HTML in 10 Simple Steps

Introduction - From The Authors


Welcome to HTML in 10 Simple Steps or Less. Our mission in writing this book is to provide a quick and accessible way for you to learn Hypertext Markup Language — the lingua franca of the World Wide Web. We hope this book provides a resource that beginning and intermediate HTML coders can use to improve their Web development skills. It is also our hope that it fills multiple roles as both a teach-ing tool and a reference once you expand your skills.

What This Book Is

Each part in this book pertains to a different aspect of HTML and Web production, and we devote each task within the parts to building a specific piece of Web page content. We’ve laid out these tasks in 10 steps or less so they’re easy to internalize and become part of your personal skill set.

Who We Are and What We Know

Robert Fuller has an extensive background in Web development and design. He served as senior devel-oper for Travelocity’s Site59.com and takes his experience into the classroom — both live and online — every day. He believes that in order for new Web developers truly to flourish, they must gain a solid understanding of the Web’s underlying language, HTML.

He has authored, coauthored, and contributed to several books about HTML, Web design, graphic soft-ware applications, and general computing. His online courses are currently available in college curricula throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia.

Laurie Ulrich has used, written about, and helped others use computers since the early 1980s. She ran two large training centers for computer resellers in Philadelphia and New York, and she served as an IT manager specializing in the proprietary software needs of midsize distributors. In 1992 she founded Limehat & Company, Inc., a firm providing Web hosting, design, and Webmaster services to growing businesses and nonprofit organizations. She has taught more than 10,000 students to make more effective and creative use of their computers and software.
Laurie has also authored, coauthored, and contributed to more than 25 nationally published books on desktop applications, graphics and illustration, and Web design.

How to Use This Book

We think of this book as a multipurpose tool — perhaps the Swiss Army knife of HTML coding. Not only can you employ it as a guide to creating individual pieces of Web page content, but you can also use this book as a valuable teaching tool. By working through the book’s tasks in sequence, you will learn the basics of Web page development — from constructing tags (the core components of Hypertext Markup Language) to publishing complete sites to a Web server.


In addition to the material found in this book, the publisher maintains a companion Web site where you’ll find information that doesn’t lend itself to a task-oriented approach. We point you to the Web site (www.wiley.com/compbooks/10simplestepsorless) at various points throughout the book to give you detailed information about particular concepts, help you learn about other Web-based resources, and provide samples of some of the content you create.
What You Need to Get Started

As long as you have a computer, the list of requirements is quite short. To create Web page content you need only two things: a program for writing code (a text editor) and another program for viewing the fin-ished product (a Web browser).

Text Editors
In nearly every case, a computer’s operating system (OS) comes with a text editor. For example, Microsoft Windows provides its users with the program called Notepad. It is a very simple, bare-bones application that allows you to write simple text files — which is all that an HTML document is. Mac OS 9 (and earlier versions) contains a native text editor, called SimpleText. Apple refers to it as “the utility-knife of software.” This simple application is designed for simple tasks. Mac OS X provides a new pro-gram, called TextEdit, that replaces SimpleText. Both of these applications are more than sufficient for writing HTML documents. Having written a vast quantity of HTML over the years, however, we’re sure you’ll ultimately want to work with a text editor that offers more functionality than these limited-range word processors do. Like anything else, you want the right tool for the job.

More robust programs offer advantages that make learning HTML easy. Just as a full-featured word processor makes it easy to write letters, term papers, and books — compared with using Notepad or SimpleText — an HTML code editor makes it easy to generate code properly and build robust Web pages. For example, most HTML editors feature syntax-checking and code-coloring. Because they understand the code you write, these programs assign colors to different functional parts of the code so that you can easily spot errors (mostly caused by typos) and fix them.

Each major operating system — Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX/Linux — offers a number of HTML editors that cost anywhere from nothing to over $100. (But as we said earlier, you get what you pay for.) We review here some of the more popular editors available on each platform. Later on in the book, we discuss these products and others in greater detail.

TextPad from Helios Software Solutions (Windows)

TextPad is shareware, which means you can download it for free and generally use it indefinitely. However, if you intend to use the program for an extended period, and derive much productive use from it, you should register and pay for the program — if at least to get technical support and notifications of upgrades or improvements (bug fixes). TextPad currently runs about US $26.
The creators of TextPad feel there shouldn’t be a steep learning curve when picking up a new application. Your familiarity with other Windows programs should be sufficient experience. TextPad therefore pro-vides the kinds of tools you expect from other applications, including keyboard shortcuts, spell-checking (in 10 languages), the ability to open and edit multiple files simultaneously, drag and drop, undo and redo, and the ability to create macros. TextPad also provides many code-specific tools, such as syntax-checking, code-coloring, and libraries for storing reusable code snippets.



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