If you're like many clients or students, you're probably wondering
whether WBT developers really need to learn HTML. After all, don't most
authoring programs tout their ability to turn mere mortals into Web-
savvy cybergeeks without knowing a stitch of HTML?
HTML is easy to learn, and knowing how it works makes you a better WBT
developer. Having a problem with how your text shows up inside a table?
If you know HTML, you can simply add an attribute like "align=middle"
to your table tags. If you don't know HTML, you could spend hours
poring over the documentation, menus, and submenus. Your choice.
To get you started, let's check out some free online tutorials. You
supply the time and interest, and they'll supply some lessons.
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Writing HTML: A Tutorial for Creating Web Pages
Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction,
Maricopa Community Colleges
Author: Alan Levine
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/
This tutorial was created to make it easy for teachers to develop their
own Web sites. There are 29 bite-size lessons (30, if you count Lesson
0, which walks the user through some important HTML background
information) leading up to the creation of a reasonably sophisticated
Web page.
Lessons one to 14 cover the basic elements, like headings, lists, and
linking. Lessons 15 to 29 cover more complex topics like tables,
frames, forms, and a little bit about JavaScript. You can download the
tutorial and do most of it offline.
The lessons are complete and well sequenced. They're chunked into
manageable bits and provide plenty of practice opportunities.
Each lesson starts with objectives. The lesson explains what you will
learn, walks you through the steps, and then has you do the steps
yourself. You then compare your result with an example of what it
should look like. Need help figuring out why your result looks
different from theirs? Compare the page source code to see what's
different.
A FAQ page helps users overcome the most common stumbling blocks. A
summary of HTML tags provides a quick reference if you forget something
you learned earlier.
Original article written by Patti Shank.
Reprinted by TechRepublic IT Trainer Digest TechMail
with permission from the March 2000 issue of Inside
Technology Training magazine. Copyright 2000 Bill Communications, Inc.,
Minneapolis, MN. All rights reserved. Not for resale.
Visit the IT Training magazine site:
http://www.ittrain.com/
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HTML GOODIES
Author: Joe Burns
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/
HTML Goodies author Joe Burns is an assistant professor of
communications at Southeastern Louisiana University. He wrote these
tutorials to use in his classes, and the rest is history. HTML Goodies
has become a popular site. In addition to having some good information,
it's nicely laid out and very easy to use.
The Primer section is a good place to start. Select The Basics for
seven introductory HTML lessons. They're designed to be done in short
chunks, one per day. Primer 1 explains what you will need to get
started: a computer, a browser, and a text editor or word processor.
Primer 2 talks about how HTML is laid out. Primers 3 through 7 cover
manipulating text, linking pages, and manipulating images.
When you're done with these, you can move into the Getting Started
tutorials. Each section covers a specific aspect of Web page
development. Burns shows you how something works and then explains how
to do it. Included are newspaper columns, RealAudio, and DHTML.
The pages are laid out similarly and are easy to follow. Some of the
examples are a bit confusing, though. He instructs you to practice what
he's showing, but there are no specific practice tasks, so it's more
informational than instructional. Also, he occasionally uses non-
standard terms. For instance, he calls HTML tags (like <b> for bold)
"flags" instead of "tags."
Original article written by Patti Shank.
Reprinted by TechRepublic IT Trainer Digest TechMail
with permission from the March 2000 issue of Inside
Technology Training magazine. Copyright 2000 Bill Communications, Inc.,
Minneapolis, MN. All rights reserved. Not for resale.
Visit the IT Training magazine site:
http://www.ittrain.com/
-
WEBMONKEY: THE WEB DEVELOPER'S RESOURCE
Wired Digital Inc.
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/
Webmonkey is the Web developer's how-to site from Wired Digital,
producers of the technology/culture magazine WIRED.
One of the great things about this site is the way it's written.
Articles and tutorials contain loads of wacky humor. It feels like a
twentysomething person is sitting next to you explaining cyberstuff.
The site is filled with tutorials on Web-related topics like Flash,
Dreamweaver, style sheets, JavaScript, and so on. Just getting started
and want to know the basics? Click the Authoring folder in the How-To
Library section and find HTML Basics.
A natural starting place is the intro to HTML. This explains what HTML
is and how it works. After reading the background information, you're
ready for the HTML teaching tool. This page provides links to simple
tutorials that teach the most common HTML tags. Each tutorial starts
with the most common uses for that tag, then shows examples. Click Try
It and you'll be able to test your understanding of what was just
explained. Put in the HTML, click Go, and see if you can produce the
desired result. Didn't work? Click View Source to see what you did
wrong.
This is a good site if you're not a total newbie, as the volume of
information can be overpowering. Links to additional information within
the Webmonkey site are helpful for Web developers, but they may
overwhelm a novice. There's no sequencing to speak of, and the site
often assumes you already know at least something. Since each page is
filled with lots of links, it's hard to know whether to follow them. If
you do, it's easy to get sidetracked. In other words, this looks less
like a bunch of tutorials and more like a performance support tool.
Original article written by Patti Shank.
Reprinted by TechRepublic IT Trainer Digest TechMail
with permission from the March 2000 issue of Inside
Technology Training magazine. Copyright 2000 Bill Communications, Inc.,
Minneapolis, MN. All rights reserved. Not for resale.
Visit the IT Training magazine site:
http://www.ittrain.com/
-
WEBTEACHER
National Cable Television Association and Tech Corps
Authors: Mike and Jo Ann Guidry, Wayne Kincaid
http://www.webteacher.org/
This site, developed by the National Cable Television Association and
Tech Corps, is a self-paced tutorial on basic and more complex Internet
concepts. Topics include Web browsers, e-mail, mailing lists, and
developing your own Web pages.
The site was developed for teachers, but it would be quite useful for
anyone needing to understand these concepts. WebTeacher has two
sections: a Web primer and a Web tutorial. The Web primer provides
condensed introductory lessons for folks who just want some basics. The
Web tutorial provides more in-depth information.
A good place for new developers to start is the section on HTML. The
first page in this section, called Baby Homepage, shows you, using
examples and pictures, what it takes to build a very simple Web page.
The authors tell you and show you what they're explaining. The step-by-
step lessons allow you to follow along with the concepts while using
them in your own pages. Instructions are clear and easy to follow.
The site determines up front which browser and platform you're using,
and then gives you the instructions that will be most clear to you.
This site is instructional, not just informational. If your WBT
developers need to know more about the Internet than how to put tags
into a HTML document (and they all do, even if they don't realize it),
bookmark this site.
Original article written by Patti Shank.
Reprinted by TechRepublic IT Trainer Digest TechMail
with permission from the March 2000 issue of Inside
Technology Training magazine. Copyright 2000 Bill Communications, Inc.,
Minneapolis, MN. All rights reserved. Not for resale.
Visit the IT Training magazine site:
http://www.ittrain.com/
