Learn web design the right way

In recent days, there has been much talk about the future of HTML and XHTML, following the announcement that the work on XHTML2 is going to be wrapped up. I’ll not re-hash what everyone else has said here, instead I’ll simply refer you to Jeffrey Zeldman and Jeremy Keith’s respective posts.

Shortly after this all happened, I received this email from a prospective buyer:

I’ve been interested in your book for a while, and checked out SitePoint’s free sample chapters. I noticed before much else that you use XHTML. I’m wondering if you’ll be coming out with a third edition using HTML 5 now that XHTML 2 has been dropped in favour of HTML 5.

To which I would like to say:

The demise of XHTML2 does not mean that XHTML1 is, by the same notion, not fit for purpose.

Some web developers prefer to use HTML4, others prefer XHTML1 while others are investigating and/or tentatively using HTML5. HTML5 is still something of a moving target, while HTML4 and XHTML1 are well-defined, stable and well-established specifications. You are free to choose whatever you wish, just do it right (follow that language’s rules, e.g. do you need to have lowercase tags? Should tags be closed? Are attribute values quoted or not?).

In my book, I teach with XHTML1. Among the reasons for doing this are:

• The rules are a bit more rigid but they are consistent – this is better for new people learning, in my opinion. No shortcuts to learn
• If you learn XHTML syntax, it’s arguably easier to transition back to writing valid HTML4 than it is to do it the other way around
• The issue of serving the XHTML with the correct MIME type is so ridiculously above the level of knowledge that a beginner should be expected to know that it’s best not touched upon, lest it confuse the heck out of the reader. There is little point in making the reader sweat the small stuff rather than just letting them get on and learn (in an earlier draft, there was an advisory note to this end, but in the review stage we all felt it was best to cut out)
• SitePoint wanted/preferred it. From a marketing point of view, XHTML is an easier one to sell, as it’s a newer spec; some people might (mistakenly) think that learning HTML4 is not appropriate or fresh enough, so I can easily understand why the publishers prefer this

XHTML1 is still appropriate to teach, the demise of XHTML2 has no effect on this at all. So, if you were having second thoughts about this book, as the person who wrote this email did, please don’t worry – I’ll still be teaching you how to build your site the right way!

Well. Erm …. wow.

When I put a competition on the web site for just 5 copies of the book, I wasn’t sure what to ask as a competition question. I didn’t want to ask anything too hard/tricky, so I left it quite open and decided that the way to win a copy was to entertain me with some creative writing – just as I found it really funny the way that people would draft over-the-top creative begging letters on Freecycle. It’ll be fun, I thought.

250 entries of creative writing later, and I have a very different opinon. I wish I’d gone for a simple closed question along the lines of "what does HTML stand for" and then just done a lucky dip!

I must confess that it’s been great to read through some of the funniest and silliest emails I’ve received in a long time; I’ve also received emails from people who appear to be on the verge of self harm or even harming me or their nearest or dearest if they don’t win a copy. Well, I did say to exaggerate! I received emails from people who:

• wanted a copy to create a web site to put a site of themselves online to get back at a cheating ex
• claimed that their dog had eaten all of their html coursework
• were living rough while supporting their family of 15 blind, amputee children
• thought the book would make a good doorstop or help with a wobbly table
• started their email to me as "Dear Andy Clarke" or "Dear Ian whoeveryouare" (fail!)
• wrote several pages’ worth of back story, worthy of publishing as a novella
• admitted being senior people in their respective industry, responsible for web … and not having a clue what they’re talking about!
• taught me all about squirrel habitations (yes, it did relate to building a web site)
• claimed their pregnant wife just likes the smell of SitePoint books and the local supplier just ran out
• were abducted by aliens and had all programming knowledge wiped from memory following a particular experiment
• said that they were fed up with camping in the aisles of the local bookstore to read my book and that if they didn’t get a copy, their continued presence there might cause the store to stop stocking the book

Then there were quite a lot of emails which seemed to be genuine tales of woe – too many for a measly 5 copies to help out with! I really started to feel how difficult it must be for people working in charities having to turn down requests for help for things a lot more important than some (in comparison) silly little book.

