[wolfen]

I am wanting to learn HTML, using BBEdit. Can anyone recommend a good HTML tutorial or book?

Thanks...


wolfen

[pavement]

http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General...TMLPrimer.html

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/teachingtool/

or one of many here:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Comp...eginners/?tc=1

BBEdit is a wonderful program. Have fun.

[wolfen]

Thanks, pavement! Cool.

I have one question...when I view "source" on a webpage, I see hundreds of lines of code. How much of this is copy/paste stuff? In general, do people type all this text on each and every page they publish or are there...I dunno...quicker ways?

Just curious.


wolfen

[pavement]

Start by learning about the html, head, title, body, img, and a href tags.
The hundreds of line of code can be things like Javascript in addition to whatever html is on the page.
Work your way through a few examples, the source you see at other people's sites will start to make more sense.

[hyperizer]

Originally posted by wolfen:
I have one question...when I view "source" on a webpage, I see hundreds of lines of code. How much of this is copy/paste stuff? In general, do people type all this text on each and every page they publish or are there...I dunno...quicker ways?

Most larger sites serve pages' contents from a database and use a template to fill in everything else. Or they might use server-side includes for commonly used code (headers, footers, etc.). If you're just starting a small site, though, I wouldn't worry about any of the above technologies.

Bare Bones has a list of <a href="http://www.barebones.com/support/resources/html-resources.html">HTML Resources</a>. If you have the commercial version of the program, the HTML tool palette can be pretty helpful.

[Millennium]

Best HTML tutorial I've ever seen:

http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide

[philzilla]

Originally posted by wolfen:
In general, do people type all this text on each and every page they publish or are there...I dunno...quicker ways?

i used to have to hand code 90k+ pages, in Notepad (eww). not as much fun as i'd like to have during the day, but it paid the bills

generally, most big sites will be done using Dreamweaver/GoLive, which cuts time right down. or, as hyperizer said, dynamic pages, so you only have to code a main page, and then a few includes. i prefer to do that, and i'm BBE all the way

[Vash]

I use this site almost every day: PageResource

[DaisyDams]

http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

I found this one good for HTML .....

[wolfen]

Thanks, everyone.

I dunno what an "include" is, so I'm afraid some of this is lost on me. I'm curious if BBEdit offers any time-saving features vs. Notepad, too. I'm IGNORANT.

Ultimately, I'm planning on putting together the typical PHP, mySQL, HTML-BBEdit site. Pretty simple and snappy. But I am going to have to learn all of these.

Thanks, all!

wolfen

[wallinbl]

Originally posted by wolfen:
I'm curious if BBEdit offers any time-saving features vs. Notepad, too. I'm IGNORANT.

No matter who says otherwise, syntax highlighting is very useful. Intellisense is also incredibly useful (not because it saves you keystrokes, but because it exposes the properties and methods of the object every time you type it). The ability to highlight several lines and hit [Tab] to indent them all at once is very useful as well.

Basically, you want to buy something more than Notepad. It will be worth your while.

[hyperizer]

Originally posted by wolfen:
I dunno what an "include" is, so I'm afraid some of this is lost on me. I'm curious if BBEdit offers any time-saving features vs. Notepad, too. I'm IGNORANT.

BBEdit has tons of great features for coding HTML and PHP. A few of my favorites:

• You can do a find and replace on an entire folder (and its nested folders) of files.
• You can use BBIncludes to update common code across multiple local files.
• You can use the glossary to store bits of code you commonly type, and assign keystrokes to them.
• There's a syntax checker.
• There's buttons for commonly used HTML.
• There's a Web-safe color picker and a palette of HTML entities.
• Wolfen's right--the syntax coloring really is handy. You can see at a glance what's going on with your page.
• You can change line breaks from DOS to Unix depending on the server where your code will reside.
• You can configure BBEdit to save copies of your files to your FTP server without a third-party app.

The best thing about BBEdit is it's elegant for such a powerful app. There's features I still haven't used after five years, but they never get in my way. You can configure the palettes quite a bit and the preferences are quite extensive.

[philzilla]

Originally posted by wallinbl:
No matter who says otherwise, syntax highlighting is very useful.

agreed. anyone who says otherwise, is obviously just trying to look cool, in an "i don't need no stinkin' colours!" kinda way

as for includes, i'll try and sum it up quickly:

say you have a large site, but the layout is basically the coame on every page. it is far easier to have two files called header.php & footer.php (or .html, .inc, whatever), and include them in each page, in the relevant places. vB will probably tax me heavily, if i try and add any code here, and i'm a bit busy at the moment, so you can find loads more about this, here:

http://bignosebird.com/sdocs/include.shtml
http://www.phpbuilder.com/manual/function.include.php

[ringo]

Originally posted by philzilla:
agreed. anyone who says otherwise, is obviously just trying to look cool, in an "i don't need no stinkin' colours!" kinda way

Hey! I don't need no stinkin' colours!

[CheesePuff]

www.pageresource.com is very good

I also own:

HTML for the world wide web with XHTML and CSS 5th edition, about $22

and

HTML and XHTML the definite guide 5th edition, about $40

[sliderule]

I learned HTML using this one http://www.cwru.edu/help/introHTML/toc.html

It's old but it gives you the basics and even tests you on them.