Our task was to build a web page utilising all the basic HTML constructs. I’ve been a Dreamweaver user since version 1.0 and I’m relatively familiar with HTML. I was excited to try hand-coding without the funky extras that Dreamweaver provides, knowing that better knowledge of HTML is always worthwhile.

What’s HTML? HyperText Mark-up Language, the fundamental language of web pages.

This source code I wrote for my HTML task 3 will be rendered in your browser something like… Well click it and take a look (http://vfowler.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/HTML_task3.html). There’ll be minor browser variations of course. Similarly, when you buy Arnott’s Tim Tams, they always taste different to other brands.

With solid HTML we can always code better and faster. Obviously the same goes for CSS, JavaScript or anything else you care to code. More sophisticated web pages are simply employing more CSS, graphics and other media. If you’re interested in clean HTML code (you should be, it’s too expensive in both time and money, to write dirty and non-standards compliant code) please remember that tables are for tabular data, never for layout. When you have tabular data, try Klaus Komenda’s best practice guide to the mark-up. I’m sure you’ll agree the resultant data table is well worth it.

What’s a blog? Perhaps you were born yesterday, or too many yesterdays ago. Try this great article from Dented Reality titled Blogs: What are they good for? including some great headings

1. What is a Blog?
2. Why Blog?
3. How do I blog?

The majority of blogging folk are creating content via the blog engine’s visual editor. Within the engine constraints, they don’t need to know any HTML to publish to their heart’s content.

When I blog, I always hand-code the new content, just the post itself. Naturally, the blog engine takes care of all the automated tasks associated with content management. I started out with a free hosted Blogger blog, but a year later moved to this self hosted WordPress blog. Blogging in this way gives me the control I want with the semi/fully automatic handling of mundane tasks. No regrets.

Will I go back to Dreamweaver? For blogging, heck no. It’s overkill. For creating other new code segments, maybe. However, I’m learning more and more about Notepad++ and enjoying it. Like any good program, when you personalise the workspace and learn the keyboard short-cuts, you’ll maximise your efficiency.