Perhaps we need a mini-mini HTML tutorial?

October 24, 2001 3:08 PM

Perhaps we need a mini-mini HTML tutorial (linked near to the submit button) for instances like this? I think we take it for granted that folks know HTML...
posted by owillis to Feature Requests at 3:08 PM (75 comments total)

just call that a Passive link. if We really want to go there we certainly can...i do that once in a while when my fingers are lazy and don't want to type extra.

i think everyone who knows html takes it for granted that everyone online must also...even though we are a small percentage....so that sounds like a good idea.
posted by th3ph17 at 3:22 PM on October 24, 2001

Maybe Postroad could whip up a tutorial.
posted by rodii at 3:28 PM on October 24, 2001

owillis, I don't know jack about HTML, all I do is follow the instructions under comment section (ctrl-shift-a to build link). Is that what you're referring to mini-mini tutorial? Or are you talking about something else?
posted by Rastafari at 3:31 PM on October 24, 2001

The "Ctrl-Shift-A" just writes the HTML for you; you still have to know that the link text goes between the open and the close tag. (In fact you have to know that there are in fact an open tag and a close tag inserted.) What I'd suggest is adjusting the script to ask for the link text, and insert that between the close tags automatically.
posted by kindall at 3:43 PM on October 24, 2001

kindall, I think it already does that (at least in my experience). That handy-dandy box pops up, I paste my URL, click "okay", and whammo, there it is in the comment preview, tucked between the tags.

What's not to understand?
posted by stefanie at 3:49 PM on October 24, 2001

OFF THE TOPIC: I would like to know how to change the font size. I'm talking about when you only want to change the size on one sentence and NOT the whole paragraph, like many people do here. When I change fonts by following directions, it makes my WHOLE paragraph change fonts. How do I do it just for a sentence?

Once again, I don't know jack about HTML (wish I did thou, I envy all you programmers out there).
posted by Rastafari at 4:01 PM on October 24, 2001

Macs can't use the control-shift-a thingy, or maybe it is just me...
posted by machaus at 4:09 PM on October 24, 2001

I think it only appears in IE. I don't see it in opera.
posted by rebeccablood at 4:12 PM on October 24, 2001

regular text

<small>small text<small>

<big>big text<big>


posted by rebeccablood at 4:14 PM on October 24, 2001

NO! NO!

of course you need to END the small and big or it gets so messy.

<small>small text</small>

<big>big text</big>
posted by rebeccablood at 4:16 PM on October 24, 2001

Stefanie, I think kindall is trying to say that while the crtl-shit-a creates the HTML just fine, if someone doesn't know anything about HTML, they may not realize that they should go back and type something between the <A HREF...></A> in the raw HTML the script provides in order to finish constructing the link.

Rasta: You want to use the FONT tag. For instance, to make a whole paragraph or two small like this one, you can use:

<FONT SIZE=2>Type however much you want here then close with</FONT>
posted by Swifty at 4:16 PM on October 24, 2001

Too late, rebecca, I just made the front page double-big, thanks to you.
posted by rodii at 4:18 PM on October 24, 2001

Oh please don't use FONT. BIG, SMALL, and SPAN are all good. FONT delenda est.
posted by rodii at 4:19 PM on October 24, 2001

Thanks, rebecca.

and you too, swifty...hey wow, it really works. Cool
posted by Rastafari at 4:25 PM on October 24, 2001

It was like stefanie said,but the URL part got dropped after I hit the post button..My experience with HTML speaks for itself:thank you for helping.I'll try again:
posted by Mack Twain at 4:27 PM on October 24, 2001

LIKE THIS?I'm thinking this is going to work,Swifty...
posted by Mack Twain at 4:37 PM on October 24, 2001

I just went to the W3C to refresh my memory as to what SPAN would do.

On Mac IE5, I used to be able to just put w3c in the address bar and it would resolve to the .org version. Now, it resolves to the .com version which seems to be an ISP trying awfully hard to look like the W3C.

I hate that!
posted by willnot at 4:48 PM on October 24, 2001

For links <a href="http://www.whateverlink.blah/blah.html">Link title</a>
posted by riffola at 4:59 PM on October 24, 2001

Maybe Postroad could whip up a tutorial.


