Re: Offering the Beginner's Perspective

For IRC, here is an helpful link that will get you straight to the channel -
http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=YOUR-NICK-NAME&channels=webplatform


☆*PhistucK*


On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 1:02 PM, Chris Mills <cmills@opera.com> wrote:

>
> On 1 Apr 2013, at 21:46, David R. Herz <mr@theherzes.com> wrote:
>
> > Dear Developer Friends:
> >
> > I am new to this list.  I am a lawyer, a teacher, and starting work as
> coach, commentator on manners, and organizer of real estate deals. I am
> here because I want to make my own web pages properly, as opposed to
> futzing with the site builders – ack! – that my web-hosting service
> provides.  My problem is I like to do things right, or at least
> efficiently. I don’t know if that makes me a web-developer, but in this
> increasingly democratic (thanks to the internet) world, it’s a direction in
> which I would like to expand.
>
> Hi David, and welcome to our list! I think that your dedication to doing
> things right is to be respected, and I am confident that we can give you
> the information you need. At the moment, our site is far from finished. We
> have a noble goal - of creating *the* definitive web development resource -
> we have some passionate people involved, who want to make web development
> easier to learn, and we have a lot of "seed" content contributed from other
> resources.
>
> What we don't have is time, and there is a lot to do. We are working as
> fast as we can, but as you've noticed, some parts of te site have a
> distinctly "in progress" feel.
>
> But all is not lost. The beginner's section of the site is one I am
> particularly passionate about, and I would really like to make progress on
> it. And I think you can be of great help to me. Would you be willing to
> work through our material and given me feedback as you go, if I help you
> get over the current organizational hurdles we have, and make sure you are
> being sent to the right steps at each stage? From what you've said below,
> this pretty much sounds like what you would like to do anyway.
>
> I am an experienced trainer with a proven record of teaching web
> development to beginners, so you are in good hands … I would hope others on
> the list would vouch for that ;-)
>
> >
> > I could go out and buy a web pages for dummies type of book, or just cut
> and paste my Microsoft Word documents into the WYSIWYG editor of my web
> page, or have it convert automatically to html, but it seems to me this
> will leave me with some really sloppy mark up code that is outdated and
> difficult to manipulate, and anyway, some of my ideas (there are a handful
> of site ideas that spin about my head) will be better served if I can
> program them myself and call to the databases that I am also planning to
> build and use.
>
> Yes, definitely. There are so many advantages to writing your own markup
> and code that it would take too long to list them all here (although this
> is a separate thread that I would be happy to have with you at some later
> stage.)
>
> >
> > But that’s in the future. For the moment, I am really a beginner. I’ve
> looked at the web-platform stuff for “beginners” (but maybe even that
> presumes more knowledge than I have), and I realize that I am getting a bit
> lost. I wanted to color certain text. From what I see, this might be best
> handled via a CSS definition (I couldn’t even figure out how to do it
> in-line), but when I search for color or text color, I get a lot of
> information on various color coding systems, but can’t figure out how to
> paint a few words red, or some table headings blue, etc.
>
> The current beginners page (http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/beginners)
> isn't great; we were hoping to create a new set of beginner's information
> soon, which will take you through a whole project, step by step, giving you
> all you need at each stage. The proposed new beginner's landing page will
> look like this: http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/TEST:beginners
>
> The articles you see at the existing beginner's page are taken from the
> web standards curriculum, a tutorial series I developed a few years ago and
> then donated to this project. You can find a more easily accessible list of
> those articles at http://www.w3.org/community/webed/wiki/Main_Page
>
> In the webplatform project we are aiming to break those up and disperse
> them through the other relevant sections, such as HTML, CSS, concepts,
> etc., and create something even more structured and suitable for beginners
> on the beginners page.
>
> >
> > So what I am offering is to work with someone to provide a beginner’s
> perspective as I learn what I am doing so that we can document the process
> and design the W3C pages so that the next person who comes here as a
> beginner actually feels like he can get the tools here to start developing
> (or is it only writing, and does that mean I am in the wrong place?)
> well-formed web pages.
> >
> > I’d appreciate your input and advice on how we can move this project
> forward together.
>
> See above - let's do it ;-)
>
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > David R. Herz
> > mr@theherzes.com
> > I set up an IRC account, but can’t seem to reach the #webplatform page
> (I really am a beginner)
>
> I can help you with this too. Have you downloaded a char/IRC client?
>
> You need to make a new connection - this works pretty much the same in all
> chat clients. You need to set the server as irc.freenode.net and give
> yourself a nickname. Then when you've connected to that server, choose to
> join a room and specify the chat room name as #webplatform.
> #webplatform-site is also a useful one, if you want to talk more
> specifically about site structure, etc.
>
> > skype: drherz
> > aim: legal@theherzes.com
> > 1-203-517-0518
> > 972-4-641-8708
> > 972-52-579-1859
>
>
>