CSS Layouts/Web Authoring Methodology

HTML Structure

Html stands for: Hypertext Markup Language, and it is the standard markup language used to create web pages. HTML is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags enclosed in angle brackets: <p>. HTML tags come in pairs, such as an open tag and closing tag: <p> </p>

The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML documents and compose them into visible or audible web pages. HTML describes the structure of a website semantically along with cues for presentation, making it a markup language rather than a programming language.

It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. A practical and helpful source in creating and structuring html is Jon Duckett's Html & CSS: Design and Build Websites textbook.

CSS Structure

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, and it is a style sheet language used for describing the look and formatting of a document written in a markup language. CSS is a cornerstone specification of the web and almost all web pages use CSS style sheets to describe their presentation.

CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content from document presentation, including elements such as the layout, colors, and fonts. This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, enable multiple pages to share formatting, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content (such as by allowing for tableless web design). A practical and helpful source in creating and strcturing CSS is Jon Duckett's Html & CSS: Design and Build Websites textbook.