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“knows” what other tags on the page are doing. An HTML tag does not. Neither does an XHTML tag (at least, not yet). But XHTML follows the rules of XML, chief among them the demand that all code be “well-formed.” Tags that close after they open are demonstrating well-formedness in XML parlance.
Exploring XML is beyond the scope of this book and is also beyond your immediate job requirements as a web designer. In all probability you will spend the next few years working with HTML or XHTML. In practical terms, working with XHTML is just like working with HTML, except that it enforces cleaner coding practices. HTML doesn’t care if you clean up your room. XHTML does.
LOOKING AHEAD
What you need to understand:
■Web designers must learn HTML, even if most of the HTML work at their jobs is performed by web technicians. Web designers who choose not to learn HTML will limit their creative thinking as well as their employability. Frankly, few good web firms would hire a designer who lacks at least basic knowledge of the technology that drives the medium, though many would hire a great designer whose initial HTML skills are merely adequate. Fortunately, HTML is very simple and thus very easy to learn.
■HTML was not created as a design tool, and within the next year or two, we will no longer be using it as one. However…
■…the Web is in transition, from an anything-goes “tag soup” to a more usable and logical division of labor between technologies that structure content (HTML, XHTML, XML) and companion technologies that format its display (mainly CSS).
When you begin working at a web shop, you or your coworkers will likely be formatting your pages in HTML (or XHTML) to make them compatible with late 1990s browsers. You will use CSS as well, but initially only in limited ways (more about that in Chapter 10). Soon, CSS will do more and more of the design work, and HTML and its successors will be used as the Web’s creators originally intended.
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Directory Assistance
On the Web, files are referenced by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) like this one:
http://www.populi.com/index.html
These URLs are to cyberspace what street addresses are to the real world—no two addresses are exactly the same.
UNIX was used to serve most sites at the dawning of the Web, and consequently, URLs follow the conventions of the UNIX Operating System (for instance, URLs are case-sensitive because UNIX is case-sensitive). UNIX is still used to serve heaps of sites due to its stability and its deep roots in the history of the Internet.
Other popular web-serving operating systems include Windows NT and, increasingly, Linux. Linux is a free, open-source version of UNIX. Macs also can serve websites, though most companies prefer to host on UNIX or NT because these platforms were designed for the job. That may change somewhat now that Apple has unveiled Mac OSX—its next-generation operating system with UNIX underpinnings.
In UNIX, slashes separate directory names from each other and from document names, and all web servers follow these conventions.
The names of web documents (including images, movies, and audio files) generally end in a threeor fourcharacter abbreviation that clues the web server (and the browser) as to what they are (and thus, how they should be handled). HTML documents end in .html (or sometimes .htm); JPEG images end in .jpg (portrait.jpg); Flash files end in .swf (grandioseintro.swf); and so on.
All web-serving platforms follow these conventions in naming. Windows 3.1 is limited to three-letter abbreviations, so .htm is used on that platform. Few sites are served from Windows 3.1, however, and you are astronomically unlikely to encounter Windows 3.1 servers in your professional career—at least in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Apache is a powerful web-serving platform with many conventions that designers follow even if they don’t know why they’re doing so. For instance, at the root level (www.populi.com), if you include a document titled index.html, that document will open automatically when the visitor types www.populi.com. This is why the ads can say “Visit www.spamulator.com” instead of “Visit www.spamulator.com/index.html.” This is also why, in writing code, you can save bandwidth with URL references such as:
<a href=”http://www.nostril.com/”>
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Instead of:
<a href=”http://www.nostril.com/index.html”>
It’s also why you can reference internal files in this way:
Visit the <a href=”contact/”>CONTACT</a> page.
Instead of:
Visit the <a href=”contact/index.html”>CONTACT</a> page.
Or:
Visit the <a href=”http://www.nostril.com/contact/index.html”>CONTACT</a> page.
The systems administrator can override this default if she desires, allowing welcome.html (for instance) to serve as the default opening document. In fact, welcome.html was the default opening document on many systems before index.html gained ascendancy. The default page at www.zeldman.com is still welcome.html. (The old CERN server used Welcome.htm, complete with initial caps.)
These conventions vary by system. Internet Information Server (IIS), on Windows, uses default.html or default.asp. Again, the systems administrator is free to override any such default. (Pickledherring.html could be set up as the default document if desired.) If your server or systems administrator prefers a particular filename, you’ll be told about it on the job.
GETTING STARTED
There are plenty of books about HTML, and heaps of free online resources. After all, what better place than the Web itself to learn about the markup language with which the Web is created?
The beginner’s tutorials at Project Cool’s Gettingstarted.net (www.gettingstarted.net) and Jay Boersma’s Web Work (www.ECNet.Net/ users/gallery/webwork/www.html) can teach anyone, even your Uncle Phil, how to apply basic HTML tags to create simple web pages. A more detailed tutorial, Ian S. Graham’s “Introduction to HTML,” may be found at www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/htmlindex.html, and our own “Ask Doctor Web” (www.zeldman.com/askdrweb/), online since 1995,
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provides a readable overview on HTML and related technologies along with the psychology of web use and similar topics. After you’re further along, you are sure to enjoy Lance Arthur’s Design-o-Rama at www.glassdog.com/ design-o-rama/, a wittily written treatise that includes a good introduction to frames and JavaScript.
These are but five of many such resources online. Most of these resources are noncommercial in nature. They exist only to share knowledge. We told you the Web was different, didn’t we? (On the Web, this would be a hyperlink back to Chapter 2, “Designing for the Medium.”)
Being noncommercial, such resources might not always be completely up- to-date. For instance, parts of Ask Dr Web show their age visually, and in places, the advice offered might not be up to current standards. Nevertheless, they are all excellent places for those who don’t know their HTML from their elbow to begin absorbing vital knowledge. We urge you to visit them all before moving on to the following more advanced resources.
For a superb, hand-holding tutorial that walks you through the entire realm of HTML, you can’t beat W3C member Dave Raggett’s “Getting Started With HTML” (www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/). It’s simple and complete; it touches on CSS, JavaScript, and Image maps as well as HTML; and it comes from a definitive source. (Raggett has been closely involved with the development of HTML since the Web’s earliest days.)
The Web Design Group’s “Web Authoring FAQ” (www.htmlhelp.com/faq/ html/all.html) is yet another fine source of HTML knowledge. It even answers questions such as “How can I get my own domain name?” “Where can I announce my site?” and the ever-popular “How can I make a frame with a vertical scrollbar but without a horizontal scrollbar?”
After you’ve gotten a handle on these basics, you’ll be able to learn from the fine tutorials and articles at Webmonkey (hotwired.lycos.com/ webmonkey/), Builder.com (home.cnet.com/webbuilding/), and our own A List Apart (www.alistapart.com). Along with technical exercises and techniques, these three resources offer a bevy of useful tips, tricks, opinions, and (best of all) insights into the changing nature of web code, design, and content.