Omniversity of Manchester

For those of us who sigh with envy when visiting yet another site where style perfectly complements substance, it was a brilliant opportunity to receive a lesson from the best in how it’s done. Chris Mills ran an all day course that took complete newcomers to CSS from the very basics of selectors, properties and values to much more advanced concepts such as specificity and learning how to style forms.

It was a really great session where not only did those of us who attended learn how to create beautiful and more accessible websites, but we also got to meet people with a wide range of interests, bouncing ideas off each other and generally having a good time.

Though the course was a bit heavy going at times, with Chris’ great sense of humor and helpful attitude, we all left thoroughly satiated and able, ready to go out into the world to code and style our websites.

The CSS course continues with Advanced CSS, another one day course on the 3rd November. It’s aimed at those already familiar with CSS who want to get ahead with the new features in CSS3. Chris will go through a series of more advanced topics which will include animation and transforms, CSS sprites and responsive web design. The course costs £100 which includes teaching material, software and a delicious lunch. If that sounds like something you’re interested in, book your place here.

Hear ye, hear ye! Chris Mills, open standards evangelist and Omniversity tutor par excellence has recently been published by Peachpit, a specialist publisher that deals in technology textbooks, ebooks and videos for creative people.

Chris has run a series of web design foundations course for the Omniversity, from HTML basics to Advanced CSS. The latest on offer are the CSS Basics, an all day introductory session to the marvels of CSS starting on Saturday 13th October, and the Advanced CSS course, starting on the 3rd November. His new book, ‘Practical CSS3: Develop And Design’ is available both in print and as an ebook and can be bought here.

What’s so special about yet another programming textbook, I hear you cry? In the words of the author himself:

Practical CSS3 was written with three main purposes in mind. I wanted to create a usable snapshot of where the CSS3 landscape is in 2012, and what we can use now in modern web sites. I [wanted to] promote open standards and associated best practices, for example using vendor prefixes responsibly, so … you don’t needlessly limit your styling to only working in one browser. And finally, I wanted to thoroughly look at how you can use CSS3 features but still ensure that your core content and features are accessible in older browsers like IE6, something a lot of books don’t give enough attention to.

Check out his blog for more details and more importantly, buy his book!

This autumn the Omniversity will be running two CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) courses: CSS Basics and Advanced CSS.

CSS enables web developers to create imaginative, beautiful and accessible websites. CSS makes it easy to change the style of a website and by separating style and layout from basic HTML content, reduces server bandwidth requirements, ensuring faster downloads.

Both courses will be run by Chris Mills, open standards evangelist, tech writer and developer relationship manager at Opera Software. Chris edits dev.opera.com and writes articles on open-web technologies for his own site A List Apart, .net magazine and more. He is the author of Practical CSS3: Develop and Design (Peachpit Press, 2012) and co-authored Interact with Web Standards (New Riders, 2010).

Chris is passionate about web education. He is the creator of the Opera web standards curriculum and member of W3C group The Open Web Education Alliance. Chris has over 10 years’ experience working with HTML and CSS, including future-facing technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3.

CSS Basics

CSS Basics will be held on Saturday October 13th at Manchester Digital Laboratory and costs £100.

It will look at the basics of CSS and teach fundamental theory such as the box model, the cascade, specificity and the basics of layouts using floats and positioning. The sessions will also cover some CSS3 features such as shadows, border radius and CSS3 selectors.

It’s expected that you will have a reasonable knowledge of HTML already and know how to use the web. So, if you’d like to move beyond basic HTML, or you’ve always been intrigued by what’s current in web development come along and check it out. No prior knowledge is required but it might help with learning the theory a bit quicker!

Advanced CSS

The Advanced CSS course takes place on Saturday November 3rd at Manchester Digital Laboratory and costs £100.

It’s the ideal course for those who already have a working knowledge of HTML and an understanding of CSS Basics. What you’ll gain is a knowledge of advanced CSS techniques and CSS3 features, vital parts of a toolbox that will enable you to use cutting edge CSS3 techniques in your future web development.

Advanced CSS will take you further in your knowledge of CSS. You’ll get a look at features including multi-column layouts, flexbox, CSS sprites, advanced web font usage, responsive web design and CSS3 transitioning.

Both courses include lunch and refreshments. You will receive an electronic copy of the teaching materials as well as the relevant software. Free hosting will be provided by MadLab, enabling you to test and refine your site.

Chris Mills will be running HTML5 courses at Omniversity in 2013. Details will be up on the site soon. If you’d like to be kept up-to-date, please drop us a line with your email address.

Web Design Foundations is a four part modular course aimed at anyone who wants to learn about how the Web works from the very basic beginnings and be taken step by step, in a friendly informal style, up to the point where they know how to build a basic modern best practices web site and put it online.
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