Training resources
Eco Consulting likes to spread good practice in web design and code, and delivers training in (X)HTML and CSS, complemented by general web technology overviews and guides. We combine patience for the beginner's learning curve (or anyone upgrading their skills) with specialist expertise.
Web skills
These public articles aim to help anyone wanting to code blog entries more intelligently, as well as experienced web designers making the transition to code. Please respect authorship by providing a reference if you quote or link to any article.
- Introducing semantic (X)HTML markup
- learn how to make well-structured and semantically marked-up body text, and improve the structure of your pages for accessibility, search engines and data harvesting.
- Using SSI in CSS files
- Apache's Server-Side Includes mean you can (e.g.) store all your CSS colours in one file and change every instance throughout all your stylesheets.
A book, a website and some software
Currently, these are the three resources I would recommend for learning to actually build websites with (X)HTML and CSS:
- Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design
- This book stops you worrying about how sites appear in Explorer for Windows and eases you into using well-structured, semantic HTML and the full range of CSS possibilities. It looks forward to the web design future we need to start implementing now.
- Web Design From Scratch
- An excellent UK-based site with just about everything you need to know about building websites. Many sites and tutorials try to cover everything, but this one actually succeeds.
- Coda
- Hand-coding is the best way to learn (fewer frustrations and more control than visual editors), and Coda fits the job. Everything is in one place: advanced text editor, visual style sheet editor, page previews, ftp, command-line shell, plus online reference works. You can store all your sites' settings and code/upload from one application; you don't need much else (see this review). Sadly Mac OS X-only, but for Windows there's the excellent EditPlus.
Other resources
- Free and open source tools
- Some of the best software and online resources remain free (or free at a usable entry level), and there are excellent and compatible alternatives to the big software names. These selected links were used in a workshop Tools for online collaboration and management at the Cii conference, Leicester, 6 Dec 2007.
- Getting started with Django
- Django is a Python web framework (like Ruby on Rails or Perl's Catalyst). If MVC or framework mean nothing to you, read this article on web frameworks.