HTML.co.uk

What is a portfolio?

When people start to think about Portfolio, their attention will on an artist carrying documents and samples in that documents. But for a Web designer, Portfolio is little different and the basic portion of this Web Portfolio’s are:

It contains some of the screen shots of the best work you have done.
Complete descriptions of the work done on a particular project.
Links that will connect to live copies or documents
Colour printout of the particular project, this is very rare.

Make use of your Web Portfolio for best work only

This Web Portfolio is intended to show your talents and skills to your potential employers. This is the reason; you don’t want to give them the samples of low quality work. Quality can’t be quantity. If you have at least 4 sites that you might be proud of, then your portfolio ought to contain only 4 sample sites.

Having a Portfolio is an opportunity to show off. Don’t be reserved in the case of Portfolio and do not lie. If you have designed your design concept with the team of designers, then do not include this into your Portfolio. It’s better to use your Web projects and that should have been done only by you and ensure to clarify the work you have done.

It’s better to know your audience and prepare many Portfolios

Web developers and designers very often have to “put on various hats” to get wok done. This could be very much perplexing in a portfolio. There are many Portfolios’ that you can divide upon the work that you are going to present
Web Design
Web Programming
Content Management
Writing and Content Creation
By parting them out in to this type of category, you can direct the prospect to the Portfolio that how best your skills match their particular needs. So, if you are applying for a writing job or else some other programming, do point at your Web Programming.

What are the things that are to included in your Portfolio

One of the advantages of your Web Portfolio is that, you can include anything that you can include in your WebPages and some of the elements are:

A screen that contains your design:

Even if you highlight the code written by you, it’s important have screen shots to engage interest and ensure that the screen shot that you are carrying must be excellent. If the design is not too good then don’t worry, audience will see the codes

A link that links to the working page or documents
This could be the page which is live on the site’s that is still on or a copy of that site on your server. If you are highlighting some elements which are dynamic and its important to have a working copy. If you link this to your Website and when ever your site goes down or changes, your portfolio won’t get ruined.

The complete description of your work and your role in it
It’s important to have a detailed description in your portfolio and your role in it.

The most important element in your Portfolio is your best work. If you are unable to know at which you are good, ask your friends so that they can help you.

Using Adobe Homesite it’s easy to replace and search over selected files, current files or each and every file in your site. Once you are used to global replace and searches, then you are going to wonder that how you ever lived without it.

To do replace and search it’s a pretty easy job and it takes not more than 5 to 10 minutes.

To search in a file, in Homesite open the file to be edited

In the Search menu choose Replace option or press Ctrl-R

Type the words to found in the find box and type the words to be replaced in the replace box

Keep on clicking the replace button until all the words are replaced properly.

To search in an entire Website:

Open the Homesite.

In the search menu click on extended replace, or use CTRL-R

Type the words to be found in the find box and the words to be replaced in the replace box

Ensure that all the open documents are selected properly that you want to search the files you have got open it for editing in a folder, or in a particular folder or in a project. So if you require all the pages in the project to be opened then click on replace.

Then Homesite will show you the words you have searched for and the results found will be displayed under the site.

Tips:

Create a specific find string so that you can avoid the items that shouldn’t be replaced at all. For example the string “in” is found inside the words like bin, inside etc. Here you have to include your phrase part inside the replace box. For example: if you want to replace “in the narrow lane” with “on the narrow lane”, here you have to induct all the words in your replace and search string. Just searching for the word in will end up in each and every instance of that particular word being replaced with “on”.

HomeSite lets you to choose options to slight down the search.

The case will match the exact lower or upper case strings of the text you write in. ‘on’ will not match ‘On’. Regular expressions allow you to search with the wildcard characters While searching the skip tags inside the HTML tags will ignore the results. While searching exclude binary files will ignore non text files. Line number of results will be displayed in the line info.

You have to just click on the results to what are all the changes have been made and make the necessary editing.

How to create a link in HomeSite?