Note: Sam Adams' Octoberfest may taste good, but it hurts coming out the nose. Cleaning up, now...
posted by gimli at 5:00 PM on October 24, 2001

I guess I could add something to the keystroke hints in Win/IE:

write out your post. Highlight the text you want to become a link with your mouse THEN do the keystroke. wa-la, IE magically inserts the highlighted text between the tags.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:31 PM on October 24, 2001

I just went to the W3C to refresh my memory as to what SPAN would do.

Two things. For everyone here, span is just a generic language/style container (it doesn’t do anything inherently). For you, willnot, I believe the W3C’s preferred address is simply www.w3.org.
posted by gleemax at 5:41 PM on October 24, 2001

whee!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:56 PM on October 24, 2001

Shouldn’t that be whee!?
posted by gleemax at 8:00 PM on October 24, 2001

you can also do crazy things with...

CSS

(i learned everything i know from webmonkey - well, not really, but they did get me started, lo these many years ago. which helped, when I had to teach 8-12 yr olds web design last summer.)
posted by epersonae at 8:28 PM on October 24, 2001

glassdog taught me how to be evil
posted by holloway at 8:36 PM on October 24, 2001

glassdog taught me how to be evil
posted by holloway at 8:36 PM on October 24, 2001

er... not that evil. The only one responsible for that are the masons... and the jews... and the blacks... and aliens... and mommy
posted by holloway at 8:39 PM on October 24, 2001

hey, more quick html tips:

<b>bold</b>

<i>italic</i>

the important thing to note, boys & girls, as alluded to by rebecca above, is to CLOSE YOUR TAGS. in other words, if you start with <sometag> you must end with </sometag>

if you learn nothing else about HTML, this will get you a long, long way.
posted by epersonae at 8:55 PM on October 24, 2001

Many prefer:

<em>emphasis</em> and
<strong>strong emphasis</strong>
posted by gleemax at 9:11 PM on October 24, 2001

Another important thing to remember is you have to be careful messing with block-level elements on Mefi.
posted by gleemax at 9:13 PM on October 24, 2001

webmonkey's tutorial on css (by mulder i think?) is definitely the boomsnigglesnap. i guess lance's is okay as well, and probably funnier, but i came across webmonkey's first.
posted by lotsofno at 9:26 PM on October 24, 2001

What the hell. CSS1 + CSS2 specifications. I learned CSS the hard way.
posted by gleemax at 10:39 PM on October 24, 2001

I'd have to admit that I learned much of what I know about Html from MeFi... So ummm... Thanks...

This might be the wrong place to ask, but what's a good book or website to learn more about Html?
posted by drezdn at 10:43 PM on October 24, 2001

Bad Barbara, no self linking, but if check my profile and go to Barbara's Doodles, there are some good links to tutorials in the learn section.
posted by bjgeiger at 10:55 PM on October 24, 2001

drezdn: take epersonae's advice and go to WebMonkey. It's very good for illiterates such as ourselves. A good place to start - worth printing - is their cheat sheet.
Also please note how well behaved and graphically sober this post is, when I now know how to go crazy. Resist!


posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:57 PM on October 24, 2001

I’m writing my own XHTML tutorial/primer, but unfortunately it’s not nearly done and it will actually suck ass when it’s done.

So, like, either wait or check out RichInStyle.com. Yes, he’s cheesy and his site is ugly, but he’s teaching HTML 4 and CSS, not design. I haven’t read entirely through his stuff, but he gets most of it right, which is better than 99% of the ‘tutorials’ out there.

I haven’t read Jeffrey Zeldman’s book, Taking Your Talent to the Web, but I’ve heard it’s good. Ah, A List Apart is usually great. Be wary of the archive, though. Yesterday’s good advice is tomorrow’s bad advice.

I wish I could give you some more help. If you plan on one day making e-commerce sites (or you just want your friends to hate you), I highly recommend Jakob Nielsen’s book, Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity.
posted by gleemax at 10:57 PM on October 24, 2001

Lemme Try!!



Oh that's cool.

Any other neat tricks?
posted by dness2 at 11:12 PM on October 24, 2001

gleemax used to have the most frightening display of css I think I've ever seen in his user profile. what happened to it?
posted by epersonae at 11:14 PM on October 24, 2001

echo
echo
echo
posted by epersonae at 11:19 PM on October 24, 2001

w3 Schools and gratuitous view sourcing can lead you too down the path of learning HTML.
posted by precocious at 11:19 PM on October 24, 2001

and yes, oddly enough, I'm sitting up late (for me) tonight, finally working on a redesign of my web site. which means that my head is all full of css & html.
posted by epersonae at 11:20 PM on October 24, 2001

I haven’t read Jeffrey Zeldman’s book, Taking Your Talent to the Web, but I’ve heard it’s good.

