subject: Using Css And Html To Build Your Site [print this page] If you're interested in being a web designer for a living, or simply want to learn the basic skills needed to build a website from scratch, you need to learn CSS and HTML. These two skills will help you to understand the ground level skills required to build attractive, functional web pages. Even if you plan on using WYSIWYG editors down the road, a solid foundation in HTML and CSS skills will help you when you use these programs. Even robust programs, like Dreamweaver may require you to do some coding by hand. Having a thorough understanding of HTML and CSS will help you to be even more proficient with some of the advanced web designing programs that are on the market. It never hurts to be able to go to a page and quickly edit it by hand. When you master HTML and CSS, you'll have the skills to make changes on the fly to improve your website.
What is HTML?
The Internet is built on a foundation of pages designed using HTML. The acronym HTML is short for Hyper Text Markup Language. This language puts regular text characters on a page following certain formatting rules in order for web browsers to display brilliant, functional pages with text improvements, hyperlinks, colors and more. HTML has been around for a long time and there are more advanced ways to code web pages, but HTML is still a valid language and knowing how to code in HTML is a skill that every aspiring web designer should possess. Even though newer and more robust coding languages, like PHP and Flash area becoming more prevalent on the Internet, it is still worthwhile to learn how to code pages in HTML.
What is CSS?
A lot of people are familiar with HTML, but are unsure about what CSS really is. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS isn't HTML, but it exists to make HTML more robust and to make coding in this markup language easier to do. Before the implementation of style sheets, every element of a page's formatting had to be handled line by line and page by page. CSS holds the formatting information for an HTML page and minimizes the number of overall tags that have to be present in order to render a page with the correct formatting. If you have a certain typeface that is supposed to show up on a part of a page, or a consistent background color that you want to use on all of your site's web pages, a style sheet can be set up to handle and render all of these formatting options for your pages. Having CSS elements in place allows you to concentrate more on the crucial pieces of HTML coding and to spend less time worrying about minor formatting issues. CSS sheets can be used with HTML pages to make life easier for you as a coder.
It doesn't take a lot of time or effort to learn HTML. The main thing that you need to do to really get good at using these web languages is to get busy making pages. Learn the basics and then start implementing what you learn. The more you code, the easier it gets.
