Web Standard Based Design with CSS and HTML
This week I am going to take a look into what Web standard based design with CSS and HTML is and what it does. At this point I don’t know anything about it, and we shall see how collective intelligence can teach me how to know it and possibly use it. Let’s get started!
We almost always have to start with a basic Wikipedia definition just to see where it will lead us.
Web Standards - Wikipedia says that it a general term for the formal standards and other tech. specifications which describe parts of the World Wide Web. In recent years it has been associated with a set of standardized best practices for building websites and we design. This definition says to me that we should follow these rules whenever building a website. I will look into it a little further in a few minutes.
CSS Cascading Style Sheets are a style sheet computer language used to describe the look and formatting of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL. I could go on and on with that definition but CSS is very complicated and it can do a large variety of thing including color, format, layout and so on. Just remember that CSS specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium.
HTML which stands for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML is the encoding scheme used to create and format a web document. It is used to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists etc as well as for links, quotes, and other items. It allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. HTML is an amazing tool for building websites and it is something that will take a long while to learn,
CSS and HTML are the necessary technologies for building Web pages: HTML for building structure, CSS for style and layout
While researching CSS I came across a CSS and HTML validator. This website will tell you if you have done your scripting right or wrong.
If you want to get started learning how to write CSS and HTML here is a tutorial at the W3C website that will teach you the correct web standards way.
Another website with courses on learning web development is webstandards.org
This last site that I will mention is w3schools.com. This website is filled with many free courses of instruction and it says that it is the largest web developer site on the net.
I just tried HTML for the first time with the w3shools.com website and it was really easy. I only changed the heading and then I added a paragraph to it. If it stays that simple I could get good at that in no time. I suggest that you try it!!!!!
I just tried CSS with the same website and I am actually starting to understand the difference between the 2 of them. Try it and see if you notice the difference!!!!!
For those of you that are impatient or have decided not to try the exercises that I tried, you should. If you didn’t the difference that I found was that CSS basically added color to the layout. I now can see that CSS will be much more difficult to understand because of the amount of different aspects that it adds over what HTML offers.
The funny thing about all of this is that I now know that I could learn everything that I need to know off of the web for free! I guess the only real reason to go to college is to get the official document. This is an amazing time we live in with all of this free knowledge out there for anyone that has the desire to learn. As long as we make sure to learn using the appropriate methods such as web standards we should be successful in web design.
November 29, 2009 at 9:30 am
While I agree with you that a person can certainly learn a lot on the web, I have to disagree with you about being able to learn everything you need to know via the web. Yes you can learn HTML and CSS (and how to fix a doorknob – long story) but there will be gaps in your skill set. I have met self taught “web designers” and while they can get a web site up and running, there are some definite design aspects missing. There are going to be many things we learn from our professors and more importantly each other as we go through school that is going to set us apart from the pack of mediocre designers and allow us to demand (and receive) higher compensation for our time.
November 29, 2009 at 3:53 pm
I hope that you are right. I have been dreading going back to college because of all the wasted hours that didn’t, don’t, and won’t transfer. I have spent countless hours in college classrooms to end up with no degree as of yet. I don’t know any actual web designers but I do know two computer programmers: one of them is my brother, and the other is my cousin. One of them has been working for Microsoft for around 12 years now and his annual bonus is around $80,000.00 and that doesn’t include his rediculously high paying salary and benefits. The other just got started programming a couple of years ago and started at $85,000.00. Neither one of them even have an associates degree they both just have certifications.
Now on the other hand I know many people with college degrees that make around $45,000 annually. I have another member of the family that has 2 masters degrees and he is making around $65,000 so I have trouble with the concept that a degree with earn you more money. From what I have seen, a college degree doesn’t earn you more money, but being educated in your work does. Like I said before, I don’t have a degree and when I owned my business, I brought in over a half a million my best year. That brings up another subject, money doesn’t bring you happiness, but we will save that for another blog.
Thanks for the comment!!
November 29, 2009 at 7:29 pm
yes all one has to do is apply what the want to learn and understand it and then use it knowledge is power but how much power can we use before we lose it?
November 30, 2009 at 7:50 pm
i found a web site and a video thats show short cuts ( in a way) but i think that learning how to do it from scracth would be way better, and learning more thean just the quick stuff and out run anyone in the future, i like your blog and i thinks its great you went beyond the class assigment to learn more bout it
December 1, 2009 at 3:56 am
I noticed when trolling around the web that W3c seems to have the most information on the subject. Though that makes sense because of them being the leading group pushing for web standards to be applied.
Sorry I was late getting my post up, had one heck of a week.