HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
As a general guideline, the efort expended on any sotware development
project should consist of three equal parts:
1
Developing the requirements and speciications
2
Writing the code
3
Testing and debugging the sotware
hese are not to be considered three separate phases. Code should be unit-
tested and debugged as it is written. Although the requirements generally
should be known before code writing begins, oten this is not the case. In fact,
an empirical law of sotware engineering states the following:
he requirements of any system are a function of the experience gained in
developing and installing the system for its user.
Modern HTML development stresses the importance of separating the
semantics of a document from the presentation aspects. Because this is not
completely possible in practice, I recommend separating CSS statements into
separate iles—one stylesheet for the layouts and positioning, and another for
the typography, colors, and styles. For any web page that you have to build,
irst decide on the proper HTML markup for each element and how those
elements should be grouped into page divisions and sections. Assign classes
and IDs to elements that relect their roles in the document. hen add CSS to
position the page elements to match the layout requirements. Repeat and reine
until the page works as expected. hen add the typography and graphic detail-
ing required. Like a well-built car, the design and construction of a web page
should start with the engine and power train. hen the controls and instrumen-
tation can be built. he body color and upholstery style should be let for last.
If you search Google for “HTML editor” (with the quotes), you will get several
million results. If you search for “free HTML editor,” you will still get well
over a million results. his does not imply that there are millions of editors—
only that discussions about HTML editors are intense. Nevertheless, there
are certainly hundreds if not thousands of diferent HTML editors to choose
from. How many of these editors are any good? he safe answer is, no more
than half of them are better than average.
4
4. his was a favorite joke of my high school statistics teacher: If you deine “average” as the median value
for a given ranking system, the statement is a tautology.
