HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
With that plan in place, you now can move on to the next few lessons and learn the
specifics of how to write individual web pages, create links between them, and add
graphics and media to enhance the website for your audience.
The first section of the workshop lists some of the common questions people ask while
planning a website, along with an answer to each. Following that, you have an opportu-
nity to answer some quiz questions. If you have problems answering any of the questions
in the quiz, go to the next section, where you can find the answers. The exercises help
you formulate some ideas for your own website.
2
Q&A
Q Getting organized seems like an awful lot of work. All I want to do is make
something simple, and you're telling me I have to have goals and topics and
storyboards. Are all the steps listed here really necessary?
A
If you're doing something simple, you won't need to do much, if any, of the stuff I
recommended in this lesson. However, if you're talking about developing two or
three interlinked pages or more, having a plan before you start can help. If you just
dive in, you might discover that keeping everything straight in your head is too dif-
ficult. And the result might not be what you expected, making it hard for people to
get the information they need out of your website and making it difficult for you to
reorganize it so that it makes sense. Having a plan before you start can't hurt, and
it might save you time in the long run.
Q You talked a lot in this lesson about organizing topics and pages, but you said
nothing about the design and layout of individual pages. Why?
A
I discuss design and layout later in this topic, after you've learned more about the
sorts of layout that HTML (the language used for web pages) can do and the stuff
that it just can't do. You'll find a whole day and more about page layout and
design in Lesson 18, “Writing Good Web Pages: Do's and Don'ts.”
Q What if I don't like any of the basic structures you talked about in this lesson?
A
Then design your own. As long as your visitors can find what they want or do what
you want them to do, no rules say you
must
use a hierarchy or a linear structure. I
presented these structures only as potential ideas for organizing your web pages.