HTML Basics
December 10, 2007
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. Besides ASCII text and links to images, sounds, videos, etc., it uses markup tags (so that they won’t show up on your screen) to tell a brower how to present these things for you.
A HTML document is basically a text file. It can be transmitted throughout the internet without being corrupted. Also, because of the markup tags, codes which are not ASCII, such as different coding characters for various human languages, can also be transmitted and presented to the end viewer — as long as the end viewer has the right system.
Note: A good place to learn HTML from scratch is HTMLGoodies.com. Joe Burns, a professor of HTML, makes it very easy to learn HTML using everyday English. He also has many online tutorials, showing you how to do simple things using good examples. He is funny, too 
OK, now the basics for HTML and handling of HTML files so that they display well on the internet and save a huge amount of time in the long run.
- Use correct path to image files - The most common error for a web page is that the images do not show up at all after being uploaded to a web server. This is an indication that you prepared the web page using a WYSIWYG editor such as Microsoft’s FrontPage Express, Netscape’s Composer, Dreamweaver, Ace HTML, etc. These and other similar editors sometime link to the image using a local computer path, e.g.
<img src=”C:\My Documents\mysite\images\1.jpg”>rather than a correct relative path such as one of these (assuming you uploaded your image files into a folder called “images” in the document root):<img src="images/1.jpg">The following is a list of other incorrect paths to images:<img src=”public_html/images/1.jpg”><img src=”www/images/1.jpg”>
Another possibility is that the path is correct but some images’ filenames ends with .JPG rather than .jpg (remember that names on unix server are CasEsenSiTive?)
- Make your file or folder names all in small letters. Some browsers or search engines may convert every letter to a lower case. Yes, it is strange.
- Always upload your HTML files in ASCII mode and image files in BINARY mode. Your images may not display properly if ASCII mode was used during uploading.
- Define character set if certain pages are not written in English. Use this tag within the <HEAD></HEAD> section of your HTML files to do the job:<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1“>This single line alone saves your site visitors’ effort to guess and manually adjust the language settings of their browsers.
- Avoid using frames if you can, as frames are still considered search-engine-unfriendly. Besides, some people still think frames are annoying.
- Avoid using Javascript to open a page in a new window. Use this simple attribute within the hyperlink <A> tag to do the job nicely and quickly:
target="_blank" OR target="_new" A javascript for this task can slow down the window opening program tremendously, sometimes freezing up your visitor’s browser
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I am a father of three kids with my dear wife Margaret. I started internet marketing since 2000 and now have gained enough experience and technical know-hows to share with you. Enjoy!
