HIST 697: Typography on the Web
To those of my classmates who chose not to pay for the exercise files that accompany the lynda.com videos, I highly suggest you invest the extra $12. I found myself zonking out on a lot of the videos this week, as many were basically filmed PowerPoint presentations, but when we finally got into the code, being able to work along with the instructor helped me focus my attention. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, working along in the exercise files makes learning and understanding the coding about 100 times easier, at least in my opinion. It certainly helped make Dreamweaver feel manageable after after that first set of videos. It’s the difference between learning and doing. We’re all poor, I know, but if you’re struggling with building I suggest you at least try out the exercise files.
I found this week’s videos helpful in explaining how to integrate web fonts into our own pages. It seemed that, in a way, this series was a little bit of a retread of what we watched last week, minus the strong emphasis on design principles. That is okay with me, though. The focus and reiteration of these lessons helped reinforce the technical aspects of selecting and using web fonts on our pages. Integrating good design technique is what I suspect will be the difficult part. The sheer amount of fonts in and of itself is overwhelming, and I’m glad for all the websites this instructor showed us to help us work to build font stacks and work with fonts in browser.
At this point I don’t really have anything profound to say about Stunning CSS. It’s more technical manual, more stunning than gripping, however, I did sit up and say “Ahh,” several times, particularly when reading about how to cheat bots when using header images as backgrounds. I am both anxious and excited to try that trip. I suspect this book will become more useful when we begin to apply the knowledge we attempted to absorb this week, a handbook whipped out every time a building problem rattles nuggets of memory. And if all else fails, we can use the index.
I have commented on David’s blog this week.
I have been considering upgrading my lynda.com account to get the exercise files and because of this week’s assignments I made the decision to do so. Hopefully, it will be worth the extra cash, which I suspect it will be.
As with all the books we’ve read so far this semester and the Sams Teach Yourself HTML and CSS that Sharon assigned for Clio I, I find that I don’t really fully comprehend them with the first read. But I do imagine them sitting on a shelf within easy reach (in the fantasy loft-style office with an exposed brick wall and huge floor-to-ceiling windows in my mind) for me to reference when working. In other words, I have an implicit understanding that I will use these books continually even if I don’t fully understand them or absorb them now. They are all great reference books, some of them such as Thinking with Type also offer plenty inspiration. I suppose it is true what they say about the books you’re assigned in grad school – you’ll keep them for the rest of your life.
I think I must be the only person who found the book more accessible than the videos this week. But I also went to the trouble of downloading her example exercises (free! well, paid for with book!), so I was able to be more active with the book than I was with the videos (which didn’t seem to have many practicums anyway).
I agree with the exercise files. It is definitely a learn-by-doing activity. If you don’t want to upgrade your account, I was also just following along in TextEdit.