December 2008
Beginner
608 pages
19h 45m
English
Content preview from Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual, 2nd EditionBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 5. XHTML Text Elements
Getting text into a Web page is easy—you just open up an XHTML file, drop in your content, and add the occasional formatting tag. Unfortunately, getting text to look exactly the way you want it to is a completely different story.
One of the first things you’ll notice when you start working on a Web site is how little control you have over your pages’ final appearance. No matter how carefully you code your XHTML, you’re at the mercy of your viewers’ Web browsers and a dozen other details beyond your control. Under these conditions, writing a perfect page feels like trying to compose a 90-minute symphony with a triangle and a pair of castanets.
Faced with these limitations, what’s an enterprising Web developer to do? The first step is to figure out just how much control you do have—to learn the XHTML commands you can use to structure your text into headings, paragraphs, lists, and more. That’s the task you’ll tackle in this chapter. The second step—which you won’t dive into until the next chapter—is to use style sheets, powerful page-formatting instructions that let you change the appearance of individual Web pages or even your entire Web site.
Understanding Text and the Web
Sooner or later, every Web site creator discovers that designing for the Web is very different from designing something that’s going to be printed. Before you can unleash your inner Web-page graphic designer, you need to clear a few conceptual hurdles.
Consider the difference between ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.