Web Standards Ramp-Up

Filed in archive Basics on February 20, 2006

Recently I've had to stop working so hard on backend business logic and spend a little more time worrying about the presentation layer of my web sites. It may have something to do with me being too cheap to hire someone but I'm not exactly sure. I know it is 2006 and I'm ashamed to admit it but I still use HTML tables all the time to build my sites. I'm pretty good at getting a few levels of nested tables together to make things look just right on my sites. The problem is the people have actually advanced beyond that method of building sites these days and I decided to get up to speed on the "right" way to do things. That is not to say that I won't throw in the odd HTML table when I need it... it is just that designers won't, hopefully, make fun of my attempts at making a site look good after having gotten ramped-up on things. I'm sure they will anyway, who am I trying to kid, but I persevere.

Anyway, here are three resources I've found helpful in getting up to speed on things:

• First, is the incredibly helpful blog A List Apart


• Designing with Web Standards by Jeffery Zeldman


• Finally, the podcast and the forums over at boagworld.com

This is not meant to be an end all and be all list for folks. There may be better resources out there but these are mine at the moment. I hope this will help folks get up to speed as well if they are looking to learn more about Web Standards. The A List Apart blog and boagworld resources will also offer the opportunity to see what other folks are doing and what resources they may be using.