Without a doubt, the best CSS / XHTML training you can give yourself is pick up any of these books to learn about front end web development.

Most of the books involve learning and adapting web pages using CSS based layouts. Some are new, some are classics. I have learnt valuable tips on working practices for CSS management, color palette selection, and also layouts using CSS3.

Books like ‘Don’t make me think, and ‘Bulletproof..’ make you question ‘Why should I do it this way..?’. Then they cover alternatives you may not have considered. Some of these books are in their Second edition, a testament to how well they are written and deservedly gaining a place on any discerning geeks bookshelf.

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Erin Caton has designed a pocket cheat sheet / pocket guide for commonly used microformats.

http://microformats.org/wiki/pocketcheatsheet

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Here’s a step by step list of how you can successfully carry out user tests on a budget and achieve great results.

Example of case study

• Usability test start off with user being asked to find individual item..
• The user/tester is normally paid for this, a real user would not take as much time to look for item.

The Comparison of costs betweeen traditional and remote testing:

• Traditional – testing lab required, specialist equipment, travel costs, user incentives.
• Remote tests – online meeting, recruitment, user incentives, better on budget.

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So the Times Online redesign went live last week.

It was an exciting project to work on, I was based in Canary Wharf working with 2 other developers, 4 Information Architects, 3 Designers, a Content Management team, and countless management types.

I was involved at a early stage in the project life cycle in August 2006. My role was to take the illustrator designs and code them into templates showing the individual modules for each element in the design. Of course, validating and browser testing went along side this. And each module was given a timescale score depending on its complexity.

I was with the team for a month during which time I completed the front end build for all the main sections of the site: news, sport, fashion, motoring.. The job became quicker once the initial elements were built as they could be reused in other sections of the sites pages.

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