Beginning HTML and CSS

Class 1

What is HTML?

HTML is the code that allows us to build websites

What is HTML?

If you 'view the source', you see this

History of HTML

  • Invented by Tim Berners-Lee
  • Created hypertext to share scientific papers
  • First web page August 6, 1991
  • Standardized by w3 Consortium

History of HTML

  • Hyper Text Markup Language
  • Early 90s
  • HTML 4 in 1997
  • XHTML in 2000
  • HTML 5 in 2008

Terms

  • Web design - The process of planning, structuring and creating a website
  • Web development - The process of programming dynamic web applications
  • Front end - The outwardly visible elements of a website or application
  • Back end - The inner workings and functionality of a website or application.

Tools

  • Browser - Chrome, Firefox
  • Development Toolkit - Chrome Inspector, Firefox Firebug
  • Text Editor - Atom, Sublime Text

Get Started: Folder Structure

  • HTML Files
  • CSS Files
  • Images
  • Script files
  • Anything else that will appear on your site

Note: No spaces, capitals, or special characters in file names.

What we'll be building today

Today we will be learning how to code a site from scratch using paragraphs, headings, links, images, and lists.

Anatomy of a website

Your Content
+ HTML: Structure
+ CSS: Presentation
= Your Website

A website is a way to present your content to the world, using HTML and CSS to present that content & make it look good.

Anatomy of a website

Concrete example

  • A paragraph is your content

  • Putting your content into an HTML tag to make it look like a paragraph is structure 
            
          
    
            A paragraph is your content

Anatomy of an HTML element

  • Element
    • An individual component of HTML
    • Paragraph, heading, table, list, link, image, etc.
  • Tag
    • Marks the beginning and end of an element
    • Opening tag and Closing Tag
    • Tags indicate purpose 
            
          <tagname>Stuff in the middle</tagname>
        
      
            
          <p>
            This is a sample paragraph.
          </p>

Tag Breakdown

Tag breakdown

Anatomy of an HTML element

  • Container Element
    • An element that can contain other elements or content
    • A paragraph (<p>) contains text
  • Stand Alone Element
    • An element that cannot contain anything else 
    •             
              <br />
              <img />

Anatomy of an HTML element

  • Attribute
    • Provides additional information about the HTML element
    • Class, ID, language, style, identity, source
    • Placed inside an opening tag, before the right angle bracket.
  • Value
    • Value is the value assigned to a given attribute.
    • Values must be contained inside quotation marks. 
    •             
              <div id='copyright'>
                © GDI 2013
              </div>
              <img src='my_picture.jpg' />
              <a href='http://betamore.com'>
                Betamore
              </a>

Doctype

The first thing on an HTML page is the doctype, which tells the browser which version of the markup language the page is using. 

    
      <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC '-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN' 'http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd'>
    
  
    
      <!DOCTYPE html>

* The doctype is case-insensitive.
DOCtype, doctype, DocType and DoCtYpe are all valid.

HTML Tag

After <!doctype>, the page content must be contained between <html> tags. 

    
      <!DOCTYPE html>
      <html>

      </html>

Head and Body Tags

Head: The head contains the title of the page& meta information about the page. Meta information is not visible to the user, but has many purposes One of which is to tell search engines about your page, who created it, and a description.

Body: The body contains the actual content of the page. Everything that is contained in the body is visible to the user.

Head and Body Tags: Example

example of head and body

Head and Body Tags 

    
      <!DOCTYPE html>
      <html>
        <head>
          <title>
            Title of the page
          </title>
        </head>
        <body>
          The page content here.
        </body>
      </html>

Let's develop it!

Let's get our web page set up with a doctype, head, title and body.

Later we'll add some content to it!

Nesting

All elements nest inside one another

Nesting is what happens when you put other containing tags inside other containing tags. For example, you would put the <p> inside of the <body> tags. The <p> is now nested inside the <body>

Whichever element OPENS first CLOSES last

Nesting: Example

Elements are 'nested' inside the <body> tag. 

    
    	<body>
  	    <p>
          A paragraph inside the body tag
        </p>
    	</body>

Paragraphs 'nested' inside list items. 

    
    	<ul>
  	    <li>
    	    <p>A paragraph inside a list item</p>
    	  </li>
    	</ul>

Element: Paragraph 

        
          <p>Paragraph 1</p>
          <p>Paragraph 2</p>
          <p>Paragraph 3</p>
        
      
        
          <p>Paragraph 1</p> <p>Paragraph 2</p>  <p>Paragraph 3</p>
        
      
        
          <p>Paragraph 1</p>

          <p>Paragraph 2</p>
          <p>Paragraph 3</p>

Paragraph 1

Paragraph 2

Paragraph 3

* White space is only for humans!

