body
{

background-color: #ffc;
font: arial, tahoma, sans serif;
}

However, one can do a lot more in the overall structure of the CSS file. For example, assuming the CSS may contain special characters, one should consider it a best practice to include a character set declaration at the beginning of the CSS file.

@charset “UTF-8″;

This must occur before any comments or other information in the file. More details can be found at the W3C site.

One should then have copyright (possibly creator) and version information to identify the CSS file. There should also be some sort of table of contents (especially as the file grows in size to hundreds of lines). To expedite searching for information, one might preface each entry with a unique character string which will not directly be used anywhere else in the document (for example, a tilde).

So, a template CSS stylesheet should have the  following characteristics;

@charset “UTF-8″;
/*
copyright 2010. Mark DuBois. Some rights reserved.
version 1.0
modified:
date:
changes:

Table of contents (to jump to a specific part of this document, just search for the unique characters at the start of each line).

~1 Color guide
~2 Reset values
~3 Global constants (identifiers)
~4 Global classes
~5 Home page (items unique to the home page)
~6 Other pages throughout site
~7 Sidebar
~8 Footer
*/

Within the CSS, one would then place specific comments so the individual sections can be easily located, for example:

/* ~1 Color guide
#ffc – light yellow – used for background
*/

Obvously, your mileage will vary with a specific site. It is not as important to have a specific section (such as footer) as it is to be consistent throughout the sites you create. This should vastly improve maintenance of the sites. I recall a quote from an individual at Howest University (Belgium) during a webinar I recently attended – “develop your code as if it will be maintained by a violent psychopath who knows where you live.” While most of us will likely never have this specific problem, it is always a good idea to make your code as maintainable as possible. As a minimum, following the above suggestions should make it much easier to locate specific items.

I know tools like Dreamweaver CS5 make it much easier to work with CSS, but even with those tools, well structured and well documented  CSS should be encouraged. Your comments are most appreciated (due to the vast number of spam attempts, I have to moderate all comments – sad, but this is the world we inhabit). If you post a legitimate comment or insight I will approve it (regardless whether you agree with these thoughts above or not)?

First and foremost, everyone should follow instructions. The contest is designed with a very specific set of challenges and those are the challenges which should be addressed. Ask questions. Think of the contest supervisor and judge as the client. They can provide insights into the challenges. Some of the questions posed were excellent. However, I would have expected more. Also make certain you document the scaffolding process. Take notes on the printed version of the contest that was provided. This helps the judges see that you are actively and critically thinking about the contest and deciding how to break it into smaller chunks which can be addressed individually.

From a technical perspective, make certain to save your work. Save often. We called teams for interviews and noted that many did not save their work when they were interviewed. It is also a good idea to make certain to not have any “untitled document” titles and to include necessary meta information to help with search engine spiders. Lastly, don’t forget to include comments in your HTML and CSS.

As everyone saw, we emphasized HTML and CSS knowledge this year. Adherence to web standards and a good understanding of accessibility issues will go a long way to generating successful pages for each of the challenges.

I hope to be able to post a few more comments after the competition has ended. From our perspective, it looks like everyone enjoyed the competition and is rising to the challenges. Congratulations to all who competed. You are a model for your peers. You stepped up and took a risk to improve your knowledge and test your skills. Well done. Although there can only be one first place winner in each contest (secondary and post-secondary), you all should be proud of your accomplishments today.

Lastly, many, many thanks to the sponsors of our contest – Lynda.com and the World Organization of Webmasters. You rock.

• 82 courses completed (3 more in progress at the moment)
• 3,945 individual movies viewed (equates to 10.8 movies per day on average for the entire year)
• 291.41 hours of video viewed (36.4 days at 8 hours per day, but who works just 8 hours anymore – which translates to an average of 47 minutes per day)

Although a number of courses focused on Adobe technologies, many also focused on other areas. What I found most helpful was not only reviewing and honing my skills as I reviewed and worked through various examples, but also seeing how others teach these technologies. I have tried to employ some of these concepts into the classes I teach as well as some of the approaches to covering these technologies.

