About ten months ago, I attended an excellent course on Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) with the good folks at Edgeofmyseat.com. So when I had the opportunity last month to attend their newest course on HTML, I was interested.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I have worked with Edgeofmyseat.com for years. They often provide the robust web development to compliment my web designs. As such, I am very familiar with the depth of their web development knowledge. I rely on it.

The official course title was HTML and Web Standards for Beginners. As an experienced communications designer, I have been building websites for years. Still, I appreciate that even those who know their stuff can benefit from a fresh look at the basics, especially when that look is being offered by highly qualified professionals.

When I took the CSS course last year, I knew I had a lot to learn. With HTML, I was pretty sure that I had the topic well covered. I went into this HTML course looking to confirm that what I believe to be true and accurate, is indeed so.

So, would Edgeofmyseat.com surprise me? Could they deliver value to an experienced web designer with a course aimed at beginners?

As the training day drew to a close and I reviewed my notes, I did admit to myself: the training was in fact well worth the price of admission. Drew McLellan, a director and senior developer at Edgeofmyseat.com, really did deliver. With his expert knowledge, Drew highlighted a number of points that I didn’t know, especially when covering what to expect with HTML 5. (Those W3C white papers are frightening to me as a designer.) Equally important, Drew’s presentation confirmed that my own grasp of HTML and web standards was solid.

Even though the course was clearly aimed at beginners – and I would have loved to attend this course about 10 years ago – there were still a few gems that an experienced guy like me could pick up. The course was value for money. Job well done by Edgeofmyseat.com.

Edgeofmyseat.com was started by Rachel Andrew and offers quality web development support. Having worked with Rachel for several years now, I have a great appreciation for her knowledge of CSS. But would all that knowledge in her head transform itself into a valuable training experience?

In a word, yes.

The course was offered a couple of Fridays ago at Moor Hall, in Cookham. The facility itself was brilliant – open and airey, with decent coffee (even it was out of a machine – but one of those new-fandangled coffee machines) and post lunch cakes!

With coffee placed strategically on the desk so that I wouldn’t knock it onto my already suspect Vaio, I eagerly began to listen to Edgeofmyseat’s new co-director and lead developer, Drew McLellan, talk about CSS. And what I quickly realised as I scribbled notes and followed along was that I was in for a great day. Having learned CSS over the years from various books and websites, and from my own practice, I had already developed a practical knowledge of it. But I lacked the big picture; I didn’t have a firm understanding of the underlying rules of CSS and I certainly was not as up to date with all the tricks and techniques as I thought.

The course schedule was divided into two major sections: a series of slides offering an introduction to CSS and some of the bigger concepts surrounding it, followed by a step-by-step look at how best to use CSS. The second section of the course involved practical tasks of applying what we were learning by writing stylesheets for sample web pages.

During the course of one of the breaks towards the end of the day, I took a moment to review my notes. As I flipped through the many pages I have scribbled, I was amazed at how many *** I had written next to what seemed an endless list of gems and insights that Drew and Rachel had covered.

So, especially if you’re new to CSS, but even if you have loads of experience too, I would recommend spending a day learning (or re-learning) CSS with Edgeofmyseat.com. It’s well worth the cost of the course.