brad garland

So after my last rant of being overwhelmed about where I should start learning, I decided to just go and do. And as things come up, learn.

So here’s an update of where I am:

XHTML

I was already pretty good at HTML coding but didn’t understand the differences between XHTML and regular HTML. That is, until I started validating in XHTML Transitional and Strict. The differences are subtle, so far, but seem to be easy to overcome. And yes, I’m still working on this site now. :)

CSS

As you can probably tell, I enjoy updating this site. Although I started off with a template, I’ve tricked it out a fair bit. So I picked up a couple of books on CSS. Both are fairly well known in the design community, one if Dan Cederholm’s ‘Bulletproof Web Design’ and the other is Dave Shea’s and Molly E. Holzschlag’s ‘The Zen of CSS design’. Both books are great reads, nicely laid out and easy to follow. However, I still needed a bit more basic understanding of some CSS techniques and more dealing with the basic code write up, instead of the more advanced techniques and concepts that are in those books.

Ruby/Rails

When I first started learning Rails, I did it using the RadRails IDE because I needed something that was like Textmate, a tree structure and not having to switch between windows all the time, something that did not only Ruby code completion but RHTML completion. Well, for as many good things there are in RadRails I found about as many negatives. I ran into problems often with it, tried to get help in their IRC channel and nobody responds, there was no HTML auto-complete, and there were more. I don’t recommend it.

So I switched, I’m now using the open-source JEdit with the Ruby plugin and it is working really well so far. Yes, I do have to use a DOS console to start the Webrick server but that isn’t a big deal because once it is setup, you leave it. As far as books, I started with the Agile Web Development for Rails book 1st edition and have downloaded the latest PDF for the 2nd edition to keep up with the changes. NOTE: If you’re starting that book now, start with the PDF b/c the new edition is SIGNIFICANTLY different in technique than the 1st edition. They get into migrations, RJS, and more. I’m really liking it but it feels kinda like Spanish to me right now, if I read the code I can translate what they’re doing but I don’t think I can write it quite yet. Back to the books I guess.

[tags]XHTML, CSS, Ruby, Rails, Dan Cederholm, Dave Shea, Molly E. Holzschlag, Dave Thomas, JEdit, RadRails[/tags]