Frontend Engineering, Volume I
HTML: Chapter 1 Companion
© 2012, Martin Rinehart
History—Before Electricity
Age of the universe: 4.6 x 10^17 seconds: www.umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm.
Websites—SEO
A beginner's guide. (Lots of ads for their paid stuff. Good info, regardless.): www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo.
The gospel according to the masters: Google's guide to SEO.
Video; what used to be called a "bibliography" (about 3 dozen external links) and a cool "periodic table" (DL the PDF): searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo.
Download Notepad++
Download Browsers
WARNING: Wrapping a genuine download inside a package full of mischief has become an unfortunate online habit. Do not click a "Download" button unless you see that it is the vendor's own page. For example, you get Chrome only from Google.com
These are US download locations, per the respective vendors. Some will automatically send you to the correct location if you are outside the U.S.
Google Chrome
Mozilla Firefox
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Microsoft is, sorry to say, less than forthright in its downloads. Be careful to download the browser, not something else. Be sure to uncheck any items Microsoft would like to foist on you along with the browser.
Opera
Why a Doctype?
Basics: webdesign.about.com/cs/doctype/a/aaquirksmode.htm.
Not so basic: www.alistapart.com/articles/doctype.
What we did in the (not so good) old days: www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html.
The (Deprecated) <font> Tag
W3Schools, (not associated with the W3C standards group) usually tops a Google search results page. It is controversial. (To be number 1 is to have a target painted on your back.) We like them for quick reference: www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_font.asp.
Tizag is usually right: www.tizag.com/htmlT/font.php.
Another good source (with another funny name): www.quackit.com/html/tags/html_font_tag.cfm.
After you look up a tag, you can begin the hard work of finding out what tags work in what browsers. The good news is that the tags we will use work in all browsers. The bad news is that there's "work" and then there's "work." Fonts are a great example.
If you never use serif fonts online, you never have this problem. But suppose you wanted to use serif fonts for a little variety, such as in your headings. (Most sites do this. It's quite reasonable.) For that you need to know that Microsoft uses the old, lame "Batang" font family (face attribute) when you specify "serif". So your headings would look quite bad in MSIE browsers. Do you want serifs? Specify "Times New Roman" and you will get a reliable, serif-based font.
If you look up generic fonts online, you will find that the W3C includes "cursive" as an alternative. (That means hand-written style, each letter joins the following one.) Unfortunately, only Opera chooses a cursive font, and only then if you specify "script" and not "cursive." To get a cursive font you'll need to find one that's free for downloading, and then get it to download with your HTML page. This is not for beginners!
Character Entities—Intellectual Property Marks
| Use | Name | HTML | Result in Browser |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copyright symbol | copy | © | © |
| Trademark symbol | trade | ™ | ™ |
| Registered trademark symbol | reg | ® | ® |
Feedback: MartinRinehart at gmail dot com
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