Archive for the ‘General’ Category
The Basics of Web Coding (Part 1)
This is part one in an ongoing series of posts.
Many of you have livejournals, xangas, tubmlrs, twitters, and wordpress installations. Customizing them isn’t always easy. Today you’ll learn the basics of HTML and CSS.
HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) go hand in hand to produce most of what you see on the internet today. The HTML provides the framework for the content, while the CSS makes everything look the way it does.
HTML is the framework upon which a website is built. When you take notes, you use markup to denote importance within the document. You’ll use Roman Numerals, numbers, letters and various other “tags” to indicate what each piece of content means in relation to another. HTML does the same thing for your website’s code, except instead of Roman Numerals and numbers, you use HTML tags. I’ve listed a few below:
<h1> means "Heading 1"
<h2> means "Heading 2"
<p> means "Paragraph text"
<a> means "Anchor (or you can think of it as an 'active link')
It’s so simple! HTML is the markup that assigns value to the content on a website. It’s also important to note that these tags must be closed in the following way:
<h1>This is the main header!</h1>
I’ve uploaded a demo page where you can view these basic tags in action.
Besides the tags above, HTML supports a variety of other important markup choices. Using semantic markup (using these tags to declare importance or weight of information within the HTML document) is crucial. New web designers will often use tags to incorrectly style their content. The most important thing you can learn early on is that style and markup are best left separated! Leave the markup to do the dirty work of denoting content’s importance within the document and styling comes much much easier.
Now that you understand the basics of how HTML “works”, the next article will cover the basics of how styling interfaces with all of this!
Customized much?
Just put the finishing touches on my own customized WordPress installation. Still has a few validation issues on the main page, but everything else should be rock solid.
I already have a great idea for a series of articles, so stay tuned!