Crys Odenkirk

Teaching HTML as a Second Language (HSL)

Posted on June 11, 2009 by Crys

…is hard.

A major project I’m doing right now at work involves teaching HTML/CSS and (and probably Javascript) to an audience of mixed knowledge-levels.

Now, I’ve got a lot of experience explaining things in context and answering questions for people of different levels of computer literacy. And I used to tutor students in Math, Science, English and other languages, and I taught Art privately for awhile. So no problem, right?

Trying to condense an entire introductory class into a couple hours and make it both appropriate AND useful to all different skill levels and then use it to contrast against the html/css/javascript being written by a tool provided by a vendor? Ouch.

I’m thinking that it might be best approached as exactly what it is: a foreign language. It has its own alphabet. Its words are elements, and it most definitely has its own rules of grammar. The doctype tells a browser what dialect you’re speaking in (html and xhtml are about as different as American and Britsh English, for instance).

Smoke Bomb

Posted on June 11, 2009 by Crys

Three Trumpets

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Crys

Three Trumpets

Would it have been so hard to put it on your website?

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Crys

If you are offering a download of any kind, state the terms right up front. I don’t know about you, but I am leery of downloading anything whose status I have to guess at. It makes me concerned that the code or product has the same lack of attention to detail.

There are many kinds of download. Is it free for all time? Just a trial? A Beta? Will clicking “download” kick you without warning to a page where you think users are going to blithely put their credit card numbers and addresses in? Don’t leave your readers wondering. If a user has to go to google to find out this information, you better have a damn good, unique, exceptional product or they probably won’t come back for the download.

Note, this is not related to the SuperPreview post right before this one, though Microsoft could stand to pay attention to this advice with regard to SuperPreview as well.

Well, got the upgrade to IE8.

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Crys

…and as I expected, half the web is broken now. Good thing for me, I only use IE for testing my sites. I mostly use Firefox for my own browsing, like most web designers.

Microsoft was really in a no-win situation (granted, of their own making) with IE8’s rendering engine, so I’m not going to curse at them too much (no promises on whether or not I’ll curse at the browser itself). I’m working on finding the necessary css hacks and javascript changes for making things work again. My own sites mostly just seem to have positioning problems for a few elements, luckily, but I’ll include whatever I find that is still valid css in my css hacks reference section. As always, that’s mostly for my own reference but you’re welcome to use anything you find there.

One shining light: there might actually finally be a way to test your pages in IE6, IE7 and IE8 without having to resort to registry hacks or incomplete rendering engines. Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview claims to let you view in IE6 and whatever version of IE you have installed (since IE8 includes an IE7 viewing mode, both IE7 and IE8 are available).

I just downloaded it. I’ll post my impressions after I try it out.