Introduction
When I was first approached about writing this book—over 13 years ago now—I must admit that my thought was, “Another HTML book—how many do we need?” I learned HTML by experience when there was only one version of Netscape, and it had been a long time since I’d even looked at an HTML book. But after I researched the other HTML books on the market, I felt compelled to write a book that gives readers a realistic, easy-to-understand approach to learning HTML while at the same time offering real-world practice activities and advice on related issues.
HTML: A Beginner’s Guide is that book, offering you practical tools and knowledge that can easily be applied to a variety of development situations, without the boring rhetoric or lengthy technical fluff. This book tells you what you need to know, when you need to know it. In revising this book for the fifth edition, I again reviewed competing books to determine what readers wanted and needed in a “new” HTML book. Again and again, I saw that you wanted a book that combined an explanation of HTML5 and the latest aspects of CSS in a way that was easy to understand and use. Furthermore, readers clamored for a beginning-level HTML book that covered the standards-compliant way to code usable web pages. This is that book.
Who Should Read This Book
Since this book is geared toward anyone with little or no prior HTML knowledge, it’s perfect for anyone wishing to learn HTML. If you are a stay-at-home mom who wants to create a web site for your family without relying on half-baked tools or cookie-cutter templates, you’ve come to the right place. If you are a business professional seeking to acquire web development skills, this is the book for you. If you are interested in learning HTML to further your programming skills, this book is for you.
You don’t need to know anything about computer programming or web development in order to learn HTML, and you certainly don’t need to know either of those things to get a lot from this book.
What This Book Covers
The book is divided into four parts: Laying the Foundation, Adding the Content, Going Live, and Appendixes.
Part I, “Laying the Foundation,” covers all you need to know in order to start coding effective and efficient web pages with HTML. Part I consists of six chapters in which information is broken up into manageable chunks. Each chapter contains one or more step-by-step, real-world suggestions for practicing what you’ve learned.
Chapter 1, “Getting Started,” helps you understand the Web by answering common questions, such as “Who created HTML?” and “Who maintains HTML?” and also by tackling the anatomy of a web site, web browsers, and HTML. Issues surrounding how to plan your web site, using HTML editors, and learning from the pros are also discussed.
Chapter 2, “Document Setup,” explains beginning terminology, such as tags, attributes, and nesting, while also describing naming conventions and proper page structure.
Chapter 3, “Style Sheet Setup,” gives you details on how to set up style sheets in an HTML file, as well as ways to work with and reference color in your web pages.
Chapter 4, “Working with Text,” teaches you how to format text within your web pages, whether that means changing the font style or color, or adding line breaks and emphasis. In addition, this chapter provides essential dos and don’ts for working with web content.
Chapter 5, “Page Structure,” expands on the content covered in Chapter 4 to help you organize and structure various sections of content, as well as to format paragraphs and other page elements. All of this is setting the stage for Chapter 6, in which you’ll learn how to position those page elements.
Chapter 6, “Positioning Page Elements,” is the capstone chapter in this first section. It is here that we pull all you’ve learned thus far together to enable you to create single- and multicolumn page layouts with HTML and CSS.
Part II, “Adding the Content,” helps you add all the page details necessary for the bulk of your site’s text, image, and multimedia content. In this section, we’ll cover not only how to add images to your sites, but also using lists, tables, and forms—all of which are key components of usable and effective web pages.
Chapter 7, “Working with Links,” discusses the core of HTML: hypertext links. This chapter gives details on how to add and customize links in your web pages, whether you’re linking to another web page, a section on a web page, or an email address.
Chapter 8, “Working with Images,” helps you use images in your web pages by describing different image types, how to add them to a page, and how to link to and from them. A review of popular web graphics software, as well as guidelines you can use when creating images for the Web, are also provided.
Chapter 9, “Working with Multimedia,” explains different types of multimedia you can add to your pages and tells how to do so in ways that work in multiple browsers.
