Happy new year

a little something from Barri Haynes:-
I have a spelling chequer
It came with my pee sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss takes I cannot see
I've run this poem threw it
I'm shore yaw pleased to no
It's letter perfect in its weigh
My chequer told me sew...

Dynamic Drive

Guys,

Check out Dynamic Drive,
it has good stuff on CSS and HTML - including code snippets,

Mark

Mollio - Molly who? A useful site of CSS layout

Here's another useful CSS site for you, this one concerns itself with using the box models for laying out your content without using the dreaded <TABLE>. The kind chap that's provided this for you has also created a useful style-guide in PDF format which tells you the class and id names so that you can more easily incorporate them into your own designs. This is definately one to download, print and keep with your notes for future reference.

There are three licensing models which Ottery releases this work under, the easiest if you don't really understand licenses (which you all should because you studied them last year!) is the creative commons one.

If you do use them, then do at least try and modify them, I don't want to see several assignments all using the same layout and colour schemes!

As always, simply click the title link to visit the site.

Thinking Outside the Grid

Holzschlag has an excellent article on a-list-apart about the whole idea of adopting a grid or tabular approach for the design and content of a website. She draws parallels with real world phenonema of town or city planning (or lack of it) comparing a modern city with a well established one. She goes on to indicate how we can 'break out of the box', or at least fool the user into thinking we have....anyway, read the full article for more information by clicking on the link.

Where is HTML at?

You've probably worked out by now that HTML is a bit of a slippery beast, what with deprecated tags, and browsers that behave in odd ways. Like most software, it's constantly adapting and changing. W3C is trying to keep a lid on it, and encourage the right kind of development. HTML 5 is under development - latest editor's draft just out.

http://www.alistapart.com/ has great articles, I do recommend you check it out, including this one, which discusses some of the features of the new version.

See CSS in action

This site is a fantastic demo of how CSS can so easily transform the look and feel of your website without a time-consuming rebuild. Click on the links to see different versions, then click to see the HTML (text part of the page) separated from the CSS (design and artwork). You can even upload your own CSS file to add to the display!

THERE IS ALSO A BOOK TO GO WITH THE SITE WHICH I'VE HAD A LOOK AT, IT LOOKS VERY GOOD, WITH EXPLANATIONS AND COLOUR PICTURES - ASK BEN HUMPAGE FOR MORE DETAILS - OR PERHAPS YOU CAN COMMENT WITH THE REFERENCE FOR US BEN?

Why blog?

Welcome to the INS2013 NILE site and weblog. This is for us, and you (see Sign Up Now!), to let everybody else know about useful/interesting news/views/tips etc., so we hope you'll check it out for new stuff when you log on.

Sign up now!

We would like you to contribute to this web-log (or blog), if you find an article or website which you have found useful or interesting (to do with this module of course!), we'd like you to share it. First of all you will need to create an account on blogger.com, it is fairly straightforward and intuitive but if you need further help there is a help document in the 'downloads' section on NILE.

Study Skills for the New Term

Would you like to upgrade your study skills ready for the 2nd year? Here's two ideas:
Check out our own Centre for Academic Practice (http://almond.admin.nene.ac.uk:7777/portal/page?_pageid=1133,4109676&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL)

Palgrave Macmillan have created 3 short audio downloads offering free advice on critical thinking skills, managing money, and exam and revision skills. These can be played from their study skills website or downloaded onto an MP3 player. This is the link:
http://www.palgrave.com/skills4study/mp3s.asp

HTML Version 5

I've unashamedly cut and paste this from the Hotscripts newsletter I subscribe to, thought it might be of interest. Adds more weight to the necessity to forget deprecated tags and get with CSS:

The W3C HTML Working Group has released the HTML 5 working draft last week. Many new features have been introduced in this newer version of HTML aimed at helping designers and developers build better web applications. Several new elements have been introduced for layout like <navigation>, <header>, and <footer> and various attributes have been depreciated in favor of CSS. Some old features, like frames, have also been removed.

You can find a list of difference between the current version of HTML and that of HTML 5 in this article. While it will take some time for browsers to fully support these new features, the future of HTML 5 is a very big step forward toward improving interoperability.

Lynch & Horton: Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition

This link provides the full online text version of the Lynch & Horton web style guide book, I've added it to the reading list as an alternative source if you can't get the copy from the library.

Web development and design with the little people

I found this article for you which I think puts most of the steps of the design and development process into an easily understandable concept. The photos are fun too (I've included the first one here), click on the title link to see the article in full in all its glory.