Christine Aguila wrote:
[...] learning how to write some html code using Notepad [...]
Well, that wasn't the best way to get started. It's sorta like learning
to drive nails by using a rock instead of a hammer. :-) If you're going
to write any sort of code or markup in raw text, you've /got/ to have a
better editor than Notepad. :-)
I will, however, refrain from stating an editor preference, so as to
avoid the inevitable religious war about which editor is "best".
[...] I learned to write some [HTML] code--and [...] how to write a
css style sheet [...] never could figure out how to get my little
two item list to align the way I wanted to. [...] intimidated by
the complexity of the code [for some elegantly simple web pages].
Well, HTML and CSS are OK for what they are, but they aren't completely
suitable for the way they are used now. The original idea behind HTML
was that the author marks the text for its semantic content, and the
browser figures out how to lay it out on screen/paper in conjunction
with the user's (not author's) configuration (fonts, sizes, etc.) and
some "notion" of appropriate layout based on those semantics.
That lasted about eight seconds after people started putting up pages
other people could view. HTML went down a bad trail of adding markup
purely for visual and layout purposes, thoroughly confusing things, and
turning a lot of web pages into tag soup. Eventually everyone said
"Bah, that's crap" and CSS was born so you could, again, separate the
semantic markup from the layout/visual markup.
But it's still immature, and it often like building a sand castle one
grain of sand at a time. For example, one big goal in CSS was to be
able to do complex layouts without having to use HTML tables. Well, you
/can/ do it in CSS instead of HTML, but the HTML still ends up with a
disgusting mess of tags for any non-trivial layout, but they're div tags
instead of HTML table-related tags.
Hence, I'm going to throw in the towel and will probably use Word Web Pages
to get something up.
I've found that it helps me learn to use some tool that let's me do
stuff visually in a GUI and writes the technical stuff for me. So I
start with a blank canvas and do one little thing at a time, save the
results, and see what code the thing wrote to achieve the effect. As I
figure out the little stuff, I gradually do bigger and bigger stuff and
see what it generates for that.
--
Thanks,
DougF (KG4LMZ)
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