OT: Need list of skills that you wish designers had
Matt Wilson
department this Fall. The class is for graphic designers, and we go
through the experience of meeting with a client, building a prototype
web site, revising it, then releasing it on the world, then going back
and fixing any post-release issues.
The students all have excellent graphic design (read aesthetic)
skills, but nothing in previous courses covers anything programming-
related. The other instructor has the graphic design chops, and
that's really the meat of the course, but they do want to punch up the
level of instruction beyond building static HTML into building
*simple* web apps.
I need a short list of skills you wish all graphic designers have.
Here's what I plan to cover so far:
1. How to use subversion. Probably we'll use google code for
everything.
2. How to use tools like Fiddler and Firebug to look at page weight
and watch the requests go back and forth.
3. How to check for valid HTML.
4. How to do some simple AJAX (by hand at first and then later with
jQuery).
5. What's the terminal in OS X for?
6. HTTP gets versus posts and what the heck does caching mean?
7. PHP fundamentals.
I think I'm going to use PHP rather than anything else, but I'd like
to hear arguments against that.
Also, the class lab has a bunch of expensive Mac machines, so if there
are really good tools out there, I'd love to hear about them.
Jaison Lee
> 1. How to use subversion.
Definitely! (Even tho I think git is going to take over the world.)
Please include
a primer on SSH, what keys are and how they work (public vs. private) and
briefly how to generate and manage them.
> 5. What's the terminal in OS X for?
That should be an interesting lesson. :P
> 6. HTTP gets versus posts and what the heck does caching mean?
Please include info on basic HTTP headers. In particular, mime-types and
content-disposition. This might also be a good time to talk about server load
and the number of subsequent requests a page generates. :)
> 7. PHP fundamentals.
>
> I think I'm going to use PHP rather than anything else, but I'd like
> to hear arguments against that.
I suppose it would segue nicely during the HTML lessons, but I don't know
how particularly relevant it is anymore. Client-side is the reality. SSI should
definitely be touched upon tho.
--
Jaison Lee
Twitter: jaisonlee
Drop.io: jaisonlee
Ralph Heimburger
Matt,
I am currently finishing teaching Web Scripting and Authoring at ITT which covers design, storyboarding, html, etc. PhP isn't bad, have you considered just a simple Cherrypy app? Another idea might be to use something like Joomla and have them focus more on design and CMS.
Ralph Heimburger
1stpOint incorporated
www.1stpointinc.com
Ph. 216-906-3640
Fax 702-995-3640
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Mike Pirnat
> This might also be a good time to talk about server load
> and the number of subsequent requests a page generates. :)
Related to this... Yahoo's exceptional performance guidelines would
be really, REALLY good material to cover.
--
Mike Pirnat
mpi...@gmail.com
http://www.pirnat.com/
Kevin Dahlhausen
It would benefit them to cover basic search-engine optimization and marketing, or at least make them aware of how their design impacts these things. Oh, and drill them on CSS and validating their html.
I worked with one of our graphic designers to have him supply his prototypes as Cheetah templates. That way we could easily fudge data. I then made the couple of syntax changes to convert the Cheetah templates to Velocity templates for J2EE and ran those in the app. This flow was very efficient. The designer liked it too.
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