Write the text you want to link
Select the entire text
In the standard tool bar, click on the ‘Anchor’ icon.
To link the text to the Website, type the URL to that file or text
To link this file to file in the hard disk, from the file menu select the file you want to link
Then click OK.

If you want to make one of your images clickable, then follow the same procedure mentioned above.

Whether you hate or love HTML email, in your inbox today chances are good that one of your messages was written in it. There is lot of reasons to avoid HTML email and writing HTML emails.

Testing email is almost impossible.

Some people still read the mails in the text mode even if the clients support HTML:

You may consider these people are extremely techno phobic, but many a people do not prefer HTML and they tend to read emails in the text mode.

Emails of HTML are flagged as spam:
Amount of HTML is used by spam assassins and other spam brokers in Email messages as an indication to know whether the email is a spam or not. HTML is used because spammers have discovered that HTML emails are quite quicker than the average emails and it is much more efficient in generating click than a simple text.

Styled emails get better results:

Emails styled with fancy text and images can be pleasing to read than a plain text. So the people who read your emails which are styled will respond or take quicker action seeing your message.

Emails of HTML can be a security risk:
Emails of HTML enable hateful senders to insert Trojans and other hateful entities into an email messages. Some clients will mechanically open images and attachments inserted in HTML emails, by doing so your system will be infected without taking ay action other than downloading the Email.

Emails of HTML are longer to download:

WebPages are slightly different than Emails, in that most people won’t wait for one email message to download. For your recipients it can be frustrating if one of the messages is so large that it stops rest of their Emails.

Writing HTML Email is fun:

Email of HTML is fun to write just like writing WebPages. Time can be spend time by designing how your messages will come crosswise.

HTML email can generate privacy issues:

If you read an HTML email, you have viewed the images and the fact the Email was opened and is recorded.

Many of the email clients don’t reliably support CSS:

This is mostly a matter for the web designers who are learning to write standard HTML for their WebPages. When they put same design in their WebPages their clients will choke. CSS is not a well supported with email clients except for basic styles like italics, colours and bold.

Many clients of email default to HTML email:

Clients like AOL and outlook express use HTML email as their default, to provide their users with embedded images and text formatting. It is very much complicated to turn off HTML as their default.

Some individuals really hate HTML:

There are some people, who really hate using HTML and they will delete those messages which are unread.

Some individuals really love HTML:

Some people love t use HTML because they like the plain text and in this there will be no images it will be lot easier for the user to read it.

It can be hard or an easy decision to chose a Web Editor. There are a lot of products available in the market today. Web Editors should not be chosed on the basis of price and what the others are using. It’s pretty important to choose a Web Editor which satisfies your needs and budget. There are little useful tips in buying Web Editor which makes a great one.

Operating system and price

These are the facts which have to be kept in mind- if an Editor won’t work for your OS (operating system) or it is not affordable, then don’t download or buy it. Than the price there are a lot of other features to a good Web Page Editor or whether the Editor it runs Mac OS or other OS.

What type of a Web Editor is it?

There are 3 types of Editors available, they are:

Text Editors: these Editors let you to edit HTML tags directly and not in a visual way.
WYSIWYG Editors: these Editors let you to edit WebPages in visual manner and not the HTML directly
Combo Editors: these editors let you to edit either text or WYSIWYG depending upon your style or mood.

An Editor that offers you both will be more useful and gets more points than the one that is only text or WYSIWYG. What ever type of Editor you use it has come with HTML validator attached to it so that you can gain more points. Having an HTML validator saves you a lot of time in the long run. Text Editors should come with tag completion and colour coding.

Managing web pages:

Many Web Editors which are more powerful comes attached with Site Managers (projects). This site manager helps you to keep the files of one Website at a particular place. By doing so the Web Editor manipulates the files as sites rather than a single file. Here Web Editors manipulate the single files through FTP. Using replace and search, Web Editors help you to manage the files.

Images

Some of the Webpage Editors provides you with limited image editing in its tool like resizing and cropping. If these Web Editors can connect to other (outside) image editors, it makes more convenient to use.

