Quoting Andrew Errington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Thu, 17 May 2007 14:16, you wrote: > > My son is interested in a certificate in "Internet and Webpages" from > > Southern Institute of Technology (a distance-learning course). They > say > > students will need: > > Not to put a downer on this, but is the certificate worth anything? This is a most important consideration. A good portfolio of work is often as good an indication of what somebody is able to do as is a certificate from some random institute. Don't interpret this as suggesting that the "Southern Institute of Technology" is incompetent. I don't know, but I do know that it's often a better use of money to buy, and read, a decent set of text-books than to attend a short, non-academic (re-)training course.
> Wouldn't your son be better off having a go at building a website and > learning from practical experience and the plethora of (free) > information available? Yes, but then he won't have the all important certificate. > That aside, I'd agree that all the course equipment requirements could > be met with the FOSS software you suggest (or any one of the myriad > alternatives), with the exception of FrontPage. If you don't have it > then > you won't be able to take advantage of the many "FrontPage extensions" > that > impart a richness to your visitors' internet browsing experience that > cannot be equalled. (nVu is okay I suppose, but vi[1] is adequate) > > A > > [1] or emacs You should add Quanta-Plus and BlueFish to nVu. Both are pretty good helpers for the html author. It's also most important to have a good understanding of Cascading Style Sheets. There are reams of prose about them on the Web and O'Reilly have published a pretty good book on the subject. There is a copy in the Christchurch Public Library. -- Sincerely etc. Christopher Sawtell
