HTML Writers Guild Newsletter -- 25 April 2001

                      HTML Writers Guild Newsletter
                    Volume 7 Number 7, 25 April 2001
                           http://www.hwg.org/
                          mailto:editor(at)hwg.org

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Table of Contents 

1. The AWARE Center Could Use Your Help!
2. Texts Available for Visually-Impaired HWG Students.
3. Annual Membership Meeting set for April 26.
4. Upcoming Online Classes: Take an HWG Class! 
5. Why Did I Get This Email? And Other HWG-News FAQs 
(How to change your email address, how to unsubscribe, and more.)

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1. The AWARE Center Could Use Your Help!
   (Kynn Bartlett, AWARE Center Director, aware(at)hwg.org)

Want to help with an important HWG project?

The Accessible Web Authoring Resources and Education (AWARE)
Center, located at http://www.awarecenter.org/, is a resource
for web designers and others seeking information how to make
their pages accessible for all audiences, including people
with disabilities.

Like most Guild activities, the AWARE Center is volunteer-run
and depends on the support of our members to continue to
provide helpful information.  Some of our links are out of
date; some of our articles are getting stale; the general
design of the page may scream "1900s!" to some people.

So we're asking for your help.  If you would like to be part
of the volunteer team to assist with the AWARE Center web site
and activities, you could do any of the following:

      * Give some advice with the general look-and-feel/design
        of the site
      * Suggest new links and resources on the web
      * Check existing links to see if they are still current
      * Write new articles or tutorials for use on the site
      * Volunteer to maintain one or more sections of the
        AWARE Center site

If you are interested, please write to me at aware(at)hwg.org
and I will add you to the aware-team mailing list.  Thanks in
advance!

      http://www.awarecenter.org/

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2.  Texts Available for Visually-Impaired HWG Students.
    (Kynn Bartlett, AWARE Center Director, aware(at)hwg.org)
    
The Guild has been working with various publishers to acquire a source for
electronic versions of the textbooks used in our HWG online courses, for
our members with visual disabilities.

We are pleased to announce that all books by O'Reilly are available in
this format.  For more information, please email Lenny Muellner at
len(at)oreilly.com.

In addition, XML by Example and Special Edition Using XHTML are available
in either HTML or PDF format from the publisher.  To order either of these
texts, please send an email to Marci Dick at marcie.dick(at)pearsoned.com and
include your name, address, phone number, ISBN and title.  They have set
these up to be purchased by credit card.  Since emails are not a secure
means to transmit this data, please ask Marcie to call you by telephone
for your card information.

We are working on additional titles available in this format and will
announce them here as soon as we have the information.

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3.  April Town Hall Meeting & Annual Membership Meeting: Thursday, April 
    26th
    (Fred Barnett, Secretary, secretary(at)hwg.org)

April's Town Hall meeting will also be this year's HWG Annual Membership
Meeting. During the AMM, the Governing Board will make reports to the
membership on HWG activities over the past year. We will then have a
question and answer period for the membership. All members of the
Governing Board are expected to attend, so please be sure to come for this
special event. We hope to see you there! 

The details on the Annual Membership Meeting are:

26 April Annual Membership Meeting
Date:      Thursday, 26 April 2001 
Time:      6:30 p.m. PST, 9:30 p.m. EST
Server:    HWG Interactive, http://interact.hwg.org/
IRC:       irc.hwg.org, port 6667
Channel:   #townhall

Agenda:

1.  Welcome and Introduction of GB Members:  Frank Boumphrey
2.  Overall State of the Guild:  Frank Boumphrey
3.  Treasurer's Report: Chris Higgs
4.  Specific HWG activities:
      A.  Online Classes:  Gretchen Lowerison
      B.  AWARE Center:  Kynn Bartlett
      C.  Mailing List Program: Chris Higgs
      D.  W3C Activities:  Marshall Jansen
      E.  XML and Project Gutenberg:  Carole Gay
7.  Thanks to Retiring Members:  Frank Boumphrey
8.  End of planned schedule
9.  Question and Answer session

To connect, either go to the URL above and use the Java-based client
available via the web, or use your favorite IRC client and join channel
#townhall.

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4. Upcoming Online Classes: Take an online class! 
(Gretchen Lowerison, Online Education Director, classes(at)hwg.org)

Through a web-based interface, we offer a broad series of online classes
designed to teach you the skills you need, in a way that fits your busy
schedule. Our instructors are your fellow Guild members, chosen for their
expertise in their field and their willingness to pass along their
experience to you.

Upcoming courses you can take during April and May include:

MS Access
April 23, 2001 - June 3, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/ms201.1.html
MS Access is designed to teach students how to create a database from
scratch. The student should already know how to run programs on their
computer and how to use HTML. This course is for those students who want
to create databases and learn to publish those databases to the WWW. It
shows the importance of a good DBMS. 

