need Help with Trying to Make sense of the Language known as HTML? (HTML - scripting)

Member Name: Squeeks

Product:	HTML - scripting
Date:	21/05/01 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sense of achievement, can be a very interesting hobby, not hard to do

Disadvantages: Takes a little perseverance, lots of different versions of HTML

I took - actually no, I was forced to take - an HTML course as part of my additional studies programme at sixth form. Expecting it to be dull and incredibly complicated, I was in for a pleasant surprise! I don't want to give a lesson on HTML here, but maybe some tips would come in useful.

Firstly, if you're thinking of writing a website, I really would recommend you write it yourself rather than using a programme (you use microsoft notepad for this). Not only does this give you a lot more control, the sense of acheivement and satisfaction you receive from doing it provides a huge boost. I also think it's less complicated in a way - you can see exactly what's happening and know why everything on the page looks the way it does.

The first step I would suggest would be to take a look at the HTML tutorials on the web. These range from total beginner stuff (trust me, you absolutely do NOT need to be a computer whizz to do this) to the kind of thing that would make a nuclear physicist's mind boggle! The very first thing you will probably be surprised at is that there is not *one* website language (HTML is only one of many, although it provides the basis of all sites). Java, Javascript and Perl are just a few examples. However, these are all very complicated and most people never progress to the stage where they can write them freely as they can HTML.

The second thing - this really confused me when I started - is that HTML itself has many different versions and also looks different depending on what browser people have. Some HTML commands (or "tags" - they look like <THIS>) won't be recognised on older computers. Some commands won't be recognised on Netscape, but they will on Internet Explorer, and vice versa. When I began writing a website it looked great on my computer - a very new one, equipped with IE 5 - but when I looked on it with Macs, or with older computers with older versions of IE and Netscape
, it looked appalling! So try to view your website on as many different computers as possible, while you work on it. As for the different versions of HTML - I say, just use the commands you need to use and don't bother about whether you're mixing HTML strict with HTML flexible, or whatever it's called!

A lot of people think writing HTML must be boring and something of a 'nerdy' thing to do. Well actually, I think it gives you the opportunity to be very creative! Choosing the colour or picture for your background, the colour, lettering and size of your fonts, the pictures to use, how to organise the information on the page so that it looks stylish yet clear... This all gave me a lot of enjoyment. I'm not much of an artist, and for me, creating web pages was like painting a picture - except the result is always flawless and you can change anything you don't like at a click of a button! There are tons of images, fonts and backgrounds on the net if you don't have these already.

Once you've got going a bit, the best way to learn (apart from tutorials) is to look at personal webpages already up. You know, the really twee ones from boring couples in Utah (searching for sickly animal names is a good way of finding them - try "Pooky"). These will be amateur enough for you to be able to glean some useful tips from - just go to the view menu and click 'source' (in IE) - you could just check out dooyoo's source now if you wanted, the first few pages aren't *too* complicated. I found out a lot of tricks from these kind of sites - try it!

Finally, I would encourage everyone to have a go at doing this, I really would. Knowing HTML is bound to come in useful some day, if not now!

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