Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Myles Harper" <mylesharper007
@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writing in news:1121881352.696234.76920
@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I am a 13 year old web designer (14 in September) and I saw a previous
> topic about teen web designers. I noticed that most of the adults were
> very critical and probably offensive to the younger web designers. I
> will probably make several enemies without meaning to by saying that I
> agree with the more experienced web designers. I think it is naïve to
> say that you know all there is to know about web design as a teenager
> and that no advice is of any use. I do not agree with the way that the
> older web designers voiced their opinions and it would have been more
> productive if they had offered advice. Does anyone agree with me on
> this?
>
>
Happy Birthday early. One of the things you will notice in Usenet is you
have to have a thick skin, as some of the regulars can seem offensive,
however, usually, their advice is right on target.
Something else you should know is that Usenet is for discussion, so you
may
or may not get advice. If you do, good for you, if you don't, don't
complain about it. After all, Usenet is not a 24/7 help desk.
Here's some ways to keep up the good work:
1. Separate content from presentation. Use CSS for presentation, and do
not use presentational markup.
2. Use a Strict DocType. It may seem harder at first, but in fact, it's a
lot easier because it does not allow presenational markup.
3 Use semantic markup, that is, if something is a heading, use a heading
element. If something is a list, like a navigation list, then use list
markup.
4. Don't abuse tables for positioning. Tables are for tabular data.
5. Use external stylesheets and external javascript.
6. Use javascript to enhance the page, do not rely on it for anything
essential like navigation or validation of form input. You can do client
side validation to reduce trips to the server, but _always_ do final
validation server side.
7. Validate your markup and your CSS. Even though validation is not the
end
all to beat all, it will help you if something is not quite working right
and you can't figure out why.
8. Send your pages through an accessibility checker. Mind you, you need
to
take a lot of what it spits out as errors with a grain of salt, but for
the
most part, it will give you good information.
9. Learn a server side language, PHP, ASP, or others. Then you can say
you're a developer. You might get a little more respect.
10. Learn about relational databases, learn SQL (Structured Query
Language)
11. Lurk in some of the HTML groups, alt.html,
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html,
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, alt.html.critique, to name a
few.
12. Get a news reader and stop relying on Google Groups. There are some
who
block google groups, simply because it does not do a good job.
Personally,
I like Xnews, but there are many others. Just don't use Outlook Express.
--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share
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