Re: Quick How to question ---

Some excellent advice.  I'd just like to add my 2 cents worth:

Joel R. Cochran wrote:

Hi Jeff, welcome to the wonderful world of web design!

If I might make a couple of humble suggestions:

1.  Don't cheat yourself.  Learn 'real' HTML, don't rely on FrontPage, or
Composer, or Dreamweaver.  Learn how to code HTML in notepad (or something
similar) first, you'll thank yourself later.  In fact, if you are just
starting, I would recommend you start with XHTML1.0 since it is the newest
standard for HTML embraced by the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium).  This
is the group responsible for developing web standards.
http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/default.asp

When writing your html, be sure to use a validator, such as
<http://validator.w3.org/>.  Browsers are notoriously tolerant in
accepting malformed html, and if there are errors in your html, you
can never be totally sure that some particular browser will render
your document differently than what you expect.

Also, see comments on CSS.

2.  While you're at it, learn CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).  CSS is one of
the coolest things going.  You get a great amount of control over the final
presentation of your pages, and when done properly they should work on any
browser (ancient versioning aside).  Again, consult the W3C and prepare to
thank yourself in the near future.
http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

Agreed!

If you're learning CSS, you might as well learn xhtml *strict*, and
not worry about the "transitional" form.  Strict differs from
transitional in that it doesn't include the deprecated tags and
attributes of earlier forms of html.  With xhtml strict and CSS, you
can do everything that the deprecated forms of html can do, and much
more.

CSS does, however, require newer browsers.  NetScape 4, for one,
doesn't handle CSS particularly well.  Moz and Konq have very good
CSS support, though.

3.  In general, you want to keep pages as small as possible.  By small I
mean in download size.  One of the easiest ways to do this is to limit the
use of graphics, images, pictures, etc.  The real question to ask is why use
a graphic for a button when a button will do?  I'm not saying there aren't
good reasons, just make sure the good reason isn't "cause I can!"  :-)

Good advice.  And when you do include images, check the sizes.
Compare sizes of the images in JPEG, PNG, and GIF format when
deciding which format to use.

4.  The same theory holds true for JavaScript.  JavaScript is a powerful
tool and greatly enhance your webpages... When used properly.  The first
question I would ask is why open a new window?  Is it going to be a regular
window, complete with it's own address bar, resizing, title bar, tool
buttons, and such?  If so, I would recommend just using "target='_newpage'"
in the anchor tag.  On the other hand, if you are looking to control any of
the attributes above then JavaScript is the way to go.

And don't forget that if your web page is intended for an external
audience, don't count on JavaScript being used by every client that
requests your web page.  If there are pages on your site that can
only be reached via JavaScript navigation, the indexing webbots will
almost certainly not visit and index your web content.

Cheers!  Hans