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Opera Web Standards Curriculum
As the most standards-compliant Web browser, Opera is dedicated to promoting Web standards across the globe. Web standards make the Web available to anyone, on any device, anywhere in the world.
Opera has created the Web Standards Curriculum (WSC) in association with the Yahoo! Developer Network. This tutorial course takes students from complete beginner to having a solid grounding in standards-based Web design, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript development. The course is supported by top companies and organizations such as the Web Standards Project (WaSP) and Yahoo!.
Split into more than 50 focused articles, students can follow the curriculum from start to finish or simply read articles that interest them the most. Each article contains essential theory, practical examples, and exercise questions. The first 41 articles are now published, and roughly ten ones covering JavaScript basics will follow ASAP, to complete the course.
Why should you incorporate the Opera WSC into your curriculum? Web standards in a Web site promote efficiency, ease of maintenance, accessibility, device compatibility, and search optimization. The Opera WSC features the most up-to-date practices in Web standards. Best of all, the course is free, requiring no expensive textbooks.
Table of contents
The beginning
- Introductory material, by Chris Mills—This is the one you’re reading.
TRANSLATIONS AVAILABLE! There are translations of the web standards curriculum available here.
Introduction to the world of web standards
- The history of the Internet and the web, and the evolution of web standards, by Mark Norman Francis.
- How does the Internet work?, by Jonathan Lane.
- The Web standards model—HTML, CSS and JavaScript, by Jonathan Lane.
- Beautiful dream, but what’s the reality?, by Jonathan Lane.
Web Design Concepts
This section won’t go into any code or markup details, and will act as an introduction to the design process before you start to create any graphics or code, as well as concepts of web design such as IA, navigation, usability etc.
- Information Architecture—planning out a web site, by Jonathan Lane.
- What does a good web page need?, by Mark Norman Francis.
- Colour Theory, by Linda Goin.
- Building up a site wireframe, by Linda Goin.
- Colour schemes and design mockups, by Linda Goin.
- Typography on the web, by Paul Haine.
HTML basics
- The basics of HTML, by Mark Norman Francis.
- The HTML <head> element, by Christian Heilmann.
- Choosing the right doctype for your HTML documents, by Roger Johansson.
The HTML body
- Marking up textual content in HTML, by Mark Norman Francis.
- HTML Lists, by Ben Buchanan.
- Images in HTML, by Christian Heilmann.
- HTML links—let’s build a web! by Christian Heilmann.
- HTML Tables, by Jen Hanen.
- HTML Forms—the basics, by Jen Hanen.
- Lesser–known semantic elements, by Mark Norman Francis.
- Generic containers—the div and span elements, by Mark Norman Francis.
- Creating multiple pages with navigation menus, by Christian Heilmann.
- Validating your HTML, by Mark Norman Francis.
Accessibility
- Accessibility basics, by Tom Hughes-Croucher.
- Accessibility testing, by Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis.
CSS
- CSS basics, by Christian Heilmann.
- Inheritance and Cascade, by Tommy Olsson.
- Text styling with CSS, by Ben Henick.
- The CSS layout model - boxes, borders, margins, padding, by Ben Henick.
- CSS background images, by Nicole Sullivan.
- Styling lists and links, by Ben Buchanan.
- Styling tables, by Ben Buchanan.
- Styling forms, by Ben Henick.
- Floats and clearing, by Tommy Olsson.
- CSS static and relative positioning, by Tommy Olsson.
- CSS absolute and fixed positioning, by Tommy Olsson.
Advanced CSS study
- Headers, footers, columns, and templates, by Ben Henick
JavaScript core skills
- Programming - the real basics!, by Christian Heilmann
- What can you do with JavaScript?, by Christian Heilmann
- Your first look at JavaScript, by Christian Heilmann
- JavaScript best practices, by Christian Heilmann
- The principles of unobtrusive JavaScript, by PPK
- JavaScript functions, by Mike West
- Objects in JavaScript, by Mike West
- Traversing the DOM, by Mike West
- Creating and modifying HTML, by Stuart Langridge
- Dynamic style - manipulating CSS with JavaScript, by Greg Schechter
- Handling events with JavaScript, by Robert Nyman
- JavaScript animation, by Stuart Langridge
- Graceful degredation versus progressive enhancement, by Christian Heilmann
Mobile web development
- Mobile 1: Introduction to the mobile web, by Brian Suda
Supplementary articles
Microformats
- Introduction to hCard, by Christopher Schmitt
- Introduction to hCard, Part two: Styling hCards, by Christopher Schmitt
- XFN encoding, extraction, and visualizations, by Brian Suda
- Styling XFN and rel-license links, by Christopher Schmitt
- Styling hReview Microformats, by Christopher Schmitt
- Microformat Encoding and Visualization, by Brian Suda
Supplementary accessibility articles
- Introduction to WAI-ARIA, by Gez Lemon
- Creating accessible data tables, by Frank Palinkas
- Building Accessible Static Navigation with CSS, by Frank Palinkas
Miscellaneous
- Getting your content online, by Craig Grannell.
- More about the document <head>, by Chris Heilmann.
- Supplementary: Common HTML entities used for typography, by Ben Henick.
- The Opera Web Standards Curriculum glossary, by various authors. This is incomplete, and will be added to as time goes by.
Education
Be heard
Professors and teachers can discuss the Opera WSC and share learning resources on our discussion forum.
Show your support
If you want to show your support for the Opera Web Standards Curriculum, link to it using one of these buttons.
Making the WSC work for you
For educators
Pass on Web Standards and good development practices to the next generation of Web developers. Opera's Web Standards Curriculum deconstructs Web Standards into modules you can teach either in order or as part of your own lesson plans.
For students
If your course already teaches Web Standards and best practices, then great - why not supplement your course texts with our material? If not, then lobby your teachers to adopt our material, thereby helping to improve the relevance of their lessons to real-world web development.
For Web developers
Web Standards have never been easier to learn. Everything you need to know is condensed into short, helpful tutorials that inform and inspire. Opera's Web Standards Curriculum can help you brush up on things you know and maybe even teach you something you didn't.
For businesses
Web Standards Curriculum is ideal for in-house training. Empower your development team to use Web Standards that reduce bandwidth, spur innovation and promote good coding practices across the Web.
For the Web
The beauty of the Web is that it creates a uniform, international development platform. Using Web Standards means your sites will be quicker to code and maintain, more compact, and accessible to web users regardless of their browsing platform and (dis)ability.
Karl Dubost, W3C"It has been now released and it's a wonderful piece of work. I will give it a full read and review in the next month and suggest things to Chris Mills. Now how can you help? Read it, use it in your Web agency, in your classroom, among your Web developers friends. Note what people misunderstood, suggest techniques to Chris Mills to improve his materials. Publish it on your blog, talk about it. Let it grow in the community. It's a cool work which comes from a long story and really it is beautiful story. Thanks to Chris Mills and Opera. They did it."
Candie Sampson, Art Director, NarrowCasting"Just wanted to send you a quick note to say thank you for your web standards course. I am a completely self- taught graphic designer, and I specialize in print. I have been trying (un-successfully) to teach myself web design for some time now, and your course has helped me more in the last 5 days than all of the other materials I have been trying for the last few years combined."
Glenda Sims, Senior Systems Analyst, University of Texas, United States"Web development and design are ever evolving professions. Anyone teaching these subjects must ask themselves if they are equipping their students with best practices or burdening them with impractical methodologies. All of us in this field can benefit from this resource and use it as a catalyst to further the W3C vision of 'Web for Everyone. Web on Everything.'"