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Links for Learning Web Standards

By Diana Mounter : July 24, 2008 | In Tools & applications, Web Standards |

“Learning Web Standards just got easier” – You can now learn to build a better web with Opera’s new Web Standards Curriculum.

Providing a clear study path for learning web standards is something the industry has struggled with. The gap just got a bit smaller when Opera launched the site a couple of weeks ago. It already provides a good foundation with plans to expand on the currently 23 articles into other key areas, and being licensed under the Creative Commons license means it can be used in a range of ways.

It will be useful to people who are new to learning web standards, or who are wanting to improve their understanding, and to teachers and team leaders to help train staff.

The launch of this got me thinking about what resources I found most useful when learning web standards. So here’s a list, I’m sure there’s lots more resources (which I’d love to hear about) but you can’t go too wrong with the following as a starting point.

So… where to begin?

Well if it wasn’t already obvious, first of all you better go to class and learn the Opera Web Standards Curriculum.

Then, spend some time using your favourite tool, the internet, and do a bit of browsing…

• To start with you’ll want to know – What is CSS?
• Then you’ll want to learn CSS from the ground up
• You’ll need some reminders so you might want some VisiBone HTML and CSS charts
• And then you’ll want to make your site pretty and start thinking about CSS Beauty
• Once you’ve learnt all the rules you’ll have an urge to start Breaking out the box with CSS (by Jina Bolton)
• When you become a pro you’ll want to know 53 CSS tricks you couldn’t live without
• If you like being teacher’s pet then do some extra curricular activities and go to W3Schools which has lots of free online tutorials in XHTML and CSS
• Or perhaps interact with some people face-to-face and book yourself on a training session like the Maxdesign CSS workshop.

But what will you do with all that time spent travelling to work, or relaxing whilst drinking a coffee? Of course you’ll need some books…

• To show that you really have truly mastered The Art & Science of CSS
• And you know all about The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
• Make sure you keep up to Web Standards Creativity: Innovations in Web Design
• No book collection would be complete without The Ultimate HTML reference (just released)
• And if all the above doesn’t change the way you understand and develop websites then make sure you’ve read the essential guide to Designing with web standards - after reading that you might find yourself looking for a forum where you can discuss ideas with your peers, so why not join Jeffrey Zeldman’s new facebook group.

Then to help you experiment you’ll need a few tools in your shed, so…

• *Get Firebug and dissect how people have built their sites, get inspired by it. Then make your own code and use Firebug to help you check how changes will appear on your site quickly before editing the real code.
• *Install the Web Developer toolbar for Firefox or IE developer toolbar
• I highly recommend FF Web Developer toolbar over the IE equivalent, its far more user friendly, but if you need some persuading then read all the Awesome things that Firefox’s Web Developer Extension Can Do.

*This is assuming you’ve already installed Firefox 3, don’t tell anyone if you missed Download Day 2008, just quickly install it and pretend you were part of breaking the world record.

If you like playing by the rules, do some testing:

• Don’t publish a thing without W3C validating your XHTML and CSS (which you’ll have under tools on your FF Web Developer toolbar)
• Perhaps check your colour contrasts with Juicy Studio Colour Contrast Analyser - Jez Lemon has also written a Firefox extension that goes deeper into testing the colours used on your site, its still in “experimental mode” at the moment though.

Relax

After all that hard work you might feel like your getting bogged down by complying to standards, so take some time out and relax in the CSS Zen garden.