Beginning HTML and CSS

Introduction

There are a lot of books about building web pages, so thank you for picking up this one. I’ve spent the last 13 years building websites, so hopefully I’ve picked up a thing or two that I can share with you to make your purchase worthwhile.

If you’re just starting out with building web pages, you’ve picked a great time to get started. The way web pages are built is changing right now in a big way. While the same basic technologies we’ve used for the last 15–20 years are still in place, there are new versions available that have people like me very excited for the future of the web.

This book presents a practical introduction to the process of making websites using a blend of the latest and greatest techniques, as well as a healthy understanding of some older technologies that have been around for a while. The techniques described in this book are informed by having solved real-world problems; so, although it has an eye toward the future it’s grounded in the act of making websites today.

You will learn a few different languages to create effective and attractive web pages:

• HTML is needed to explain the structure of a web page. This page is made up of a lot of words. On web pages, it is the job of HTML to explain the structure of the words—which words form a heading, where paragraphs start and end, and which text should have bullet points. This language also specifies things such as the links between different web pages, where images should appear, where videos should ...