Larry Ullman » html

Learn to Write

Larry — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:34:05 +0000

There was a recent posting by Jeff Atwood titled “Please Don’t Learn to Code“, which received a lot of recent discussion. It’s a bit silly, to me, because the impetus for that post—a tweet by NY Mayor Bloomberg suggesting he was going to learn to code in 2012—was almost certainly sent out as a promotional message for a NYC-based company (CodeAcademy), not as a sincere expression of the mayor’s side interests. In any case, Atwood’s piece came across to some as unnecessarily harsh, and while it’s hard to argue that everyone should learn to code, it’s also elitist to suggest that people should’t learn X because they’re not going to be able to do it in a way you think is right.

The reason I mention Atwood’s piece is because Rands in Repose had a very nice reaction post titled “Please Learn to Write“. Maybe it’s because I am a writer, but the suggestion—Hey, if you want to improve yourself, communicate better.—rings true to me.

The Protocol-Relative URL

Larry — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:50:20 +0000

Some time back, I came across this excellent nugget of information that Paul Irish has put forth about the protocol-relative URL. I don’t want to reveal the details here (it’s a short article, and you ought to read it), but the gist is that there’s a very simple way to link CSS, images, JavaScript, and whatever other resources so that they’ll be served over HTTP on HTTP pages and provided over HTTPS on HTTPS pages. I wish I had thought to use this when I wrote my e-commerce book (instead of using two different header files)! Sometimes the simple solution is the most brilliant one…

30 HTML Best Practices for Beginners

Larry — Sat, 15 May 2010 01:11:48 +0000

I StumbledUpon this post on the 30 HTML Best Practices for Beginners. It’s a good read, even for non-beginners (especially if you’re the type that likes validation of what you’re already doing). The suggestions cover merely coding to what tools you should be using. Check it out!

Useful Web Development Sites

Larry — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 01:48:09 +0000

I’m constantly running across different useful sites when it comes to choosing a Web page’s HTML, formatting, CSS, fonts, layout, and so forth. Here are a couple of notable ones:

FontTester, as you might expect, lets you play with different CSS and HTML options to adjust what fonts you use and how they are formatted. The page starts with up to three columns of sample text at the top. Then you can edit the properties of the individual columns to compare and contrast different effects. Once you have the look you like, including color, line height, indentation, and more, you can copy the corresponding CSS.

If you’re new to CSS, you might want to check out CSS Basics. I think it’s a fairly straightforward, easy to understand introduction to Cascading Style Sheets. Once you’ve grasped CSS fundamentals, and found yourself wanting more, check out the exhaustive 84 Amazingly Useful CSS Tips & Resources. There are links to LOTS of good content there; just give yourself time to kill and don’t forget to take good notes!

Once you’ve got a site fairly well developed, you ought to do the professional thing and check its accessibility. This is a pretty easy step to skip, especially if you don’t have personal experience in accessing sites using non-standard tools. Sitepoint put together an article worth reading called 12 Tools To Check Your Site’s Accessibility. Some are software plug-ins that work with Dreamweaver, Eclipse, Firefox, or Opera; other tools are Web based, just like those used to validate a site’s HTML. Besides increasing the potential number of viewers for your site, making it universally accessible may even be something that’s mandated by the client. For example, I do a lot of work for educational institutions and the federal government, both of which insist on sites being accessible.

10 Rare HTML Tags You Really Should Know

Larry — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 02:36:32 +0000

I stumbled upon this article titled 10 Rare HTML Tags You Really Should Know. The content’s as you would expect it to be. Unfortunately the benefit of using a couple of the tags isn’t clear, but I do like the information on OPTGROUP and ACRONYM. Although do not that the indicated code for OPTGROUP is incorrect. OPTGROUP tags should actually wrap around the options that go within that group:

I would like to think that the LABEL and FIELDSET tags are being used regularly, but perhaps they aren’t. As for WBR, I’d never heard of that one, but it’s quite interesting.