This is my third attempt at this post. The other two got wiped out when my browser launched a link in this same window, When you go back, it's all gone. Hopefully, the third time is the charm.
It is the 19th of August, and in 13 short days, I will begin teaching an Intro to Web Authoring class for MSU's Professional Writing program. This is a class I have never taught before, so I though perhaps I should begin reading the textbook, Jeffery Zeldman and Ethan Marcotte's Designing with Web Standards, that is the required text. When I read Zeldman and Marcotte's claim that standards created by organizations such as W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) "make it possible to design sites that will continue to work, even as those standards and browsers evolve" (4), I thought, "yea right, I doubt that seriously."
I mean come on..... even the authors claim that "most of us [web authors] agree that even the latest version of Internet Explorer, while very good, is not as advanced as Safari, Firefox, and Opera" (8). Personally, I don't find Safari all that great either!!
But the good news is that we are so much better off than we were in the beginning. I mean come on now, seriously, we've only been doing this..... what, 20, 25 years? Some of you may remember the proprietary (never a good word when it comes to technology) wars between IE and Netscape. Chances are if you could view the web page on IE than you wouldn't be able to see it in Netscape and vice versa. This is probably why many of us thought this "Web" thing would probably not make it for very long.
But now browsers play nicer and designers are attempting to follow the standards closer. It will be interesting to see how the authors lead us through these standards. My class will not be reading the entire text, as it's one that they will also use in the next class, but we will hit on many of the basics. Onward!
It is the 19th of August, and in 13 short days, I will begin teaching an Intro to Web Authoring class for MSU's Professional Writing program. This is a class I have never taught before, so I though perhaps I should begin reading the textbook, Jeffery Zeldman and Ethan Marcotte's Designing with Web Standards, that is the required text. When I read Zeldman and Marcotte's claim that standards created by organizations such as W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) "make it possible to design sites that will continue to work, even as those standards and browsers evolve" (4), I thought, "yea right, I doubt that seriously."
I mean come on..... even the authors claim that "most of us [web authors] agree that even the latest version of Internet Explorer, while very good, is not as advanced as Safari, Firefox, and Opera" (8). Personally, I don't find Safari all that great either!!
But the good news is that we are so much better off than we were in the beginning. I mean come on now, seriously, we've only been doing this..... what, 20, 25 years? Some of you may remember the proprietary (never a good word when it comes to technology) wars between IE and Netscape. Chances are if you could view the web page on IE than you wouldn't be able to see it in Netscape and vice versa. This is probably why many of us thought this "Web" thing would probably not make it for very long.
But now browsers play nicer and designers are attempting to follow the standards closer. It will be interesting to see how the authors lead us through these standards. My class will not be reading the entire text, as it's one that they will also use in the next class, but we will hit on many of the basics. Onward!
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