So Long, NCSA Primer
by Scott Hardie on August 28, 2006
Someone asked me for help learning HTML today. I turned to my trusted traditional source, the good old primer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, but alas, it has finally been removed after all these years. This was one of the major how-to guides in the early years of the web, and it's the very guide that I used to teach myself HTML one weekend in 1996, from which this very site you're reading has since evolved. I was surprised it lasted so long, but over the years I have recommended it to a great many people interested in web development, including as recently as this past spring. It had such a comfortable lay-terms approach while most other guides are hopelessly technical, and that's silly since HTML is a very accessible, easy-to-use language and anybody should be able to pick it up, but maybe I only think that because I had a good guide to teach me. Thanks for everything, NCSA.
Two Replies to So Long, NCSA Primer
Scott Hardie | August 30, 2006
W3Schools has always been my second recommendation. It's highly technically specific and you can find the precise syntax requirements you need – but they're just not good at explaining it on a conceptual level so that someone just starting out can see the forest for the trees. php.net has the same problem for the php language: Technically precise, but almost zero context that would foster understanding.
As for the others, I guess I'll have to get familiar with them so I know other good places to send someone from now on.
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Even When I Was a Child, I Was Hated by Skeletons
We watched The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra again last night. If you haven't seen it, and you have a place in your heart for a pretty good spoof of campy D-grade sci-fi movies from the 1950s, rent it. A few people have been turned off by its slow pace, but I have yet to watch it with someone who hasn't at least found a few things to chuckle at. Go »The Time Has Come
My kingdom for an alarm clock that beeps once, gently, 60 seconds before it really begins going off. That way you're woken up comfortably and given a chance to turn it off, instead of being startled awake by loud shrieking and having to scramble for it. Go »Downtown Disney
My mom's birthday present to me was a mini-vacation in Orlando, since we're too broke to take a real vacation. We weighed the options for a few days, theme parks vs small local attractions, and settled on something we had wanted to do for years, DisneyQuest and some of the Downtown Disney complex around it. I knew DisneyQuest had a lot of motion-simulator and interactive video games, but I didn't realize that the entire 5-story building is just one giant video arcade. Go »In Love, in Tampa
Last night we took in a special show by Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman for Valentines Day. Kelly is a huge fan of both and I was happy to take her to see them. I did not start the evening as a Palmer fan, but I was one by the time it ended. Go »Warp Zone
President Bush has a new advisor: (link) Go »
Amy Austin | August 30, 2006
Hm, that's too bad -- but there are three re-directs offered, which leads me to wonder how your estimation of these alternatives compares to your Old Faithful...