How to teach coworkers DIV & CSS?

[CJM]

Karl Grove gave you good advice, imho. If your freelance web developers
do not know how to write proper html, and don't know what css is, then
you have the wrong freelancers on the job. And if they're freelancers,
surely you can find new ones. Or is there a contract involved?

I think you are both being a little hard on him there.

Reading between the lines, it seems to me that his hands are tied.

Outsourcing is always about cheaper, not better. I expect Mr Mittens has
little control over who his company chooses as an outsourcing organisation.
While he ought to point out his concerns to his bosses, I suspect that it
will have little effect, and thus we have to decide whether to make the best
of a bad situation and help him, or take Karl's stance leave him in the
sh*t.

Personally, I'm for helping him...

That said, picking CSS-P is not a trivial step, and I would be doubtful that
this will be a pleasant experience. Would we want a act as a guinea pig for
a 3rd party to practice their skills? What is more, how professional can
they be if they cant find their own information on CSS-P themselves??

It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Just my £0.02

Chris

 

[Brian]

Brian wrote...


I think you are both being a little hard on him there.

! I don't think I'm being hard on the op. I am hard on the freelancers
who don't know what css is, but then, so are you (as quoted below).

it seems to me that his hands are tied.

I'd have to agree, if a contract is involved.

I expect Mr Mittens has little control over who his company chooses
as an outsourcing organisation. While he ought to point out his
concerns to his bosses, I suspect that it will have little effect

Yes, that may also be true.

Personally, I'm for helping him...

Me too. That's why I posted links to html tutorials in another thread.

That said, picking CSS-P is not a trivial step, and I would be
doubtful that this will be a pleasant experience.

It will be all the more difficult if their html code is not pristine.
Browsers do strange things when the html structure is ambiguous.

What is more, how professional can they be if they cant find their
own information on CSS-P themselves??

It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

I don't know why you're taking me to task; it appears that we are
largely in agreement over the cause of the problem.

 

[CJM]

I don't know why you're taking me to task; it appears that we are
largely in agreement over the cause of the problem.

I wasnt. Well, I didn't intend to.

It was response to multiple comments from multiple people... I had to post
it somewhere(!) lol
Perhaps I should have tagged it onto Karl's post...

cheers

Chris

 

[Michael Stemper]

Outsourcing is always about cheaper, not better.

No, sometimes it's about customer requirements. Some contracts will
have what's called a "local content" requirement; stating that 5%
or 25% of the contract content will be performed by "local" sources.
I've seen such where "local" was defined as a particular state (in
the US) and some where it was defined as the customer's country.

 

[Woolly Mittens]

<ahem> Actually, some of us *did* answer it. In my response, I even

First != Only.

Thanks everybody for the responses, sadly I won't see the results of the
efforts until the <insert warzone here> people get some work done.

 

[Lars Kasper]

I was asked to find some documentation which explains how to develop a
website using DIV's and CSS, instead of TABLES.

Why DIVs are not always the most appropriate elements to be used has
already been explained.

I dug around alistapart but couldn't find anything complete enough.

But it is a good resource link to give to the developers.

I searched through the W3C, but could only find the standards, not how to
apply them in the desired way.

Does anyone have some handy links for me???

No links in the first place, but books:

· "Designing With Web Standards" by Jeffrey Zeldman.
For people who know old-school HTML with FONTs and TABLEs and hundreds
of validator errors. Zeldman explains why and how to move from invalid
pages layouted with TABLES to valid XHTML Transitional pages with less
TABLE layout and style. This book is far from being perfect (by my high
coding standards, that is); there are some errors in the code and
content, there is too much X(HT)ML hype in it (a reader might think that
HTML is bad) -- but it is a good start for people who are not convinced
of valid (X)HTML, CSS and TABLEless layouts.

· "Eric Meyer on CSS" and "More Eric Meyer on CSS" by, surprisingly,
Eric A. Meyer.
Some real-world examples how to use CSS and more or less semantic markup
to produce modern websites. Use the companion websites to get a glance
at the several projects: <http://www.ericmeyeroncss.com/>,
<http://more.ericmeyeroncss.com/>

· To show your developers the power of CSS (so they get interested) lead
them to <http://www.csszengarden.com/>.


f'up2 <set.

 

[nice.guy.nige]

While the city slept, Brian <[email protected]> feverishly
typed:

[...]

Here's something from a restaurant website that I redid. [...]
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

Nice. But the image on the front page is a bit flat... I took the liberty of
adjusting the brightness / contrast etc in Paint Shop Pro, and here is a
comparison: http://www.nigenet.org.uk/stuff/tsm/

If you like it, feel free to use it.

Cheers,
Nige

--
Nigel Moss.

Email address is not valid. (e-mail address removed). Take the dog out!
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