Intermediate Web Design

Intermediate Web Design
WebWorks – A Workshop Series in Web Design (Session Two)
Table of Contents:
1. Getting Started
2. Meta Tags
3. Favorites Icon
4. Brief Introduction to CSS
5. Syntax
6. Adding to an HTML Page
7. Div and Span
8. Links Color Change
9. Building a Site without Tables
Quick Tip:
Did you know that you can view the html used to make any page you visit (called the “source
code”)? Simply right click, and select View Source or go to the View option on the menu bar
and select Source
1. Getting Started with Dreamweaver MX 2004

Although notepad.exe is the fastest and “cheapest” way to create webpages, this
tutorial will cover the use of Dreamweaver as a guide to creating HTML pages.
• Open up Dreamweaver and select the “coder” option.

• Select HTML from the Create New area.
• A new window with a standard HTML document template will appear:
• Quick and fast right? Notice the blue highlighting for html code… this will
come in handy when hunting down bugs. Also, Dreamweaver automatically
ends your tags, which is very helpful and probably cuts down 99% of HTML
errors.1
2. Meta Tags
Meta tags are inserted in the <head> region of your web page and used to
convey information that is not viewable in a browser. Meta tags in general “work
1If you ever used Notepad for HTML pages… it can get very frustrating when you miss that </tag>…
Webworks: Lists, Tables, and Frames Page 2 of 14
behind the scenes” and a human visitor will not care too much about them. They
are usually used to help increase search engine rankings by including relevant
information about the page. As we all know, pages on the internet are usually not
what they claim to be in a search engine...
A little friendly note: If you want to be ranked #1 in a search engine like Google, meta tags
alone will not help you because they use a different algorithm in site ranking. The moral
of the story here? Content > flashy junky stuff. If you have good content, more people
will link to you, thus driving up the site ranking.
Here is an example of meta tags in use:
<head>
</title> RabbitWorld </title>
<meta name = “description” content = “All you want to know about
rabbits.”>
<meta name = “keywords” content = “rabbits, bunnies, bunny, world, no
sleep”>
<meta name = “robots” content = “noindex”>
</head>
Meta tags do not have an end tag!
Name – type of meta tag used

Content – information about this tag
Quick rundown on the tags:

Description – Brief statement describing the page
Keywords – What a user would type into a search engine to find this page
Robots – Should web spiders be allowed to index this page?
Another useful meta tag is REFRESH. Use this little snippet of code for
redirecting to another site.
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=http://www.site.com/">
Notice the number 5 inside content. This is the number of seconds before the
browser will attempt to redirect so you can have a little message in the main
page “Please wait FIVE seconds before jumping to another page!”
Dreamweaver automatically includes a meta tag in the new generated HTML file:
Content-type tells the browser what sort of character set (iso-8859-1) to load so
the page will look correct. This is optional, but this meta tag can be left alone.
3. Adding Favorites Icon

You’ve all seen a little icon appear right before the url in a web browser or in your
favorites folder:
Workshop Committee of Technology Assist By Students

Now you want to include your own customized icon for your own site!
Start by drawing a 16x16 image and convert it into the icon format. Save the icon
as favicon.ico. Upload this icon onto your web space and put the following code
inside the <head> tag to link to the icon:
<link REL="SHORTCUT ICON” HREF= http://www.site.com/favicon.ico >
Refresh your webpage, and the favorites icon will be replaced with your own
customized icon!
If your computer doesn’t have a program to convert picture files to icons, here are
some links to icon converting programs:
• http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22323,00.asp
http://www.mostshareware.com/soft/Image-Icon-Converter-download-
7867.html
4. (very) Brief Introduction to CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allow the web page designer to define HTML
elements. This amount of control over the rendering of the page allows a great
deal of freedom in determining what your page will look like.
An example would be taking a tag <h1> and give it new attributes like
highlighting text with red.
Whenever you want text to be highlighted red, all you have to do is use the <h1>
tag instead of using <font color= “red”></font>. Since CSS allows the designer
to separate style from content, this saves a lot of time when editing pages and
makes HTML code easier to read.
Style is identified with its <style> </style> tags, and these tags will show up as
purple in Dreamweaver.
Want an example of CSS in action. You’ll find tons at the CSS Zen Garden
(http://www.csszengarden.com/).
5. Syntax
CSS sytnax is easy to remember: selector, property, and value.
The selector is the HTML tag you want to modify, property is an attribute you
want to modify with a value.
Example:
p {font-family: “verdana, arial, helvetica”}

