Part 13

The easiest way to learn HTML is by studying the source from other people's pages. Most browsers will get the HTML source for the page you're looking at. It's also a good way to learn what makes bad pages bad.

Be careful about using new or specialized HTML features. They may not be upward compatible with the newer browsers or new versions of HTML. And it will be a very long time until your visitors have upgraded to a browser that supports these features.

Avoid using browser-specific "enhancements" that only work with one particular make or version of browser.

Use the absolutely smallest set of HTML that will do the job. Make this something you can brag about, rather than how you mastered the fancy commands.

Don't use undocumented HTML effects to do things such as dissolves or fades. This may stop working in the next release of the particular browser you're designing it for, and may cause some other browsers to function incorrectly.

Never forget that HTML is not a page description language or page formatting language. It is for displaying information and graphics, and for interacting with the user.

Use as many defaults as possible, Override them only when necessary, such as to set the background colour to white, or to centre an image.

But the best way to use HTML is not to use it. The newest WYSIWYG web page editors let you put together web pages without coding directly in HTML. It's like using a word processor. Most of them also have a way of viewing and editing the underlying HTML code so experienced users can still have control over the fine points.

It's like advancing from assembly language to a high-level language like BASIC. The WYSIWYG editors take care of the annoying details and free you to work at a higher level. In addition, these editors will automatically take care of a lot of the housekeeping for you, like specifying the height and width of all the images so that your page loads faster.

Most of the WYSIWYG web page editors are still in the WYSINQWYG (What You See Is Not Quite What You Get) stage, and some produce more HTML than an optimised, hand-coded page. But the extra text they produce adds little to the download time of a page, and you can be sure that the page won't have any HTML errors in it. (If you're really interested in how fast your page loads, how about dumping one of those animated GIFs?)