I checked my HTML page against the W3C Validator. This time I had only 25 errors at the start (my first ever page had 86). As before, I found that the best way to use this resource is to correct the first few mistakes and then re-validate. In my first page the 86 errors reduced to just 27 with the correction of one mistake. This is because missing a bracket or punctuation mark used in the code can cause cascading errors down the page - one missed bracket can make anything following wrong as it does not open or close correctly. Slow and cautious seems to be the best way to go.
The errors are all primarily the construction of the code.
- Have you put the correct document declaration at the top? I used the transitional XHTML version.
- I had missed a statement of the font type statement in the "header" ( charset=utf-8). The Validator assumed this but it seemed better to add it.
- I needed to decide a layout on paper first and then decide what needed to be added to the CSS file in the way of formatting (and check my CSS file).
- As I had decided to use the page to write a summary of the tutorials my main errors were sorting out what code needed to be written in directly (tags for italic text) and what code needed to be written in with special character code and "pre" tags so that the computer code was displayed on my page.
In summary, the main thrust of the validator is to correct code errors. These were involved with the display on the page.
April 8, 2009
HTML page construction and tutorial
Barta (n.d.) has produced an excellent summary of HTML. Working through it revised a lot of terms and ideas. I have recommended it to one person in this field already. I still haven't mastered Photoshop so my heading is a patch of two images and a title instead of a background image and layered heading. I will have to work on that further. I was not sure what to do about the CSS sheet and HTML code so will try to post it to the web site allocated. Otherwise I will probably add it to blogger later on.
Writing code to appear on a screen, inside an HTML document, proved tricky as I had to distinguish between the code used to format the document and the publishing of the code (requiring special character encoding and the use of "pre" tags).
Writing HTML code has become easier but still proves very tricky. The smallest error can have drastic consequences. It seems that there are not only three versions of HTML but also two versions of CSS. It also seems that not all browsers read all of the new code correctly. (Powell, 2003)explains the code but then provides a detailed list of which browsers will recognize it. This makes constructing a web page a more difficult proposition than it should otherwise be. You would need to try your page in all types of browsers and resolutions if you are producing a commercial version. This also fails to recognize the miniaturization of web browsers in mobile phones and new smaller laptops with their reduced resolution (Neilson,2009).
Blogging seems to be a wysiwyg site where the HTML code is produced for you. However, like many of these programs it often produces errors in the blog unless you understand what is happening and can correct it (or press a lot of buttons in order to find the methods in the blog site e.g. text wrap when adding images to blogger.com). It has a different purpose - to allow people with no knowledge of HTML to produce a web page easily. The web page we constructed was intended for a more permanent display (usually) with the consequent problems of both your own description and search engine automatic allocation of meta-data.
Barta, J. (n.d.) So, you want to make a Web Page. Retrieved April 2, 2009 from PageTutor.com
Neilson, J.(2009) Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998. Retrieved April 8, 2009 from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html
Powell, T. (2003) The Complete Reference: HTML & XHTML. Emeryville, McGraw-Hill/Osborne.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)