Web Design with HTML

At this point, most people I encounter in the lab who are working on a website are using WordPress or Google Sites or Blogger or Tumblr or even just Facebook to create their webpages.  But some of us still want to get our hands dirty with good old HTML, the programming language used to create web pages. It’s not difficult, but it does take some time and practice to learn it well.  If you’re going to create an entire website, though, and you want total control over what your site looks like and how it behaves, and you don’t want to be the slave to somebody else’s templates, it’s really worth the effort.

Lynda.com has a new course which introduces you to the nuts and bolts of HTML.  Author Bill Weinman explains what HTML is, how it’s structured, and presents the major tags and features of the language. Discover how to format text and lists, add images and flow text around them, link to other pages and sites, embed audio and video, and create HTML forms. Additional tutorials cover the new elements in HTML5, the latest version of HTML, and prepare you to start working with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Topics include:

• What is HTML?
• Using HTML tags and containers
• Understanding block vs. inline tags
• Controlling line breaks and spaces in text
• Aligning images
• Linking within a page
• Using relative links
• Working with tables
• Creating progress indicators with HTML5
• Adding buttons and check boxes to forms
• Applying CSS
• Optimizing your pages for search engines
• Building document outlines

Check out the contents at http://www.lynda.com/HTML-tutorials/HTML-Essential-Training-2012/99326-2.html.  Let any staff person in the Media Lab or the front part of the WIC know if you’d like us to log you in to one of our computers so you can watch the training videos. And of course we’re here in the Vitale Digital Media Lab if you get stuck at any step along the way.

Also, be sure to check out the post I wrote back in June about a good site called “Don’t Fear the Internet,” aimed at non web-designers interested in building websites.