This is more of a tangent to Peter Timusk's post, than a response to it, but I thought some on this list might be interested... I've taught a class called "Web Technologies and Techniques" (it should be called "Introduction to HTML") for the past two years. Ian Graham's (online) tutorials are extremely well written, but they are a bit dated. I can only assign selected portions of them or else I mislead my students. I *really* wish his work had a creative commons license so that I could modify it and create an up-to-date tutorial using what he wrote as a strong foundation. Grrr, copyright! Finding good web resources to teach (yourself) HTML is difficult. If students need to learn about a particular tag, then the w3schools site is very good: http://www.w3schools.com/ However, I don't recommend navigating or searching the site. The tutorials can be ok. The real benefit is if you do a google search of the form "html table" or "css font-family". Almost always the w3 schools site is the first site, and when it is not, it is usually in the top 3. Each HTML tag or CSS property has its own page, with complete instructions regarding how to use it properly. It is an invaluable resource. As far as tutorials go, the best one that is mostly updated is Dave Raggett's introduction to HTML & CSS tutorials: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/ The problem is that it is a bit bare-bones, and you can tell that he wrote most of it before the distinction between descriptive and presentational markup became important in HTML, though he has updated it so that it is technically correct. Aside from those, I have found good internet resources fairly scarce. I am tempted to write my own, but I don't have the time. What's interesting from a research point of view, is that there are a *lot* of online tutorials for HTML & CSS. Most of them are really bad, *not* because they are poorly written and do a poor job of teaching, but rather because they were written way back before the distinction between presentational and descriptive markup became important in HTML. Thus, most of them recommend extremely poor HTML coding practices, and few of them mention CSS. Oddly enough, the CSS tutorials often seem to assume that you already are a crackerjack web designer. The javascript pages are usually even worse. I now totally understand why most website builders learn via a problem-based-google-searching approach. I should point out, I have not looked at these sites systematically. This impression is culled from looking at the top google hits of various searches I have done while trying to find materials to aid in teaching my course. For those of you interested in my class, last year's incarnation can be found here: http://ingbert.org/courses/webtech/lis390w1a_fall2008/ I will be reorganizing it and hopefully updating some material for next year (as well as tweaking the grading scheme a bit). For those of you interested in buying a book, I strongly recommend: Freeman, Elizabeth; Freeman, Eric (2006). Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML. O'Reilly Media, Inc.: Beijing, China. It's not perfect, but it's pretty darn close. Ingbert On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 7:24 PM, Peter Timusk <ptimusk@sympatico.ca> wrote:
I think Ian Graham wrote some great HTML books in the 1990's. Is anyone studying the computer self help press?
here are some titles that are only pennies used from Amazon
If a few bucks is still too much you read his online tutorial
http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/intro.html
Old but still useful
The Html Sourcebook: A Complete Guide to Html 3.0 (Paperback) by Ian S. Graham (Author), Ian S Graham (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Html-Sourcebook-Complete-Guide-3-0/dp/0471142425/ref=s...
Html 4.0 Sourcebook (Paperback) by Ian S. Graham (Author) "What is a text markup language?..." (more)
http://www.amazon.com/Html-4-0-Sourcebook-Ian-Graham/dp/0471257249/ref=sr_1_...
I am trying to start reading this one
HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook (Sourcebooks) (Paperback) by Ian S. Graham (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/HTML-Stylesheet-Sourcebook-Sourcebooks-Graham/dp/04711...
BTW I do not know Ian or have any monetary connection to him nor really academic beyond learning from his great books and always available online tutorial.
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- ========================================== Ingbert Floyd PhD Student Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign http://ingbert.org/ || skype/twitter/etc.: spacesoon Check out the unofficial GSLIS Wiki: http://www.gslis.org/ "Dream in a pragmatic way." -Aldous Huxley