Beginner CSS/HTML tutorial
Jan 8, 2009 CSS
This is the ultimate CSS and HTML Beginner Tutorial, it starts with opening an editor and goes to inserting content.
This tutorial has been viewed: 831 times
Intro to CSS/HTML
This tutorial is aimed at a few different people.
- Those who want to learn more programming/scripting.
- Those who are tired of trying to read messy HTML files.
- Those who have procrastinated staying with the times.
- Those who just don’t anything.
- And finally, those who just want to make their site look good!
Reguardless of why you are reading this you are already well on your
way to having a good looking site.
HTML
So you want to make a web site huh? Fine. See if we can learn you a
thing or two.
I’m not aiming for any kind of website in particular, I’m just going
to give you the steps on how to create the basic parts that you will
need to create your own website. This means you’ll have to do some
coding. We are going to use a language called HTML (Hyper-Text Markup
Lanuage). HTML is very easy to use, and so I’m not going to give you a
discourse on it. We’re diving right in.
First we’re going to need a place to write our code for our website. For
this tutorial we’ll use Notepad. Any text editor will do though.
If you don’t know what that is don’t worry. I’ll get you there.
- Click on Start
- Click on All programs
- Click on Accessories
- Click on Notepad
Once you have your Text editor open put this code into it. Don’t
worry, I’ll explain everything.
This is as simple as it get in having a skeleton to work with. These
are the most common HTML tags and in virtually every web page. At any
time you can save your work and view it in a web browser.
- Click on “File”.
- Click on “Save As”.
- Type whatever you want the name to be and put “.html” at the end of it.
- Then click the drop down arrow on “Save as type” and change it to “All Files”.
- Save the file wherever you want.
- Double click on the file after saving it and it will bring it up in the browser.
- Now all you have to do is go to “File” and click “Save” every time you update your code.
- As you go through this tutorial or as you code, save often.
The
first tag is the “html” tag. This tag tells the browser “Hey I’m coding
in HTML here!”. The “head” tag is where we can tell the browser as well
as the server a lot of things. The only thing we’ll concern ourselves
with though is the “title” tag. The “title” tag goes in side the “head”
tags. Whatever you put inside those “title” tags will be the title of
the Web page. For example. Look at the top of your window or tab. It
says “Beginning CSS/HTML”. I did it because I have this code in my
page
Cool huh? Now we come to the “body” tags. This is where we get to the
meat of this business. The “body” tags are basically where everything else
goes (pictures, links, etc.).
Now take note for every tag I make,
I have a closing tag to go with it designated by the “/” in the tag.
These are a requirement. If you don’t agree then you just got an “F”
and I’m not telling you anymore.
Now I’m going to give you some stuff to put inside those “body” tags
of yours to give a little bit of substance to your page. We’re going
to start with a the paragraph tags. The paragraph tags are in the form
of
“P” for paragraph. There’s nothing to it. Just put that code inside
your “body” tags and your good to go. You got some substance. Don’t
worry though, we got more for you. And just like in writing your
school paper you can make new paragraphs as much as you would like
Check that out. The browser even knew to skip some space and start a
new paragraph for us.
I know that’s not overly exciting so how about a link? For links we
use what are called the “anchor” tags. The “anchor” tags are done like
this
The “a” stands for “anchor”. Notice we got something new. Inside the
first anchor tag we have the “href=…”. This is an attribute that is
assigned a value. The “href attribute” tells the browser where to go
when the link is clicked on. So “a” creates the link or “anchor” and
the attribute tells it “where”.
Now as studly as that was, we’re going to throw an image into our
web page as well. And a break and a list and a table, and I think
that’ll give us a nice page.
If you look at it carefully you can almost read it as if it was
english. For an image you have the “img” tag with the source (“src”),
attribute to tell where the image is. We have a break in the page for
some white space “br”. There’s the “unordered list” (“ul”) tag. Which
basically means you have a list with no order (bullets). I’ll let you
try and guess how to do an orderded list. Then we have the “table” tag.
If you have used Excel before then you know what a table is. It’s
simply a grid to make things look nice and organized. You first declare
your rows (“tr”) and then at you do you header (“th”). Then when you
go to your next row you insert your data (“td”).
Make sure you close off all your tags. Some of them like the image and
break tags don’t have anything out side the initial declaration so they
are closed by having the “/” at the end of the statement right before
the closing bracket.
How’s that? You made a web page. Now lets make it look a bit nicer.
CSS
Probably the first thing you need to learn is when you make your HTML
file. Don’t do anything extra. Don’t do something along the lines of
alone. Just don’t touch it
and make your site look good in the HTML file. In fact you want your
HTML file by itself to look like you just started learning. White
background, no font color, no centering anything. Just leave that all
alone. I promise you won’t regret it.
That is what your HTML should look like. Don’t try and spice it in
any way.
Enter CSS!
I’m going to insert one line into that HTML file between the “head”
tags
And we go from this
to this
CSS Is the design/style for your website and HTML is the content. Seperating
your content and style gives your code a lot more readability preventing
confusion and making it far easier for someone else you work with to
modify your code if needed. How is this done you ask well I will show
you the css code and explain each part. Take note in the line we
inserted into the head tag
we have
css file is. Now lets take a look at the file. Don’t worry this one
is short.
If you put the tags /* and */ up then anything between them is just
a comment. When you code, comment often so you remember what you are
doing and others will be able to see what you are doing also.
The actual code starts off with “body”. This is telling the browser
that we we’re going to add some style to everything inside the body
tags. In CSS “body” is what would be called a Selector becuase it is
what we are selecting to modify. Then we proceed to insert properties
and their values with which we are going to make our site look good.
The properties and what they do are self explanatory because you
probably recognize it from trying to do that in your HTML code from
before.
Learning CSS will save you a lot time, coding, space, headaches,
disease, plauges, and even from Armegeddon (almost anyway). CSS is a must
go ahead and continue with more tutorials. This one has served to be an
introduction to what CSS is and can do.
