Rodent Regatta

Oh, to know enough to understand what this is telling me. There are so many things I want to do to this weblog. The emphasis is on ”I want to do them.” Sure, I could hire a web designer, but what I really want to hire is a tutor. I define a tutor as someone I can send (endless numbers) of emails to or spend an hour on the phone with. I need basic understanding plus deeper knowledge of how to comply with web standards, what things mean in Movable Type, what the pieces of an RSS template mean and do, how to rewrite this simple website using webstandards and CSS, etc.

You know, more important than any of those things, I need a tutor to guide me in how to learn. That’s it – that’s the deal. I need someone who can help me focus on which books are best, which tools are best, how to structure my knowledge. XHTML first or Movable Type details first? CSS first or web standards first?

I don’t want to outsource much more than the graphical design. I admire the people with an eye for great-looking design. I respect them. I recognize that I need them. For everything else, I want to learn enough to be able to understand what’s under the hood of this Movable Type-based weblog.

Yesterday, I noticed that the folks at Macromedia have released Studio MX 2004 with new versions of Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, etc. In Zeldman’s book I read this last night:

The latest versions of Dreamweaver and GoLive are sophisticated, powerful, and standards friendly. But you will still want to edit some of their output by hand to avoid classitis and divitis.

Jeffrey Zeldman
Designing With Web Standards

Obviously, Zeldman’s comment was written before Studio MX 2004. Yet, I suspect his comment stands. Furthermore, there’s still value in understanding the hand-coding of CSS, RSS, XHTML, etc., because, no matter what tool you ultimately migrate to, it’s clear that being able to ”read mark-up” is a vital skill in all of this web design stuff.

So, I’m looking for a tutor who can help me create a syllabus with all the appropriate textbooks, tools and web sites for effective learning. I’m prepared to be ”self-taught,” but I’d like to do it as efficiently as possible without buying endless references only to find that they contradict one another.

A tutor is someone who says, ”I’ve looked at lots of stuff and here’s what you need:”

• Notepad
• TopStyle
• Jeffrey Zeldman’s book
• Movable Type
• a web host
• a photo editing program
• ...and whatever else belongs on the list

I can comply with that. Then, I need a tutor who can say something like, ”here’s how I learned this stuff:”

• First, you need to learn this tool using this resource as your guide. Email me if you have questions.
• Second, set up a ”play site” in Movable Type that isn’t visible to the public by doing…
• Third, with a ”play site,” you can now experiment without exposing your trials-and-errors to the world
• Or, perhaps a tutor would say, ”Don’t edit your entries in Movable Type, edit them in TopStyle and then copy-and-paste them into Movable Type’s edit box.”
• ...and so on. (This is my own list of bizarre notions – not the actual list I’m seeking from someone in-the-know.)

Anyhow, this business of how to go about learning is what I’m after. It isn’t so much a money issue as it is a time and efficiency issue. What’s the shortest distance between two points for rank beginner with a strong desire to learn and use this stuff?