Re: need help with an explanation
by "the head lemur" <lemurs(at)extremezone.com>
|
| Date: |
Mon, 19 Jun 2000 07:45:46 -0700 |
| To: |
"Kristin Henry" <krhenry(at)sirius.com>,
<hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org> |
| References: |
oemcomputer |
| |
todo: View
Thread,
Original
|
|
>I got an e-mail back
>saying that their current designer said they weren't needed.
This is true.
By naming an HTML document with either the .htm or .html extention is enough
to get a browser to render a page.
The penalties for this type of coding are severe and are not good practice.
The simple explanation is the HTML tag tells the User Agent, "aka", your
browser, that it is an HTML document.
The HTML tag signals the browser that it is working on an HTML page.
The browser software's rendering engine begins to process the information
contained in the rest of the page.
(Note. the newer browsers IE 5.5 Mac and the upcoming Mozilla browsers are
DOCTYPE Sensitive. This means that the rendering engine in the browser will
process the page according the the W3C Doctype Standards. In reality the
DOCTYPE Declaration is placed above the HTML tag for producing Valid well
formed code.)
At a bare minimum the HEAD tag contains the TITLE tag which allows you
to tell the browser what you have titled the page, e.g. "My Home Page" and
display this result on the top of the browser window.
The HEAD tag contains meta-data information in the META tags such keywords
and content. Some search engines use this information to index the page for
placement in search engine directories.
The HEAD tag is where you put script processing instructions that are
invisible to the visitor and do not display on the page.
The SCRIPT tag instructions are placed here to enable Scripting Languages
such as javascripts, Cascading Style Sheet information in the case of Inline
style sheets and affecting a single page.
If you are designing a sitewide look, you would use external style sheets.
These are called using the LINK tag.
Inside the HEAD tag is the only place these are used.
The BODY tag tells the browser what part of the declared html document to
display to the screen.
This is where the tags and content meet the screen.
A well formed Validated document has a number of advantages.
After correcting lots of validation errors you will begin to code better
documents, provide the minium page size to display the content, seperate
content from display, and these all improve the speed of display to enable
your work to make the impact on the screen you or your client desires.
In addition to improving your skills, correct coding will make the
transition to XML coding easier as you are including the necessary closing
tags to conform the the XHTML and XML specifications that are coming into
use now.
Below is a snippet of a Valid Document structure you can use to help your
client.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------
<!DOCTYPE html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<HTML lang="en">
<head>
<title>lemurzone design version 8.0.1</title>
<META name="keywords" content="web design, html, javascript, automotive,
web, designs, forms, accessability, web standards graphics, websites, web
development, internet identity, lemurzone, phoenix, arizona">
<META name="description" content="Websites for Business - Web Development
One page to infinity, your ideas will become your web site. HTML with
Attitude!!">
<META name="author" content="LemurZone Design (www.lemurzone.com) Phoenix,
AZ">
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!-- Begin
image0 = new Image();
image0.src = "images/newsbtn.gif";
// End -->
</script>
<link href="lzdstd.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
</head>
<body>
======C O N T E N T ========
</body>
</html>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------
alan herrell - the head lemur
Help a Site http://www.evolt.org
Keep a Site http://domain-issues.org
Standards for Sites http://www.webstandards.org
Buy a Site http://www.lemurzone.com
HWG hwg-techniques mailing list archives,
maintained by Webmasters @ IWA