Frontend Engineering, Volume I

HTML: Syllabus

All Standards: HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.1, HTML 5, Living HTML

Syllabus Defined

The syllabus is a list of topics, subtopics, and so on, organized in "depth-first" order, exhausting one subtopic before moving on to the next.

This is very different from a table of contents. In an HTML syllabus, for example, you would have each of the tags that are used in tables presented as subtopics under the table topic. This order is easiest for the professor, but inappropriate for the student.

To teach table building in HTML, you start with basics. The student masters the basics of table, table rows and table datum elements and their nesting. A subsequent lessons (in company with other topics at a similar level of complexity) covers more advanced table tags. Row and column spans are not taught until the student is highly skilled in HTML.

To summarize, a syllabus organizes a subject based on the logic of the subject. Subtopics are covered before starting the next topic. Details of one subtopic are covered before starting the next subtopic. A Table of Contents organizes a subject into good order for learning: simplest things before simpler things, and so on, postponing the most complex for last.

Folding Syllabus

Suggestion: Try the "-" and "+" buttons to the left of the title, top row.

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