What about HTML??

[sunixadm]

Hi everyone,

I am a Unix system administrator and have practically no experience developing web sites and content. I manage several Apache web servers but don't concern myself with the content, only the server.

I would like to start web development and am wondering if I need to know HTML before I can become proficient in PHP.

I have looked in the FAQs and links and read several good articles about PHP and MySQL, and am wondering where I should "jump in". Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks.

-Joe

 

[ericbrunson]

You don't need to know any HTML to learn PHP, but it'll be pretty useless for developing web pages.

 

[dexthageek]

Joe
Even if you LEARN php without learning HTML how will you display your content on your pages. HTML is a very easy language to learn and use. So learn HTML as well. If you are really interested in creating websites then I would also look into CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

with those 3 scripting languages there is alot you can do. But trust me as you learn more you will start using other languages as well.

 

[DRJ478]

HTML is IMHO a prerequisite for web development. But, as the other posters pointed out, it is not hard to learn.
Once you get the hang of structured markup languages you'll be able to understand HTML, XHTML, XML etc.
You are already familiar with some markup language elements, just think of the <Location>....</Location> directives in your httpd.conf files.
So, I would:
1. learn basic HTML structure. Don't even look at <font> tags, forget about HTML styling completely. CSS will be much more appropriate.
2. PHP: learn to output basic structure and elements.
3. CSS: learn how to style the HTML elements with CSS attributes.

 

[ingresman]

HTML and CSS is easy enough at a synatax level is fairly easy (although tedious at times). The hard part is making the screen look like you want it to. Resorting to tables is the way forward until the world is CSS enabled !

 

[Olavxxx]

I think the only thing that is the problem with HTML and CSS, is that a lot of browsers display it incorrectly.

Something that looks nice in IE, might look like hell in Opera, and vise versa.

IE is known to make theire own <tags>, which are not standard, and then users start using them. It might look cool and be easy to use in IE, but in some other browser, it might not work at all.

That is kindof why they made XHTML and CSS, I think.

http://www.w3c.org

has some tutorials I think, but XHTML is VERY easy to learn, after you have learned basic HTML.

There are only small differences, and you will also learn by validating your pages, as then you will be forced to work around the flaws that are in your code, so the design will (in theory) look the same on all browsers.

I also think that you should start with some basic HTML tutorial, that you can find on google.

I think what is important to learn, is easy.. like:
images are <img>, you provide source with <img src="path/to/img.jpg">
you also have paragraphs, <p>text</p>
linebreak: <br>
etc etc.

I think forms are a vital part of HTML, as well as formatting (<p> and <br>).

When you learn about XHTML, you learn to write all tags in lowercase, as well as all tags should be closed.

tags like <img> and <br>, are in html, tags that are not closed. You simply close them by adding a / at the end:
<img src="woot.jpg" title="woot, this is cool" />

Then you will also learn tips and tricks, while you are doing the html coding, like:
specifying width and height for the image tags, makes the browser render them faster, as then it does not have to "open" them, to check the width and height.

anyways, I dont know of a good html tutorial at hand, but I guess that you will find some on google.

CSS is also smart to use, as said above.
I have recently made a "html free" design.. (I should rather say table-free design, as some html is always needed). The design worked PERFECTLY, and also gave some more freedom than regular html.

html is "square", in that way that everything is made up, almost like an excel document.
You can however make some cells span (have same width as more than one cell, that is above), modify height, etc.

If you are after some flashy, animated page, it is most likely easier to make it in flash.
If you however are after a fast-loading page, which will show a lot of content, I would use XHTML and CSS, with php/mysql backend.

If the page is not to be updated frequently, XHTML/CSS could be enough, with some kind of flatfile system and includes.

What is great with CSS, is also that you can define tags, so that you can send a template to a designer, and send some files to a programmer. They can then handle the files, without corrupting your system, if you make a smart system, that is.

Anyways, this was a lot of babble.

Good luck!

Olav Alexander Mjelde

http://www.volvo-power.net

Admin & Webmaster