Continuing education (my summer reading list)
Yesterday, I posted a summer reading list for j-school students who want to get up-to-date on the whole new media thing.
So, what does a new media journalist and Web developer do during his summers? He learns more. Journalists need to embrace continuing education.
Lawyers have to take classes to keep their bar licenses, teachers need to do continuing education to remain teachers and many other professions require the same mindset. So, why are journalists so unwilling to learn anything beyond college?
Well, they shouldn’t be.
For me, I am learning more Web development techniques this summer. I know CSS and (X)HTML well, but beyond that my skills are mostly limited to deploying technology.
I can work with Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and javascript, but I really can’t write the code and develop my own frameworks. I’ve never really had to in the past, because I usually worked with people who knew those other languages (mostly PHP and mySQL), freeing me up to concentrate on thinking about the totality of a project and making the pieces fit together.
But a deep understanding of Ajax will allow me to make much more dynamic Web sites and features. Some great examples of Ajax can be found at apple.com. Ajax allows developers to make Web sites that behave like desktop applications, without the need for reloading pages.
If you want to see a video on Apple’s upcoming Leopard operating system just click the link, and a subpage appears on top of the current page with the content you requested. No need to reload anything.
Another example can be found at my paper’s special feature on Heroes in the military. If you click on the audio, video or slide show links they appear in a window above the page (but not an annoying pop up window). I did this to create a much more dynamic and cohesive project.
Ajax creates a much more fluid experience that is quicker and more enjoyable for end users. You can accomplish a similar design through Flash, but Flash is a resource hog. Sites built entirely in Flash are usually slow to load and eat up a lot of computer resources.
The other advantage of Ajax is that non-Ajax people can update parts of sites that are tied into the Ajax itself. With Flash, you can’t update a Flash file unless you know Flash. But I could develop a system where you only had to update the HTML file on a site (and a lot of people know how to do this).
Ajax sites require more time up front than Flash, but are much more flexible in the long run.
I’m reading a book called DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith right now. It’s a book on working with the Document Object Model written for Web designers. It’s easy to pick up and read.
When I finish that, I have a thick book on javascript to read, because I want to get to the nuts and bolts of the language (the first book will give me the skills needed to work with Ajax before I fully learn everything javascript related). I’m reading both these books in preparation for an Ajax class this August.
But I need more than Ajax to create the features I want (At my newspaper job I do not have the same kind of programming assistance that I have when I do Web development for clients. Thus I need to know more programming). I’ll finally be learning PHP and mySQL in-depth for database driven projects and features. I have a book that I hope to read after I get Ajax down well. After that, I plan on taking a second-level PHP programming class.
At home I also have a book The Zen of CSS Design that I read from time to time at home. It’s not a book for learning CSS. It’s a book for getting excited about CSS (if you don’t know the language) and about seeing what’s possible with CSS (even for people who know CSS). It’s written by the people who created the incredible CSS Zen Garden.
That’s my summer reading list. Of course, I’ll stay up-to-date on the latest happening in the industry, and I hope to attend a few conferences.
If I can get all this done by the fall, I’ll have to start a next reading list.