Sue Jenkins

Whether you're looking to design your own website or are a new web designer who plans to make a career of this exciting profession, you might be feeling overwhelmed. This handy guide to HTML/HTML5 and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) gets you started on the right path.

Most web code editors have a command that automatically cleans up the common errors in your code. For instance, the Clean Up Word HTML/XHTML command in Dreamweaver is a must for any webpage that includes content that was copied from Word or any other Microsoft documents. This is important because Microsoft files often embed extra markup when pasted into a web page to make the file’s content retain its formatting.

If you’re a Dreamweaver user, you almost don’t have to think about the document type definition (DTD) when creating a web page because the program automatically inserts the selected DOCTYPE and DTD into the code each time you create a new document through the New Document dialog box. Of course, you have other ways to create a new file in Dreamweaver, and in those cases, the program’s default DTD, as specified in the program’s preferences, will be automatically inserted.

If you chose to use Dreamweaver to create your website, you have a number of ways to transfer files to your webpage through the Files panel. The smartest way to transfer files is to use the expanded Files panel so that you can view both the local and remote files at the same time, much like a standalone FTP client.

Though you’re undoubtedly very excited about publishing your website, you have one more task to perform beforehand: Set up a test directory where you can upload your site to the hosting server for one final round of quick testing. A test directory is a folder you create that sits at the root level of the remote server.

Most CSS styles fall into nine basic style and positioning categories. This list can help you keep track of all the cool things you can do with CSS: TYPE: Font family, size, style, weight, color, decoration BACKGROUND: Background color, image position, and repeat BLOCK: Word and letter spacing, text ali

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics — the style and positioning — of elements within a web document written in a simple markup language. CSS syntax is made up of two parts: the selector and the declaration block inside curly brackets. Inside the declaration block you can have multiple declarations.

If you're designing websites, you're probably going to want to use standards-compliant HTML5 markup — after all, you need to use some type of markup language so that your websites can communicate, right? The table here gives you a rundown of the most popular HTML5 tags and tells you what each does. Tag Description Defines a comment in the HTML code Defines the document type Defines an anchor Defines an article Defines content that sides next to other content Defines a sound Defines a long quotation Defines the body element Inserts a single line break Defines an area where graphics can be drawn with JavaScript Defines a table caption Defines a citation Defines computer code text Defines a details section that can be shown or hidden Defines a section in a document Defines emphasized (italic) text Defines a space to insert media files like plug-ins or applications Defines content like photos, illustrations, and diagrams, etc.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) fall into four different types (or styles). When you understand how these four different types work, you'll be styling your web pages more efficiently. To keep your CSS organized, use CSS comment tags to identify the different sections of CSS within your style sheet. For instance, you may have a section for the header styles, for the sidebar styles, for the navigation styles and for the footer styles.