It is hard work keeping up with technologies and this is one resource that I plan to continue utilizing. As I mention to students from time to time, it is important to keep learning. Technologies employed with web systems continue to change rapidly. While nearly 4,000 individual movies may seem like a mountain, it was done one small step at a time (only 10 movies per day at a cost of less than an hour per day on average).

Full disclosure – I am a member of the Lynda.com advisory board (and have been since October, 2009). I would have used these resources regardless of my affiliation.

If you are curious about the courses I have completed, you can follow the link below (will open in a new window/ tab).

First – welcome to class. I am here to help you better understand the material and apply it to real life situations. If you ever have a question about the material, contact me and I will do my best to help. I have a number of tools which I can employ to help you better understand the concepts and tools we will be using.

Second – you are responsible for your future. Since you are taking these classes, I make the assumption you aspire to be a web professional. You are encouraged to develop and enhance your professionalism as part of these classes. For example, do the absolute best you can on each assignment. Do not settle for second best. You may someday wish to include some of these as part of a portfolio of your work. Also, take responsibility for your actions. If you know you will miss a deadline, notify me in advance. As a general rule, I will provide you with extra time. However, if you do not notify me beforehand, you will receive a grade of “unsatisfactory” or a 0 for that assignment.

Third – take time to enjoy the class experience. You have the opportunity to interact with your peers. In some courses, we will be working on group projects. In others,  you will be working alone, but will still need to interact with others via the discussion forum. Everyone bring a different and unique experience to class. Learn from what others have to offer.

I hope you are looking forward to this semester as much as I am. For those who are in the East Peoria area, we do have an optional open lab for all CMWEB students on Wednesday and Thursday nights (from 6:00 – 8:30 p.m. in TC 210 – ICC East Peoria campus). If you are able to make it – great. for those outside of the area (or who can not make it on the above nights, I also offer an online office hour (Tuesday from 6 – 6:50 p.m. Central Time zone). I use the ConnectPro software to allow us to share desktop applications.

I wanted to take a moment and acknowledge a select group of students. In the interest of student confidentiality, I really can’t mention your names publicly. You know who you are because you received a note from me attached to your final grade for the semester in your chosen class. You small group of students achieved a significant milestone but may not realize how few have met that milestone. Specifically, you scored 100% on every assignment, quiz, project, and final exam. Yes, there were several students this semester in various classes I taught. I went back through my notes for the past decade that I have been teaching and have done a quick tally. Frankly, more people have walked on the surface of the moon than have achieved this milestone of a perfect score in one of my classes. If you are curious, I understand there are 12 astronauts who have walked on the moon. Yes, many students have gotten a grade of “A” in my classes, but most elect to take the final with minimal effort and get the course grade they have already earned. Only a very few pursue a perfect score on the final. So, congratulations to each of you. You know who you are. Keep up the great work.

I look forward to working with everyone in the spring semester. Enjoy the winter break and Happy Holidays to all.

Although a beta version had been released in October (Oct. 13, I believe), this was the official launch date. Although AOL dropped support for this in 2007, this marked a milestone. Prior to this I used VoilaWWW and a smattering of other browsers (I later obtained a copy of Internet in a Box – big deal at the time). Hard to believe how far we have come in such a short time.

• Online office hours using ConnectPro – 42 student visits during the semester (average of 2.2 students per session).
• Open lab – 304 student visits (average of 9.8 students per open lab)

