Exciting news!!! We have finished connecting our server and all of our workstations at the ROP Pleasant Hill Training Center. We will be open for classes beginning tomorrow, January 29, 2008 at 12:15 p.m. The 4:15 p.m. class will also resume tomorrow - YAY!

The room is beautiful, clean and very spacious. All of the computers have had a new keyboard and mouse installed. I will be starting to install Adobe Design Premium on all of our workstations tomorrow — this may take several days to complete. We still have boxes to unpack, but we can get those put away during the week.

Our new address is:

399 Taylor Blvd., Ste. 110
Pleasant Hill, CA 94523

We are in the first building when you enter the parking lot. Please park in the first, upper parking lot to the left and walk down the stairs to the classroom (there are signs posted for the classroom in the window). If you are not able to walk down stairs, please park in 2nd lot to the left; but do not park in the spaces closest to the building as they are reserved for other tenants.

Telephone: 925-609-7108
Fax: 925-609-7290

We hit a minor snag with our phone lines today; they should be installed tomorrow. If you need to reach me, please email rwood ‘at’ cccoe.k12.ca.us - I may not respond right away. We do not currently have Internet access in the classroom; our network manager has the awful cold that’s going around and was out ill today. He should be in tomorrow before class to install our router.

We will need to be sure to scan ALL Flash/USB drives for viruses before any files are opened - please remove portable applications from your Flash drives with the exception of Firefox before you come to school. Also, please remember that there is no food or drink allowed in the classroom; especially with brand new carpet!

A big thank you to all of my students for your patience; you are the BEST! Thanks to all of the people who made our new classroom possible!

Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

Robin

Good news, our move to the Pleasant Hill Executive Park is on schedule. We hope that we will have classes running in Pleasant Hill as early as next Tuesday, January 29, 2008. Please check here for further updates. I will post on Monday evening or Tuesday morning to let you all know if we get all of the computers installed and class is open for business.

Our new address is:
399 Taylor Blvd., Ste. 110
Pleasant Hill, CA 94523

Telephone: 925-609-7108
Fax: 925-609-7290
Phone lines will be installed 1/28/08.

Thanks for your patience.

Please direct all questions to rwood ‘at’ cccoe.k12.ca.us

See you all soon.

Robin Wood
ROP Instructor

I went over to the new classroom today and it’s looking FABULOUS!!!!!!!! It seems so spacious! Here is a photo.

OK, here is one more.

My iPhone photos really don’t do the room justice.

I have a little slide presentation with more photos to show tomorrow at the OneStop. If you can’t make it to the OneStop you can watch it at http://www.robinsblog.com/PHTrainingCenter.wmv it’s over 15mb, so dial up users beware. I’m also going to try and get over to the new classroom tomorrow morning to take some video.

It looks like everything is on schedule and I am very hopeful that we will be holding classes at the Pleasant Hill Training Center by 2/1. I will send out an email as soon as we have a firm date, but in case I don’t have your correct email please keep reading here for updates.

I found some excellent articles at Chromatic Sites Web Technology on developing professional Web sites that I think all of the Web development students should read.

The first article focuses on the process of great Web design and details the three stages: conceptualization and planning, modeling, and execution.

The process of web design can be compared to the process of writing a research paper. In the conceptualization/planning stage, flowcharts (the outline) are created which illustrate the navigational structure of your website. In the modeling stage, static wireframes are created (the rough draft) which illustrate the skeletal layout for each section of your website. After the wire frames are created, graphics, colors and text are used to create the design of your web pages based on the layout of the wire frames. In the execution stage, your design is converted into a format supported by web browsers, text and content are added, and finally, your website is published live to the Internet for the world to see (final draft).

All three stages of the design process are equally important. Many web designers skip a stage in order to save time or because they don’t think that is is necessary. However, all three stages are necessary if your goal is to create a successful design and respectable website. Even if the three stages are used, there are many mistakes that web designers can make that will lead to poor-quality, non user-friendly websites. It’s time to clean out the cabinet of bad web design practices and restock it with the good ones.

Read the rest of Dos and Donts Guide to Great Web Design

The second article outlines the 12 steps to creating a professional Web design.

1. Multi-stage web design process
2. Project collaboration tools (if project has more than one person involved)
3. High-quality design
4. Attention to detail
5. Current web design technology (CSS)
6. Well written, interesting, grammatically-correct content
7. Usability
8. XHTML and CSS validation (clean code)
9. Standards-compliant
10. Optimization
11. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly
12. Abuse of Flash, Javascript, and sound effects

Although there is no “one size fits all” process to creating a website, there are a number of things a website designer must do to create a professional web design and website.

Read the 12 Steps to Creating a Professional Web Design.

Be sure to check out the rest of Chromatic’s excellent articles.

Noupe has a wonderful roundup of 101 CSS techniques.

CSS has fundamentally changed web design, it has provided designers with a set of properties that can be tweaked to make various techniques to make your pages just look right.

Today we are presenting a round-up of 101 CSS techniques designers use all the time. Definitely worth taking a very close look at!

This is a two part series. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

Michael purchased Adobe Creative Suite at MacWorld. He was kind enough to contact Creation Engine about extending the discount pricing and they are continuing their show special until January 31, 2008. You will need to have a student ID that you can fax or email to them after you place your order.

Details are at http://www.creationengine.com/macworld2008

Smashing Magazine has pulled together a list of the best Flash tutorials. There are over 25 tutorials and sites for you to check out.

drweb.de has a nice collection of 35 free fonts that you can download for your graphic projects.

Check out Splashup, an online image editor and creator. This is a Web based image editor, no software installation is required. With Splashup you can even create and edit images with multiple layers. This online image editor even has filters and layer effects. Splashup can be used to create Web graphics and/or to edit digital photos. Splashup is very easy to use and definitely worth bookmarking.

Internet Explorer 6 isn’t perfect, far from it, but unfortunately while the user base for the outdated browser is still high, it’s in our best interest as designers and website owners to ensure that our sites work correctly for the majority if not all of our users.

There are bugs and problems with Internet Explorer 6 (and even IE7) but you may be surprised to hear that for myself, ensuring a website is compatible with IE6 adds next to nothing to development time.

Read the rest of this great article at Dave Wood’s site