Example: Paragraphs

Paragraphs allow you to format your content in a readable fashion.

Example of Paragraphs in the wild

* You can edit how paragraphs are displayed with CSS

Element: Heading 

        
          <h1>Heading 1</h1>
          <h2>Heading 2</h2>
          <h3>Heading 3</h3>
          <h4>Heading 4</h4>
          <h5>Heading 5</h5>
          <h6>Heading 6</h6>

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5
Heading 6

* Heading number indicates hierarchy, not size. Think: Outlines from high school papers

Example: Headings

Example of headings

Formatted text

Here is a paragraph with Emphasized text and Important text. 

      
        <p>
          Here is a paragraph with <em>Emphasized</em> text and <strong>Important</strong> text.
        </p>

Note: em and strong are meant to indicate meaning through code. If you want to have italicized for style appearance and not to communicate meaning, you should use CSS.

Let's Develop it!

Let's add some content to our site!

Add one of each level of heading with 1-2 short paragraphs of text below each heading.

Create some emphasized and strong text within a few paragraphs.

Element: a (Anchor / Link)

Anchors have three components

  • Tag: <a></a>
  • href attribute: 'http://www.betamore.com' 
    
      <a href='http://www.betamore.com' title='Betamore Homepage'>GDI</a>

Betamore

The <a> tag surrounds text or images to turn them into links

Link Attributes

Links can have attributes that tell the link to do different actions like open in a new tab, or launch your e-mail program. 

    
      <a href='home.html' target='_blank'>Link Text</a>

Link opens in a new window/tab with target='_blank' 

    
      <a href='mailto:something@gmail.com'>Say hi!</a>

Link opens mail program by inserting mailto: directly before the email address.

Relative vs. Absolute paths for links & images

  • Relative
    • Relative paths change depending upon the page the link is on.
      • Links within the same directory need no path information. 'filename.jpg'
      • Subdirectories are listed without preceding slashes. 'images/filename.jpg'
  • Absolute
    • Absolute paths refer to a specific location of a file, including the domain. 'https://betamore.com/academy/'
    • Typically used when pointing to a link that is not within your own domain.

Let's Develop It

Let's add links to our site!

Add links that open in the same window, a new window and link to an e-mail address.

Element: img

Images have three components

  • Tag: <img/>
  • src attribute: 'https://betamore.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/logo.png'
  • alt attribute: 'Betamore logo' 
    
      <img src='https://betamore.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/logo.png' alt='Betamore Logo'/>
Betamore Logo

Note: This tag is our first example of a stand-alone or self-closing element.

Element: Line Break 

        
          <p>
            Imagine there's no Heaven <br/>
            It's easy if you try <br/>
            No hell below us  <br/>
            Above us only sky
          </p>

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky



Let's Develop It!

Let's add some images and line breaks to our page.

We can even turn our images into links!

Element: Unordered and ordered lists 

        
          <ul>
            <li>
              List Item
            </li>
            <li>
              AnotherList Item
            </li>
          </ul>
        
      
        
          <ol>
            <li>
              List Item
            </li>
            <li>
              AnotherList Item
            </li>
          </ol>

Unordered list (bullets)

  • List Item
  • AnotherList Item

Ordered list (sequence)

  1. List Item
  2. AnotherList Item

Lists: Examples

Lists can be used to organize any list of items.

Examples of lists

You'd be surprised how often lists are used in web design.

Let's Develop it!

Let's add one of each ordered and unordered lists to our page.

We can make a list of links or even a list of images!

Comments

You can add comments to your code that will not be seen by the browser, but only visible when viewing the code. 

    
      <!-- Comment goes here -->

Comments can be used to organize your code into sections so you (or someone else) can easily understand your code. It can also be used to 'comment out' large chunks of code to hide it from the browser. 

    
      <!-- Beginning of header -->
        <div id='header'>Header Content </div>
      <!-- End of header -->

      <!--
        <ol>
          <li>List Item</li>
          <li>Another List Item</li>
        </ol>
      -->

Tables

Tables are a way to represent complex information in a grid format.

Tables are made up of rows and columns. 

      
        <table>
          <tr>
            <th>Head</th>
            <th>Head</th>
          </tr>
          <tr>
            <td>Data</td>
            <td>Data</td>
          </tr>
        </table>
Head Head
Data Data

Tables: Examples

Tables can be styled with CSS to add zebra striping or to highlight important rows/columns.

Example of tables

Character codes

There are character codes for many different characters in many different languages

Example of Characters

Questions?

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