I had built websites in the past, but was not really a huge fan of designing for the web. The problem, at least in the past, was that in order to layout HTML effectively you had to use invisible tables. Inside those would go more invisible tables. I never like using tables as a method of layout, but eventually got used to it for the few sites I had made.

A modern web site uses CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to control the look and layout of a website instead of building ugly tables. I have to admit that I didn’t clue into what CSS was the first few times I came across it. I thought it was for controlling fonts, and that was about it. Later I found zengarden, and saw what could really be done with CSS.

I decided I should re-learn how to build a web site, so I bought books on the subject and read them. Now that I have a few of them, I’ve noticed that most come in two main flavors: How to code (HTML and CSS) and How to plan and design a website. There’s a fair amount of crossover, but they’ll each have their main focus. I’m sure there’s some tomes out there that fully cover both, but I imagine they’re thick like a phone book.

Here are some of the books I’ve gotten on either HTML/CSS or Designing a Website: (Regardless of the book’s focus, they all say to drop the tables for layout and use CSS.)

By Jennifer Niederst Robbins

One of the first books I read. Pretty thorough with regards to teaching the main concepts and requirements behind HTML and CSS. For example, shows you how to create sections within your HTML and move them around through CSS.

by Richard Quick

I kind of felt self conscious about buying a how to book with a monkey on the front, but I got it anyway. It’s a good book that’s not too long, and has some good content. It talks about the many components of a web site, planning, navigation, etc. It didn’t tell me a lot that I didn’t already know, but served as a good reminder here and there. Like all good web books, it tells you to use bread crumbs wherever possible to enhance navigation.

By Christopher Schmitt

More of a reference book, I read about the first half before getting bored. It’s a good book to have if you need to understand or make something work in CSS.
Talks about web typography, images, page elements, links and navigation, layouts and more.

By Rob Huddleston

Not a bad buy, but I bought it well into development, and didn’t really need it as much as I thought I’d use it.

I do think that the visual examples are a good way to learn.

by Paul McFedries

I got this one for some of the later chapters, like finding a web host. A good design book with lots of information.

By Matthew MacDonald

Again, I bought this one for the chapters on what to do once you have a website. Quite readable.

In a future Post I will try and talk about some of the specific concepts that I’ve come across while figuring out how to build a web site.

First imagine the Player Characters are not familiar with Starwars (the gamers live in an alternate universe, where Starwars never came out).

Second, the Game Master is taking his PCs, who normally play a Medieval Fantasy game (like DnD), and having them play in his made-up space world.

The comic really shows the difference between a film narrative and an RPG adventure (and player tendencies). “Qui-Gon: I take all the blasters!“

Make sure to look at the commentary below most of the comics. They really go on to explain the strange relationship between PCs, the GM and Adventure Plots.

The comic points out a lot of the oddities of RPGs in general. All are funny when they point them out, but some are kind of frustrating when you’re actually playing them. A good portion of writing and designing Spellchrome is born out dealing with or avoiding such oddities. For example, the comic makes a funny point about vehicular damage tables. In Spellchrome, I state that the GM should just be able to make the right call as a vehicle loses hit points. (Not that I have never been tempted to make up vehicular damage tables in the past.)

I’m really getting a kick out of reading this online comic. Funny stuff if you’re a gamer.

The article is entitled Springboard to Adventure, and it gives a few examples of for story based, thematic based, and character based adventures. The examples fit into a more pure medieval fantasy setting in a few places, but nothing that is unworkable.

Give it a read, see how you might use them in conjunction with Spellchrome’s Chapter 9: Running the Game. Specifically, see the sections on Adventure Basics, Adding Challenges, and Adventure Ideas.

I think I’m getting the hang of Wordpress now, but it took a couple hours. I was missing some of the basics earlier, like how to edit my Blog Title and Tagline. It’s not that Wordpress is lacking for tutorials and documentation – quite the opposite. I think at first it is all a bit overwhelming. Part of me wants to find a good base theme, another part is trying to figure out how to edit those themes, and another part is confused about how pages and widgets work. Best thing to do is just mess around with it for a while and see what all you can do, which is pretty much what I did. They say the best learning comes from a state of confusion and then an Aha! moment.