Typography

After all this talk about different fonts, one thing I'm wondering, are there good places/websites to get free typefaces? I'm too cheap to pay. But one also has to think about using any funky typefaces carefully, as many of the odd ones will not display in a browser properly. Also, it a typeface is hard to read, then don't use it for main text, only use it for effect in graphics or logos.

The secret to typography is, basically, make it aesthetically pleasing, yet practical (meaning easy to read). Most of it is following the rules of style and grammar and using common sense. Many of the things Williams talked about in her book I've already done on word processing, and it's a matter of figuring out how it's done on Dreamweaver or in html.

CSS assignment

My home page for this course can be found at:
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeohrc6/hist697/
There is a link to the CSS assignment there:
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeohrc6/hist697/css.html
Getting the validator to work required some doing, and my home page is still not totally compliant, hence the lack of a validation badge there. As you can see from looking at the two pages, the navigation down either side of the page is different. The format of the sidebars on my homepage, which looks much slicker, is not compliant. But it looks so much better on my home page!

CSS tutorials & Brickner Book

Web Design on a Shoestring can be summed up in one sentence. When budgets are tight, be realistic about what you can do (think small) and be very organized! I know from working in a government office where everything is done in committees, too many people bog down a project needlessly and eat up time and money. Of course there was an extensive discussion of using CSS and webstandards. Plus Brickner gives a link to the W3C website that can check whether your xhtml is valid or not (http://validator.w3.org), which I'm sure everyone in this class will find very useful.

I found the CSS tutorials difficult, especially McFly. With McFly, I felt like I was missing part of the instructions. With each step I found myself saying "eh?" and getting frustrated. I ended up skipping McFly and doing the one from Macromedia which I found infinitely easier to follow, even if a little cookbook-y. I screwed up just a couple of times in the code, but got it in the end.