Thursday, November 18, 2010

Todd's Tips - Learn HTML and CSS. Now!

Kind of a sad state of affairs, no? I think one thing we can take away from this image is the idea that there are so many WYSIWYG applications out there that actually writing HTML code has become a sort of lost art.

But it shouldn't be.

HMTL (Hypertext Markup Language) and its companion CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) are essential for creating high-quality websites. While the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) applications like Dreamweaver and Front Page can take you a long way, when you really need to alter the page in a minute way to fit your awesome idea, you're gonna need HTML and CSS.

Let me explain...

A web browser, like the one you're using now to read this, is built to read HMTL. At least, that was the original idea. HTML allows you to upload text (Hypertext) to the net. In the beginning one could only do the bare minimum of formatting with barebones HTML. But, after a while, CSS came along. CSS is a scripting language that acts on HMTL elements in a page. It can add a number of attributes such as color, size and most importantly positioning. Moreover, it can also be used to position Java Script objects, Flash files and other, more interactive elements. So as of right now the basic developmental elements of a web page are its HMTL base and a linked CSS file that tells all those HTML elements where to go.

So, in order for you to create the best web pages you can, you need to learn these things. And here's where you can start:


More Basic HTML Tutorials - This website might look crappy, but that's because it uses no CSS. Despite this, you'll find that the tutorials are very good at explaining the basics of HTML.


Also, there are a large number of tutorials on HTML and CSS as well as other web-scripting languages such as Action Script, Java Script, PHP, Ajax and Cold Fusion on Lynda.com.

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