HTML, CSS and so on - will it be worth it?

simpletom · 7 Feb 2010 at 12:16

Hi

Okay, I am not a coder, not particularly creative and a little short on time.

I do a lot of the Moodle VLE work where I work but I am also building up my own VLE portfolio. This is in case I wish to 'spread my wings', so to speak, and find a place that will allocate me time for the work I do. They do exist!

Having got a domain and webspace (cheers optitech-uk), uploaded Moodle and so on, I really do need a front end to the Moodle area. A few pages that are simple but not scrappy and naff looking.

I have Dreamweaver CS4 though work and yes, I can make a front end. A grey, dull one at that. Is it worth me looking deeper into this or is it hideously time-consuming? Are there any decent templates out there that don't look like a throwback to the 90s?

And WTF is CSS all about?

Cheers for laughing at a noob!

simpletom · 7 Feb 2010 at 12:35

Tr Insanity said:
I wouldn't say it's hard at all, definitely worth it if you're going to be creating a portfolio website.

CSS is used to stylise the whole webpage: what colour everything is, positioning etc.

Start learning now!

Well, as I was up until 2am working on Moodle (and a student was on as well!), I have a spare couple of hours

So, where do I start? Books or, as I usually do things, mess around until I get it? Any good online tutorials that you would recommend? Dont forget, the closest I got to this was 68000 assembly language in 1988

simpletom · 7 Feb 2010 at 12:45

billysielu said:
Read:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Designing-S...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265546348&sr=8-1

Cheers. Everything must be fully accessible for visually impaired students and so on. How difficult is it to be able to change to an accessible design at the click of a mouse? Is that done via CSS?

simpletom · 7 Feb 2010 at 14:06

Tr Insanity said:
They may not be the best, but these tutorials really helped me when I started :
http://www.tizag.com/

Or do what billysielu says and design the whole site so that it's accessible to everyone

I think what I am trying to get at is that it can be more accessible. Some students I have simply cannot use ICT without having a massive typeface which, frankly, renders the site unreadable to others. Having black on grey or cream is certainly readable for person A but not person B.

It sounds like some reading up on CSS is what I need. Changing the background colour of the frames and englarging the font are the two most important elements.

Many thanks for the responses.

simpletom · 7 Feb 2010 at 17:54

MarcLister said:
Hi. Moodle eh? Work in a school then? I do and I've got to look after the Moodle setup for my school. Would you mind dropping me a line at marclister at gmail dot com to see just how more advanced than mine your Moodle knowledge is?

I don't get much time to work on our Moodle site and so when I do have work to do I take a while to work out what on earth I'm meant to be doing and how to do it.

Oh and CSS is pretty cool.

No probs - I run four Moodle courses. I get an hour a week deducted form class contact for that

I am actually a tutor, not an IT guy.

I will mail you when I have my own Moodle site up sometime tomorrow. It will avoid any issues using the college ones.

As for learning using notepad++, it is great in theory but there are limits to my time. I will take note though and have a look. It will give me something to read on the train.

I currently use Firefox as a browser so will get Firebug.

simpletom · 7 Feb 2010 at 17:58

Longbow said:
Best example of what CSS can do is http://www.csszengarden.com

The HTML is the same (aside from links) on every page, yet they all look completely different from the style sheets. Designing in this way means you can change the look of an entire website by editing the single .css (style sheet) file, without editing each HTML file.

Might want to dump Dreamweaver as well, and use Notepad or Notepad++, you'll probably learn a lot more looking at the code all day than using that fancy GUI.

http://www.w3schools.com is another site similar to tizag that will explain what tags are etc.

That site is quality

simpletom · 8 Feb 2010 at 19:32

MarcLister said:
Cheers. I've got a few blank template pages that I use for web dev stuff. It is just a blank page with the necessary beginnings of a page such as the declaration and body sections along with a link to a default.css file. When I get your email tomorrow I'll reply with some attachments for you.

I do this so that I know I've got something that is valid in XHTML and saves me a few minutes getting the basics ready each time.

I'm an IT guy but I don't really get any dedicated time for our Moodle. The IT teacher who was the IT guy before I turned up definitely didn't get any time off to do general ICT stuff let alone Moodle stuff.

No need to say that he likes having me around.

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