Chris Mills, who looks after Dev Opera has gathered together the great and the good from the world of the web and developed the first instalment of the Web Standards Curriculum.
The Opera Web Standards Curriculum is an education program to help propagate best practices and increase web standards usage on the web. It provides a thorough grounding in all the skills you need to be a proficient front end developer, including web background theory, in-depth HTML and CSS, design principles and introductory DOM/JavaScript.
This is a fantastic resource aimed at web developers, designers, students, educators; just anyone who wants to learn web design the right way. Whether you’re starting out or simply want to refresh your understanding this is the place to go. Written by experts such as Mark Norman Francis, Jonathan Lane, Linda Goin, Paul Haine, Roger Johansson, Ben Buchanan, Jenifer Hanen, Craig Grannell and Christian Heilmann you can hardly go wrong.
Presented as if you are working on a project from start to finish, the Web Standards Curriculum is broken down into a series of articles taking you from information architecture and wire-framing through to design and build of pages using (X)HTML, CSS and so on. It kicks off with some necessary scene setting describing the origins of the Internet and the Web which in turn provides the backdrop for the rationale of why we need web standards. What’s so great is that while you can opt to read the Curriculum from start to finish you can also just dip into it as it works just as well as modules.
I particularly liked the articles about colour theory, colour schemes and design mock-ups. While I may understand colour from an accessibility point of view this opened up my understanding of how uses of colour can be manipulated to enhance typography, forms, lists, tables and images, all of which are covered in more depth in other articles.
All this lovely goodness doesn’t stop there however. In total there will be fifty plus articles with future additions planned to cover accessibility, CSS and JavaScript. The Web Standards Curriculum will also be maintained to ensure that you get the most up to date information. The best bit however is that it’s for you to use not just as a resource for yourself, but also when teaching others either in schools and colleges or at work.
Opera’s Web Standards Curriculum is also supported by the Web Standards Project (WaSP) who are themselves developing The Curriculum Project. This will be a resource that is intended to be used by those in education, as well as anyone needing to update knowledge on web related technologies.
As Glenda Sims, Senior Systems Analyst University of Texas, and co-lead of WaSP says of Opera’s Web Standards Curriculum says:
Web development and design are ever evolving professions. Anyone teaching these subjects must ask themselves if they are equipping their students with best practices or burdening them with impractical methodologies. All of us in this field can benefit from this resource and use it as a catalyst to further the W3C vision of ‘Web for Everyone. Web on Everything.
Enjoy, share, teach and be part of the movement to build a better web!
Further resources
- Dev.Opera - Dev Opera is a community resource site where developers can share tips, tricks, extensions and more.
- Web Standards Project (WaSP) - a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.
- Business Case for Web Standards wiki - a resource that logs case studies and information supporting the business case for web standards.
- A List Apart - A List Apart Magazine explores the design, development and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.
- WebAim - Web Accessibility In Mind.
