Important Technologies
Two of the most important technologies to Web developers
across the land, and two that you'd do well to drum in to
your head rather quickly, yes, we're talking about HTML and
CSS. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and CSS is
Cascading Style Sheets.
These are absolutely fundamental to your developing
aspirations. If you don't know CSS, you can just about get
by with pages upon pages of unnecessary code.
Without a grasp of HTML, you might as well shut up shop and
call in the professionals.
The good news, however, is that their status in the
industry is largely dictated by their simplicity. Both HTML
and CSS are extremely easy to learn.
HTML makes up the standard code for most of the pages on
the Web. You may remember we spoke of advanced technologies
earlier (PHP, ASP ...ring a bell?), well these are
generally languages that dictate what HTML content will be
output in to a browser.
Take note that they rarely, if ever, replace HTML as the
served language.
We could spend hours on end discussing the ins and outs of
how to code in HTML, but if you're keen, you should
consider using Google as your starting block. All you need
to know is that everything you see on your screen has been
loaded from a source file. Most source files are written in
HTML and saved with a (.html) extension.
HTML enables you to modify everything from the background
colour, to the font of your text, to the images on display.
Most importantly, it allows you to declare elements.
It's becoming increasingly common for Web businesses to do
away with standard HTML written source files. This is too
rigid, they say.
What happens if you need to make a change to the layout on
every page? You could have 7,000 files to go through! As a
result, CSS has become the standard module for formatting
and presenting content.
What does CSS allow us to achieve?
Well, an awful lot if we're being open minded. By using
CSS, we can cut down on the file sizes, loading speeds, and
mass changes for our Web sites.
For example, a CSS file may state that all of the text on a
Web site within a paragraph tag (<p>), be outputted as Times
New Roman, Size 11. It doesn't sound like much, but when
you weigh up the alternative of ploughing through EVERY
page and setting the HTML tags to the same effect, the
benefit is clear.
CSS and HTML are thus used in tandem to structure content,
and to apply styles. They work together, despite the fact
that they can both do each other's job, to produce a more
efficient Web site.
Don't feel as if you have to master these languages before
you set foot on your Web business venture. You rarely need
to master ANY programming language. It's simply wise to
investigate the most efficient ways of reaching a goal.
|