Special characters, CSS and Java script

In most of the Editors these days you can write CSS styles, if the Editor is embedded with style library, CSS validator and CSS editor. With Web Editor it is easy to write CSS WebPages. This is the same case with Java script.
Web designers mostly forget about special characters. If the text is written in English, it’s easy to assume that, for an accented character you will not require to know the codes for that.

Conveniences of Web Editors

The ability of the Web Editors to connect with data base
Support for the languages like ASP, JSP, cold fusion and PHP.
Spell checkers ignoring tags will be critical.
Some of the Editors provide you with photo gallery maker

HTML History

HTML’s first version didn’t have the version number. HTML was just called as HTML. Back in 1989 to1995 HTML was used to put up some of the simple WebPages. HTML was standardized in the year 1995 by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and numbered it as “HTML 2.0”.

W3C (World Wide Web consortium) presented the next version called “HTML 3.2” in 1997, in 1998 “HTML 4.0” and in 1999 “HTML 4.01” was released. Later on W3C made an announcement that, it would not be developing new versions of HTML and it would focus on extensible XHTML or HTML. W3C recommended web designers to use HTML 4.01 for their (web designers) HTML documents.

At this point of time, development of HTML split off. W3C drew its attention on XHTML 1.0 and from 2000 onwards basics of XHTML was recommended. As web designers weren’t interested to move to rigid parts of XHTML. In 2004, WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) began to develop the new version of HTML called HTML 5 which was not as rigid as XHTML. WHATWG are hopeful that their HTML 5 version will be eventually accepted as a W3C recommendation.

Deciding which version of HTML

While writing a Webpage, the first and foremost decision is whether to write in XHTML or HTML. If a webpage designer is using an editor like dreamweaver the choice of HTML is determined by the doctype chosen. If an XHTML doctype is chosen, then the page will be written XHTML or if an HTML doctype is chosen, then the page will be written in HTML.

Now XHTML is HTML 4.0 which has been rewritten as XML application. If XHTML is written, the attributes will be quoted, tags will be closed and it could be edited in XML editor. Than XHTML, HTML is lot looser because it can leave quotes of attributes like leave tags <p> without closing </p>tag and so on.

Why HTML is used

HTML occupies lesser space, where the download speed will be higher
Response of the older browsers will be more effective to HTML than to a XHTML.
Learning HTML is an easy process because it forgives, like if the tags in HTML are left off the codes still work.

Why XHTML is used

XTML is lot clearer at the beginning and at the end by which events and styles can be added in more easily. Because XHTML is XM, it integrates well into other programming languages. Some of the browsers available respond reliably to XHTML, so that the pages are displayed consistently.

Once decided on XHTML or HTML- which of these versions should be used

HTML
In this there are 3 versions still in regular use around the net. They are:
HTML 3.2, HTML 4.0 and HTML 4.01.

XHTML
In this there are 2 versions in current use, they are:
XHTML 1.0 and XHTML 2.0.

Once decided on a version

Ensure to use a doctype. Using a doctype is one more additional line in HTML documents. By using doctype, it ensures the pages are displayed the way they are intended to be displayed

Definition of Doctype: it specifies the version of the HTML used in the document

When a doctype is used in one of your WebPages, you are telling the web browser how your webpage should be displayed in what versions of (X) HTML. Here the browser gets a list of supported tags from the DOCTYPE and it doesn’t include either proprietary tags (the tags of HTML that works on in the internet explorer) or deprecated tags (attributes and elements which has been deprecated in the latest versions of XHTML 1.0 and XHTML) in the list.

But generally HTML editors allow you to write any non HTML or HTML tags you wish to write inside your documents, even if a strict DOCTYPE is specified. Even if it’s incorrect, HTML editors allow you to write and save anything that you want unlike many XHTML editors.

Web Browsers are fairly forgiving

You can write incorrect or invalid HTML codes and get away with it because most of the Web Browsers which are being used are astonishingly forgiving. Web Browsers do not require a well informed or valid HTML because Web Browsers will display anything given to them as long as it is defined as text or HTML.

