Last week in class, Mindy gave us (the students of Journalists’ Toolkit 1) an all inclusive, one day lesson in the basics of HTML and CSS; that is hypertext markup language and cascading style sheets. More simply put, HTML is a programming language made up of English words that tells a browser what to display on the screen. While HTML is used for the structure of Web pages, CSS is used to add style elements to that structure. Using cascading style sheets helps keep the presentation of a Web page separate from the content, allowing for faster downloads than if you were to style the content right in the HTML code.
Some of you who might have never been exposed to this stuff, might be wondering what I am talking about! Mindy introduced us to a lovely Web site, HTML Dog, which is perfect for beginners. It has step-by-step tutorials on how to write your own HTML and CSS code to start your own Web site. Also helpful for beginners interested in learning how to write this code, is a book I am using in my electronic publishing class, HTML, XHTML & CSS by Elizabeth Castro. Like HTML DOG, this book is very detailed and thorough. Both of these resources go at the perfect pace for someone that is just starting to try and understand these concepts. Elizabeth also has a very helpful Web site on the subject that you should consider taking a look at. The site includes more information about the book I have mentioned in addition to other books that can add to your computer savvy.
HTML and CSS can be simple once you understand what is going on, but it can also be very confusing as it tends to be very, very, excruciatingly specific, and therefore mistakes are easily made. If you are looking to get into this, I suggest you look at the resources I have mentioned here and look for more! For me, although I am currently taking a course in electronic publishing that focuses on HTML and CSS, Mindy’s lesson was still very helpful. Being taught the basics all in one lesson was useful, as it really helped to reiterate to me how this all comes together. This can sometimes be difficult when you are taught in very small steps. As with everything else, the only way to really get good at this is practice, practice, practice, so I suggest you get to it!
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