Introduction to XML
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/x101.12.html
April 23, 2001 - June 3, 2001
XML has been referred to as the new ASCII of the computer world. In a
short space of time it has outgrown its nascent purpose of being a means
to fix 'broken' HTML and help the web expand, and has become the language
of choice for most new major standards and projects.  This course is
designed to give students a thorough grasp of the basics of XML and will
also hopefully excite them enough to learn more about this powerful new
concept.

Introduction to HTML 4.0
April 23, 2001 - June 3, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/h101.28.html
Designed for the student with little to no working knowledge of creating
HTML files "by hand."  If you're looking to learn HTML from scratch or
move beyond using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editing tool,
this is the class for you. 

Beginning PHP
April 30, 2001 - June 10, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/p171.1.html
PHP is a server side, embedded scripting language ideal for web
development, database interaction and deployment of dynamic web
pages/sites. PHP has enjoyed meteoritic growth in the last two years.
January 2001 statistics published by Netcraft show 5.8 Million domains
running PHP world wide. 

Sites that Sizzle: Web Animation with Macromedia Flash 4/5 
April 30, 2001 - June 10, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/a231.6.html
With the help of Katherine Ulrich's book entitled Flash 4 for Windows and
Macintosh or Flash 5 for Windows and Macintosh (depending on which version
of Flash you are using): visual quickstart guide; weekly lessons, visits
to sites that exemplify current the current flash topics, we will be
covering techniques to create what is most enjoyed throughout the web:
FLASH animated web sites. 

Creating Web Graphics with Paint Shop Pro 
April 30, 2001 - June 10, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/g201.12.html
Most web site developers use graphics to enhance their pages. For many,
this means that you must rely on previously created graphics that you
download from royalty free sites. But there is another alternative -
create your own! Paint Shop Pro is a popular and powerful image editing
application that allows you to create and modify graphics for your web
pages and other documents. 

Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets 
April 30, 2001 - June 10, 2001, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/h151.17.html
Cascading Style Sheets have become an important component of new W3C
recommendations.  HTML 4.0 Strict relies on Style Sheets for all stylistic
presentation, the Web Accessibility Initiative makes use of CSS for
improving access for the disabled, and new work on HTML and XML will
continue to make heavy use of CSS for the future.

Introduction to SQL
May 7, 2001 - June 17, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/ms301.1.html
Learn the basics from a simple SQL statement to more complex 3-table join.
Inserts, updates, deletes, inner joins and outer joins are covered in this
course.

Business Writing Basics 
May 7, 2001 - July 1, 2001, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/b101.13.html
In the perfect world, Web developers have the support of other specialists
when building sites -- copywriters, graphic designers, network
administrators, and so on. In the real world, we all know this rarely
happens. Often, you'll get saddled with creating the whole site, including
writing the text content of the pages. This course will help you feel more
comfortable with that task.

Advanced Web Writing 
May 7, 2001 - July 1, 2001, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/b201.4.html
In this course, students will work intensively on the copy for a web
project and get the feedback of fellow students and the instructor. We
will review subjective and objective tools for identifying and analyzing
the audience for a web site. We'll compare and contrast the advice experts
give on writing text for the web, along with a variety of web style guides
available. 

FrontPage 2000 
May 7, 2001- June 17, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/a141.2.html
Microsoft FrontPage 2000 is designed for the student who already has some
basic knowledge of the HTML tags used to create Web pages and would like
to learn a rather quick and straight-forward way to develop and manage Web
pages. The course is taught by an Industry-experienced teacher who uses
FrontPage on a daily basis. The emphasis will be on practical uses rather
than theory.

Macromedia Flash Wizardry: A Masters Course 
May 14, 2001 - June 24, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/a222.6.html
With Russell Chun's "Flash 5 Advanced for Windows and MacIntosh" as a
reference book, weekly lessons, visits to showcase sites that exemplify
lesson topics and comments student assignments, we will be diving deep
into the lesser known aspects of Flash!

Advanced Perl Programming 
May 21, 2001 - July 1, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/p201.1.html
This course will cover intermediate and advanced Perl programming
concepts, including: 

	CDS (complex data structures) 
	Named parameters 
        Modules 
        DBI (databases) 
        Date and time 
        mod_perl (Apache Perl module) 
        Scope (Variable scoping) 
        OO (object oriented programming) 
        Images (GD, ImageMagik) 
        Other topics based on student interest. 
        
Photoshop Level 1 
May 21, 2001 - July 1, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/g301.2.html
Photoshop 6.0 and ImageReady 3.0 software package is the industry standard
program for creating web graphics and for image manipulation. This course
is designed for graphic designers, web designers, digital artists and
photographers with little or no working knowledge of creating or modifying
photographs and graphics for the web or print. 

