html advice

sawadnet2 · #1 (**permalink**) 04-26-2008, 07:31 PM

hi every body.
i'm new in tml and i want an advice as to the best site tht teaches html for absolute begiiners thnx

James · #2 (**permalink**) 04-26-2008, 08:28 PM

sawadnet2

Glad you asked. I learned a lot of bad stuff by not getting any good guidance before I started, and as you know, unlearning is harder than learning. There is a lot of terribly outdated information on the web about html and web building.

For up to date, web standard compliant tutors, go to either ww3schools.com or htmldog.com. Both are very good. The former is especially complete with lots of training in other skills, but htmldog is a little easier to learn from and just as good—they aren't referred to as often here because mostly they just cover html and css.

sawadnet2 · #3 (**permalink**) 04-27-2008, 08:21 AM

HI James
thnx for the link,however can u breakdown this tag for me plz:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

James · #4 (**permalink**) 04-27-2008, 10:23 AM

sawadnet2

This is nothing to worry about at all. It just points to web standard information on the web that browsers will recognize. It identifies your format as xhtml (a long version of the name) and provides the web location of the standards details.

The whole statement tells your browser exactly what format your page will follow so it can be displayed better. html has gone through many phases and browsers try to make adjustments to fit the version you are using. There is a lot of hit and miss with many of them.

The statement you quote tells the browser that you will be following the xhtml 1.0 strict version. In short the browser will put up exactly what you enter and not guess at anything because the strict means you do not have any old styles included but will follow the current standard. By following the instructions on htmldog.com or w3schools.com you will meet this standard. That's why it is good to learn from an up to date tutor.

Always put this at the top of your page and you will do fine. If you do not the browser will assume you may have a mix of stuff and will guess a lot. Different browsers will display your page differently, too, if they are guessing differently.

Make it easy for yourself by making a copy of this and have it available for copy and paste so you won't need to type it out everytime. If you use an editor like NoteTab as I do (a free version is available for download), it will automatically input it when you start a new page.

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