ptg tags, and all the other strange bugs that always seem to creep into an HTML file the first time you create it. These problems always seem to happen no matter how good you are at creating web pages. If you use an HTML editor or some other help tool, your job will be easier, but you’ll always seem to find mistakes. That’s what previewing is for—so you can catch the problems before you actually make the document available to other people. Getting Fancy Everything included on the page up to this point has been plain- vanilla HTML 2.0, so it’s readable and will look pretty much the same in all browsers. After you get the page to this point, however, you can add additional formatting tags and attributes that won’t change the page for many readers but might make it look a little fancier in browsers that do support these attributes. So, what attributes do you want to use? Here are two: n Centering the title of the page, the quote, and the bookstore’s address n Making a slight font size change to the address To center the topmost part of the page, you can use the <div> tag around the heading, the quote, and the bookshop’s address, as in the following: Input ▼ <div style=”text-align: center”> <a name=”top”><h1 style=”font-variant: small-caps”>The Bookworm: A Better Book Store</h1></a> <blockquote> “Old books are best—-how tale and rhyme<br /> Float with us down the stream of time!”<br /> - Clarence Urmy, <cite>Old Songs are Best</cite> </blockquote> <p>The Bookworm Bookshop<br /> 1345 Applewood Dr<br /> Springfield, CA 94325<br /> (415) 555-0034 </p> </div> I’ve also used the style attribute to change the text in the <h1> tag to small caps. To change the font size of the address, add a style attribute to the paragraph containing the address: 166 LESSON 7: Formatting Text with HTML and CSS , , Download from www.wowebook.com ptg Input ▼ <p style=”font-size: 150%”>The Bookworm Bookshop<br /> 1345 Applewood Dr<br /> Springfield, CA 94325<br /> (415) 555-0034 </p> Figure 7.19 shows the final result, including styles. Summary 167 7 , Output . FIGURE 7.19 The final Bookworm home page, with addi- tional attributes. You’ll learn more about formatting tags, and styles, and how to design well with them, in Lesson 8. Summary Tags, tags, and more tags! In this lesson, you learned about most of the remaining tags in the HTML language for presenting text, and quite a few of the tags for additional text formatting and presentation. You also put together a real-life HTML home page. You could stop now and create quite presentable web pages, but more cool stuff is to come. So, don’t put down the book yet. Table 7.2 presents a quick summary of all the tags and attributes you’ve learned about in this lesson. Table 7.3 summarizes the CSS properties that have been described in this lesson. ▲ Download from www.wowebook.com ptg TABLE 7.2 HTML Tags from Lesson 7 Tag Attribute Use <address> </address> A signature for each web page; typically occurs near the bottom of each document and contains contact or copyright information. <b> </b> Bold text. <big> </big> Text in a larger font than the text around it. (Removed from HTML5.) <blockquote> </blockquote> A quotation longer than a few words. <cite> </cite> A citation. <code> </code> A code sample. <dfn> </dfn> A definition, or a term about to be defined. <em> </em> Emphasized text. <i> </i> Italic text. <kbd> </kbd> Text to be typed in by the user. <pre> </pre> Preformatted text; all spaces, tabs, and returns are retained. Text is printed in a monospaced font. <s> </s> Strikethrough text. (Removed from HTML5) <samp> </samp> Sample text. <small> </small> Text in a smaller font than the text around it. <strong> </strong> Strongly emphasized text. <sub> </sub> Subscript text. <sup> </sup> Superscript text. <tt> </tt> Text in typewriter font (a mono- spaced font such as Courier). (Removed from HTML5.) <u> </u> Underlined text. (Removed from HTML5.) <var> </var> A variable name. <span> </span> A generic tag used to apply styles to a particular bit of text. 168 LESSON 7: Formatting Text with HTML and CSS Download from www.wowebook.com ptg TABLE 7.2 Continued Tag Attribute Use <hr> A horizontal rule line at the given position in the text. There’s no closing tag in HTML for <hr>; for XHTML, add a space and forward slash ( /) at the end of the tag and its attributes (for example, <hr size=”2” width=”75%” />). size The thickness of the rule, in pix- els. (Removed from HTML5.) width The width of the rule, either in exact pixels or as a percentage of page width (for example, 50%). (Removed from HTML5.) align The alignment of the rule on the page. Possible values are left, right, and center. (Removed from HTML5.) noshade Displays the rule without three- dimensional shading. (Removed from HTML5. <br> A line break; starts the next char- acter on the next line but doesn’t create a new paragraph or list item. There’s no closing tag in HTML for <br>; for XHTML, add a space and forward slash ( /) at the end of the tag and its attrib- utes (for example, <br clear=”left” />). <nobr> </nobr> Doesn’t wrap the enclosed text (nonstandard; supported by Netscape and Internet Explorer). <wbr> Wraps the text at this point only if necessary (nonstandard; sup- ported by Netscape and Internet Explorer). Adds a space and for- ward slash at the end of the tag for XHTML 1.0. <p> </p>, <h1-6> </h1-6> align=”left” Left-justifies the text within that paragraph or heading. (Removed from HTML5.) Summary 169 7 Download from www.wowebook.com ptg TABLE 7.2 Continued Tag Attribute Use align=”right” Right-justifies the text within that paragraph or heading. (Removed from HTML5.) align=”center” Centers the text within that para- graph or heading. (Removed from HTML5.) <div> </div> align=”left” Left-justifies all the content between the opening and closing tags. (DeprecatRemoved from