are looking for the a reliable resource for web design best practices.

In addition to the writers, a number of other people worked to bring this book to life. They include Aarron Walter as project manager, Patrick Lauke as technical editor, Jeff Riley as development editor, Leslie Jensen-Inman as creative director and Jessi Taylor as book and site designer.

Many kudos go to Leslie Jensen-Inman and Jessi Taylor. When you see this book and hold it in your hands you will realize what a work of art it is from a design and typography point of view. It’s a beautiful book.

Take a look at the table of contents:

InterACT
Tools
Learning on the Web
Internet Fundamentals
Writing for the Web
Information Architecture Intro
Site Planning
Content Analysis
Content Strategy
HTML Intro
CSS Intro
Headings and Paragraphs
Whitespace
Links
Images
Lists
Tables
Forms
Floats
Positioning
Accessibility Intro
Accessibility Helps
Accessibility Testing
Bringing it All Together
Index

The InterACT with Web Standards book site has everything you need to know. There, you’ll find links to purchase the book, links to code examples from the book, links to bonus content, and links to the sample project. The site has links to information about InterACT, OWEA, and the Web Standards Project. You can take a peek inside the book, read some reviews, grab links to all the resources cited in the book, and MUCH MORE.

Buy now and take advantage of this limited time offer tweeted by @waspinteract.

InterACT With Web Standards, the first book from The Web Standards Project, is out. Save 35% on it with code INTERACT. http://cot.ag/9RS4rEMon May 17 16:00:20 via CoTweetWaSP InterAct
waspinteract

Yes, you can! Teach web standards with InterACT

vdebolt — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:57:14 +0000

What do educators find in the InterACT courses? Competencies. Assignments. Resources.

You’ll find assignments with rubrics related to each competency. Some courses also include learning modules that can be used either online or in the classroom.

Most courses include book, article, and/or web site recommendations that you may find useful either as required or supplemental resources.

Here are the currently available courses. More are in progress.

If you want to contribute assignments or courses, here’s how to contribute.

The first book from the InterACT team, InterACT with Web Standards, will be on bookstore shelves May 15.

Useful links: liquid layouts, new InterACT courses, InterACT contributors,

vdebolt — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:16:42 +0000

Have you discovered zomigi’s blog? There are wonderful things there, like this collection of 70+ essential resources for liquid and elastic layouts.

Six new courses added to the WaSP InterACT curriculum. They are:

Writing for the Web, author: Erin Kissane
Usability 1, authors: Dara Solomon and Dana Wortman
Prototyping, authors: Todd Zaki Warfel and Aarron Walter
Project Management, authors: Stephanie Troeth and Denise Jacobs
Server-side Scripting, author: Lars Gunther
Interaction Design 1, authors: Carolyn Chandler and Jason Ulaszek

As is true of all InterACT courses, these six new courses contain competencies (the stuff students need to master in order to pass the class), assignments with grading rubrics, exam questions, recommended texts and readings, and technologies required to teach the course.

Aarron Walter (@aarron) made a Twitter list of all the contributors to the InterACT project. Follow @aarron/InterACT.

Useful Links: Captions, your college on Facebook, Web Education Rocks at SXSW

vdebolt — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:09:37 +0000

The Future will be Captioned at the YouTube blog explains their new auto-captioning function, which works only for English videos at this point.

I saw a presentation from the social media team at Central New Mexico Community College last week. They talked about how they interact with the college’s 25,000 students on Facebook. The rule they gave for social media interaction was 80% fun and 20% serious. They are getting good results with what they are doing. If your college is not having much luck getting into social media, take a look at the way CNM is doing things. It’s an instructive model.

Will you be at SXSW Interactive? I hope you’ll attend the Web Education Rocks: 2010 WaSP InterAct Annual Meeting. In the past, this session was billed as the WaSP annual meeting, but this year most of the things going on within WaSP relate to InterAct–both the web standards curriculum and the web standards book. You’ll find out what the new courses are that have been added to the curriculum, and more about the book that will come out soon. Hope to see you there.

InterAct scores a big w00t with new book and site

vdebolt — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:12:08 +0000

InterACT with Web Standards: A Holistic Approach to Web Design has reached the stage in the publishing cycle where you can preorder the book.

You can order on Amazon.com or from Amazon.co.uk. At some point in the near future, it will also be available from Peachpit and other booksellers like Barnes and Nobel.

A new site at interactwithwebstandards.com went up yesterday in support of the book. Currently there, you’ll find the table of contents, and a list of all the people involved in writing and designing this book. The list contains some familiar names and excellent people at work on this book.

It’s the first “companion” book written in support of the InterAct Curriculum.

Speaking of the InterAct Curriculum, even more course materials and more courses are going to be announced at SXSW in March, so be watching to see what the new courses are.

Here’s a blurb from the site, explaining what the book is all about.

Crafted by the education luminaries that brought you the revolutionary InterACT curriculum, the Opera Web Standards Curriculum, and the experts that power The Web Standards Project, this book is the definitive guide to the best practices every web professional needs to master to succeed in their career.

If you’re teaching a basic web design course, you should check out the resources available in this book as well as in the curriculum, which has materials for many more courses as well.

Web Education Rocks

vdebolt — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:50:07 +0000

Something significant for web education is happening in Chattanooga from August 5-8. The event is dubbed the Web Education Rocks Summit. The event is a meeting of the newly formed Open Web Education Alliance. Members are meeting to create a structure for OWEA that will aid companies, schools, and organizations involved in shaping the education of Web professionals.

On Thursday, August 6, there will be an open meeting for any interested web professional. This meeting is called The Tour, and is the first of many Tour dates for OWEA. At this meeting, the speakers will be:

John Allsopp, Web Directions

Scott Fegette, Adobe

Nick Fogler, Yahoo!

Leslie Jensen-Inman, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Chris Mills, Opera

Doug Schepers, W3C

Aarron Walter, MailChimp

You can request a tour stop in your town. You may not get all of the speakers listed above at every Tour stop, but you will get some of the OWEA members. OWEA is an organization spun off from the drive to create the InterAct Curriculum.

The Web Education Rocks Summit was put together by Leslie Jensen-Inman from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, who obtained all sorts of sponsorships and funds to support the efforts of OWEA. Leslie rocks!