WebTutorExtreme: CSS and HTML: HTML Basic

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Thursday, July 5, 2012

CSS and HTML 12:Putting It All Together

If you have gone through all of the pages in this HTML Basics then you should be a competent HTMLer.

In fact, due to the fact that most people who use HTML use it rather badly, you should be better than most.

he following code incorporates all of the methods that have been explained in the previous pages:


<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html>

<head>

 <title>My first web page</title>

 <!-- By the way, this is a comment -->

</head>

<body>

<h1>My first web page</h1>

<h2>What this is</h2>
<p>A simple page put together using HTML. <strong>A simple page put together using HTML.</strong> A simple page put together using HTML. A simple page put together using HTML. A simple page put together using HTML. A simple page put together using HTML. A simple page put together using HTML. A simple page put together using HTML. A simple page put together using HTML.</p>

<h2>Why this is</h2>
<ul>
 <li>To learn HTML</li>
 <li>
  To show off
  <ol>
   <li>To my boss</li>
   <li>To my friends</li>
   <li>To my cat</li>
   <li>To the little talking duck in my brain</li>
  </ol>
 </li>
 <li>Because I've fallen in love with my computer and want to give her some HTML loving.</li>
</ul>

<h2>Where to find the tutorial</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.htmldog.com"><img src="http://www.htmldog.com/images/logo.gif" width="157" height="70" alt="HTML Dog logo" /></a></p>

<h3>Some random table</h3>
<table border="1">
 <tr>
  <td>Row 1, cell 1</td>
  <td>Row 1, cell 2</td>
  <td>Row 1, cell 3</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>Row 2, cell 1</td>
  <td>Row 2, cell 2</td>
  <td>Row 2, cell 3</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>Row 3, cell 1</td>
  <td>Row 3, cell 2</td>
  <td>Row 3, cell 3</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>Row 4, cell 1</td>
  <td>Row 4, cell 2</td>
  <td>Row 4, cell 3</td>
 </tr>
</table>

<h3>Some random form</h3>
<p><strong>Note:</strong> It looks the part, but won't do a damned thing</p>

<form action="somescript.php" method="post">

<p>Name:</p>
<p><input type="text" name="name" value="Your name" /></p>

<p>Comments: </p>
<p><textarea rows="10" cols="20" name="comments">Your comments</textarea></p>

<p>Are you:</p>
<p><input type="radio" name="areyou" value="male" /> Male</p>
<p><input type="radio" name="areyou" value="female" /> Female</p>
<p><input type="radio" name="areyou" value="hermaphrodite" /> An hermaphrodite</p>
<p><input type="radio" name="areyou" value="asexual" checked="checked" /> Asexual</p>

<p><input type="submit" /></p>

<p><input type="reset" /></p>

</form>

</body>

</html>

There you have it. Save the file and play around with it - this is the best way to understand how everything works. Go on. Tinker.

When you're happy, you can move on to the CSS Beginner Tutorial.

CSS and HTML 11: Forms

Forms can be used to send data across the web and are often used as contact forms to convert information inputted by a user into an email

On their own, forms are useless. They need to be hooked up to a program that will process the data inputted by the user. These take all manner of guises and are outside of the remit of this website. If you use an internet service provider to host your HTML, they will be able to help you with this and will probably have clear and simple instructions on how, for example, to make a form-to-email form work.

The basic tags used in the actual HTML of forms are form, input, textarea, select and option.

form defines the form and within this tag, there is one required action attribute which tells the form where its contents will be sent to when it is submitted.

The optional method attribute tells the form how the data in it is going to be sent and it can have the value get (which is default) or post. This is commonly used, and often set to postwhich hides the information (get latches the information onto the URL).

So a form element will look something like this:


<form action="processingscript.php" method="post">

</form>

The input tag is the daddy of the form world. It can take ten forms, outlined below:

<input type="text" /> is a standard textbox. This can also have a value attribute, which sets the initial text in the textbox.
<input type="password" /> is similar to the textbox, but the characters typed in by the user will be hidden.
<input type="checkbox" /> is a checkbox, which can be toggled on and off by the user. This can also have a checked attribute, which would be used in the format <input type="checkbox" checked="checked" />, and makes the initial state of the check box to be switched on, as it were.
<input type="radio" /> is similar to a checkbox, but the user can only select one radio button in a group. This can also have a checked attribute, used in the same way as the checkbox.
<input type="file" /> is an area that shows the files on your computer, like you see when you open or save a document in most programs, and is used to enable users to upload files.
<input type="submit" /> is a button that when selected will submit the form. You can control the text that appears on the submit button (as you can with button and resettypes - see below) with the value attribute, for example <input type="submit"value="Ooo. Look. Text on a button. Wow" />.
<input type="image" /> is an image that will submit the coordinates of where the user clicked on it. This also requires a src attribute, like the img tag.
<input type="button" /> is a button that will not do anything without extra code added.
<input type="reset" /> is a button that when selected will reset the form fields to their default values.
<input type="hidden" /> is a field that will not be displayed and is used to pass information such as the page name that the user is on or the email address that the form should be posted to.