It is very, very good, but it has nothing to do with learning html.
posted by justgary at 11:31 PM on October 24, 2001

gleemax used to have the most frightening display of css I think I've ever seen in his user profile. what happened to it?

Mercy killing.

w3schools

I believe w3schools has quite a bit of misleading (and downright incorrect) information. Be wary.

Things like this bother me: ‘Both Netscape 4.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0 support Cascading Style Sheets.’ (On more than one level.)
posted by gleemax at 11:36 PM on October 24, 2001

here's another bit of basic html:



<img src="http://www.pierce.ctc.edu/programs/campuscapers/maddy.jpg" alt="kitty!">

now, technically, you should have height="anumber" and width="anothernumber", but I didn't know the dimensions off the top of my head, and I don't have a graphics program installed on this computer.

I've heard that Lynda Weinman's books are good, but can't say myself. I live & die by my o'reilly dhtml book (the flamingo).
posted by epersonae at 11:38 PM on October 24, 2001

(I've always wanted a reason to post a kitty picture.)
posted by epersonae at 11:39 PM on October 24, 2001

It is very, very good, but it has nothing to do with learning html.

I should be asleep. Apologies. (Let me also note that Designing Web Usability has nothing to do with learning HTML.)
posted by gleemax at 11:39 PM on October 24, 2001

another good book that has nothing to do with learning html, but is quite fascinating from a design perspective: The Art & Science of Web Design, by Jeffery Veen. I won it in the blogger template contest, else I never would've picked it up...but I'm really enjoying it. ("yes, we will complain about browsers.")

I also love the Visibone site, tho I've never bought their stuff.

okay, I'm really going to bed now....
posted by epersonae at 11:46 PM on October 24, 2001

I’ve always found these HTML analyses of HTML DTDs useful. CSS.nu is great for CSS pointers, last I checked (which was a while ago).
posted by gleemax at 11:53 PM on October 24, 2001

How could I forget? Agitprop, though dated, has a lot of good CSS information.

There’s also The Little Shop of CSS Horrors, written by our very own Matt Haughey, but it’s more than out of date.
posted by gleemax at 12:01 AM on October 25, 2001

One place to avoid: HTML Goodies. Bad, horrible, wrong, nasty, horribly wrong information. Stay away! (And this guy has a Ph.D.?) I quote:

The term "Cascading" Style Sheets is used because more than one Style Sheet can affect the same page. For instance, if you are using a Style Sheet on the actual document, called an "in-line", and a style sheet that is being referenced by multiple pages, called a "span", both can have an effect on the items in the page. If both the in-line and the span Style Sheet are attempting to affect the same item, like an <H1> command, the closest to the <H1>command wins. That would be the in-line in this case.

The guy can’t even get his terminology right, and he’s trying to teach other people. He even wrote a book. Sick.

Du Jour means friendship!
posted by gleemax at 12:08 AM on October 25, 2001

One more thing for newbies to watch out for: in addresses for your links, always, always remember the http://. Otherwise, you get things like this:

<a href="www.wrong.com">wrong!</a>
posted by moss at 12:25 AM on October 25, 2001

Things like this bother me: "Both Netscape 4.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0 support Cascading Style Sheets." (On more than one level.)

I still say they do, if you avoid bleeding-edge bits of CSS that aren't well supported anyway. But I still design for Lynx.
posted by moss at 12:28 AM on October 25, 2001

I was mostly concerned with the ‘both,’ but NN 4.x has horrible CSS support and IE 4 ain’t far behind. Saying NN 4 supports CSS is almost as bad as saying IE 3 supports CSS. Hell, IE 5.5 has pretty bad CSS ‘support.’

http == hypertext transfer protocol
telnet == uh, telnet
ftp == file transfer protocol
https == secure http, I think
news == short for newsgroups, I believe
gopher == some old thing
wais == ditto

mailto:[e-mail] will email [e-mail], e.g.,
<a href="mailto:[e-mail]">email me</a>
posted by gleemax at 12:34 AM on October 25, 2001

I'm getting really really frightened about now.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:52 AM on October 25, 2001

another good book that has nothing to do with learning html, but is quite fascinating from a design perspective: The Art & Science of Web Design, by Jeffery Veen.