The <p> tag is your selector, “font-family” is the property that will be
modified by the value “verdana, arial, helvetica.”
You can also make style definitions easier to read by spacing them out and writing
each property on a different line:
span
{
color:red
font-style: italic
}
When modifying fonts using CSS, there are units and values that should be kept in
mind:
• em – height of a character
• px – pixels
• pt – point
• % - percentages!
body { font-size:10px; }
6. Adding to a HTML Page

Now you may be wondering, where do I stick all this CSS code? Well there are 3
ways to use CSS.
External
This is the most common implementation of styles. The CSS code is in a separate
file with a “.css” extension (NOTE: You must have the .css extension). A snippet is put in
the <head> section of the HTML file specifying where the style sheet is. For
example, if you had a style sheet called main.css in your styles folder under your
web directory, your HTML will be:
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./styles/main.css" />
</head>
The CSS file would then just contain your CSS code AND NOTHING ELSE. For
example if all your style sheet did was set the background color of your pages to
yellow, the CSS file would look like this:
body {background-color: yellow}
Using external style sheets makes it easy to apply the style sheet to multiple
pages. Even better, any changes you make to the source style sheet cascades and
updates the styling of all your pages.
Internal/Embedded
Say you apply an external style sheet to your page, but then want just one page
to have a blue background. Then you can include the page specific CSS code

within the <head> section of your page. While other styles of your external style
sheet come through, the background color style of the external sheet will be
overridden by the internal stylesheet in the page. Now the CSS code needs to be
wrapped with special <STYLE> tags in the HTML:
<head>
<style type="text/css">

</style>
</head>
The use of comments within the style tag is to hide the code from someone
viewing the page with a really old browser. All the code will be displayed on the
screen and that looks really bad, so take the extra 2 seconds to comment out the
style area!
Inline
Inline uses of CSS is generally not recommended and is slowly being faded out.
Inline CSS is where you stick the style directly inside a HTML tag. For example:
<p style=”color:green”>
The text in this paragraph would then be green.
</p>
The only time you would use Inline CSS is if you need one instance of CSS, say
highlighting a sentence or something that would be difficult to do with other HTML
methods.
You can use more than one of these implementations. When they conflict, the
order of precedence:
1. Inline styles
2. Internal styles
3. External styles
Custom Selectors
Besides selecting HTML elements to apply styles to, you can also create your own
custom element names to apply to any element. Custom styles take two forms,
CLASS and ID.
When should I use ID or CLASS?

• CLASS styles can be attached to multiple elements
• ID styles can only be attached to one element.
• Use ID when there is only ONE instance. Use Class when there are
multiple instances.
The syntax for both is as follows:
CLASS

.somename { color: green; }
ID
#someothername {color: red; }
ID must be preceeded by a hash “#”.
p#ID1 { background-color: blue; }
CLASS must be preceeded by a period.
p.redpen {color:red}
p.greenpen {color:green}
Whenever you wanted to “highlight” text of a certain color:
<p class = ”redpen”>

This text is red!
</p>
<p class = “greenpen”>

The text is green!
</p>
Comments!
Comment as often as possible! You might have to look at your code several
months or years down the line, and realize you don’t understand what is going on
because you failed to document it properly!
Comments start with /* and end with */ :
/* Hello! This is a very important comment! */
Comments will not be displayed in the page; they only appear in the source. They
also appear as gray in Dreamweaver.
7. Div and Span

The <div> tag is used to divide portions of a web page and allows you to define a
style section. <div> to </div> is used to indicate the beginning to the end of a
paragraph. Remember that you cannot have a <div> within a <div>!
<span> is used to tell the browser to apply formatting. The big difference
between <div> and <span> is <div>’s ability to create paragraph breaks (line
break before and after.) <span> elements only affect a small chunk of text in a
line.
Screenshot of these two tags in use:

<span> can be nested within a <div>:
<div class="blueback">
<span class="sitaround">Sit around in center! </span>

<span class="floatright">I am floating to the right! </span>
<span class="other">Other text</span>
</div>
The width of a <div> can be set, and the importance of this will be discussed
later.
.box {width = 10px;}
8. Links Color Change

A fun thing to do is to make your web links change to a different color when the
mouse cursors hovers over the link.
In this example, “a” is the “a” in <a href =”....”></a> and we can apply the
following style changes:
a:link { text-decoration: none; color: #33CCFF; }

a:visited { text-decoration: none; color: #33CCFF; }
a:hover { text-decoration: underline; color: #FF0000; }
When correctly done, the link should be displayed in light blue and once the user
hovers over the link, it should be underlined and in red.
9. Building a Site without Tables

