Class Intro / HTML Basics

INTRO/HTML
22-3376 Web Design 2 // Columbia College Chicago

shawncalvert.com/webdesign-2
!
!
TO DO
Review syllabus and resources page
Download web2-questions.txt, then type out answers

Q.
Name
Major
HTML/CSS experience (beyond web1 1)
What is your favorite design project ever?

Q.
What Name
make a good site? (3 qualities)
Major
What is outdated in web design? (3)
List HTML/3 site CSS you experience visit most
(beyond web1 1)
What is your favorite design project ever?

Hyper Text
+
Markup Language

Markup Language
A markup language is a
set of markup tags.
The purpose of the tags
are to describe page content.

Markup Language
Without any markup to give your content structure, the
browser renders unformatted as unstyled text, also known as
“plain text”.

Semantic Markup
HTML tags give structure and meaning to your content. “Semantic
markup” refers to the use of meaningful tags to describe content
(e.g. using header tags for header content).

Rich Text to Plain Text
Just as with InDesign, when you receive text from someone
that has already been formatted (e.g. from Word), you
should always paste that text into TextEdit, and convert to
plain text.

In TextEdit, go to ‘Format’ to ‘Make Plain Text.’

Copy and paste the plain text into your HTML and start
typing in tags to recreate the document structure.

Anatomy of an Element
<tag>Content</tag>
An HTML element includes both
the HTML tag and everything between
the tag (the content).

<tag>Content</tag>
The element tag gives the
content structure and meaning.

<tag>Content</tag>
Tags normally come in pairs. The
first tag is the start tag, and the second
tag is the end tag.

<h1>Main Headline</h1>
HTML has a defined set of tag
names (also called keywords) that
the browser understands.

<html lang=”en”></html>
Most elements can have attributes,
which provides additional informatin
about the element.

<div class=”left-nav”></div>
Attributes always follow the same
format: name=”value”. You can use
either single or double quotes.

<el name=”value” name=”value”></el>
An element can have multiple attributes,
separated by a letterspace.

EXCEPTION
<!DOCTYPE html>
The doctype is not actually a tag,
but a declaration, telling the browser
what kind of html you are using. The
doctype above declares HTML 5.

STRUCTURE
<html></html>
The <html> element defines
the whole HTML document.

STRUCTURE
<html lang=”en”></html>
The <html> element should have a “lang”
attribute to tell the browser what language
your page is written in.

STRUCTURE
<head></head>
The <head> contains special elements
that instruct the browser where to find
stylesheets & javascript files, as well as
provide meta data about your site.

STRUCTURE
<body></body>
The <body> element contains
the document content (what is shown
inside the browser window).

Document Hierarchy: Parents, children and siblings
Just as in a genealogy tree, the family hierarchy is described in
terms of relationships. All elements in the document have a
parent (up to ‘document’, which is at the top), and may have
children (nested inside) or siblings (placed alongside).
<parent x>
<child and sibling y> </child and sibling y>
<child and sibling z> </child and sibling z>
</parent x>

Nesting
The use of our first three tags (html, head and body), introduces
and important concept: Nesting, which is when tags “wrap”
other tags. When you create markup, you should indicate
nesting by indenting the nested tags with 2 spaces (preferred) or
a tab.
<html>
<head> <body>
<h1><<p></</body>
</html>

title
base
meta
link
script
style

HEAD TAG
<title></title>
The title element:
• defines a title in the browser toolbar,
• provides a title for the page when it is
added to favorites
• displays a title for the page in search
engine results.

HEAD TAG
<title>My Portfolio</title>

HEAD TAG
<meta>
The <meta> tag provides metadata about
the HTML document. Metadata will not
be displayed on the page, but will be
machine readable.

HEAD TAG
<meta charset="utf-8">
The <meta> is a single tag —
it does not require a closing tag.

HEAD TAG
<link>
The <link> tag defines the
relationship between a document
and an external resource. It is a
single tag.

HEAD TAG
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css">
In the example above, the <link> tag
has three attributes: rel (relationship),
type, and href (hypertext reference).

<p></p>
The <p> element is a block-level tag
that contains default space-before and
space-after properties (making indention
unnecessary.)

<h1></h1>
through
<h6></h6>
The header elements are block-level
tags that give you the ability to assign
semantic weight (importance) to your
headlines.