I agree. Great book.
posted by justgary at 1:02 AM on October 25, 2001

Oh goody, stavros, master of marginalia is awake and about to wreak his wrath at this senseless sharing of code! Get him a Bloody Mary quick, Rosalita!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:07 AM on October 25, 2001

gleemax: what the hell are u saying. That sites brilliant - but that could be because I understand what he's saying!
posted by monkeyJuice at 1:41 AM on October 25, 2001

I still say they do, if you avoid bleeding-edge bits of CSS that aren't well supported anyway.

now that's just making excuses for NS 4....
posted by lotsofno at 4:58 AM on October 25, 2001

and for html to *not* use, please don't use onmouseover in postings (as was done here). we like to see the urls.
posted by gluechunk at 5:55 AM on October 25, 2001

Sure, where was all this helpful advice when I needed it? I had to go out and piece together my knowledge of HTML the hard way -- with bearskins and stone knives!

(a really helpful person would make one nice little page in the style of the Webmonkey cheat sheet summing up all of this just for MeFi'ers)


posted by briank at 6:12 AM on October 25, 2001

Don't forget <STRIKE>All the better to visibly retract yourself</STRIKE> in the grand tradition of ^H^H^H, my dears.
posted by headspace at 7:14 AM on October 25, 2001

As Derek says in his book, this knowledge of HTML could be perceived as a 'barrier to entry' for MeFi. (Which all community sites must have.)
posted by williamtry at 8:06 AM on October 25, 2001

now, technically, you should have height="anumber" and width="anothernumber", but I didn't know the dimensions off the top of my head, and I don't have a graphics program installed on this computer.

epersonae: If you're using IE, just right-click on the image and select "Properties." You'll get information about the image, including its dimensions.
posted by webmutant at 8:46 AM on October 25, 2001

monkeyJuice: gleemax: what the hell are u saying. That sites brilliant - but that could be because I understand what he's saying!

It actually isn’t. I’d rather read the recommendations than his drivel.

<h1> is not a ‘command’ or a ‘flag,’ it’s a tag. This alone is reason to rewrite all his crap, never mind all the other misinformation.
posted by gleemax at 9:39 AM on October 25, 2001

Everything I know I learned...by viewing the source code.
posted by msacheson at 10:14 AM on October 25, 2001

webmutant - thanks! I never even noticed that. (actually, that seems to work in Opera, too.)

(did I say that I have 6 browsers installed on my work 'puter? (IE 5.5, Netscape 4.7 AND 6.1, Opera 5.11, Lynx, Amaya, and some weird text-reading browser that I downloaded on a whim.))
posted by epersonae at 10:42 AM on October 25, 2001

Amaya... wow, there's one I haven't heard of in a while.

(at work, IE 5. At home, Mozilla 0.94, Netscape 4.7, Opera 5 beta, Lynx, Links, Konqueror, and... can I count wget?)
posted by moss at 11:34 AM on October 25, 2001

But how many of you downloaded the WebTV viewer (i.e., the root of most evil)?
posted by gleemax at 12:46 PM on October 25, 2001

I bow to your browser kungfu, gleemax. (although at my last job we did have one person on staff who happened to have WebTV, and I always had her check my work.)
posted by epersonae at 12:51 PM on October 25, 2001

Gluechunk...you didn't like my window.status message???

*lip quivering*

BUT I MADE IT FOR YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU...

*break down, weeping and cursing God*
posted by solistrato at 12:55 PM on October 25, 2001

But how many of you downloaded the WebTV viewer (i.e., the root of most evil)?
posted by gleemax at 12:55 PM on October 25, 2001

Opera 5.0, IE 5.1, Netscape 6.1, 4.7, 1.1N (!), iCab, Mozilla 0.95, MacLynx Beta 1, OmniWeb, and I think a couple others I can't recall right now.
posted by rodii at 5:53 PM on October 25, 2001

*sigh*
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:57 PM on October 25, 2001

<a href="http://browsers.evolt.org">browsers.evolt.org</a>
posted by holloway at 6:05 PM on October 25, 2001

I have WorldWideWeb installed.

Just kidding.
posted by gleemax at 1:54 AM on October 26, 2001