HTML5.) align=”right” Right-justifies all the content between the opening and closing tags. (Removed from HTML5.) align=”center” Centers all the content between the opening and closing tags. (Removed from HTML5.) <center> </center> Centers all the content between the opening and closing tags. (Removed from HTML5.) TABLE 7.3 CSS Properties from Lesson 7 Property Use/Values text-decoration Specifies which sort of decoration should be applied to the text. The values are underline, overline, line-through, blink, and none. font-style Specifies whether text should be italicized. The three values are normal, italic, and oblique. font-weight Specifies the degree to which text should be embold- ened. Options are normal, bold, bolder, lighter, and 100 to 900. font-family Enables you to specify the font used for text. You can choose families such as serif, sans serif, and mono- space, or specific font names. You can also specify more than one font or font family. font-variant Sets the font variant to normal or small-caps. text-align Specifies how text is aligned: left, right, center,or justify. font-size Enables you to specify the font size in any unit sup- ported by CSS. 170 LESSON 7: Formatting Text with HTML and CSS Download from www.wowebook.com ptg Workshop Here you are at the close of this lesson (a long one!) and facing yet another workshop. This lesson covered a lot of ground, so I’ll try to keep the questions easy. There are a couple exercises that focus on building some additional pages for your website. Ready? Q&A Q If line breaks appear in HTML, can I also do page breaks? A HTML doesn’t have a page break tag. Consider what the term page means in a web document. If each document on the web is a single page, the only way to pro- duce a page break is to split your HTML document into separate files and link them. Even within a single document, browsers have no concept of a page; each HTML document simply scrolls by continuously. If you consider a single screen a page, you still can’t have what results in a page break in HTML. The screen size in each browser is different. It’s based on not only the browser itself, but also the size of the monitor on which it runs, the number of lines defined, the font currently being used, and other factors that you cannot control from HTML. When you design your web pages, don’t get too hung up on the concept of a page the way it exists in paper documents. Remember, HTML’s strength is its flexibility for multiple kinds of systems and formats. Instead, think in terms of creating small chunks of information and how they link together to form a complete presentation. If page breaks are essential to your document, you might consider saving it in the PDF format and making it available for download. Q How can I include em dashes or curly quotes (typesetter’s quotes) in my HTML files? A There are entities for all these characters, but they might not be supported by all browsers or on all platforms. Most people still don’t use them. To add an em dash, use —. The curly quote entities are “ for the left quote and ” for the right quote. Similarly, you can create curly single quotes using ‘ and ’. Workshop 171 7 Download from www.wowebook.com ptg Quiz 1. What are the differences between logical character styles and physical character styles? 2. What are some things that the <pre> (preformatted text) tag can be used for? 3. What’s the most common use of the <address> tag? 4. Older versions of HTML provided ways to align and center text on a web page. What’s the recommended way to accomplish these tasks in HTML 4.01? 5. Without looking at Table 7.2, list all eight logical style tags and what they’re used for. Explain why you should use the logical tags rather than the physical tags. Quiz Answers 1. Logical styles indicate how the highlighted text is used (citation, definition, code, and so on). Physical styles indicate how the highlighted text is displayed (bold, italic, or monospaced, for example). 2. Preformatted text can be used for text-based tables, code examples, ASCII art, and any other web page content that requires extra spaces to align characters. 3. The <address> tag is most commonly used for signature-like entities on a web page. These include the name of the author of the web page, contact information, dates, copyright notices, or warnings. Address information usually appears at the bottom of a web page. 4. Alignment and centering of text can be accomplished with style sheets, which is the recommended approach in HTML 4.01. 5. The eight logical styles are <em> (for emphasized text), <strong> (for bold text), <code> (for programming code), <samp> (similar to <code>), <kbd> (to indicate user keyboard input), <var> (for variable names), <dfn> (for definitions), and <cite> (for short quotes or citations). Logical tags rely on the browser to format their appearance. Exercises 1. Now that you’ve had a taste of building your first thorough web page, take a stab at your own home page. What can you include that would entice people to dig deeper into your pages? Don’t forget to include links to other pages on your site. 2. Try out your home page in several browsers and even on multiple platforms if you have access to them. Web developers have to get used to the fact that their designs are at the mercy of their users, and it’s best to see right away how different browsers and platforms treat pages. 