Month: March 2006

Review: Web Site Cookbook

Web Site CookbookWeb Site Cookbook : Solutions & Examples for Building and Administering Your Web Site (O’Reilly, 2006) by Doug Addison is the first of the O’Reilly cookbooks I’ve really looked at closely. It’s a reference book rather than an instruction manual. It’s the kind of book where you look in the index first to find the page you need and read just the bit from the page that answers your question.

The thing that I find valuable about this book from a teaching point of view is that it answers all those questions that students ask (and need to know) that aren’t in the book you’re probably using as your chief text. What kinds of questions am I talking about? Almost everything related to making web sites is in here: finding hosting, buying domains, creating graphics, designing logos, adding information to mailto links, using cookies, creating favicons, using htaccess and mod_rewrite, self-signed SSL certificates, custom error pages, maintaining a MySQL database and more.

Teaching aside, this reference would be useful to anyone who was still not completely sure about everything involved with building and maintaining a web site. It’s a good reference book to have on your shelf.

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Tip: Three steps to a two column CSS layout

I certainly did not originate this method of creating a two column layout, but I will summarize it for you. Step one: create a wrapper or container div and give it a CSS rule: position:relative.

#wrapper {
position: relative;
}

I’m temporarily ignoring the need for headers and footers. You can adjust for them. Step two: position the first div (we’ll call it #nav) using position:absolute. The numbers you use for top and left determine whether this column will be on the right or the left side of your page. Give the div a suitable width for your navigation.

#nav {
width: 20%;
position: absolute;
left: 10px;
top: 40px;
}

Step three: Use a margin to create a second column with another div (we’ll call it #content). If the nav is on the left, use a wide margin-left. If the nav is on the right, use a wide margin-right. Assign a width that allows for the nav.

#content{
width: 70%;
margin-left: 25%;
}

Yep, it’s still unreadable

A Stunning Design & Amazing Accessibility Showcase | Accessites.org: Web Showcase On Feb 27 I said this would change fast to something a person could actually read (as in accessible content). Since it remains unreadable, I’ll withdraw my prediction that it’s going to become accessible content. I no longer encourage anyone to participate in this, to submit a site or to worry about their criteria. I guess they didn’t read their own criteria.

More help for beginners

Ian Lloyd over at Latest Accessibility News on Accessify | One of the (Many) Reasons I Have Been Quiet, part 3 announced that he is writing a book for sitepoint that will be aimed at beginners. This expands the field of writing specifically for beginners by about 33% according to my informal count.

What is that count? There’s my own book, Integrated HTML and CSS: A Smarter, Faster Way to Learn, there’s the Head First book I reviewed here called Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML, and now Ian’s coming soon volume, Build Your First Website The Right Way Using HTML & CSS.

I know a lot of writers are very competitive about the success of their books vs. the success of other books on the same topic, but I am not afflicted with that competitive gene. I tend to look at it as a step in the right direction that more books are being released into the great cosmos that advocate the principles that I believe are the right ones for education and learning in this field. If it happens often enough, changes are bound to occur in the places where curriculum is determined, and that definitely needs to happen.

I probably lied before. I am as competitive as the next person. It would be wonderful to be rich and famous because of something I wrote. But that isn’t what it’s about for me. It isn’t about money or fame. It’s about changing an educational system that doesn’t serve students in the way it should. It’s about improving the quality of what is offered to web design students. Every new book that moves things in the right direction is a welcome addition to my world.