All W3C training courses are run on an instance of the Moodle platform hosted at w3techcourses.com. Moodle is designed and built by people who are educationalists first and developers second. There are some features of the platform that are terrific and one or two that are not ideal. For example, sorry, but no, there is no persistent login and no, it really doesn't work well on mobile.

One thing you should do as early as possible is to set up your profile and other preferences. To do this:

1. Log in to your account on the training website;
2. Click your name in the top right hand corner of the screen;
3. Click the Edit Profile tab;
4. If there's a 'Show Advanced' button — click it.

You can now set your preferences for things like whether you want to receive HTML or plain text e-mails. One very useful feature is the ability to choose between receiving all e-mails in real time or a daily digest. Look for the Email digest type options.

Something that all past participants have appreciated is the discussion forum. The more information you provide about yourself the more connections you're likely to make!

Accessing the Web on mobile

During the course you will need to access the Web on a mobile device. If you have a top end smartphone it will give a falsely good impression of how the Web works on mobile for users of other devices. For our purposes here, an older device is preferable. Better yet is to have several devices but most of us don't have that luxury.

Accessing the Web on a mobile device can sometimes be expensive, depending on your tariff. If your phone supports wi-fi, that's generally a good (free) option, but if all else fails, you may want to use an emulator, i.e. tools you access through your desktop that show how a given page will look on a mobile device. If you're serious about mobile app development you'll probably want to install one or more emulator packages on your development machine. Maximiliano Firtman created a comprehensive list of emulator SDKs which you may find interesting, but you may also find rather daunting!

For our purposes on this course it is sufficient to use online emulators that you can access simply through your regaular desktop browser. Just type in the URL of your page and you'll see it as it will appear on mobile.

Opera Mini

Opera makes two versions of its browser available for use on small devices. Opera Mobile is very similar to its full-function desktop browser and if you want to use its emulator then you'll need to install it.

Opera Mini is the front end of a substantial optimization system. Complex pages are transcoded on Opera's servers for lightweight delivery to Opera Mini browsers. That is, what leaves your server isn't necessarily what is delivered to the user. However, pages that are already suitable for display on mobile will not be transcoded and therefore this is a suitable tool for testing mobile-friendly pages, such as those you'll be producing on the course.

There are two versions of the Opera Mini demo, the most up to date version and, helpfully, an older version: Opera Mini Demo version 4.2. It's this older version we recommend for much of the work on the course although there's no harm atall in testing your work in other emulators.

One particularly useful feature of Opera Mini version 4.2 is that it allows you to invoke CSS media rules. As we'll see on the course, the CSS media="handheld" rule is not supported on most modern devices but if you want to see it in action, Opera Mini can help you if you follow the steps below:

NB Some course participants report that they get an error message of Connection failed! Unable to connect. In this case the advice is to select Menu -> Tools -> Settings and then scroll down to Network where you can change the protocol from Socket to HTTP.

But for emphasis, the best way to test your work is to use actual mobile devices, including older ones as well as that top of the range just out new smartphone you got last week!

Moodle has a system trough which you can submit assignments. Teachers are notified automatically when you do this and the system records that you have made your submission. When your assignment has been reviewed, you should receive an e-mail notifying you that feedback has been left. You may be asked to look at something again — i.e. make changes to your submission in order to gain a pass. If this happens, and your work and then resubmit it. This will alert the tutors who will then provide feedback shortly afterwards.

Most of the assignments ask you to create or modify a web page and these need to be available online. If you have access to a web server you'll probably be more comfortable uploading your work to it. Alternatively there are a number of companies such as x10hosting and Free Web Hosting Area that offer free web hosting. These are limited accounts (they're free!) but they should allow you sufficient flexibility to complete the course.

Either way, once the work in online, you then send the link and any additional notes via Moodle's 'Edit my submission' button at the bottom of the assignment page. Click that and you should see a WYSIWYG editor like this:

Previous participants have found it impossible to upload images through the Moodle system. If you want to include images, such as screenshots, you'll need to post them to your Web space and refer to them in your text.

In some browsers, rather than a WYSIWYG editor, you'll see a simple text box. This is because you're using a browser that Moodle doesn't fully support. In this case you just enter the HTML directly or, however awkward and emotionally difficult it may be, just use a browser you don't normally use!

Please do not send assignment submissions as e-mail attachments as these are not recorded on the system automatically.

The grade for all assignments is either 100% or 0% (i.e. pass or fail). As a reminder, to gain a certificate of completion you must successfully complete all the assignments and quizzes.

Apart from the mid-point and final deadlines, assignments don't have individual closing dates as such (see the course description for details). However, as the course progresses, the discussion in the forum, which is a critical part of the learning process, moves on and you will get less benefit from doing assignments after other participants have begun discussing other matters. Furthermore, tutor feedback is unlikely to be prompt for late submissions as the priority is on the current work.

Languages

We have participants on the course from all over the world so for many, English is a second (or third) language. You are more than welcome to write to the forum in any language since fellow participants may well be able to respond in that language. If you want a reply from the teachers then please do use English.

Weekly routine

The course material for any given week is usually made available on the preceding Friday afternoon (European time). This is generally announced in an e-mail sent to the group at that time with an update on the state of the course, what has and hasn't been marked and so on.

Although the teachers are based in Europe (Britain and France), there is no set time of the day or week when you need to be online, i.e. the course can be taken equally effectively in any time zone.