Rodent Regatta

Different people learn in different ways. Read a book. Watch a video. Try and try some more until you get it. Have someone show you. Take a course. Follow a self-paced tutorial.

Redemption Through Standards is linking to a CSS course provided by one of its customers. Whether you use that or one of the Westciv courses, there are plenty of ways to get your head around CSS.

Here’s the link to the main page for The Bergen County Internet Tutor.

Robert Scoble’s request to carry web designers’ wishes back to the IE6 programming team has now received 47 comments. That’s a pretty amazing way to get some straight, actionable feedback from a constituency that Microsoft (probably) would like to please.

My experience with web design is approaching three years of turmoil, torment, torture, trials, tribulations and fun. Yes, fun. In spite of thinking about throwing a computer across the room at times, I enjoy trying to figure out how these great designs and designers work. It hasn’t really been three years, nor has it been anything like full time effort or even a realiable five or ten hours a week of study, but I’m not where I would like to be.

One of the frustrating things is getting the terminology straight. I’m not talking just about tags vs. elements vs. attributes vs. values, etc. It’s stuff like validation, valid, well-formed and semantic that throws me. When I read Jeffrey Zeldman’s book and the remarkable piece that Dave Shea wrote, I understand. When I sit down to do something, I realize I don’t understand.

Now, here comes D. Keith Robinson with a focus on the concept of semantic writing or semantic mark-up. I’m clueless within three paragraphs. Now, in which of these books will I find this one?

I told someone today that these great designers make this stuff look as easy as the professional golfers make that game appear. I remember a time when I didn’t just think about throwing a golf club.

There’s a great looking site redesign at The Daily Report. You’ll love the way it looks. Here’s another case of, ”I can’t do it, but I know it when I see it.” Great colors. Great use of screen real estate. Classy looking fonts.

If Microsoft really has something over an eighty or ninety percent share of the web browser market, why wouldn’t they make improvements? If a rather large group of standards-oriented designers can show how IE6 fails in its handling of specific standards, wouldn’t Microsoft jump at an opportunity to fix those failures?

There’s an opportunity to do just that – compliments of an open dialog between Andrei Herasimchuk and Robert Scoble.

Now the call is out for very specific problems or examples of how IE mishandles standards-based rendering.

The wish lists and recommendations are accumulating here.