How doth the little busy bee/Improve each shining hour

[chrishansenhome]

Now that I am between jobs and have time to kill, it occurs to me that one way in which to improve myself would be to learn a lot more about web design and engineering. My own website is a disgrace, and other people and organisations have asked me to help them with design and engineering of their websites, and I do not really have the expertise to do more than the bare minimum.

Thus, I wonder if anyone reading this knows of a good online course in web design and in aspects of web engineering such as PHP or XML and the like.

If so, comments or PVT_EMAIL would be welcome.

The last time I was not working 9 to 5 each day I basically pissed away most of the time surfing and reading email (this was before Twitter). I am determined not to do so this time.

Comments

[auntieruth.livejournal.com]

I don't know about an online course. When I decided I wanted to learn PHP/MySQl I just set out to make a database driven web site. I decided to make a site for a video store, with all the movies in the db. You could sort by direct, actor, title.

This led into a bit of JavaScript, and Ajax as well.

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

I would love to do it like that. Unfortunately, my inner child needs discipline. If I can't have my 3rd grade teacher, Miss Gorham, standing over me with a ruler tapping her feet until I learned something, then I just can't learn very well.

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

The tutorials at w3schools.com are decent. I learned the basics mostly from O'Reilly books and then honed that through experience on my own sites and working for various clients.

I have a book on XML I can lend you. Alas, all my HTML, PHP, and MySQL books are in the US.

When I was in the US I tried to do it all: Perl, PHP, MySQL, UNIX administration, XHTML, etc. Here I've learned it pays to focus on one aspect and do it very well. So I focus on the front end (XHTML, CSS, JavaScript) with an emphasis in standards, accessibility, usability, and semantics. There's a wealth of information online (articles, blogs, etc.) that would be of use in that area once you've got the basics down.

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that.

The reason I want to take a course as opposed to just learning it from a book is that I need the discipline that taking a course would provide.

I will investigate further tonight.