specializing in digital media technologies

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!

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.

Similarly, there’s the htmlPlayground, for manipulating HTML elements. There’s a list of tags, and for each one, you’ll be provided with a definition and an example (both the code and the rendered result). You can then manipulate the HTML to see how the output is affected. This is as much of a reference as anything, but good references are always welcome.

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.

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:

<select name="os"> <option>Select Your OS</option>
  <optgroup label="Windows">
    <option value="Vista">Vista</option>
    <option value="XP">XP</option>
  </optgroup>
  <optgroup label="Mac">
    <option value="Leopard">Leopard</option>
    <option value="Tiger">Tiger</option>
  </optgroup>
</select>

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.