HTML and CSS : Journalists' Toolkit

A training site for multimedia and online journalists

Learning HTML and CSS

HTML Dog is a great site for finding answers to your questions about HTML and CSS.
It provides tutorials for every level, from beginner to advanced.
If you patiently work through the HTML tutorials in order, you will learn the proper way to code Web pages.

W3schools has a very nice CSS 2.0 reference.

Web Page Editing Programs

The nicest professional editor, in my opinion, is Dreamweaver. I have been using it for many years.

Alternatively, there are a number of free and open-source Web editing programs today:

If you do not know how to upload files to a Web server, see this FTP tutorial.

Firefox and Add-Ons

Among the many things that make Firefox far superior to Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the ability to enhance it with free add-ons. These little programs download and install painlessly from the Firefox site itself.

These are my favorite Firefox add-ons for Web work:

  1. Web Developer toolbar: Adds almost everything a Web designer or programmer needs to inspect pages: See the CSS, the HTML, the Javascript; turn images on and off; outline CSS elements to figure out how pages were built; validate in two clicks.
  2. Firebug: The few tasks that the Web Developer toolbar can't do are handled admirably by Firebug, which allows you not only to view code but also to edit it.
  3. FireFTP: The easiest way to upload and download files between your computer and your host Web server.
  4. Pearl Crescent Page Saver Basic: An easy way to get a screenshot of a Web page; you can choose to grab the entire page, including what is not visible outside the viewport.
  5. MeasureIt: A quick way to determine the width, in pixels, of anything on a Web page in the browser. Great for design troubleshooting.
  6. ColorZilla: Use an eyedropper tool to instantly get the hexadecimal code for any color on a Web page.

Intermediate/Advanced

Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications, by Jesse James Garrett (Feb 18, 2005)

Big List of Helpful Sites

Tutorials Round-Up: Ajax, CSS, PHP and More, from Smashing Magazine (Jan. 26, 2007)

 

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