Note that the input tag closes itself with a "/>" at the end.

A textarea is, basically, a large textbox. It requires a rows and cols attribute and is used like this:

<textarea rows="5" cols="20">A big load of text here</textarea>

The select tag works with the option tag to make drop-down select boxes.

They work like this:


<select>
 <option value="first option">Option 1</option>
 <option value="second option">Option 2</option>
 <option value="third option">Option 3</option>
</select>

When the form is submitted, the value of the selected option will be sent.

Similar to the checked attribute of checkboxes and radio buttons, an option tag can also have a selected attribute, which would be used in the format <option value="mouse" selected="selected">Rodent</option>.

All of the tags mentioned above will look very nice presented on the page, but if you hook up your form to a form-handling program, they will all be ignored. This is because the form fields need names. So to all of the fields, the attribute name needs to be added, for example <input type="text" name="talkingsponge" />

A form might look like the one below. (Note: this form will not work unless there is a "contactus.php" file, which is stated in the action attribute of the form tag, to handle the submitted date)


<form action="contactus.php" method="post">

 <p>Name:</p>
 <p><input type="text" name="name" value="Your name" /></p>

 <p>Comments: </p>
 <p><textarea name="comments" rows="5" cols="20">Your comments</textarea></p>

 <p>Are you:</p>
 <p><input type="radio" name="areyou" value="male" /> Male</p>
 <p><input type="radio" name="areyou" value="female" /> Female</p>
 <p><input type="radio" name="areyou" value="hermaphrodite" /> An hermaphrodite</p>
 <p><input type="radio" name="areyou" value="asexual" checked="checked" /> Asexual</p>

 <p><input type="submit" /></p>

 <p><input type="reset" /></p>

</form>

There is a whole other level of complexity you can delve into in the HTML Advanced Tutorial if you are so inclined.

CSS and HTML 10: Tables

There are a number of tags used in tables, and to fully get to grips with how they work is probably the most difficult area of this HTML Beginners Tutorial.

Copy the following code into the body of your document and then we will go through what each tag is doing:

here are a number of tags used in tables, and to fully get to grips with how they work is probably the most difficult area of this HTML Beginners Tutorial.

Copy the following code into the body of your document and then we will go through what each tag is doing:


<table>
 <tr>
  <td>Row 1, cell 1</td>
  <td>Row 1, cell 2</td>
  <td>Row 1, cell 3</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>Row 2, cell 1</td>
  <td>Row 2, cell 2</td>
  <td>Row 2, cell 3</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>Row 3, cell 1</td>
  <td>Row 3, cell 2</td>
  <td>Row 3, cell 3</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>Row 4, cell 1</td>
  <td>Row 4, cell 2</td>
  <td>Row 4, cell 3</td>
 </tr>
</table>

The table element defines the table.

The tr element defines a table row.

The td element defines a data cell. These must be enclosed in tr tags, as shown above.

If you imagine a 3x4 table, which is 12 cells, there should be four tr elements to define the rows and three td elements within each of the rows, making a total of 12 td elements.

CSS and HTML 9: Images

The img tag is used to put an image in an HTML document and it looks like this:


<img src="http://www.htmldog.com/images/logo.gif" width="157" height="70" alt="HTML Dog logo" />

The src attribute tells the browser where to find the image. Like the a tag, this can be absolute, as the above example demonstrates, but is usually relative. For example, if you create your own image and save it as "alienpie.jpg" in a directory called "images" then the code would be <img src="images/alienpie.jpg"...

The width and height attributes are necessary because if they are excluded, the browser will tend to calculate the size as the image loads, instead of when the page loads, which means that the layout of the document may jump around while the page is loading.

The alt attribute is the alternative description. This is used for people who cannot or choose not to view images. This is a requirement in the latest versions of HTML.

Note that, like the br tag, because the img tag does not have a closing tag, it closes itself, ending with "/>"

The construction of images for the web is a little outside of the remit of this website, but it is worth noting a few things...

The most commonly used file formats used for images are GIFs and JPEGs. They are both compressed formats, and have very different uses.

GIFs can have no more than 256 colours, but they maintain the colours of the original image. The lower the number of colours you have in the image, the lower the file size will be.

GIFS SHOULD BE USED FOR IMAGES WITH SOLID COLOURS.