In the end, I decided to choose a mixture of people who either made me laugh the most or who I felt would get the most benefit from learning the book. For reasons of privacy, I’ll not mention full names/details here – I’ll contact the winners directly, but they were:

• A photographer whose website looked in need of a make-over (but whose letter to me was the most colourful of the bunch!)
• 10-year-old Dennis whose ‘tutor’ was Dad but who was doing a rubbish job and needed to be fired (now he is)
• Kevin, recently unemployed and looking to re-train (a sign of the times – there were quite a few of these)
• A schools outreach program in Zimbabwe
• A new mother trying to learn a new skill so that she can manage a business from home and bring up the baby too (awww!)

Now, because there were so many funny entries to the competition, I’ve selected some of my favourites [published on accessify.com] and collated them here. Once again, I’ve removed the authors’ names to save them from any potential embarassment, and have also scanned through to make sure that there are no other personally identifiable pieces of information.

Thanks to everyone for taking part – it’s been fun … but I’ll definitely go with the closed question approach next time!

Please note – this competition is now closed and the winners have been announced.

I’ve got some promotional copies of my beginners web development book (Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way with HTML & CSS) that I’m just itching to give away to people who can guarantee them some good homes. How can you win a copy? Well, there are five copies to giveaway (shared between this site and accessify.com). All I need from you is an email, which should be sent to iknowsomeonewhowouldreallyloveacopyofyourbook@accessify.com (you might want to copy that) with the most cheesy/over-the-top/unbelievable/inventive piece of creative begging that you can think of. Don’t let facts get in the way of a creative begging letter – be creative! In fact, just go for the kind of thing that people do when begging for items on Freecycle.

The closing date for this is Friday 23rd January (0900 GMT) – after this point the email address above will no longer be active. I’ll pick five winners soon after (as long as it takes me to read them all – 80 and counting so far!) and contact directly to arrange a shipping address. Good luck.

It’s been a while since I checked reader feedback on my HTML beginners book, but with all the recent activity taking place with the second edition push, I received a really nice email from a customer of the first edition. This was sent to me privately, via SitePoint, and I’ve asked if I can re-publish, to which that person has said ‘yes’ but asked for it to be anonymous. I promise, though, that this is a genuine email (I’ve just highlighted some key phrases that I thought were pertinent). The reason I wanted to re-publish this note is simple – it proves that the audience I aimed the book at, in both editions, is being well served by this book. Anyway, enough from me, let’s hear from the happy customer:

I saw that a new edition of your book ‘Build your own website the right way’ has just been released. If I wrote a book, I think I would find it interesting to know if it had a big effect on anyone.

Well it was the first book on web design I had ever read, before that I didn’t even really understand how the internet worked in its simplest form (I didn’t even know what a ‘browser’ was – even though I was using one). I actually thought after reading most of the book ‘Hey this is really easy’ (well done) ‘I thought this stuff was supposed to be really complex and hard?’ but then I discovered Javascript and server side technology, and started to understand where the complexities of web development lay.

Anyway I think its been about two years since I first read your book, and since then I have learnt stacks about web development/design and now confidently build web sites using PHP, JavaScript, mySQL and obviously CSS and HTML, always with web standards and accessibility in mind. In september I am starting a degree at university studying e-commerce and internet systems, and I’m currently programming my first online shop.

So thanks for watering the seed of my interest in web design/development! A brilliant beginners book!

So, perhaps you have got the second version of Build Your Own Website The Right Way Using HTML & CSS, or were thinking of getting a copy, and wondered “What happened to the HTML Reference that was at the back of the first edition?”

Fear not! While the second edition does not have a reference at the back, you have two choices. One of them will cost you nothing, the other will cost you a little more (but you get a hardback book with which to bash web standards ignoramuses over the head with when they say something silly – or is that ignoramii?)

The Ultimate HTML Reference is a much better reference than the somewhat slimline one that appeared at the end of the this book’s first edition, but there’s also a free online HTML reference that you can use straight away. So, please don’t think that you’re missing out on the good stuff.