Author as Reviewer

Someone got me thinking about the position I’ve put myself in as an author of a web design book who writes reviews of web design books. I’ve never questioned my fairness in attempting this task, because I’ve made my bias clear from the very beginning of this blog.

As a historical recap of my position on web design, I have this bias: in order to teach students to create web sites that use standards and are accessible, we should teach CSS in tandem with HTML. As soon as a student learns an HTML tag, they should learn about the CSS that can be used to style that element. I’ve made this bias very clear in critiquing other folks books by coming down hard on books that taught deprecated methods first and CSS last.

I’ve been writing reviews here since 2001. My own book came out in 2004. Since 2001, I have seen changes toward my point of view among other authors. When I see it, I’m free with my praise. I’m an open admirer of books that directly compete with mine, for example Liz Castro’s HTML for the World Wide Web.

I’m not here to stifle or stamp out the competition. I’m here to help teachers select the right books to teach web development classes so that students complete the class knowing standards, accessibility, good coding habits, and CSS. I wrote my book with the constant thought in mind that this is the best way for a teacher to approach teaching this topic. I hope teachers will select my book as a text for an HTML class. But if they don’t, then I want them to know about other good books, and know which books are not worth considering at all.

Everything seems like a polemic these days. People behave as if Machiavellian self-aggrandisement is the only normal behavior. Consideration, courtesy, cooperation, or generosity toward one’s competition seem to have fallen out of style. But, hey, I’m old. Venerable, in fact. My standards of behavior came from a different time. I intend to continue doing what I’m doing. I trust that my readers understand that this is my blog, my point of view, my opinion and that my readers are intelligent enough to understand and make use of whatever value I add with my reviews.

hCard, hCalendar, why not hReview

I referred to dog or higher earlier when he wrote about webpatterns. He’s made some interesting predictions about the future here. dog or higher: data at the edges: “We all put a lot of effort into making our sites pretty – that is our effort is going to making them nicer for people to consume. It’s time to start making sites nicer for software to consume. That’s what this next 12 months will be about. Well, at least that’s my prediction. Keep your eye on microformats and webpatterns”

Best singers you never heard of

Everybody is doing a list of their favorite things for 2005. Not me, I decided to do a list of my favorite female singers that you never heard of. Great female vocalists on my list are…TA DA…

And just to be on topic, here’s the most interesting web design book of 2005, reviewed in April on these pages.

Visit Web Teacher to read any comments.

Dreamweaver 8 Visual Quickstart Guide

DW8 VQSMacromedia Dreamweaver 8 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide by Tom Negrino and Dori Smith is about to be released. I’m recusing myself from writing a review of this book because I helped a little bit with it. I’m very familiar with the previous editions of the book by J. Tarin Towers, having worked on the students’ editions, and will say that I think the version by Tom Negrino and Dori Smith promises to be a big improvement. If you had rejected this book as a text for a Dreamweaver-based class before, be sure to check out the new edition.

What are we teaching?

At The Web Standards Project, their blog contains a very interesting dicussion about New Professionalism and what colleges are currently teaching web design and development students. A quote: “University Web design courses are an ideal time to start young developers thinking in terms of separation of content from aesthetics and behavior, but unfortunately, this is rarely the case. If the correspondence I receive from students in higher education Web design courses is a true barometer, academia is not keeping up with the Web’s progression. Students often complain of being taught development practices circa 1998, at best. Photoshop slicing and table-based layouts rule the day in most courses and the Web suffers for it.”

I’ve talked about some of the issues discussed in this article on a number of occasions right here on these pages. I urge you to take a look at this piece by Holly Marie Koltz.