General advice about HTML needed please

[Amiduffer]

Hi all.

I'm setting up a webpage, and its my first time to try! I'm using plain HTML and not using any WYSIWYG word processors, but making it from scratch so I can get "my hands dirty" so to speak and get comfortable with coding webpages.

The page will mostly be names of performers and a list of the songs they sing with links to digitized MPG video files. Currently the file names look like this: RM HJohnson TakeMyMotherHome.MPG because it looked better on my PC. For the purposes of them being on the web, will I have to use _ or - or remove the spaces in the file name when I link them from the page or are they fine as they are? Thanks.

[motorollin]

Most web servers will automatically handle spaces in filenames, but if you're not sure just put %20 where the space comes and this will be interpreted as a space.

--
moto

[Amiduffer]

I just eliminated the spaces, just for convenience sake.

Take a look, My first designed webpage  :-D

[motorollin]

Glad to see you're learning the code. I hate those "WYSIWYG" editors. Generally I find them to be "WYSIWTSWYTG" - "What You See Is What The Software Wants You To Get". I much prefer to hand-craft any sites I create. Most people don't believe me when they ask me what software I use to create web sites and I tell them "TextEdit" ;-)

--
moto

[Amiduffer]

What websites have you designed?

[motorollin]

Only internal stuff actually. I used to design web apps for the company I worked for, and I wrote everything in PHP using notepad. I stopped doing that when I realised it is very, very boring.

--
moto

[adz]

Just took a quick peek as your code and you seem to, in some places, have used a

when you should have used a

. Might cause you some grief further down the track. As for the site, a little bit of CSS could help you clean it up and make it easier to change later. You could also use PHP to read the contents of certain directories and create the links automatically for you. Good luck and most of all, have fun :-)

[whabang]

motorollin wrote:
Most people don't believe me when they ask me what software I use to create web sites and I tell them "TextEdit" ;-)

:love:

[JaXanim]

Amiduffer wrote:
I just eliminated the spaces, just for convenience sake.

Take a look, My first designed webpage  :-D

A good start. Only error I noted is the word video's used for the plural. It should be videos. Spelling and punctuation on webpages must be perfect.

JaX

[Speelgoedmannetje]

whabang wrote:

motorollin wrote:
Most people don't believe me when they ask me what software I use to create web sites and I tell them "TextEdit" ;-)

:love:

urgh, I prefer some programming environment...
/me is lazy programmer, yet I code in assembly too...

oh, and if there's something dirty, it's webdesign, especially by 'hand'...

[whabang]

I still think that Notepad is the best web-design application Microsoft have ever made. ;-)

[motorollin]

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
oh, and if there's something dirty, it's webdesign, especially by 'hand'...

I disagree. Looking at the code generated by WYSIWIG editors is terrifying. The amount of unnecessary crap that get added to code is just amazing! Efficiently coding the site by hand is much cleaner IMO. I like to write my web sites/apps in PHP in the following structure:



require('header.php');
//Content of page
require('footer.php');

?>


The header and footer pages contain content which is common to all pages, and the header also sets up variables for things like fonts, colours etc. Then when I want to use a standard style element from the site's theme I just echo the appropriate variable. If I want to modify the site's theme I just change the value of the variable in the header and it changes on all pages. Voila! CSS without CSS! :-D

I think that's pretty clean :-)

--
moto

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Moto, you missed my point,
I stated that html and the whole web bunch is in general utterly messy if you want 'more'.

[motorollin]

You mean if you want to give more than is offered by HTML? That's not so messy. There's always Flash. Or Shockwave. Or Javascript. Or Java. Or Silverlight. Or any number of other technologies on the web, each of which has its own plugin and its own requirements.

Oh, right... ;-)

--
moto

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Please! No more! Make it stop!