The ability to just “layout” a page without tables is one of CSS’s strongest points.
There is no need to keep track of millions of nested tables and tags.
Position
This property allows the coder to determine where a block of text will go in the
page.
• Static – places the block wherever it is
• Absolute – places the block in the page defined by the coder
.somewhere {position: absolute; top: 50px; right: 100px; }
(This places the block of text 50 pixels from the top, and 100 pixels
from the right)
• Relative – places the block where it would have been if there was nothing

around.
.shift {position: relative; top: 12px; right: 10px; }
Border
This is the standard property that allows us to draw lines around blocks of text.
There are many border styles, ranging from solid to ... hidden.
.a1 {border-style: solid; } /* Your standard black border */

.a2 {border-style: double; } /* Double border*/
.a3 {border-style: hidden; } /* Hidden! */
.a4 {border-style: inset; } /* Creates an indented border */
.a5 {border-style: outset; } /* Creates a raised border */
.a6 {border-style: groove; } /* Creates a grooved border */
For the ubiquitous thin border you see all the time, use this code:
border: 1px solid #000000;
Up to this point, a simple two-column page can be created using the following
code:
#navbar { position: absolute;

top: 10px;
left: 2px;
width: 200px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
}
#maintext { position: absolute;

top: 10px;
left: 210px;
border: 1px solid #000000;}
}
Adding a third column is very easy, just create a new ID with the position of the
third area. Use the <div> tags in the <body> region of the HTML code
(remember that <div> tags are like blocks of text) and you’re done!
Float
This property “floats” a block of text or image in a direction (left or right or
nowhere.)
#flt_right { float: right;} /* self-explanatory */
Multiple blocks with the same float direction will appear alongside each other. To
create the effect of blocks stacked on top of each other, but still floating towards
a direction, use the CLEAR property.
Without clear:

#flt_rightclear { float: right;

clear:right; }
With clear:
Useful Tags
Background
Property Values Description
Background-color Red, blue, FFFFFF,
transparent, etc Sets the background color
Background-image url Sets the background image
Border
Border-color Red, blue, FFFFFF,
etc Sets the color of the border
Border-style Hidden, dotted,

dashed, solid,
double, groove, Sets the style of the border
ridge, inset, outset
Border-width Thin, medium, thick,
pixels Sets the width of the border
Border-bottom- See border-color Sets the color of the bottom

color
border (bottom can be replaced
by left, right, or top)
Border-bottom- See border-style Sets the style of the bottom

style
border(bottom can be replaced
Border-bottom- See border-width Sets the style of the bottom
width
width (bottom can be replaced
Classification
Cursor Auto, crosshair,
default, pointer, Sets the type of cursor to
move, text, wait, display
help
Display None, inline, block,
list-item, run-in,
compact, marker,
table, inline-table,
table-row-group,
table-header-group,
table-footer-group, Sets how an item is displayed
table-row, table-
column-group, table-
row, table-column-
group, table-column,
table-cell, table-
caption
Float Left, right, none Sets where an item will appear
within another
Position Static, relative,
absolute, fixed Sets where to put the item
Visibility Visible, hidden, Sets the visibility mode of the

collapse item
Dimension
Height Auto, pixels, 30% Sets the height of an item
Line-height Normal, #, pixels,
30% Sets the distance between lines
Max-height None, length, % Sets the maximum height of an

item
Min-height None, length, % Sets the minimum height of an
item

Max-width Length, % Sets the maximum width of an

item
Min-width Length, % Sets the minimum width of an
item
width Auto, length, % Sets the width of an item
Font
Font-family Family name
Sets the font family (Allows a
(Arial)or a generic
name (serif) list by priority)
Font-size xx-small, x-small,

small, medium,
large, x-large, xx- Sets the font size
large, smaller,
larger, length, %
Font-stretch Normal, wider,
narrower, ultra-
condensed, extra-
condensed,
condensed, semi- Stretches or condenses the font
condensed, semi-
expanded, expanded,
extra-expanded,
ultra-expanded
Font-style Normal, italic,
oblique Sets the style of the font
Font-font-weight Normal, bold,

bolder, lighter, Sets the weight of the font
100-900
List
List-style-type None, disc, circle,
square, decimal,
lower-roman, upper- Sets the type of the list marker
roman, lower-alpha,
upper-alpha
List-style- Inside, outsider Sets where the marker is
position
placed
List-style-image None, url Sets an image for the list
marker

