Pages

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Understanding HTML and its Importance

In my last lesson on HTML, I covered some basic tags by which to code a webpage. Here's an example of a simple page code using tags from that post:


<html>
                <h1>Example page</h1>
                <br />
                <p> This is an example page. A clickable link can be found <a href="code-buddy.blogspot.com">here!</a>
</html>

This is incredibly simple, and would not pass as a real website today, but it does show the basic way in which HTML really works. Tags are nested inside other tags, but that's not all; while not quite necessary, I have used separate lines and indentation to make it easy to read our code.

I do this because anyone (including myself) who will inevitably come along to alter the code for any reason will have a tougher time deciphering it if it looks like this:

<html><h1>Example page</h1><br /><p>This is an example page. A clickable link can be found <a href="code-buddy.blogspot.com">here!</a></html>

While its certainly not impossible to read that particular piece of code, keep in mind that coding can easily span hundreds of lines, very quickly. Many decent pages have so many lines of code it would be a screwy task to even try counting them all!

So, the point is, keep your code clean and clear, for both our sake, and yours! 

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The Basics of HTML, or How to Build a Page in One Post

The Basics of HTML
or How to Build a Page in One Post

With any luck, you will have found that subtitle to be quite appealing to your sense of impatience (or, perhaps more appropriately said, your sense of urgency). After all, the seemingly monolithic task of building a webpage would be excellent to have delegated to just one post. In just several hundred words, you can learn how to build a page from scratch!

Now, here comes the 'but.'

But, that webpage is going to be considerably low-quality. That's because even most poorly designed webpages required quite a bit of knowledge, coding, and debugging (rinse, lather, repeat). In the most basic languages, with a relatively small pool of different elements and attributes, there are only so many different interesting combinations available.

However, a foundation is necessary to learn anything, and this is especially true of coding. Many codes require foundational knowledge to even begin learning, and programming in general will sweep you up if you do not understand these foundations.

So we start with HTML, perhaps among the most basic of common coding languages available today. The best part about HTML, save its simplicity, is that it is everywhere. HTML makes up so much of what you see on the internet that I guarantee you wouldn't recognize anything if it were gone.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

First post, and introductions

I suppose this is the most appropriate time to make an introductory post.

I am a college student in the United States with an interest in computer programming/coding. Currently, I am still in the process of learning this fascinating and useful subject, but I am already quite enthralled by its magnificence.

Computer programming is important to everyday life in so many ways that it has almost become too easy to forget about. As many people around the world now know at least some bits and pieces of computer programming and/or code, appreciation for this integral facet of science has exploded, creating an exponential increase in interest over time.