Published: 23 May, 2012
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A Few Tips To Kick Start Your Knowledge of HTML5 And CSS3

It is becoming easier and easier for people to become acquainted with basic web development skills. Where code has in the past deterred newcomers, the new coding – HTML5 has simplified the whole process. Acronyms like HTML and CSS may boggle the newcomer but they are far simpler than you might imagine. If you've ever wondered how to build a website, now is the time to act.

HTML (which stands for HyperText Markup Language) is the basic language which allows you to write code which can be interpreted by all web browsers. This is responsible for basic input of content. This is where every code for every web page begins.

CSS (that's Cascading Style Sheets) allows you to spruce up your HTML code – adding colour and affecting layout. While the two are separate languages, they are almost always seen together, working hand in hand to make beautiful and functional pages. The CSS you add to your code will complement the HTML that you have already created.

Let's have a look at what each code looks like and how they work.

The Paragraph HTML Tag

When you are writing code, not everything you do in terms of formatting will transpose to your site. For example, regular carriage returns will not break up text. To do this, you need to use the paragraph tag, which looks like this.

<p>
Here is the content of a paragraph. The tags above and below indicate that space will be made here on my website.
</p>

Most HTML tags open and close. This allows you to be strict when determining what content should be affected by the rules you create with the tags. Here, the two tags clearly indicate the beginning and end of the paragraph.

Text Formatting

You can use HTML to tell a browser how a piece of text looks. The intricacies will be determined by CSS in a moment. Begin, by using to code to categorise your text:

<h1>Here is some text which needs underlining.</h1>

Any text put between these h1 tags will be formatted as you determine by using CSS. The above code alone will not underline the text. Instead, you must combine it with the following CSS.

Underlining With CSS

Here we determine how to affect any text which falls inside the h1 tags as we used above. We use a CSS tag to do this, as follows.

<style type = “text/css”>
h1 {text-decoration:underline;}
</style>

This is an example of how HTML5 and CSS3 can be used in harmony to create functional and pretty web pages. The proper combination of the two is what you will learn as you discover how to create a website.

These tips are provided by Webeden-If you want to create stunning websites without learning HTML and CSS, use Webeden's free website builder.