NOTE
List tags are always used in nested pairs.
!
The wrapping tags define the list type,
and indicate where the list series begins
and ends.

<ul>
<li></li>
</ul>
The <ul> (unordered list) element is a
block-level tag that wraps a series of <li>
(list item) elements. The default property
for the list items is a bullet.

<ol>
<li></li>
</ol>
The <ol> (ordered list) element is a
block-level tag that wraps a series of <li>
(list item) elements. The default property
for the list items is decimal (1, 2, 3).

Where did those text styles come from?

Where did those text styles come from?
All browsers have what is called a
“client stylesheet” that applies formatting
to your html elements, such as text size, font,
color, margins, line-height, and much more.
Your custom css overrides
some of these default styles.

Block and Inline elements
One important default style applied to elements is whether they
are block or inline. This is called their display property (we will
talk about properties when we get to CSS).
A block element takes up the full width available to the
element, and forces a line above and below. Examples include
<p>, <div>, <ul>, <blockquote> and all headers.
another element
block element
another element
another element

Block and Inline elements
A inline element can be inserted within block elements or
other inline elements and do no create additional space or
line breaks. Examples include <img>, <em>, <strong>,
<a>, and <span>.
<p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<a></a> </p>

(partial list)
big
q
blockquote
cite
i (or) em
!
small
b (or) strong
sub
sup
del
!

<br>
The <br> element is a single, inline
tag that works anywhere in the body
to create a single line break. In a <p>
element, it is the equivalent of a
soft return.

<hr>
A horizontal rule is created by
using the single tag <hr>. It is a block
level element (so it will clear the elements
above and below.

Escape & Special Characters
In HTML, some characters are reserved for the code, like brackets
(< >), ampersands (&), and quotes (“ and ‘). Other characters, like
em & en dashes, em spaces, curly quotes, copyright symbols,
fractions, etc, are not included in the “standard” character sets. In
both cases, you work around this by using special codes that will
translate into those characters in the browser. Below are the ones
you will probably use the most:
& &
“ “
” “
‘ &
’ &
– –
— —
© ©
← ←
→ →

<img>
The <img> element is a single, inline
tag that works anywhere in the body
to insert a jpg, png, svg or gif file.

NOTE
The <img> tag is empty;
it requires a src (source) attribute to
“pull in” the image into the page. It does
not require an “alt” tag, but if the image
is essential to the content (e.g. not a
background or decorative element), it
should have one.

<img src="images/logo.gif" alt=”Acme Corp”>
All <img> tags should also contain an
alt attribute. This is “alternate” text
that will appear if for some reason the image
link is broken or the file is unavailable.

<a></a>
The <a> element is an inline
tag that works anywhere in the
body to create a hyperlink.

<a href="aboutme.html">About Me</a>
<a href="http://www.colum.edu">My school</a>
<a> tags are always used in pairs, wrapping
the content you want to activate as a link. If
you use an absolute URL, it must start with
“http://”.

Relative vs Absolute links
Whenever you link to a file with an ‘href‘ (hypertext reference )
or ‘src’ (source) attribute, you are providing the browser and
address to the resource. That address can be relative or
absolute.
root directory (www.mysite.com)
index.html
images
logo.png
report.pdf
stylesheet.css
!

A relative link is relative to the resource’s location in its
directory. It is like saying “the restaurant is 2 blocks away.”
In the example below, if ‘logo.png‘ were linked from the
homepage (index.html), the tag would be:
<img src=”images/logo.png”>
index.html
images
logo.png
report.pdf
stylesheet.css

An absolute link is the full address to the resource’s location in
the entire web. It is like saying “the restaurant is at 222 West
Grand, Chicago IL 60625.”
<img src=”http://www.mysite.com/images/logo.png”>
index.html
images
logo.png
report.pdf
stylesheet.css

QUIZ
Primary
Structure
html
head
body
Head
Elements
title
meta
link
Body
Elements
p
br
h1 – h6
ul
ol
a
img
div
Formatting
Elements
em
strong
q
blockquote

File Transfer Protocol
Local
(your computer)
Host
(www)

FTP Software
All premium code editors have ftp built in, which allows you to
sync your project files to the server easily.
You will often need to post or download files from the server
manually. For this you can use dedicated ftp software:
Fetch, Transmit and FileZilla & Fireftp (both free) are all good
choices for Mac.

Class Intro / HTML Basics

Class Intro / HTML Basics

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