HTML: Introduction (including XHTML and CSS Techniques)

Course Description:

This two day course is designed for those with no previous coding or programming experience but who need a comprehensive grasp of web page coding and structure using HTML and XHTML - the language of the web. By the end of this course you will have the necessary knowledge to author web pages using XHTML, be able to edit existing HTML and to maintain and update existing web content.

The course explores planning a website, browser issues, structural mark up, creating on-line forms and tables and working with graphics.

Whether you are an individual user, a small business or part of a large organisation, this course will give you the skills and confidence to author and publish robust XHTML and HTML websites. Feel free to adapt the following outline to your own specific requirements if you wish.

This course includes the following modules:

Background

• Introduction to HTML
• Introduction to XHTML
• Introduction to XML

Structuring a website

• The client/server relationship
• Understanding directories and how a site is organised
• Installing and running a simple Server
• Cross platform file names
• Cross platform directory names

The minimal HTML document

• XHTML and HTML syntax
• Creating body text
• Creating titles
• Creating headings

Adding meta data

• Creating content tags
• Creating keyword tags

Adding structure to the content

• Creating headings and sub headings
• Creating paragraphs
• Working with special characters
• Creating line breaks
• Creating horizontal rules

Working with images

• Adding image links
• The GIF, JPEG and PNG formats
• Compression issues
• Alternative text, titles and descriptions for images

Creating and working with lists

• Numbered (ordered) lists
• Unnumbered (unordered) lists
• Definition lists

Linking to other documents

• Relative links vs Absolute links
• Working with URLs
• Anchors within documents

Tables in XHTML

• Creating a table
• Creating rows
• Creating columns
• Creating table headings
• Adding a table caption and summary
• Merging cells
• Nesting tables

Forms in XHTML

• Creating a basic input form
• Adding form fields, radio buttons and check boxes
• Using the legend, label and fieldset tags
• Adding submit and reset buttons
• Using form methods
• Combining forms and actions

Working with colours

• Hexadecimal and RGB?colour
• Web safe colours

Introduction to CSS

• Separating content from presentation
• The difference between CSS and mark up
• What can CSS do?
• CSS structure (syntax)
• Inserting styles - inline, embedded or external
• The cascade order

Styling text

• Styling basic text elements
• Specifying font size and colour
• Specifying font alignment

Styling a table

• Styling row and column settings
• Creating borders
• Adding colours

Styling links

• Creating hover effects
• Keeping track of links

Publishing issues

• Uploading your site
• Proofing and testing your site
• Troubleshooting
• Web authoring tools