Styles may be declared in external linked style sheets, internalstyle sheets in the HEAD section of a page, or in line inside anHTML element. See The W3C Web Consortium site for much more detailed informaton. Or, go to the W3schools (unrelated to W3C) CSS pages for some good introductory material.

External style sheet

<link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="monk.css"> (substitute the url of your style sheet for 'monk.css')

A style sheet you want to apply to more than one page is most easily done as an external style page. That page does NOT use style tags (they are html, not css), but just jumps in with tags and attributes, and their styles. Save the file with a .css extension. If you need help preparing the style sheet, there are numerous tutorials. Or do what I did and download TopStyleLite (free). It takes you a few minutes to figure out how it works, but once you get that, it's pretty easy to use. I'm assuming you know basic html and have read a bit about use of css. TopStyle is excellent for getting the syntax right, so you don't have to remember it, or keep looking it up. And, like my other favorite program, Homesite, it teaches you as you use it.

Page style sheet

<style> h1, h2, p {font-family: Ariel, sans; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff;}
</style>

Styles placed in the HEAD section of your html page must be surrounded by STYLE tags. The form used as within the .css file, is to give an HTML tag with the designated attribues enclosed within curly braces, as you see above.

Inline styles

<TAG style="attribute:value;">styled text</TAG>
You can apply a style to a section of your page using inline styles applied to a DIV tag, or to a smaller section by applying style to any individual HTML tag, like this:
This sentence contains inline styling.


Since it's hard to remember these various syntaxes, I recommend keeping a 'snippets' file, that is, a text file with codes in it, somewhere handy so you can copy and paste from it, adapting as needed. One reason I like Homesite as a text editor is that first it helps you with the syntax, and second it provides for an easy-to-use snippets file. If you don't want to spring for Homesite, you might want to download HTML Kit. It's free and does a lot. I've just begun to delve into it. I use it pretty much for html, but it also offers assists in all sorts of other coding - ASP, perl, javascript,and more. For a free program, there is a lot there.


-- posted by Palema on 8/31/2003

 
Since the new verson of blogger (dano) came out, some new help pages have emerged, as well. The knowledge base is shallow so far, but the more questions, the more answers. The slightly misnamed FAQ is written in the standard Q&A format, but contains a lot of useful information most of us might not have thought to ask about. The release notes are a must-read for changes you may need to make in your blog. They also contain some new blogger tags, including template tags and owner tags.
-- posted by Palema on 8/20/2003

 
Rush over to Elegant Hack. I got the link from Kate's blog, urlygrl.com. The elegant hack is an extremely attractive web site on information architecture. Cool and rich, sort of like frozen chocolate.
-- posted by Palema on 8/17/2003

 
Your basic 404 "does not exist" error will be thrown up by the server as a default. But some pages have cute, humorous or elegant 404's. One has been going around recently that makes a political statement.

Want to roll your own? Check out the 404 Pros. They also offer tips on what makes a useful 404 page.

This site also has a useful dissection of the meaning of this and other error codes





-- posted by Palema on 8/15/2003

 

The word accessibility refers primarily to the degree in which something is accessible by people with disabilities, but in a wider sense it also measures resistance to external or temporary handicaps, such as noisy environments or bad lighting.

The main method to ensure accessibility is to encode data at as high a level of abstraction as possible, but it is also important to hook into already existing accessibility technologies.

The structure/style dichotomy is a clear example of the former: rather than encoding that something is red, W3C formats allow (and urge) an author to encode first of all the reason why it is red. The redness is added as a rule on top of that. With HTML, for example, rather than <font color="red">, a careful author writes <em class="warning"> and puts the rule that warnings are displayed in red in a style sheet. This way somebody who has no means to display (or see) red at least has a chance to substitute something else that alerts him (such as a nasty sound).

-- Bert Bos, What is a Good Standard? An essay on W3C's design principles
-- posted by Palema on 8/08/2003

 
I got this little javascript piece from About.com on web design, that provides automatically updating links to their pages:

<script language="JavaScript" src="http://z.about.com/6/js/b.txt?s=webdesign"></script>
<script>ShowHeadlines(10)</script>

By changing the number, fewer headlines can be shown.


-- posted by Palema on 8/03/2003

 
In the Blogger interface one can make one's blog available for other people's news feeds with the click of a few buttons. But how to bring other feeds to a page of one's own- that is not so easy! I am looking for info on this and will present it here when I get it. I'm hoping to find something that's free and easy.
-- posted by Palema on 8/03/2003

 
For those of us stymied by weird things Windows sometimes does, here is a web page (at annoyances.org) where you can find out how to make the little adjustments that would make your computing life far easier and/or pleasanter. Many of the items are attached to discussion forums as well. There you can read others' questions and answers, or ask your own.
Go to http://www.annoyances.org


-- posted by Palema on 8/01/2003