Week 4: CSS Positioning, Advanced Typography, and Finishing Unit #1

It was great to see how quickly some of you worked your way through the tasks in our CSS workshop yesterday. For a few of you, though, the workshop served as a reminder that you need to be reading the textbook a little more carefully and working through the practice exercises at the end of each chapter. If you didn’t complete the 10 tasks in the workshop instructions, please do so this weekend and be ready to show me your files at the beginning of class on Monday.

During Week 4, you should be putting the finishing touches on the content of your Unit #1 site, then carefully reviewing your markup. (The W3C Validator is a harsh master!) It’s the week when your Unit #1 projects should go from good to great. Here’s how we’ll get there:

• On Monday, we will learn how CSS can be used not just to style elements, but also to position them on the page. Before you come to class, please read Chapters 15 and 16 in Learning Web Design and identify at least one part of your Unit #1 site that could be modified using the concepts in these chapters. We’ll practice applying these concepts to your projects during class, but you may want to get a jump start on this before we meet. [Update: When you get to class, download our positioning workshop files.]
• By Wednesday, you should have a complete draft of your Unit #1 site. Please be ready to show it to your peers during class. (This means it should be “live” and functioning properly on your Reclaim Hosting site.) In addition, we will experiment with a few advanced typographic strategies and apply those strategies to your Unit #1 sites. Before you come to class, please review Chapter 12 in Learning Web Design (you’ve read this before, but you should know it inside and out by Wednesday), then read and/or explore the following resources:
  • “Web Design is 95% Typography,” by Oliver Reichenstein
  • “Best Practices of Combining Typefaces,” by Douglas Bonneville
  • The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web
  • Beautiful Web Type
  • The Web Font Combinator

I know we’ve been moving very quickly through a lot of material lately, but these first few weeks in class are designed to help you understand the fundamental concepts of HTML and CSS, then apply those concepts to your Unit #1 project. If you’re not sure where you should be focusing your energy between now and February 17 (when Unit #1 is due), here are a few tips:

• Two of the most basic aspects of style sheets are color and typography, so I’ll be looking for evidence that you know how to go beyond the default colors and fonts imposed by your browser.
• We haven’t spent much time on CSS positioning (and getting positioning right can be really tricky), so I don’t expect to see incredibly complex page layouts. Your résumé doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective.
• Along the same lines, remember that you’re creating a professional résumé designed to be seen by potential employers. Yes, you should inject some of your personality into the design, but a résumé may not be the best place to take big risks with an outlandish design.
• This first assignment is intended, in part, to see how well you’ve been paying attention to the readings in our textbook. Your markup should be clean and well organized, and your HTML and CSS should validate.
• If you aren’t comfortable with moving files from your computer to your Reclaim Hosting account via FTP, practice this skill over the weekend. (Reminder: the “public_html” directory is where your “live” files should go.) If you need help with this, come see me before you need to upload your final files when the project is due.

If you have any questions about where we’re headed, or if you want to reserve a time to see me during office hours (Tuesday 1-4; Wednesday 9-12), just let me know.