Cool HTML Website Codes

Creating an "exceptional" Web page using the cool HTML website code requires good design technique and a thorough understanding of HTML tags and attributes. Setting the concepts of "good" and "bad" page design aside, making a Web page boils down to one thing, creating a document (that is, a text file) that contains the HTML code necessary to tell the Web browser to display what you want onscreen. Although this chapter discusses the ins and outs of basic HTML code, it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the programs available for creating text documents in which you write and store your Web page HTML.

A Web page is nothing more than a text document that contains all of the text content and HTML (tags and attributes) the Web browser needs to display the information you want onscreen. As such, you do not need a specialized program to generate a Web page. You need only a general knowledge of HTML and a program that lets you save a text-only file. Three types of programs let you create HTML documents using cool HTML website code: text editors, word processors, and HTML layout programs (such as Dreamweaver and FrontPage). All three have their advantages and, in some cases, disadvantages.

A text editor is the simplest (and perhaps easiest to use) of the three types of programs that let you create a text document. A text editor is a no-frills application that lets you enter text into the computer and save what you type to a file on the hard drive or on a floppy disk. On a Windows computer, Microsoft supplies a text editor called Notepad, and on the Macintosh, the text editor is called SimpleText. Typically, text editors do not have a spell check module or advanced formatting tools, such as style sheets and paragraph rules.

Text editors do however let you type information onto an electronic sheet of paper and save what you type to a file. The major disadvantage of using a text editor to create a Web page is that text editors provide little help in writing tags that conform to HTML syntax rules. You type the cool HTML website code; the text editor records the text. However, the text editor will not alert you to misspelled words or HTML syntax errors. The advantage in using a text editor to create a Web page is that text editors force you to learn the HTML more quickly, because they provide no crutch on which you can lean. After you type your HTML into Notepad, select File | Save and enter a filename to save your Web page to disk. Be sure to give your filename an .htm or .html (and not the default .txt) extension.

The two most popular word processors on the market are Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect. Word processors give you an advantage over simple text editors in that you can call the word processor to spell check what you type. However, unless you use a spell check module designed to check HTML, you will spend a lot of time instructing the word processor to ignore the spelling of HTML tags, because most tag names are only abbreviations and not correctly spelled words in English. If your word processor does not have an HTML spell check module, you can instruct the application to learn new words. For example, the word processor will mark the image tag <> as being a misspelled word. However, when you instruct the word processor to learn that the character string "<>" is spelled correctly, the word processor will accept subsequent occurrences of it in the document as spelled correctly. A word of caution, make sure that the HTML tag you type is syntactically correct before you click the spell check program's learn button. Thus, a word processor has two advantages.

First, you can tell the word processor to check the spelling of words and tags you enter into your Web page HTML; and second, you still have to learn HTML quickly because must you still type the HTML you want the browser to execute into the document. When you save the file, be sure to use the word processor's "save as" function to save the document as a text-only file. Word processors do something that text editors do not; they insert special codes into a document. These embedded codes can affect how the Web browser interprets the document and worst case, can prevent the Web browser from displaying your Web page at all, or even cause the browser to crash. Because HTML documents do not require embedded text formatting codes, tell the word processor to save your HTML file using the text-only option.

Web layout applications let you create Web pages in much the same way as page layout applications such as PageMaker and QuarkXPress let you lay out and print a paper document. Although dozens of Web layout applications are on the market, the three most popular programs for creating Web pages are Adobe's GoLive, Dreamweaver, and Microsoft's FrontPage. When you use a Web layout program such as GoLive, you open a new document, and begin typing text and dragging graphics onto the blank layout window. As you add text and graphics to the Web page, the program generates the cool HTML codes for you. The advantage of using a Web layout program is that you see how the page will look in a Web browser as you create the page. The disadvantage in using Web layout programs is that they do the entire HTML coding for you. Although that may seem like a good thing, you never get a chance to learn any HTML, and therefore you may never advance beyond what the layout program is capable of doing. Suppose, for example, you want to add a specific feature to your Web page and the layout program does not have a button to make it happen.

That means you are stuck because you do not know how to code the feature yourself. In addition, Web layout programs are not perfect. Sometimes they generate additional HTML code that is not necessary to your Web page. If you do not know HTML, you cannot make a decision as to what you need and what you should remove. If you are new to Web site design, it is a good idea to start by using a simple text editor or word processor. After you understand HTML, move on to a Web layout program such as Dreamweaver or GoLive. If you understand HTML, using a Web layout program gives you the best of both worlds. The Web layout program generates all the HTML code quickly and on the fly, while at any time letting you stop and modify the code to fit your specific needs.

When you create a new Web site, you will have to move the Web content (that is, the HTML documents, graphics, animation, sound, and other support files) from your development computer to the Web server. If your Web pages contain links to pages stored in the same or related folders (such as a subfolder or parent folder), you can save yourself considerable time and work by using relative pathnames when referencing files in the Web page HTML tags.

I am pretty sure that I've made you curios and you will want to learn more about HTML and cool HTML website code. If you will search the internet for more information, you will find more cool stuff and you can have your own cool website and be a web designer. You can use these cool HTML sequences in your social networking profiles' pages, like Xanga, Myspace or Facebook. Try these cool Xanga codes and customize your profile as much as you can, in order to express your personality!