Most people reading this have a job that involves the internet (web designer, web developer, project manager for an agency, etc). But what if there was no internet? What do you think you’d be doing right now?
I think I would be doing graphic design, photography, or computer programming.
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Oh, bad pun!
When you think of marking up a book title, the first thing you might be thinking about is styling the text in italics. Simple enough.
<em>Practical C Programming</em>
That seems to work, but em renders as emphasized text. Do we
really want to emphasize a book title?
According to the Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines and the Chicago Manual of Style, book titles may be italicized or underlined. Perhaps we could have the book title underlined? It’s probably not a good idea because it would interfere with links which are generally (and always by default) underlined. So let’s try something else.
We’re trying really hard to keep content and style separated. We could
use CSS and wrap the book title with span tags.
<span class="book">Practical C Programming</span>
span.book { font-style: italic; }
That sounds good, but if we disable the stylesheet, the italics disappear. Then the book title is like everything else.
If we don’t use em we could revert to using i.
Most people wouldn’t even consider this, but I did. The i
is not deprecated. But then again, we’re trying really hard to keep
content and style separate.
When I first learned how to use cite, I assumed it was
blockquote’s “sidecar”. It could also be
q’s for that matter. But if you look at
Dan’s
discussion about titles, you will see some good points about why
cite should be used. Take a look at the
HTML
specification too. When your content “contains a citation or
a reference to other sources” you should use cite.
Think about that—“a reference to other sources”.
Wouldn’t you consider me talking about a book as being another
source besides this article? It makes sense.
<cite>Practical C Programming</cite>
How would you mark up a book title?
This list is in no particular order.
A couple of days ago, I found a post by Molly Holleschalage(sp) regarding the way companies write their job adverts. I’ve been thinking about this as well. Who in the company writes those listings? Do they know what ASP, JSP, PHP, Perl, XSL, and the lot really are? And do they really expect web developers to have all of these skills coming into the job?
Take the case where you see a job listing and the list of requirements is overwhelming. When do you say, "Yes, I’m going to apply", and when do you stop and think that maybe you shouldn’t even bother? I stop and think a lot.
I’ve got the HTML and CSS skills. I can write some Javascript. I know PHP pretty well. Heck, I even took a Java class at a junior college and excelled at it. But do I know about JavaBeans? No. J2EE? No, but it has something to do with Java. JSP? If it’s like PHP then I may have a chance.
What about experience? I have seen listings call for good experience, strong experience, 2+ years of hands-on experience, 3+ years experience, or 5+ years experience. Then there are the must-haves. And don't forget knowing a certain skill can be “a plus”.
A couple of years ago I listed my experience in years: 9 years of HTML, 3 years of CSS, 2 years of PHP, …. But what do years really tell you about a person’s knowledge of a particular technology? I could have used CSS for 3 years without ever putting together a stylesheet for a complex design that would end up needing further alterations to work with Internet Explorer. Could I even say I have one year of Perl experience because there was a period of time when I used formmail.pl for form submissions? I’m not sure experience in years can really measure a person’s skills.
Once, during an interview, I was asked to rate my skills on a scale from one to ten. That was tough. “HTML? Uh, 8? No! 9?” I didn’t know how low was too low before looking bad too. I think I gave Javascript a 4 because I don’t do any crazy programming with it. I use it for DOM scripting. If I don’t know something, I look it up in a reference book. Maybe I should have given Javascript a 5 or 6?
Now I’ve updated the way I list my summary of skills. I use three different categories: Experienced, Intermediate, and Basic Knowledge. I snatched the idea from Eric Meyer’s résumé. Thanks, Eric.
But when can we official say we have basic knowledge of something? I just read the book, IBM Smalltalk: The Language, this past week. I now have basic knowledge of Smalltalk’s methodologies, yet I have programmed nothing in Smalltalk. Does this count as basic knowledge? What if I were to read another programming book, typed out the examples as I went along, and completed the exercises at the end of each chapter? Does this count? I took a Java programming class in junior college and a Java/C programming class at a university. Does this count?
One more thing I would like to mention is skills, just to have skills. I’ve used Flash. I was good at tweening and some basic ActionScript in Flash 4. Then Flash 5 came out and I didn’t like the interface changes so I stopped using it for awhile. When MX came out, I got back into it for a project or two, which involved ActionScript-ing. But I found myself getting frustrated. While my code seemed to be written logically, things would not work as expected. I gave up on Flash and I would honestly be happy if I never had to touch it again. But I have the skills; I know Flash and I can do some ActionScript. So I put those words into my resume. Well, 90% of the calls I received, from submitting my resume to a job search site, were looking for someone to fill a Flash position. Now I am removing Flash and ActionScript from my resume because I now know that it’s not always a good idea to include skills, just to beef up the resume. If, during an interview, I was asked about having Flash skills, I could tell them yes but explain where I stand about doing it.
