Opera Web Standards Curriculum
Learn to build a better Web with Opera
Learning Web Standards just got easier. Opera’s new Web Standards Curriculum, released in association with the Yahoo! Developer Network, is a complete course to teach you standards-based web development, including HTML, CSS, design principles and background theory, and JavaScript basics. It already has support from many organizations (including Yahoo! and the Web Standards Project) and universities. The first 23 articles are currently available, with about 30 more to be published between now and late September.
Table of contents
The beginning
- Introduction to The Web Standards Curriculum, by Chris Mills
Translations available! There are translations of the web standards curriculum available here.
Introduction to the world of web standards
- The history of the Internet and the web, and the evolution of web standards, by Mark Norman Francis.
- How does the Internet work?, by Jonathan Lane.
- The Web standards model—HTML, CSS and JavaScript, by Jonathan Lane.
- Beautiful dream, but what’s the reality?, by Jonathan Lane.
Web Design Concepts
This section won’t go into any code or markup details, and will act as an introduction to the design process before you start to create any graphics or code, as well as concepts of web design such as IA, navigation, usability etc.
- Information Architecture—planning out a web site, by Jonathan Lane.
- What does a good web page need?, by Mark Norman Francis.
- Colour Theory, by Linda Goin.
- Building up a site wireframe, by Linda Goin.
- Colour schemes and design mockups, by Linda Goin.
- Typography on the web, by Paul Haine.
HTML basics
- The basics of HTML, by Mark Norman Francis.
- The HTML <head> element, by Christian Heilmann.
- Choosing the right doctype for your HTML documents, by Roger Johansson.
The HTML body
- Marking up textual content in HTML, by Mark Norman Francis.
- HTML Lists, by Ben Buchanan.
- Images in HTML, by Christian Heilmann.
- HTML links—let’s build a web! by Christian Heilmann.
- HTML Tables, by Jen Hanen.
- HTML Forms—the basics, by Jen Hanen.
- Lesser–known semantic elements, by Mark Norman Francis.
- Generic containers—the div and span elements, by Mark Norman Francis.
- Creating multiple pages with navigation menus, by Christian Heilmann.
- Validating your HTML, by Mark Norman Francis.
Accessibility
- Accessibility basics, by Tom Hughes-Croucher.
- Accessibility testing, by Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis.
CSS
- CSS basics, by Christian Heilmann.
- Inheritance and Cascade, by Tommy Olsson.
- Text styling with CSS, by Ben Henick.
- The CSS layout model - boxes, borders, margins, padding, by Ben Henick.
- CSS background images, by Nicole Sullivan.
- Styling lists and links, by Ben Buchanan.
- Styling tables, by Ben Buchanan.
- Styling forms, by Ben Henick.
- Floats and clearing, by Tommy Olsson.
- CSS static and relative positioning, by Tommy Olsson.
- CSS absolute and fixed positioning, by Tommy Olsson.
Advanced CSS study
- Headers, footers, columns, and templates, by Ben Henick
JavaScript core skills
- Programming - the real basics!, by Christian Heilmann
- What can you do with JavaScript?, by Christian Heilmann
- Your first look at JavaScript, by Christian Heilmann
- JavaScript best practices, by Christian Heilmann
- The principles of unobtrusive JavaScript, by PPK
- JavaScript functions, by Mike West
- Objects in JavaScript, by Mike West
- Traversing the DOM, by Mike West
- Creating and modifying HTML, by Stuart Langridge
- Dynamic style - manipulating CSS with JavaScript, by Greg Schechter
- Handling events with JavaScript, by Robert Nyman
- JavaScript animation, by Stuart Langridge
- Graceful degredation versus progressive enhancement, by Christian Heilmann
Mobile web development
- Mobile 1: Introduction to the mobile web, by Brian Suda
Supplementary articles
Microformats
- Introduction to hCard, by Christopher Schmitt
- Introduction to hCard, Part two: Styling hCards, by Christopher Schmitt
- XFN encoding, extraction, and visualizations, by Brian Suda
- Styling XFN and rel-license links, by Christopher Schmitt
- Styling hReview Microformats, by Christopher Schmitt
- Styling and extracting hCalendar, by Christopher Schmitt
- Microformat Encoding and Visualization, by Brian Suda
Supplementary accessibility articles
- Introduction to WAI-ARIA, by Gez Lemon
- Creating accessible data tables, by Frank Palinkas
- Building Accessible Static Navigation with CSS, by Frank Palinkas
Miscellaneous
- Getting your content online, by Craig Grannell.
- More about the document <head>, by Chris Heilmann.
- Supplementary: Common HTML entities used for typography, by Ben Henick.
- The Opera Web Standards Curriculum glossary, by various authors. This is incomplete, and will be added to as time goes by.
Be heard
Let us know what you think, in our Web Standards Curriculum forums.
Show your support
If you want to show your support for the Opera Web Standards Curriculum, link to it using one of these buttons.
Opera Education
The Opera Web Standards Curriculum is also part of the larger Opera Education outreach program dedicated to working closely with universities, schools, and other education institutions. Check out the full program at www.opera.com/education.
Opera Web Standards Curriculum, in association with the 
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These articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial - Share Alike 2.5 license.
Making Opera WSC work for you
For educators
Pass on Web Standards and good development practices to the next generation of Web developers. Opera’s Web Standards Curriculum deconstructs Web Standards into modules you can teach either in order or as part of your own lesson plans.
For students
If your course already teaches Web Standards and best practices, then great - why not supplement your course texts with our material? If not, then lobby your teachers to adopt our material, thereby helping to improve the relevance of their lessons to real-world web development.
For Web developers
Web Standards have never been easier to learn. Everything you need to know is condensed into short, helpful tutorials that inform and inspire. Opera’s Web Standards Curriculum can help you brush up on things you know and maybe even teach you something you didn’t.
For businesses
Web Standards Curriculum is ideal for in-house training. Empower your development team to use Web Standards that reduce bandwidth, spur innovation and promote good coding practices across the Web.
For the Web
The beauty of the Web is that it creates a uniform, international development platform. Using Web Standards means your sites will be quicker to code and maintain, more compact, and accessible to web users regardless of their browsing platform and (dis)ability.
“Web development and design are ever evolving professions. Anyone teaching these subjects must ask themselves if they are equipping their students with best practices or burdening them with impractical methodologies. All of us in this field can benefit from this 
resource and use it as a catalyst to further the W3C vision of ‘Web for Everyone. Web on Everything.’”
Glenda Sims, Senior Systems Analyst
University of Texas, United States
“This will be an invaluable resource for the teaching of Web Standards at all levels and will fill an important gap in the available resources about this important subject. This course will help students to learn the right way to implement Web design and will increase their understanding of the importance of Web Standards for creating valid Web resources.”
Andrew Cobley, Lecturer in Internet Programming
Dundee University, United Kingdom
“As one of the world’s premier Web technology companies, Yahoo! prides itself on following best practices and building the Web the right way to enable us to become the starting point on the Internet for our consumers. The Opera Web Standards Curriculum delivers exactly the spread of knowledge Yahoo! would expect a front-end developer to know.”
Sophie Major, Manager
Yahoo! Developer Network International