Resources for Web Development Students @ Robin’s Blog

Some of you have mentioned to me that the current class forum is difficult to navigate. I tend to agree, the forum itself seems to be a bit clumsy. Currently we are using a content management system called Xoops. I decided to test some of the different content management systems to see if another platform would meet our needs. I setup a Mambo site and I am not sure that the forum module is any easier to navigate (but I do like the administrative interface…very easy). I then decided to try Nuke Evolution, a content management system based on the popular PHPNuke and I think this is the forum we may use. The reason that I think this might be a better choice for the classroom is because the forum uses the popular PHPBB.

You can try out the “beta” forum at http://forum.robinsblog.com/index.php. This really is a “beta” site since both the Nuke Evolution application and the site layout are both still being tested and perfected. Please take a look at the forum and let me know what you think about the navigation and ease of use.

Edit: 10/17/05 – The beta forum is giving me trouble (is that why they call it beta?) This is on hold until I can figure out the problem or a more stable version of the software is released.

The nice thing about using content management systems is that they offer a lot of great features for communities. You can add your own recommended links, news articles, downloads, write reviews of software, hardware, book reviews, and web sites, and create your own class journal. There are a lot more modules that I can add to the site, but lets see how you like it first, so visit today. If you like it, we can move the forum posts from the old site to the new site.

More beta news from around the web.

Yahoo now offers Yahoo Podcasts Beta; use this tool to browse or search for podcasts. The site highlights new, noteworthy, and popular podcasts as well. Listeners can rate and review the podcasts. You don’t need special software to listen, so you should be able to check out some of the technology podcasts in class (there is also food podcasts). there is even a tutorial for creating your own podcast!

When CSS hacks begin to fail. The IEBlog requests a Call to action: The demise of CSS hacks and broken pages. If you have been using any of the following hacks in your sites you may want to read this article:

html > body – http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ChildHack
* html – http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=StarHtmlHack
head:first-child + body – http://centricle.com/ref/css/filters/tests/owen/
head + body – http://www.dithered.com/css_filters/css_only/head_adjacent_sibling_body.html
body > element – http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ChildHack

It seems that in testing the beta of IE7 many sites are failing because of hacks. Surprise, surprise. Besides CSS and IE7 you will also learn about the new browser features that look pretty good. Microsoft also has a “Team RSS” Blog that you may want to check out.

CSSTidy optimizes your CSS documents. It will convert color names to hex values (shorthand if possible), duplicate properties are merged, unnecessary white space is removed, missing semicolons are added, incorrect newlines in strings are fixed, missing units are added, bad colors (and color names) are fixed. I would recommend that you keep a copy of your original CSS document on your hard drive for regular editing, when you are ready to upload, make a copy and run it thru CSSTidy and upload the optimized version. I suggest this because optimized documents are not as easy to read because all extra whitespace is removed.

Remember the Milk – get organized, manage all of your todo lists.