Unlike xml applications, Web Browser attempts to find at what the Web Page writer is aiming at and it displays however what it can display.

Web Browser Quirks Mode

When most of the Web Browsers are in the quirk mode it will display the WebPages slight differently. If your WebPages doesn’t have a DOCTYPE or a DOCTYPE without DTD attached to it you might notice some of the quirks, they are:
Class names of CSS are case insensitive
Colours of HTML are parsed differently (# is not necessary, missing digits are filled in a different way).
If a unit is left off sizes are calculated in pixels (px).
In its place of Modern Browsers, pages try to view similar to that of Netscape 4.

From where did the scroll bar come from?

IE 6 has an amazing feature to it that it adds to the documents that have got HTML tags which are proprietary from within its page and deprecated. It adds a horizontal bar to it.

One of the possible way to avoid the horizontal scroll bar, is to get rid of the HTML tags which are proprietary and deprecated HTML tags with a DOCTYPE declaration from with in a page

Why Use a DOCTYPE Declarations
It’s a pretty good idea to get in the habit of using DOCTYPE declarations on your web pages. You won’t be amused in that way that, how they display.
Do validate your HTM (to validate CSS, HTML and other web files with these HTML validators, they are: CSS validators, HTML validators, RSS validators, an XHTML validators and a p3p validator. They are all easy to use, just put the URL of the HTML and just click on the validate button to get validated) once you are comfortable using them, by validating the HTML you will not end with the surprises like horizontal scroll bar in IE 6.

Since the last millennium HTML 5 has introduced new elements to HTML. Aside, figure and section are the new structural elements. Time, meter and progress are the new inline elements. Video and audio are the new embedding elements. Details, data grid and command are the new interactive elements.

In 1999 the development of HTML had stopped with HTML4. The world wide website consortium’s (w3c) changed its focus in the underlying syntax of HTML to XML (extensible markup language) from standard generalized markup language(SGML) and it also focused on languages like Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG),X Forms and MathML. Browser features like tabs and RSS readers were focused by browser vendors. The languages like CSS and JavaScript came in handy to the web designers to build their own applications on top of the existing frame work using Asynchronous XML (Ajax) + JavaScript, but in the next eight years HTML grew itself very hardly.

Recently the 3 browser vendor major’s – Apple, Opera and Mozilla foundation came together as the web hypertext application technology working group(whatwg) to develop the classic version of HTML to an updated and upgraded version. With Same members, w3c started developing its own upgraded version of HTML taking note of the developments of the three major browser vendors. These two upgraded versions are likely to be merged, but many details are left to be argued, the next version of HTML outlines is becoming clear.

HTML5 the new version of HTML known usually, though it goes under the name web application1.0, it is recognizable by a web designer frozen in the year 1999 and today thawed. It includes no namespaces and schemas. Elements need not be closed. Errors will be forgiven by browsers. Desk is still a desk and TV is still a TV.

At the same moment some new and confusing elements would encountered by the unfrozen caveman Web designer. Now HTML includes new elements like section, header, footer, and nav with old elements like div.But now it includes audio and video and also em,code and strong are still present with meter, time, and m. img and embed which are continued to be used. Closer inspection by caveman designer however would reveal that all these elements are not different. Back in 1999 the designer might have needed these things, but wasn’t developed. The designer can understand all these new elements by simple analogy where he might have learned earlier. Than Ajax or CSS it is lot easier to learn.

At last, laptop running on windows 98 with 300 MHz was fired by caveman which was frozen way back in 1999, they might have astonished to know that the display of the new pages are fine in Netscape 4 and Windows® Internet Explorer® 5. Page still displays and all the contents are present, and the browser does anything or wouldn’t recognize with new elements.

It’s not a happy feature, HTML was designed explicitly to degrade browsers gracefully that won’t support it. The reason behind this is simple, as we all are cave people. Browsers now have XmlHttpRequest, tabs and CSS, but in 1999 their renderers of HTML stuck. Without accounting the installed base, web cannot move forward and HTML5 understands it.