Marker-offset Auto, length Specifies by how much the

marker is to be offset
Margin
Margin-bottom Auto, length, % Sets the bottom margin of the
element
Margin-left Auto, length, % Sets the left margin of the
element
Margin-right Auto, length, % Sets the right margin of the
element
Margin-top Auto, length, % Sets the top margin of the
element
Outline
Outline-color Color, invert Sets the color of the outline
around an item
Outline-style None, dotted,
dashed, solid, Sets the style of the outline
double, groove, around an item
ridge, inset, outset
Outline-width Thin, medium, thick, Sets the width of the outline
length around an item
Padding
Padding-bottom Length, % Sets the padding on the bottom
of an item
Padding-left Length, % Sets the padding on the left of
an item
Padding-right Length, % Sets the padding on the right of
an item
Padding-top Length, % Sets the padding on the top of
an item
Position
Bottom Auto, %, length Sets how far from the bottom of

the parent item the current

item is
Left Auto, %, length Sets how far from the left of the
left of the parent item the
current item is
Right Auto, %, length Sets how far from the right of
the right of the parent item the
current item is.
Top Auto, %, length Sets how far from the top of the
parent item the current item is
Clip Shape, auto Clips the item into a specific
shape
Overflow Visible, hidden, Sets what is to happen if the
scroll, auto item overflows its given area
Vertical-align Baseline, sub,
super, top, text-
Sets the vertical alignment of
top, middle, bottom,
text-bottom, length, an item
%
z-index Auto, # Sets the stack order of an item
Table
Border-collapse Collapse, separate Sets the border of a table to
collapse or separate
Border-spacing Length Sets the distance between
borders of two cells
Empty-cells Top, bottom, left, Sets whether empty cells
right should have a border
Table-layout Auto, fixed Sets how the table is to be laid
out
Text
Color Blue, green, FFFFFF,
etc Sets the color of the text
Direction Ltr, rtl Sets the direction of the text

Letter-spacing Normal, length Changes the space between

characters
Text-align Left, right, center,
justify Aligns the text
Text-decoration None, underline,

overline, line- Decorates the text
through, blink
Text-indent Length, % Indents the first line of text
Text-shadow None, color, length Shadows the text
Text-transform None, capitalize,
uppercase, lowercase Transforms the text
White-space Normal, pre, nowrap Decides how white space is

handled
Word-spacing Normal, length Changes the space between
words

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Intermediate Web Design

WebWorks – A Workshop Series in Web Design (Session Two)

1. Getting Started with Dreamweaver MX 2004

• Open up Dreamweaver and select the “coder” option.

• A new window with a standard HTML document template will appear:

Here is an example of meta tags in use:

Meta tags do not have an end tag!

Name – type of meta tag used

Quick rundown on the tags:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=http://www.site.com/">

3. Adding Favorites Icon

Workshop Committee of Technology Assist By Students

<link REL="SHORTCUT ICON” HREF= http://www.site.com/favicon.ico >

4. (very) Brief Introduction to CSS

p {font-family: “verdana, arial, helvetica”}

Workshop Committee of Technology Assist By Students

6. Adding to a HTML Page

body {background-color: yellow}

Workshop Committee of Technology Assist By Students

When should I use ID or CLASS?

The syntax for both is as follows:

Workshop Committee of Technology Assist By Students

.somename { color: green; }

ID must be preceeded by a hash “#”.

p#ID1 { background-color: blue; }

CLASS must be preceeded by a period.

Whenever you wanted to “highlight” text of a certain color:

<p class = ”redpen”>

<p class = “greenpen”>

Comments start with /* and end with */ :

/* Hello! This is a very important comment! */

7. Div and Span

Screenshot of these two tags in use:

Workshop Committee of Technology Assist By Students

<span> can be nested within a <div>:

<span class="sitaround">Sit around in center! </span>

.box {width = 10px;}

8. Links Color Change

a:link { text-decoration: none; color: #33CCFF; }

9. Building a Site without Tables

Workshop Committee of Technology Assist By Students

.shift {position: relative; top: 12px; right: 10px; }

.a1 {border-style: solid; } /* Your standard black border */

border: 1px solid #000000;

#navbar { position: absolute;

#maintext { position: absolute;

Workshop Committee of Technology Assist By Students

#flt_rightclear { float: right;

Background-image url Sets the background image

Border-style Hidden, dotted,

Border-bottom- See border-color Sets the color of the bottom

Workshop Committee of Technology Assist By Students

Visibility Visible, hidden, Sets the visibility mode of the

Max-height None, length, % Sets the maximum height of an

Workshop Committee of Technology Assist By Students

Max-width Length, % Sets the maximum width of an

Font-size xx-small, x-small,

Font-font-weight Normal, bold,

Workshop Committee of Technology Assist By Students

Marker-offset Auto, length Specifies by how much the