172 LESSON 7: Formatting Text with HTML and CSS Download from www.wowebook.com ptg LESSON 8 Using CSS to Style a Site The past few lessons Idiscussed how to lay out web pages using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags. This lesson describes how you can create complex pages using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). You’ve already learned about the advantages CSS can provide for formatting smaller snippets of text. In this lesson, you learn how to use CSS to control the appearance of an entire page. The following topics are covered: n Creating style sheets and including them in a page n Linking to external style sheets n Using selectors to apply styles to elements on a page n Units of measure supported by CSS n The CSS box model n Positioning elements using CSS n Applying styles to tables and the <body> tag n Using CSS to create multicolumn layouts Download from www.wowebook.com ptg Including Style Sheets in a Page Thus far, when I’ve discussed style sheets, I’ve applied them using the style attribute of tags. For example, I’ve shown how you can modify the font for some text using tags such as <div> and <span>, or how you can modify the appearance of a list item by applying a style within an <li> tag. If you rely on the style attribute of tags to apply CSS, if you want to embolden every paragraph on a page, you need to put style=“font-weight: bold” in every <p> tag. This is no improvement over just using <p><b> and </b></p> instead. Fortunately, CSS provides ways to apply styles generally to a page, or even to an entire website. Creating Page-Level Styles First, let’s look at how we can apply styles to our page at the page level. Thus far, you’ve seen how styles are applied, but you haven’t seen any style sheets. Here’s what one looks like: <style type=“text/css”> h1 { font-size: x-large; font-weight: bold } h2 { font-size: large; font-weight: bold } </style> The <style> tag should be included within the <head> tag on your page. The type attribute indicates the MIME type of the style sheet. text/css is the only value you’ll use. The body of the style sheet consists of a series of rules. All rules follow the same structure: selector { property1: value1; property2: value2; } Each rule consists of a selector followed by a list of properties and values associated with those properties. All the properties being set for a selector are enclosed in curly braces, as shown in the example. You can include any number of properties for each selector, and they must be separated from one another using semicolons. You can also include a semicolon following the last property/value pair in the rule, or not—it’s up to you. You should already be quite familiar with CSS properties and values because that’s what you use in the style attribute of tags. Selectors are something new. I discuss them in detail in a bit. The ones I’ve used thus far have the same names as tags. If you use h1 as a selector, the rule will apply to any <h1> tags on the page. By the same token, if you use p as your selector, it will apply to <p> tags. 174 LESSON 8: Using CSS to Style a Site Download from www.wowebook.com ptg Creating Sitewide Style Sheets You can’t capture the real efficiency of style sheets until you start creating sitewide style sheets. You can store all of your style information in a file and include it without resort- ing to any server trickery (which I discuss in Lesson 21, “Taking Advantage of the Server”). A CSS file contains the body of a <style> tag. To turn the style sheet from the previous section into a separate file, you could just save the following to a file called style.css: h1 { font-size: x-large; font-weight: bold } h2 { font-size: large; font-weight: bold } In truth, the extension of the file is irrelevant, but the extension .css is the de facto stan- dard for style sheets, so you should probably use it. After you’ve created the style sheet file, you can include it in your page using the <link> tag, like this: <link rel=“stylesheet” href=“style.css” type=“text/css” /> The type attribute is the same as that of the <style> tag. The href tag is the same as that of the <a> tag. It can be a relative URL, an absolute URL, or even a fully qualified URL that points to a different server. As long as the browser can fetch the file, any URL will work. This means that you can just as easily use other people’s style sheets as your own, but you probably shouldn’t. There’s another attribute of the link tag, too: media. This enables you to specify different style sheets for different display mediums. For example, you can specify one for print, another for screen display, and others for things like aural browsers for use with screen readers. Not all browsers support the different media types, but if your style sheet is spe- cific to a particular medium, you should include it. The options are screen, print, pro- jection, aural, braille, tty, tv, embossed, handheld, and all. You can also specify titles for your style sheets using the title attribute, as well as alter- native style sheets by setting the rel attribute to alternative style sheet. Theoretically, this means that you could specify multiple style sheets for your page (with the one set to rel=“stylesheet” as the preferred style sheet). The browser would then enable the user to select from among them based on the title you provide. Unfortunately, none of the major browsers support this behavior. As it is, you can include links to multiple style sheets in your pages, and all the rules will be applied. This means that you can create one general style sheet for your entire site and then another specific to a page or to a section of the site, too. Including Style Sheets in a Page 175 8 Download from www.wowebook.com . (nonstandard; sup- ported by Netscape and Internet Explorer). Adds a space and for- ward slash at the end of the tag for XHTML 1. 0. <p> </p>, <h 1-6 > </h 1-6 > align=”left” Left-justifies. called style .css: h1 { font-size: x-large; font-weight: bold } h2 { font-size: large; font-weight: bold } In truth, the extension of the file is irrelevant, but the extension .css is the de facto stan- dard. sheets. Here’s what one looks like: <style type=“text /css > h1 { font-size: x-large; font-weight: bold } h2 { font-size: large; font-weight: bold } </style> The <style> tag should