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On Wed, 2010-01-20 at 15:14 +0000, Rob Beard wrote: > Quoting tom <tompotts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: > > > > It makes me mad when they teach people 'lock you into sme forever' programs. > > Just doing MS work for them.... > > Tom te tom te tom > > Yep, I'd have thought that a decent web design course these days would > be teaching maybe PHP or Perl along with SQL (maybe MySQL) and > possibly Javascript. > > Surely being taught these technologies is going to be more future > proofed than just a web editing package and desktop database app? > > Rob > > Of course the above are great technologies and if the course is a couple of years long then they should be taught. However a 1 term, or even 3 term, part time/evening class course will not be able to teach these as web design tools (unless there is a nice gui based app I've never heard of where this stuff is invisible). The above all need serious programming skills and are not easy to pick up even if one is that way inclined. People could be taught drupal or zencart pretty easily, but even these need skills most people who want to put together a simple website won't have, for example how do you install this stuff either to your own PC (not recommended) or to your web account if your ISP doesn't supply them as a one click install. Apart from the fact that most people won't want the type of website these deliver. The unfortunate fact is that Dreamweaver is nicer to use, has more features and is more intuitive than kompozer. Photoshop may not have more features than The Gimp, but Photoshop is easier to use. (We won't mention outlook 'cos it's just pants). I'm not sure that converting people to linux is that difficult if a. they have a reason to change and b. one is prepared to convert them to one of the "simple" to use distros. If the convertee watches movies etc.. then provide them with a distro which has, or will install, all needed codecs. Provide a distro which always automatically downloads all needed dependencies and removes previous versions of whatever app it happens to be. Make sure it has wide wifi support installed when the distro is installed, likewise support for media cards, dongles etc. And likewise propitiatory graphics drivers. I reckon this gives you a choice of 3 or 4 distros. However my 72 year old mother, 11 year old nephew and 30 something next door neighbours are all pretty happy with ubuntu, easypeasy netbook remix and kubuntu respectably. A bit of hand holding for mum, but no more than with windows stuff (and no she's not IT illiterate, I couldn't write a 200 line excell macro...). All these people had windows slow down on them, be very slow to start with or download vast amounts of viruses because of gullibility and IT illiteracy. All are happy with what they now have. Simon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html