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#1 2007-07-25 6:53 pm
Stupid Book...
This book I have for a beginning web development class is horrible! It teaches you deprecated HTML, then tells you why you shouldn't use it, then teaches you some CSS but tells you that you should still learn how to write deprecated code because some people still use legacy browsers...wtf? Why they don't just teach the newer standards (XHTML and CSS) from the beginning is beyond me. Anyone else deal with stupid books like this?
MacBook Pro 15.4"
2.5GHz CPU, 250GB HDD, 512MB VRAM
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#2 2007-07-28 3:57 pm
- Shadowless
- LCpl, USMC
- From: San Diego, CA
- Registered: 2005-10-10
- Posts: 2969
Re: Stupid Book...
Heh, when I learned Java we didn't even have a book. It was a bunch of photocopied pages stapled together. And it sucked.
We had to pay something like $60 for that crap, and then at the end of the semester our teacher kindly informed us that the entire text was online... for free.
Yay.
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#3 2007-07-28 9:00 pm
Re: Stupid Book...
It's not "HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide" is it? I took a Web Development course that covered similar issues. I'm not a big hand coder, but still had to learn hand coding for the class.
What's really frustrating about Web authoring is that you have to deal with the fact that a wide variety of users are going to be accessing your Web site. So if your audience is using browsers going back years and years (and on all different platforms), you're supposed to be polite and design the code to be compatible with as many users as possible. I'm with you, that sucks. Let them get of of their lazy butts and get their equipment updated for all I care. But sometimes the job requires you to reach as wide an audience as possible. Which means having to include Grandpa and his Windows '95 machine. Having to think that way about Web design, stinks! However, a lot of developers solve that problem by just ignoring the audience with obsolete browsers and put a disclaimer on you site that says – "this site is best run with Web browsers version number X and above" and solve it that way. Force them to upgrade their browsers, I say. Try to shoot for what the vast majority of users are doing. There's even Web sites out there that give you the breakdown of what the most popular browser versions are.
It's true though, you may learn a lot of things in classes that are useless in the real world and that you may never actually use. I'm living proof of that.
Last edited by adamjg (2007-07-28 9:01 pm)
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