Introduction to Programming Concepts 
May 21, 2001 - July 1, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/p010.6.html
This course is suggested for students with no programming background, or
those who would like a more formal introduction to the concepts behind
most programming languages. This class is an introduction to the
fundamental syntax and logic of programming. Students will learn how to
establish a script, and work with variables, conditional statements, loops
and arrays. The fundamental logic of program flow and design will also be
discussed. 

Creating Spread Sheets with Excel 
May 28, 2001 - July 8, 2001
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/c101.1.html
Microsoft Excel is Windows answer to the spreadsheet. Gone are the days of
paper ledgers and hand calculations. Excel allows you to set up a digital
ledger and enter data directly into your computer. Once the data has been
inputted, you are able to perform a variety of calculations to provide you
with the information that you require.


Get more information at:  http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/ 



COURSE FEES

Course fees are based on membership level; Full members receive a
discounted tuition price, while Trial members pay the standard price.
Full membership is only $40 per year, so upgrade your membership before
registering, and save money! Payments may be made online via secure
transaction; all figures are in U.S. funds.  A certificate of completion
is available for an additional $5; the request needs to be made at the
time of registration. A certificate can be requested after class is
completed for $10.  Textbooks (when required) are separate and may be
purchased through the Guild's online bookstore, The Bookmark. Books should
be purchased before the first week of class! In addition, students should
have regular access to the web and the ability to post completed
assignments on a public (non-Intranet) web server.

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5. Why Did I Get This Email? And Other HWG-News FAQs 
(HWG-News Newsletter Editor, editor(at)hwg.org)
This newsletter was edited by Kef Moulton <kef(at)hwg.org>. 

Some questions you may be asking:

Q: Why did I get this mail?
A: You received this newsletter because you are a member of the HTML
Writers Guild. This message came from HWG-News, the Guild's mandatory
mailing list for all members. If you need more information about
HWG-News, please see the List Charter at:
http://www.hwg.org/lists/hwg-news/index.html

Q. Why doesn't this newsletter talk about web design or HTML more?
A. The newsletter is the Guild's administrative bulletin to the
membership; beyond the HWG News Tips, we don't include specific
information on web creation. If you are interested in the topics of Web
design and HTML, then you might want to subscribe to some of our
discussion lists devoted to those topics. More  information on the
Guild's offering of discussion lists can be found at:
http://www.hwg.org/lists/mailinglists.html

Q. How can I find out more about Guild activities?
A. The Guild has set up a one-way announcement list, HWG-Announce, that
carries bulletins of day-to-day Guild business. For details on how to
subscribe, please see:  http://www.hwg.org/lists/hwg-announce/

Q: How do I unsubscribe from HWG-News?
A: Since this is a required list in order to maintain your Guild
membership, unsubscribing is the same as resigning from the HTML Writers
Guild.  If you have your Member ID and password, to resign your
membership in the Guild and to unsubscribe to HWG-News, visit:
http://www.hwg.org/member/resign.html  Fill in the pertinent information,
and submit it.  If you don't have a Member ID, or have forgotten your
password, send mail to:  mailto:lost-password(at)hwg.org  with a Subject of:
Resign membership.  In the body of the message, provide the following
information:   

* Your email address(es) 
* Your member ID if you have one. 
* The list of discussion lists you are on.

Please remember that unsubscribing to HWG-News automatically resigns you
from the Guild. If you have problems with unsubscribing, please contact
the password support team <lost-password(at)hwg.org> for help.

Q: How do I change my email address for Guild mailings?
A: Full members can update their membership profile at any time by going
to this page:  http://www.hwg.org/member/profile.html. If you don't know
your password, contact the password support team <lost-password(at)hwg.org>
for help. Trial members can send email to <dbadmin(at)hwg.org> to change
their email address.

Q: Can my company advertise in the Guild's newsletter?
A: Yes; the Guild is offering sponsorship opportunities in HWG-News on a
limited basis. If you are interested in advertising your web related
product or service here, please send email to advertising(at)hwg.org or call
(334) 928-4542. Discounts are available to Guild Business and Corporate
members, as well as for multiple placements. The Guild's newsletter
reaches over 124,000 web authors worldwide each month.  (Note: The Guild
does not make our member database available for third party use. We have
a strong privacy policy and will not release our members' personal
information; our mailing list is not for sale. Any questions regarding
the Guild's advertising or privacy policies can be directed to
advertising(at)hwg.org.)

Q: What if I want to comment on this newsletter?
A: The HWG-News Mailing List is a "Read-Only" list -- please do not try
to reply to this message directly.  If you wish to contact the editor of
this newsletter, you may do so by sending email to editor(at)hwg.org. Each
article begins with the contact information for the author as well.  

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Copyright 2001, HTML Writers Guild, Inc., All Rights Reserved. 
Published twice monthly via email and WWW.

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