Stylehack

[editor's note: I teach the XHTML Intermediate class at LVS, called "Build Your Website II", as well as the Flash courses. You'll also run into me in other coding or programming classes from time to time as I fill in for instructors who are out.]

12+ NEW Classes, over 100 Classes in All!

With 12 new classes being offered this session, LVS has over 100 classes on its roster. From Instructor-led to Self-study, LVS covers a wide range of subjects. And don’t forget the FREE Windows XP and Vista classes!

To check out the courses you would like to take, a complete list is given at LVS Course Schedule.

Intructor-led Classes in a Virtual Setting

If you’ve never participated in a virtual classroom setting, you’ll find LVS the perfect choice for initiation into the online learning environment. Administrators and instructors alike understand what it’s like to be a first-time enrollee and work with you to overcome any concerns you may have.

Each instructor-led course has its own virtual classroom accessible to enrolled students with a forum-type message board used to post assignments, ask questions, and interact with the instructor as well as the other students who signed up for that class. Instructors maintain a friendly, fun, and energetic setting in which to learn.

Instructor-led classes begin August 30th so head on over to LVS Online Classes to enroll now.

Build a Website

LVS offers a 3-part website coding series that takes you from “I don’t know anything about X/HTML & CSS” to “WOW - I can create a valid website” in no time at all and you’ll have a great time doing it, too.

If web site coding is something you’ve always wanted to learn, now is the time. Get started by registering for the introductory-level course Build Your Web Site I today!

Don’t need an intro class but you’d like to strengthen and/or build on the skills you have?  Head on over and check out the Level II and Level III courses. I happen to know the Level II instructor will be happy to check out samples of your work; if you meet the criteria she’ll accept you as a student without your having to take the intro class! How do I know this? I’m the instructor. “-)

I never thought I would say this, but DO NOT UPGRADE TO OPERA 9.5.x of any version or flavor.

Opera PTB and Dev Team, I have one thing to say to you:  It is dangerous to buy into your own legend and think you know better than your users what they want. When you buy into your own legend you may find that it is simply a figment of your imagination — i.e., that you are a legend in your own mind and nowhere else.

If I wanted a dumbed down browser for the masses, there are two that pop to mind (Firefox for the wanna-be-geeks, and IE for the typical apathetic mass user). Why did you have to ruin Opera for the rest of us????

I have been a faithful user of Opera since its inception, yes I even paid for each new version. But 9.5.x is beyond the pale. For the same reason I feel almost violent when I think about Firefox and its development team (notice the all lower case letters), I am now feeling ill thinking of how badly Opera has mangled a beautiful, clean product.

This is the final entry in a series of 3 articles designed to help you embed a YouTube movie while maintaining (X)HTML standards compliance, then customizing the display of the movie and finally, providing alternate content for visitors unable to view the movie.

In this article we’ll add alternate content to the code that was modified in the first two articles. The purpose of providing alternate content is to allow for accessibility and/or for visitors whose browser is not configured to display a movie.

What is Alternate Content?

Alternate content is simply text or other content (for instance, an image) provided as an alternate representation of the object embedded within the page.

1. It is placed between the <object> </object> tag set, after any <param> elements and before the </object> tag.
2. There is no tag set or attribute label related to this content, it is placed directing into the <object> tag set just like placing content in a <p> tag set!
3. The alternate content is what will be displayed in the browser when your visitor does not have the capability to view the object being called by the <object> element.

You can use an image, add a link, even use other elements in the alternate content… anything that is valid under (X)HTML coding guidelines. It’s actually a nice touch to use all of the above – an image, a link and text – for maximum accessibility.

This is the second in a series of 3 articles designed to help you embed a YouTube movie while maintaining (X)HTML standards compliance, then customizing the display of the movie and finally, providing alternate content for visitors unable to view the movie.

In this article we’ll apply all that you learned in the first article to embed a movie, this time with code that has been modified using the customization option(s) available on YouTube.

Customization Options via YouTube

If you recall from the first article in this series, when you are on the movie’s YouTube page you have two options for obtaining embedding code — to simply grab the embedding code for the default player (addressed in Part 1 of this series), or to customize the player before you grab the embedding code. Let’s grab some customized code and convert it to valid XHTML code.

To generate the customized code click on the “customize” link, located right above the default embedding code.

Then select from the options you would like to customize; YouTube offers you a choice of colors, using a border and/or enabling a selection of related movies to be displayed when your embedded movie has finished playing.

This is the first of a series of 3 articles designed to help you embed a YouTube movie while maintaining (X)HTML standards compliance, then customizing the display of the movie and finally, providing alternate content for visitors unable to view the movie.

Web 2.0 is in full swing (cough cough) and with it come many opportunities to display someone else’s content in our sites or blogs. And most of those opportunies even offer us the code necessary to do so. However, as is typical with much that you find on the web, the code provided by the object’s author is rarely 100% (X)HTML standards compliant.

Most of the code you find out on the web uses the <embed> element, which is deprecated in (X)HTML. So we need to be able to replace that element and its attributes with the appropriate <object> and <param> elements.

How is that accomplished? The short answer is by moving some (or all) of the <embed> attributes to the <object> and <param> elements! Let’s see how that works by concentrating on how to make the code to embed a YouTube movie standards compliant.

Getting the Code to Insert a YouTube Movie

The code for embedding a movie is different from the code used on YouTube pages and from the code that you receive in email when someone uses the “Email this movie” functon. So where do you get the code sample you need to embed a YouTube movie?