Lojic Technologies Blog » html http://lojic.com/blog Fri, 25 Nov 2011 20:12:56 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML http://lojic.com/blog/2007/07/14/head-first-html-with-css-xhtml/ http://lojic.com/blog/2007/07/14/head-first-html-with-css-xhtml/#comments Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:46:03 +0000 Brian Adkins http://lojic.com/blog/?p=88 I first noticed the covers of the “Head First” book series from O’Reilly a while ago, and I thought they looked unprofessional and simplistic, so I never really looked into them. Interestingly, I try to be careful about not being biased by nice book covers, but I think I’m more susceptible to dismissing books with “bad” covers.

I researched HTML books recently to help my aesthetically gifted wife get started designing web pages and the Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML title got great reviews on Amazon, so she picked up a copy.

I thought I’d flip through the book, and I ended up reading the entire thing :) I really wish this book was available years ago when I started coding HTML; it’s an incredibly well written tutorial. It has a very unique style which the authors spend quite a few pages explaining:

Based on the latest research in cognitive science, neurobiology, and educational psychology, learning takes a lot more than text on a page. We know what turns your brain on.

After reading the book, I tend to agree with their approach. It was a very fun and informative read. Most of the book was review for me since I’ve spent years learning this stuff the hard way, but there were a handful of excellent points I learned from the book, and I understand a lot of the foundational aspects of XHTML & CSS much better than I did before. Expecting a newbie to get through a typical HTML reference book is unrealistic IMO.

For anyone wanting to learn the basics of (X)HTML & CSS, or would like a good review, I highly recommend this book. I don’t know if the other books in the “Head First” series are as good, but I’ll certainly consider them in the future based on my experience with this one.

UPDATE: I have found one thing to criticize about the book. The index leaves a lot to be desired. This is a particularly grievous deficiency with this book since it is organized as a tutorial as opposed to a reference book.

]]> http://lojic.com/blog/2007/07/14/head-first-html-with-css-xhtml/feed/ 1 Which doctypes are being used? http://lojic.com/blog/2007/07/12/which-doctypes-are-being-used/ http://lojic.com/blog/2007/07/12/which-doctypes-are-being-used/#comments Fri, 13 Jul 2007 03:01:36 +0000 Brian Adkins http://lojic.com/blog/?p=87 In trying to decide which doctype to use for my new web apps, I thought I’d see what other sites are currently using. Here are the results in order from least to most leading edge:

No doctype at all

  • mail.google.com
  • mail.yahoo.com
  • www.alexa.com
  • www.amazon.com
  • www.barnesnoble.com
  • www.ebay.com
  • www.godaddy.com
  • www.google.com
  • www.myspace.com
  • www.trianglemls.com

HTML 4.0 Transitional w/o URL

  • www.fedex.com

HTML 4.0 Transitional Loose

  • www.dell.com
  • www.microsoft.com
  • www.monster.com

HTML 4.0 Strict w/o URL

  • www.ask.com

HTML 4.01 Transitional w/o URL

  • www.bankofamerica.com
  • www.netflix.com
  • www.nuskin.com
  • www.ups.com

HTML 4.01 Transitional Loose

  • www.apple.com
  • www.bizbuysell.com
  • www.craigslist.org
  • www.hp.com
  • www.sun.com
  • www.usps.gov
  • www.youtube.com

HTML 4.01 Strict

  • www.flickr.com
  • www.slashdot.org
  • www.walmart.com
  • www.yahoo.com (for Firefox, no doctype for IE)

XHTML 1.0 Transitional

  • www.aol.com
  • www.digg.com
  • www.expedia.com
  • www.livejournal.com
  • www.loopnet.com
  • www.orbitz.com
  • www.stumbleupon.com
  • www.wachovia.com

XHTML 1.0 Strict

  • del.icio.us
  • maps.google.com
  • www.blogger.com
  • www.facebook.com
  • www.ibm.com
  • www.jaiku.com
  • www.msn.com
  • www.pownce.com
  • www.twitter.com
  • www.wikipedia.org

XHTML 1.1

  • www.mayoclinic.com

Conclusion

There are enough mainstream sites using XHTML now, that I feel it may be ready for prime time. Since I don’t have a lot of legacy pages to deal with, I’m going to use XHTML 1.0 Strict.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

]]> http://lojic.com/blog/2007/07/12/which-doctypes-are-being-used/feed/ 3 Douglas Crockford: Theory of the DOM http://lojic.com/blog/2007/05/17/douglas-crockford-theory-of-the-dom/ http://lojic.com/blog/2007/05/17/douglas-crockford-theory-of-the-dom/#comments Fri, 18 May 2007 00:04:48 +0000 Brian Adkins http://lojic.com/blog/?p=76 Here’s a set of 3 videos by Douglas Crockford on the DOM that were in between his JavaScript and Advanced JavaScript presentations. Pretty basic material, but you may find a few helpful hints. A few comments:

  1. Comment hack for JavaScript hasn’t been necessary for 10 years!
  2. language=javascript has been deprecated
  3. type=’text/javascript’ is ignored if you use the src attribute
  4. remove any event handlers of a node before deleting it due to MS garbage collection incompetencies
  5. avoid trickling, bubbling is where the action is

Theory of the DOM Part 1 of 3

Theory of the DOM Part 2 of 3

Theory of the DOM Part 3 of 3

]]> http://lojic.com/blog/2007/05/17/douglas-crockford-theory-of-the-dom/feed/ 0 35 Designers x 5 Questions http://lojic.com/blog/2007/05/08/35-designers-x-5-questions/ http://lojic.com/blog/2007/05/08/35-designers-x-5-questions/#comments Wed, 09 May 2007 04:05:12 +0000 Brian Adkins http://lojic.com/blog/?p=50

35 designers. 5 questions. 5 precise answers. Result: 175 professional suggestions, tips and ideas from some of the best web-developers all around the world.

In the end we’ve received more answers than we expected. The results – over 80 CSS-based tips, design ideas, suggestions, fonts, design-related books and online-magazines – are listed below. It’s interesting to know, how designers work their magic. It’s interesting to know what you can actually learn from them.

35 Designers x 5 Questions

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