Author: vdebolt

Review: Textbooks from Thomson Learning

Some time back I commented that high school teachers coming through my technology certification classes were using books referred to as Cashman Series and that they thought the books were pretty good. I got some Thomson Learning textbooks in the mail the other day. I received Web Design: Introductory Concepts and Techniques by Shelly, Cashman and Kosteba, Web Design Basics by Stubbs and Barksdale and Principles of Web Design by Sklar.

Web Design: Introductory Concepts and Techniques is very attractive, large-page format, with full color illustrations, screen shots, and charts. The lessons are intended to help students understand basic design roles, design principles, site development steps, basics of typography and graphics, basics of multimedia and the basics of testing and publishing. There are all the pedagogical requirement such as objectives, assessments, and hands-on activities. The hands-on activities are not involved with making Web sites, but focus on using the Internet to elaborate on the topics being studied. Students would leave the class with a grasp of the theoretical underpinnings of Web site design and creation, but not able to produce a Web site. This book is part of Thomson’s Shelly Cashman Series.

Web Design Basics is another full color text with an attractive design aimed at high school students. The first part tackles some of the same basic principles as Web Design: Introductory Concepts and Techniques. About half way though Web Design Basics students start writing simple HTML. The HTML taught is not up to current HTML versions, that is, students are taught deprecated tags and no CSS.

Principles of Web Design is a more complete treatment of Web Design. The book is less workbook and more textbook than the first two. It has screen shots and illustrations, but is not in full color. Students get a good background in HTML from this book, which includes tables, forms and frames. And there is a chapter on CSS! The hands-on projects involve students in real Web page construction and design. This book also has much more complete and detailed reference sections for HTML and CSS. This book is part of Thomson’s Web Warrior Series.

Improve the bottom line through the use of Web standards

Eric Meyer, CSS author and former Netscape evangalist has launched a new consulting company, Complex Spiral Consulting, that is based on the notion that the use of Web standards in making a Web site saves money, bandwidth, maintenance costs and improves speed, accessibility and support for mobile devices. Employers are going to start asking for people who can create work for them that meets
Web standards. Those of us teaching Web topics need to be sure the students we unleash on the job market know Web standards.

What are design students learning about web standards? Part II

Tom Green, co-author of Building Web Sites with Macromedia Studio MX from New Riders Press, had some thoughtful comments on this topic, which I’m quoting with his permission.

“The question I have always grappled with is: Am I training designers or bit heads? Around [my] college this has resulted in an awareness of the two sides of the web fence that I call the ‘geeks and the freaks’.”

Tom said, “Educators that actually hang out in the industry have seen the job become very complex, very fast. As I have been hammering in the book, Building Web Sites with Macromedia Studio MX, the business, almost overnight it seems, moved from the one person shop to multi-discipline teams. This means there is room for designers and there is room for the coders. The astute educator will recognize neither side can even hope to master the other’s knowledge base. In order to accommodate this I, for example, make it very clear to my students we aren’t going to turn them into code jockeys. What we are going to do, though, is make them aware of how the code works in order to help them actually work and communicate, knowledgeably, with a code jockey. . . In fact we are starting to pair up the coders and the geeks at my college.”

What are design students learning about web standards? Part II

This question was raised in a group discussion today by Judi Sohn of Mom at Home Design. She said, “I happened to visit my alma mater’s (a college of art and design) website this morning. They just redesigned the site. The site looks attractive but the code! Standards schmandards. It’s nested table on nested table. I counted 3 table tags before the first line of content.”

“I know there are a lot of good reasons to stick with a table-based layout,” Judi continued, “but if you’re selling a service shouldn’t you
advertise it? Art schools are marketing themselves as the future of professional design, shouldn’t they show that they can do what they should be teaching? Layout aside, the CSS was worse. I took a look and saw things like:
body { background-color: #D5CBC0}
body { }
body { }
body { }
I ran it through the validator and I could have sworn the thing laughed at me.”

Judi’s comments really struck a nerve with me, because I too have felt that we are not necessarily teaching the right things in our colleges.

I think part of the blame is that many of the available text books continue to offer up table-based layouts and font tags as if there were no alternatives. I think part of the blame is that instructors have not learned as much as they need to know about CSS. And, at the school where I teach, I know that standards get overlooked because instruction is concentrated on creating art works in PhotoShop or Fireworks and importing it into Dreamweaver without teaching students to care what the code looks like.

I think we can do both: create attractive site design and use standards. I’d like to hear from teachers who think they have found a way to do both in their curriculum.