TECFA's HTML Page
The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a simple markup language used to createhypertext documents that are portable from one platform to another. It is the publishing language of the World Wide Web (WWW). HTML documents are SGML documents with generic semantics that are appropriate for representing information from a wide range of applications.
XHTML documents are XML documents and you should start coding in XHTML (this page needs some
tutorials on XHTML, but since there are so many indexes, you'll have to wait maybe forever).
HTML @ TECFA
HTML teaching at TECFA
Documentation
HTML Validator
Manuals & Short References
Specifications
FAQ's
XHTML Tutorials
HTML Tutorials
(HTML is outdated)
Online documentation
Near Future: XHTML & DOM
Specialized topics
See also WWW Design and Style and
Hypertexts Pointers @ TECFA
Style sheets and fonts
Icons/Graphics
Chars & Entities
(instead of using old-style entities you can define a character set, a much more simple strategy)
UTF-8 example:
\u03a3 is the code for a SUM sign.
URL encoding
- URL Encoding (or what are those "%20" codes in URLs?') by Brian Wilson
Colors
Frames
(don't use frames, because it destroys the idea of the URL, something you can link to)
HTTP
META TAGs
See also our RDF page !
DHTML
DHTML is a combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but we don't teach
it here since it the cost/benefit ratio is usually quite low..... and often useless
Check other sites please,
e.g. Dynamic Drive
or ActiveUI
or general WebMaster's sites.
Mobile Devices
Tools / Software
(only some, some maybe outdated)
Validation and Syntax correction
HTML Editors
Filters
(need more here)
- Don't use "save as HTML" in Word, use some Rtf2Html:
Browsers
Links
A note about browsers: IE is not a superior browser. Version 5.5 just
implemented CSS much better than Netscape 4.x ever did. Newer versions (IE 6+) still
fail in many aspects. They don't even respect the fundamental HTTP
protocol, e.g. if you put some html in some text file (served as
text/plain by the server), it will not display the html code but
render it as HTML which it should *not*. IE has trouble with uploading
and many other little problems like it doesn't understand correctly served XHTML as XML application.
I suggest the following strategy for non-commercial webmasters who build pages and
sites which must last:
- Do simple HTML. It is much easier to maintain and indexes
well with search engines and it will load fast. Go for
XHTML (transitional) or HTML 4.01 transitional if you know what I am talking about and don't
use any JS code (any stupid beginner can do roll-over
menus, so don't be afraid of not using these).
People will be able to read your pages for years to
come. If your pages must look pretty, you should use external style-sheets, but
do NOT use tiny Windows fonts. Windows fonts look big on Windows screens but print
very small and look very small on other platforms.
- If you plan to write web applications, code by
W3C DOM standards and ignore NS 4.x and IE 5. Your code may or may
not run with IE 5.5 (you can make allowances for this) but it
will with Mozilla which is coming along nicely (install its
latest Beta
release and ignore Netscape if you can). It will also run
with Netscape 7.x and IE 6 (unless MS decides to launch some
major sabotage project). My home page shows how you can code in XHTML + CSS
and still show contents to older browsers. Read A List Apart on a regular basis to keep in touch !
D.K.S.
Last modified: Fri Oct 11 18:52:17 MEST 2002