CSS Cookbook, 3rd Edition

Chapter 1. Using HTML Basics

Introduction

Using CSS effectively requires using HTML effectively. To set you on the right path with HTML, this chapter runs through the basics of using HTML well. You’ll explore basic but critical techniques for creating an HTML page, validating the markup to make sure it’s free of any typos and errors, and taking advantage of new possibilities for adding video and audio with HTML5.

Note

If you feel you’re an old hand at this, feel free to skim the chapter. Even a review of the chapter should help you build some good habits that will ease your work.

Structuring Documents

To build a design for your web pages, first there must be content in a web document, usually a simple text file. That content within a text file needs to be tagged with what is called HyperText Markup Language, more commonly referred to as HTML. HTML provides structure to documents through the use of elements.

When you wrap these elements with tags, such as p for paragraphs and h2 for headings, throughout the content, the web page starts to form an inherent HTML document structure.

The browser then applies its own stylesheet to render what is known as the default rendering of the web page onto this document structure.

This default look and feel won’t win any design awards. It’s a starting point that allows the presentation or design to be associated through Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript more cleanly to provide appearance and movement to the web page.

Semantic Markup

This chapter ...