Indiana University: IT Training Tips Blog

For people new to the web design game, the process can seem kind of overwhelming. After all, at various points when designing and developing a website, you need:

1. aesthetic skills (to make things look good)
2. information architecture skills (organizing the content in a way so that users can find what they need)
3. interaction design skills (making sure that the paths within a website makes sense and are pleasurable for the user)
4. technical skills (XHTML, CSS, knowing how to turn on a computer)

Many web design shops have pros who are experts in each of these areas. How can you, a smart but inexperienced person, compete with that?  You're just trying to put together a little web site for yourself, your aunt the locally famous banjo player, or a volunteer organization...

divide et impera, or, Divide and Conquer

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Way back in July, the W3C (the governing organization of web standards) announced that it was not going to renew the charter of the XHTML2 working group. In non-bureaucracy speak, that means the W3C has stuffed XHTML2 standards development into a bottle and chucked it out to sea, where it will spend the rest of eternity bobbing on the waves and following the thermal currents. The W3C did this so that it could focus all of its attention on developing HTML5.

"Wait a minute, " one might shout on hearing this news, "I thought XHTML was the wave of the future, and HTML was what Cro-Magnons used to code their web pages??? What's going on?"

Its easy to be confused, and, yes, even a little bit alarmed by this news. But, in essence, the labels here don't really represent what you think they do: XHTML2 isn't really XHTML as you know it, and HTML5 encompasses a lot more than HTML4.01. Here's what you need to know about both of these standards: (more...)

IT Training and Education currently offers three workshops on Dreamweaver CS4:

1. Dreamweaver CS4: The Basics covers the Dreamweaver environment and building a publishing a simple web site using tables.
2. Dreamweaver CS4: Creating Websites with CSS concentrates on how to build a website using Cascading Style Sheets to control the layout.
3. Dreamweaver CS4: Navigation, Templates & Media Integration covers how to create pop-up menus for navigation, build Dreamweaver templates to simplify site maintenance, and include multimedia on your web sites.

While these workshops provide an excellent platform on which to start exploring web design and development using Dreamweaver, they are by no means exhaustive. And, there may be certain concepts (especially related to CSS) for which you'd like additional reinforcement. This is where lynda.com can come in. Remember that from now until Dec. 20, IU community members get FREE access to lynda.com. As of this writing, lynda.com has 8 Dreamweaver CS4 series, for a total of almost forty additional hours of training on Dreamweaver CS4. Awesome! And when we retire, we'll actually have time to watch all of it.
Here's a chart to help you narrow down which lynda.com Dreamweaver CS4 videos cover the topics you're interested in:

See a more detailed chart after the jump... (more...)

Design First, Then HTML-ize

If you're new to the web design game, developing a new website (or redesigning an old one) is much like starting a new job: there are a thousand small details competing for your attention and its difficult to know how to proceed in a relatively efficient fashion.

One typical workflow, especially for smaller sites that only have static HTML pages, is to design the appearance of the site first. Some folks sketch designs on a pad of paper, others use a graphics program like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Fireworks to lay out how the site will look. In fact, there's been more than one great website design where the impetus came from cocktail napkin scratchings at a Friday night happy hour.

The Challenges of Translating Your Design into HTML

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With the announcement that IU had acquired free Adobe software for all of it's employees and students, your first thought was probably "How do I get it?" Now that we've all had a couple of months to get the software downloaded and installed, you're likely thinking now: "What do I do with all of this stuff?"

Adobe is one of the largest software companies in the world, and while most people are familiar with their core apps, like Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash, there are many applications included in the suite that you might not be familiar with. In this post, we'll take some time to examine all the different applications that you can install with the various Adobe suites. We will focus on the applications in Design Premium CS4 and Production Premium CS4. There are many add-ons and extra technology included in the installers, but we will look only at the applications included.

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