I only touched upon skills this time through. Work experience, what your role was at Company X, and the portfolio of sites which you’ve assisted in completing are some other important parts of the resume.
What’s in your resume? How do you rate your skills? What do you purposely exclude from the resume? And don’t forget about those lovely job listings on all those job boards!
It was about 2 years ago when I first read the AJAX (or is it Ajax?) article by Jesse James Garrett. I thought it sounded like an interesting idea and possibly a good technology to welcome to my skillset. Unfortunately it involved Javascript, a language I wasn’t too fond of using. But I printed the article and looked at a couple other sites on the subject. A week went by and I was over it. Now it’s hot stuff and big names like Google are using it in most of their applications.
Then Ruby on Rails was released to the public in July 2004. I had been using Basecamp, from where RoR was extracted, at my job. And I thought Basecamp was a pretty good application to use there. I checked out some of the early talk about Rails and it led me to the Ruby site where there were some basic tutorials on how to get programming with Ruby. PHP was my main focus then and the thought of learning another language didn’t sound like the smartest thing to do at the time. So that dream was over by the end of the day.
But wait! How could I pass up learning Ruby and Rails? How could I pass up this opportunity especially with those clever screencasts? Who couldn’t turn their back on Rails after seeing the weblog built in less than 15 minutes. I know I couldn’t! So I bought some books and strapped myself in for a long journey into Ruby and Rails. More on that journey coming soon.
I even have an idea for my first real web application on Rails. I purchased three domains. My project is currently a secret and I won’t reveal what the domain names are. But since Rails is so easy to use, I should have the project up for the public by November 1st. You can stay “tuned” because I may slip a couple little hints here and there before then.
Now some people have been programming Ruby before Rails even came about. And some people have been using Rails since it was first released to the public. But I still think I have a chance. I can get myself up to speed. They did mention Rails was easy, right?
Lastly, don’t forget about the evolving world of CSS. Because CSS3 is still in its prime and unsupported by most browsers, I think I can jump into this early. Maybe I can actually be ahead on this one while others try to catch up. I better get started.
After testing out their hosting for two months, I have cancelled my TextDrive account. I am obviously not going to continue with their services.
First reason: The control panel is not intuitive. It is just text, links, and long-winded forms. According to some people in their forum, they have been promising a custom in-house control panel for at least a year now. I think they need it. Their Knowledge Base was helpful enough to get me playing with Rails, but it was a time-consuming process.
It’s time for a change of scenery. It’s time to look for a new web host. I need a place that can handle Ruby on Rails, and can handle it well. Sorry, ASO. You’re just not cutting it anymore. My site is slow and your Rails support isn’t quite up to speed in my opinion. I currently have a lifetime hosting plan with ASO and the lifetime thing appeals to me. I did a little fishing and found another hosting company that was offering a lifetime plan.
While working on a project, I needed to use a Javascript Console in my browser to see if my Javascript skills were in order. Because I primarily use Safari, I began looking around for the console. No luck! It was time for a Google search to find a solution.
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
That’s it! If you want to get rid of the debug menu, follow the above
steps, but change the 1 to a 0.
“Get your design looking right with a standards-compliant browser first, then check it out in IE6 and other browsers to clean up the CSS or add hacks.” It’s a good piece of advice I read somewhere.
When designing, I always view my work in Safari first. I believe if I can get my design looking good in Safari then some of the other browsers, like Firefox, Mozilla, and Opera, are either very close to rendering correctly or look very much the same. It is nice when they all render the same way, but we can’t always be that lucky, can we?
The following is a list of browsers with which I test my work:
Apple Macintosh running OS X
Virtual PC (Windows 2000)
I’m sure there are a few browsers I should be using that are not on my list. But then again, some browsers use the same rendering engine so they should render a given page similarly (Mozilla and Netscape use Gecko).
In addition to using browsers, there are other tools, such as the Firefox extension, Web Developer Extension by Chris Pederick. It is great for easily switching off stylesheets, viewing a page under different screen sizes, and for making quick changes to a stylesheet directly. I think this extension alone is a huge addition to the arsenal.
As for running multiple versions of Internet Explorer on your PC, now you can with these ‘hacked’ builds of IE.
Also of interest is an article from A List Apart about building a cross-platform testing station. The article is very out-of-date, but still worth a read.
© Copyright 2004–2007 Mark Wiens