Chapter 10, “Creating Lists,” teaches you how to create and format the three different types of lists available in HTML, as well as how to style them with CSS.
Chapter 11, “Using Tables,” tackles the somewhat tricky but very useful topic of HTML tables. In step-by-step fashion, this chapter takes you through creating a very basic table structure and then formatting it with CSS.
Chapter 12, “Creating Forms,” introduces a key ingredient for most web sites—forms providing communication methods for customers. Various types of input controls are taught, including text fields, check boxes, file uploads, select menus, and buttons, as well as information about providing a way for your form to be processed.
Chapter 13, “Formatting and Styling Forms,” builds upon the skills you learned in Chapter 12 to make forms more user-friendly and efficient. Layout techniques specific to web forms are discussed, as well as client-side form validation.
Chapter 14, “Beyond Static HTML,” offers you an introduction to JavaScript, a technology used to add dynamic aspects to otherwise static HTML pages. Sample scripts allow you to add the current date and time to a web page, create a dynamic navigation bar, and display a user’s location on a map.
Part III, “Going Live,” includes two chapters that cover ways to publish the pages you’ve created, as well as tips for translating them to be accessed via email readers.
Chapter 15, “Publishing Pages,” teaches you to prepare your pages for online distribution before guiding you on important decisions, such as where to host your site, what domain name to use, and how to upload the site. Testing, submission to search engines and directories, and general marketing tips are also discussed.
Chapter 16, “HTML for Email,” is a brand-new chapter in this edition of the book, added to help web editors translate web page development skills to the world of HTML email (specifically for business marketing purposes).
Part IV, “Appendixes,” provides additional information in quick-reference formats and puts commonly used details at the fingertips of both beginning and advanced HTML coders.
Appendix A, “Answers to Self Tests,” contains the answers to the questions asked at the end of each chapter.
Appendix B, “HTML/CSS Reference Table,” outlines all of the HTML tags and CSS properties taught in the book in an easy-to-read alphabetical reference format.
Appendix C, “Troubleshooting (FAQs),” provides answers to commonly asked questions from beginning and advanced HTML coders.
Appendix D, “Special Characters,” lists the character entities used to embed special characters, such as the copyright symbol and an ampersand, into a web page.
Appendix E, “File Types,” includes a list of the file types you are most likely to encounter while creating web pages, as well as a brief description and MIME type for each.
How to Read This Book
The content is structured so that you can read a single chapter as needed or the entire book from cover to cover. While beginners should read through the book, chapter by chapter, in order to efficiently grasp the concepts taught, intermediate and advanced users can use certain chapters as reference materials.
The projects at the end of each chapter are intended to build upon each other as you create your own web site, but you could certainly adapt a specific project to your own needs if you read them out of order.
Special Features
Each chapter includes Tips and Notes to provide additional reference information wherever needed. Detailed code listings are included, many times with certain tags or features highlighted with further explanation.
Many chapters contain Ask the Expert question-and-answer sections to address potentially confusing issues. Each chapter contains Try This exercises and step-by-step projects to give you a chance to practice the concepts taught thus far. The intention is that you use these projects to build a web site from scratch for yourself or the business or organization of your choosing.
Self Tests are included at the end of each chapter to give you another chance to review the concepts taught in the chapter. The answers to the Self Tests are in Appendix A.
Throughout the development of this book, our objective has always been to provide you with a cohesive, easy-to-understand guide for coding HTML to help you get up and running in no time. As you’ll hear me say countless times, HTML is not that difficult and is definitely within your reach. I applaud your decision to learn HTML and encourage you to use the Internet to its fullest potential, both during the learning process and in your ensuing web development aspirations. As Chapter 1 discusses, visit the web sites you love and love to hate to determine how they accomplished various features. Follow the links identified in the book for additional information, and don’t forget to perform your own web searches for related content. Have fun and good luck!
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