Words
Journal
see also: poetry, prose, brautigan, spoken by firelight
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Training on Web Standards #
Working on a required reading list for a new contractor starting soon here at work. Debating how much more context to give here. Let's just say it's really hard to find a front end developer who is technically qualified and available. In the end I chose the most articulate person that we interviewed, whom I see eye-to-eye with philosophically, but will require a little ramp up on the advanced JavaScript coding and CSS layout, which he was honest about, scoring big points for not just nodding his head and saying yes like a good little ______ (am i not a racist if i don't finish this statement, or is it the thought that counts against me?). In the end intelligence and willingness/ability to learn are the most important things to have in an employee, though damn do I miss having a mentor at work!
Required reading for Web Standards development:
- designing with web standards
- the first 3 chapters of Cascading Style Sheets 2.0 Programmer's Reference (with the rest as the best CSS reference out there)
- Separating behavior and structure
- Separating Behavior and Presentation
and getting more specific, at work we use these:
and then of course there are some important resources:
- Explorer Exposed!
- JavaScript Lint
- and last but not least, QuirksMode.
What did I miss? Should the Meyer "On CSS" books be on there?
Comments:
Jon said:
The "On CSS" stuff, in my arguably cynical view, is mostly marketing material for CSS. CSS needs marketing, sure, but if someone is basically sold, it's time to throw them off the dock. If you've got a philosophical match, eager to learn, a willing little *sponge* (how familiar this is!), then you can probably skip it. "On CSS" ain't reference material.Later on you'll the two of you will want to take a pass at Crockford's work beyond JSON, such as A Survey of the JavaScript Programming Language, Remedial JavaScript, and Classical Inheritance in JavaScript. There's more, but even reading the first one and starting on the second should open eyes.
Now if we could only add methods to the Node prototype in IE, we'd be all set.
Jon said:
(Your RSS feed made my comment possible. Thank you.)Nils T. Devine said:
I was thinking, this might be a good excuse to pick up Dan Cederholm's book. I wasn't going to buy it because I've been following SimpleQuiz from the beginning, but if one wanted to catch someone up paper really is a much better medium for reading, and the discussions take forever to read, better probably to get the distilled answer.