Besides, all-caps filenames are annoying. Who wants to view MYDOG.GIF on MYHOMEPAGE.HTML? Come to think of it, who wants to view mydog.gif on myhomepage.html? Never mind.

One of our clients performs his own site maintenance and updating. Well, actually, many of our clients do this, but we’re not talking about those clients. We’re talking about a particular client who wreaked havoc by renaming a certain directory <PRODUCTS> after linking to it throughout the site from its original name, <products>. One little word, eight little letters that simply meant he got fired.

HTMHELL

This chapter and the resources to which it points are not sexy because HTML is not sexy. It is a dull, baseline standard that behaves in predictable ways (give or take a few browser compatibility problems). As a web designer, you’ll be hired because of your visual skills and your thinking, not because you can upload files correctly, write good <META> tags, or have committed the various <DOCTYPES> to memory. Nevertheless, without a thorough understanding of HTML and the ability to write it, detect and fix errors in it, and use it creatively as a design tool, you cannot be an effective web designer. So take the time to learn this simple, logical markup language before moving on to the more exciting stuff. (The exciting stuff begins in the very next chapter.)