B200 : : : T171 : : : T209 : : : T223 : : : TT28x : : : M206 : : : M358 : : : M360 : : : T396

TT280/TT281/TT282 - Web Development

Validation: All Your Tags Are Belong To Us

Sick of validating all your pages by hand? Me too. Try my new(ish) testall script that does it all for you while you do something more interesting. You can find it here.

Overview:

The trouble with all these courses is the ambiguity of the assessment tests. In most cases, the technological issue behind each CMA question is fairly straightforward, but the task of unravelling the question-setter's thought process is much more difficult. I can usually find a satisfactory answer, but then the result comes back and I feel a bit cheated if I've got one wrong because of imprecise phrasing rather than my own lack of knowledge! Does that sound like sour grapes? Well maybe it is!
Anyway, if you're a fan of pots and pans, these are the courses for you!

TT280: Web Basics.

Sklarface I needed an extension for this course (first time I've ever asked for one!) but I got through it OK and passed it comfortably.

These Nielsen / Sklar pictures were made using Paint Shop Pro. They're based on pics by William Hogarth and William Holman Hunt...and... um... a film poster...

TT280 Course Description

There are more and more TT280 pages springing up all over the place now, as you'd expect, of course, what with it being a web design course and all! Here are a few:
Bill Larnach's : : : NOMADS by Keith Evetts : : : Delicata Designs : : : MyTangledWeb : : : Toni Walton's page

Accessibility and good practice - The Code Police! : : : Mencap Accessibility Services : : : Cross-browser testing : : : The Jedi Council : : : Webxact (formerly known as Bobby) : : : CAST : : : Any Browser Campaign : : : Tunna Resources : : : Way handy everything-checker: Fagan Finder : : : Guild of Accessible Web Designers

Behold, I Stand at the Door and Knock HTML and CSS - General : : : Webmonkey : : : W3Schools - HTML and CSS : : : HTML Goodies : : : Almost insanely-clever CSS thing

Do You Guru? : : : Flanders : : : Nielsen : : : Useitorloseit : : : Meyerweb

Book Sites : : : DWS : : : Sklarface : : : Robin Williams

Making it Pretty : : : Some guy : : : The Non-Designer's Design Guide : : : Yale Style Guide : : : CSS Zen Garden : : : Curved Table Tutorial : : : Accessible CSS rollovers : : : How to embed flash in a standards-compliant way (and make it stop working in firefox at the same time!!!)

Media : : : Web Talk Guys : : : Geek Radio interview with Tim Berners-Lee

Gizmos : : : Evil CSS : : : Browser Stats : : : Spacehopper Webmaster Links : : : Favelets : : : Lipsum generator : : : A List Apart : : : Dr Watson (lots of handy free tools including a web page word counter!) : : : Character code list

TT281 The Client Side

TT281 Course Description

Javascript Links : : : Dave Thau's Webmonkey tutorial : : : The Javascript Source : : : The Course Book : : : Netscape Devedge : : : Javascript Manual : : : W3Schools : : : Codepunk's Advanced Javascript : : : Damn cunning javascript link thingy.

DHTML : : : Dynamic Drive : : : Taylor's DHTML walkthrough : : : DHTML lab : : : DHTML Central : : :

Student Sites - BBM (Hilma Miles) : : : Catzwhiskerz : : : Bill Larnach

Regex Coach and Regular Expressions.info

Mozilla Firefox has a very handy JavaScript Console which I found very useful for debugging my TT281 ECA scripts

TT282 The Server Side

June 2004
Well, I've managed to get my Linux laptop talking to my Win2K server so I'm all set to be able to hand-code the ASP in a linux text editor, shoot it over to the server and test it on my desktop. Why would I want to do it this way? No reason at all! It gives me a little nerd thrill of compy-joy though! Mmmm...networks...

Jakob Nielsen Triumphing Over Death Aug 2004
Muddled through this one somehow with very little reference to the course book which seemed very badly written and full of typographical fuck-ups. I tended to look at a "...For Dummies" volume for the general outline and a few trips to the web to fill in the gaps.

ASP: Course Book (But Beginning Active Server Pages 3.0 is supposed to be better) : : : MS Developers' Network : : : Webmonkey - Server-Side Scripting Shoot-out, ASP intro , Extending IIS, and more about ASP : : : Four Guys from Rolla : : : Edgequest (NB - at time of writing, site is undergoing reconstruction but by the time you read this it might be ok again) : : : Session Management

Related: BigNose Bird (SSI) : : : W3SChools VBScript Page : : : Access

Web Server Stuff: How Web Servers Work : : : Apache.org : : :

Security: Articsoft Security Info : : : SANS Internet Vulnerabilities : : : The Wily Hacker : : : Infosyssec

Wireframing: Wireframes at the DMXZone : : : If you want to try a different wireframing tool, try Fusium.com.

TT282 Course Description : : : Limitations/details of the TTASP Sun One server's support for ASP

...And The Rest

Having already signed on for a whacking 110 points this year I think I may need to lie down for a while and rest before taking the final three units, which are TT380 (Databases within Website Design), TT381 (Open Source Development Tools) and TT382 (Web Server Management, Performance and Tuning). There are so many courses I'd love to take. What a shame there are only so many hours in the day!

Jayson Gurney's TT380 study blog : : TT382 student smight like some of the IT Idiots podcasts such as this one : : : Neil Anderson's TT Page : : : Open Saucepots

Anyway, to round up, here are a few links that are relevant to anyone studying any of these courses:

Brainjar : : : Webmonkey : : : W3Schools : : : Dev Mechanic : : : HighRankings.com : : : ConText (General -purpose text editor with syntax highlighting for HTML, javascript, PHP, WML, ASP and more!) : : : TT28x Web Applications group. (Requires signup)

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