From: Hilary Bailey Date: 2011-02-12T23:07:53+09:00 Subject: Re: Choosing an office suite Distinguish community, Thanks again for such comments. I already build an Excel model which consist of many files.I also wrote a layman methodology which includes a graphical representation, explaining the relationship between and among different contributors, the reporting system, defined the contributors, what kind of information can be entered, who to target, red flags as warning signs, and many other parameters. Over the years (20 years) I have been using a smaller component of this creation, but now, after seeing what my school district, and other districts use as a source of information/data management, I think that my written model surpasses their presentation tools. Now it is time to role up my sleeves and get to work. I am not afraid of spending countless hours working on learning. Secondly, I am not trying to find a cute shortcut to creating a program. My great concern is where to start, and having started, knowing the possible steps to take (different tools such as Vim, HTML, SQLs) to have the understanding. As I mentioned, many moons gone by, I do not have the finance to pay for such expertise, also I am aware that due to the USA financial mess, seeking private grants is almost virtually impossible. For others who are fortunate to have the financial resources, good for them, my reality is a bit different. Therefore at this point I think that I have gathered a whole lot of valuable information from a great community. My approach will be to attack my dream with the following curriculum: a)as described by Phillip G -Pick up the necessities of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - Learn about application security (this is very, very important on the internet!)- Learn about deployment options for Rails. b) as mentioned by Shern - Check out