JPEGs on the other hand use a mathematical algorithm to compress the image and will distort the original slightly. The lower the compression, the higher the file size, but the clearer the image.

JPEGS SHOULD BE USED FOR IMAGES SUCH AS PHOTOGRAPHS.

Images are perhaps the largest files a new web designer will be handling. It is a common mistake to be oblivious to the file size of images, which can be extremely large. Web pages should download as quickly as possible, and if you keep in mind that most people still use modems that download at less than 7Kb a second(realistically it is less than 5Kb), you can see how a large file will greatly slow down the download time of a full page.

You need to strike a balance between image quality and image size. Most modern image manipulation programs allow you to compress images and the best way to figure out what is best suited for yourself is trial and error.

CSS and HTML 8: Links

So far you've been making a stand-alone web page, which is all very well and nice, but what makes the internet so special is that it all links together.

The 'H' and 'T' in 'HTML' stand for 'hypertext', which basically means a system of linked text.

An anchor tag (a) is used to define a link, but you also need to add something to the anchor tag - the destination of the link.

Add this to your document:


<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html>

<head>
	<title>My first web page</title>
</head>

<body>

	<h1>My first web page</h1>

	<h2>What this is</h2>
	<p>A simple page put together using HTML</p>

	<h2>Why this is</h2>
	<p>To learn HTML</p>

	<h2>Where to find the tutorial</h2>
	<p><a href="http://www.htmldog.com">HTML Dog</a></p>

</body>

</html>

The destination of the link is defined in the href attribute of the tag. The link can be absolute, such as "http://www.htmldog.com", or it can be relative to the current page.

So if, for example, you had another file called "flyingmoss.html" then the line of code would simply be <a href="flyingmoss.html">The miracle of moss in flight</a> or something like this.

A link does not have to link to another HTML file, it can link to any file anywhere on the web.

A link can also send a user to another part of the same page they are on. You can add an idattribute to just about any tag, for example <h2 id="moss">Moss</h2>, and then link to it by using something like this: <a href="#moss">Go to moss</a>. Selecting this link will scroll the page straight to the element with that id.

The a tag allows you to open the link in a newly spawned window, rather than replacing the web page the user is on, which at first thought may sound like a good idea as it doesn't take the user away from your site.

There are a number of reasons why you shouldn't do this however.

From a usability point of view, this method breaks navigation. The most commonly used navigation tool on a browser is the "back" button. Opening a new window disables this function.

On a wider, more general usability point, users do not want new windows to be popping up all over the place. If they want to open a link in a new window then they can choose to do so themselves.

CSS and HTML 7: Lists

Unordered lists and ordered lists work the same way, except that the former is used for non-sequential lists with list items usually preceded by bullets and the latter is for sequential lists, which are normally represented by incremental numbers.

The ul tag is used to define unordered lists and the ol tag is used to define ordered lists. Inside the lists, the li tag is used to define each list item.

Change your code to the following:


<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html>

<head>
	<title>My first web page</title>
</head>

<body>
	<h1>My first web page</h1>

	<h2>What this is</h2>
	<p>A simple page put together using HTML</p>

	<h2>Why this is</h2>
	<ul>
		<li>To learn HTML</li>
		<li>To show off</li>
		<li>Because I've fallen in love with my computer and want to give her some HTML loving.</li>
	</ul>

</body>

</html>

If you look at this in your browser, you will see a bulleted list. Simply change the ul tags to ol and you will see that the list will become numbered.

Lists can also be included in lists to form a structured hierarchy of items.

Replace the above list code with the following:


<ul>
	<li>To learn HTML</li>
	<li>
		To show off
		<ol>
			<li>To my boss</li>
			<li>To my friends</li>
			<li>To my cat</li>
			<li>To the little talking duck in my brain</li>
		</ol>
	</li>
	<li>Because I've fallen in love with my computer and want to give her some HTML loving.</li>
</ul>

A list within a list. And you could put another list within that. And another within that. And so on and so forth.

CSS and HTML 6: Headings

The p tag is just the start of text formatting.

If you have documents with genuine headings, then there are HTML tags specifically designed just for them.

They are h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6, h1 being the almighty emperor of headings and h6 being the lowest pleb.

Change your code to the following:


<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html>

<head>
	<title>My first web page</title>
</head>

<body>
	<h1>My first web page</h1>

	<h2>What this is</h2>
	<p>A simple page put together using HTML</p>

	<h2>Why this is</h2>
	<p>To learn HTML</p>
</body>

</html>

Note that the h1 tag is only used once - it is supposed to be the main heading of the page and shouldn't be used multiple times.

h2 to h6 however, can be used as often as you desire, but they should always be used in order, as they were intended. For example, an h4 should be a sub-heading of an h3, which should be a sub-heading of an h2.

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