These are not “required readings,” but they will help you get a better perspective on the topics covered in each Unit. If you have any suggestions for additions, email Greg.
You might also want to see the Examples page, which contains the examples from the course guide.
Contents:
- World Wide Web
- Markup and XHTML
- Cascading Style Sheets
- Advanced XHTML and CSS
- Graphics and Images
- Design
- Programming Introduction
- Forms and Web Programming
- More Programming
- Internet Internals
World Wide Web
- howstuffworks has a lot of very good descriptions of the inner workings of everything from toilets to income taxes. Of interest to us:
- History of the Internet [video]
- Packet Switching Demo [interactive demo]
- Internet Protocol Examples from Wikipedia
- Internet and WWW Glossary
- Tim Berners-Lee and the History of the World Wide Web
- MIME types in Wikipedia
Markup and XHTML
- XHTML 1.0 Reference
- Alternate XHTML 1.0 Reference
- Relative URLs
- Back to Basics: HTML Tags Have Meaning
- Logical vs. Physical Markup
- mezzoblue Markup Guide
- Bad HTML Tags, mostly how to get from transitional to strict markup.
- Definition lists - misused or misunderstood? Discussion of proper usage of one tag in particular.
Cascading Style Sheets
- Starting with HTML & CSS
- CSS1 Reference (SFU mirror of CSS1 reference)
- CSS2 Guide, a very nice CSS2 tutorial. It's a little old, so some of the "browsers don't support this" comments are no longer valid.
- CSS2 Reference
- CSS Browser Support Summary, a comparison of the CSS features that are supported by various browsers.
- CSS Browser Compatibility, another feature support comparison.
- Interactive CSS Box Model Demo
- The (CSS) Box Model
- Units in CSS
Advanced XHTML and CSS
Directly related to Guide topics
- WDG's HTML validator (SFU mirror of WDG's HTML Validator)
- W3C's HTML validator
- Empty XHTML, ready to validate [source]
- XHTML Entities
- Unicode Characters as HTML Entities
- Unicode Character Search
- The
divandspanTags - Structural Naming Convention in CSS, notes on choosing names for
classandid. - Empty CSS that sets overall colours
- Advanced CSS Styling/Selectors Tutorial
- Three-character RGB reference
- RGB Colour Mixer
- RGB Color Chart (SFU mirror of RGB Color Chart), image containing a palette of colours and their 6-character colour code.
- Understanding Color
- The RGB Color System
- Floatutorial (a “float” tutorial)
- The Mystery of CSS Float Property
- Interactive CSS Examples
- mezzoblue [Semantic] Markup Guide
- Semantics, HTML, XHTML, and Structure
Other interesting links
- CSS validator, similar to an HTML validator, but it checks your style sheets.
- Firebug, a porwerful Firebox addon for web development.
- CSS examples: (For this course, borrowing ideas is okay, copying code is not.)
- Learn CSS Positioning in Ten Steps
- Microformats: ways to squeeze even more meaning into your XHTML
- Discussion of the styles available on the course web site
Graphics and Images
Design
- Design Principles slides [Powerpoint]
- How CRAP is Your Site Design?
- Design a business card with style, discussion of design principles as they apply to business cards.
- Web Conventions and Website Consistency
- The Need for Web Design Standards [Conventions]
- Web Design Conventions
- Design Conventions
- Experimenting with Link Conventions
- Alertbox: How Users Read on the Web, the basis for the Readability section in the Guide
- Why “Click here” is bad linking practice
- Don't ‘click here’: writing meaningful link text
- Alertbox: Ten Good Deeds in Web Design
- Alertbox: Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design
- Quality Tips for Webmasters, some tips on what to do to make a technically good web site.
- Semantic data extractor, a tool to extract heading info—the "Outline" should match your document if you've used headings properly.
- No-nos that ID you as an amateur, twelve things that you should avoid.
Programming Introduction
- Think Python: An Introduction to Software Design (SFU mirror of Think Python)
- Why Programming Is Fun
- IDLE Toying, a tour of the IDLE environment under Windows.
- Python for Non-Programmers, a collection of links to materials for people wanting to learn Python as a first language.
- Python Documentation (SFU mirror of Python documentation)
- Tutorial, maybe “tutorial” is a bit of an overstatement (it would be a good tutorial if you already knew how to program in another language).
Forms and Web Programming
More Programming
- Python Library (modules) reference (SFU mirror of modules reference)
- Python Tutorial (SFU mirror of the tutorial), which contains information on
if, and other Python constructs. - String Formatting (SFU mirror of string formatting)
- Python Style Guide
- Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years, or "why half a semester doesn't teach you everything."
Internet Internals
- Percent-encoding, which is used for the query string
- URL Fragment identifier
- How Internet Cookies Work
- Caching Tutorial for Web Authors and Webmasters
- Cool URIs don't change
- HTTP and MIME types