While the online office hours may not seem like many students, this is a vast improvement over previous semesters. Every online session (with one exception) this semester had at least one student stop by for online assistance. During most previous semesters, online (and in person) office hours were a complete waste of my time. Many semesters, not a single student stopped by during the allocated time. To answer the question you likely have – the reason for this is that I tend to respond very quickly to email and online messages throughout the entire semester (and average many messages per day). Therefore, in the past office hours were pointless as I handled the questions as they arose (and did not wait for a specific time to meet with students). However, we are required to hold office hours so I waited patiently (and worked on other lessons) while no one ever stopped by. However, using ConnectPro meant that I could actually share my applications and desktop with students visiting and we could quickly solve problems that students had encountered. I also set up a few additional sessions for students who needed help at a given time (rather than waiting for the required office hour time). Was it a perfect solution, no. Sometimes, there were voice problems with various microphones (and not all students had microphones). However, this was a vast improvement over previous semesters. It is likely I will continue to use this tool and hold online office hours in this manner for some time to come. This also meant that I was able to communicate much more clearly with students in other states and countries who are taking our classes. Personally, I am sold on the use of ConnectPro. I would be interested in comments from students regarding their experiences with the ConnectPro environment.

I also included a note about the open lab (which both Shari and I make available to students who are in the area). Part of the reason for this is that I have heard comments from some who question whether anyone actually shows up for these open lab sessions. Obviously the answer is yes. Since we had an average of almost 10 students per session throughout the semester, these seem to be a good use of an otherwise empty room on campus (empty at that time of the night).

As an aside, I believe that the above numbers also demonstrate that students prefer to have actual personal interactions (rather than virtual) for help with specific problems as they learn web technologies. And to answer the obvious question asked by many students – we have to do the classes in online fashion only because of the number of students we have from other states and regions. In this manner we can serve the greatest number of students who want to learn web systems. Yes, it is harder to take online only classes (it is also harder to teach them). However, I believe that tools like ConnectPro help us get closer to the physical in-class experience desired by most.

I am running Windows 7 Professional as the base system on the laptop. Of course, to run some older programs I have installed the Windows XP Mode virtual environment. Since I had to install Virtual PC for the XP virtual environment, I decided to also create a separate virtual machine running XP Pro. Then, since I teach security classes, I also created a Windows Server 2008 SP2 virtual machine and a Windows Server 2008 Core machine. So, if you are counting, that is now 5 versions of various Windows Operating Systems on this laptop. I then also installed Sun’s Virtual Box environment and both Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server. The tally now stands at 7 separate operating systems on one laptop.

Here is a brief overview of the development environments I have created. Yes, I am able to share the disk space across all environments so I can read a downloaded file from any of the operating systems.

• Ubuntu Desktop
  • Apache 2
  • PHP
  • MySQL
  • Ruby on Rails
  • Network admin and hacking tools (I do teach security)
  • The environment can be accessed from from Windows 7 via a non-standard port so I can develop in Ubuntu and test in browsers on both Windows and Linux – this is a test region
• Ubuntu Server
  • Apache 2
  • PHP
  • MySQL
  • Ruby on Rails
  • SSH access
  • This is a quality assurance region (which can also be accessed from windows 7 for additional testing of developed applications). After confirming all works, I can then move applications to production servers on the WWW.
• Windows XP Professional
  • Ruby on Rails
  • XAMPP
    • Apache 2
    • MySQL
    • PHP
  • This is a test environment for developing in the Windows world.
• Windows Server 2008
  • Application Server (IIS)
  • SQL Server 2008 Express
  • This is a development environment for testing Windows based web applications
  • This environment will also be used for developing and testing items for the security classes I teach.
• Windows Server 2008 core
  • This is a command shell only version of Server 2008 and I am still getting used to doing everything at the command shell (I know one can remote, but I am stubborn on this point – grin)
• Windows XP Virtual Mode
  • I only plan to use this environment for older applications which can not run in Windows 7
• Windows 7
  • I plan to use this as the main platform for developing tutorials and documentation, for example Camtasia and Captivate can be used to capture screens in the other environments (at least that is my plan).

So, there you have it. And it only took 3 days to set up (remember I also had to install anti-virus on these systems as well as firewalls and various web browsers). As you may suspect, I will be installing other applications and moving data from other systems for weeks to come. I hope to report back in a few months as to how this approach is working out.

To complete the insanity, I am somewhat considering running virtualization within one of the Windows Server 2008 instances. This would give me the ability to try out a virtual environment within a virtual environment. Perhaps that is going a bit over the edge *grin*.