Yeah, while things like that will break it, since its for a class, you might as well try to do things the right way from the start 
I’d remove that whole line, and replace it with <ul>
–mark
honestly they should let him use something like Frontpage or Dreamweaver…this is why younger people are so ill-equipped for the workforce…
i mean really…teaching to ‘code’ in HTML in plain text in Notepad…give me a break. and fwiw, HTML is far from ‘code.’
HTML should be a few day primer…then spend an appropriate amount of time on css, javascript, jsp or asp. who would ever write html pages on their own?
:word:
I didn’t know they still had HTML classes…Did that freshman year of highschool lol
:word: .
Correct. Tables are no longer how you code pages. Semantic markup is the way to go. Firefox and IE, along with different versions of these browsers all have different interperetations of code, and you will have to style your xhtml to work in all of them. Most of it you should be able to get right in a main stylesheet, but you may need to detect ie6 and ie7 and write seperate stylesheets for them.
Backend code and frontend code are much different areas of expertise in today’s web. Look around, there is just as much of a need (if not more) for standards compliant frontend developers as there is for backend developers. No longer can we deal with shitty dreamweaver produced HTML, frontend is as important if not more important than anything else. Learning correct semantic web-standard xHTML / CSS / DOM is a big deal, and should have as much time spent on it as anything else.
Take a look at the jobs being posted. http://artypapers.com/jobpile/
- its a html class, not a CSS class
- w3c is for the new wave, of shit, this class is old school
- ugh i don’t wanna read through the code, cause i know html is forgiving and will let a lot slide
- the teacher can easily see its through dreamweaver.
- too drunk to care
I still write HTML on my own. HTML goes hand in hand with coding in PHP and other languages, so there really is no way to get around it all together. Yes, dreamweaver can be handy, but I still strive to not use it all the time. It makes you forget the basics. I use BBedit for all of my html editing, unless I am doing mass edits from Word documents I export to the web, for our graduate and undergraduate bulletings that we do once a year. For that, Dreamweaver is perfect for stripping all of the stupid word tags out of there.
–mark
CSS makes coding in HTML a million times easier.
And you cant be serious about the W3C. They are one of the single forces making sure the web progresses forward. Validation is neccessary for any website, if you care about cross platform / browser viewing. And if the teacher/professor has any knowledge of the web at all, they will make all students validate their pages, entry level HTML coding or super advanced HTML coding.
–mark
HTML = Structure of a webpage
CSS = Styling/Presentation of a webpage
JS/DOM = Behavior of a webpage
They are three parts of a whole, they are separate, but go hand in hand.
HTML is not forgiving, the browsers are forgiving (in quirks mode). You need to start caring about your HTML if you want it to work right. Understand Doctypes and URI’s (when to use certain ones) and how browsers distinguish between them, along with the different modes of the browser (Quirks mode, standards mode, etc). Learn how to label things correctly (best practices), when and why to use H1’s H2’s, lists, definition lists, paragraphs, and so on. Semantics is using these things for thier intended purpose.
A webpage is no longer just seen by our eyes, it must be read by spiders, machines, screen readers, alternative browsers, and so on. By using semantic HTML you are allowing these different things to know what the code and content means, you are allowing the page to degrade “Gracefully” if a user has an older non web-standard browser or has functionality (javascript or css) turned off. In the end the content is still accessible.
Old School? How about deprecated. The web is changing and this is the way front end is being done, and if you refuse to admit that standards, accessibility, and usability matter, you’re going to be left behind. Buffalo is full of shitty ass developers and web companies so you can get away with being terrible in this town, but it will all change soon, as it has in most other cities. ESPN, GM, Wired, etc etc. They have all made the jump to standards based beautiful front end code and none of them are looking back.
Basically, if you are going to learn HTML, learn it the right way… you will thank yourself down the road.
Dozr and me are on the same page here 
I’m just talking about from the stand point of the class. I doubt he is taking anything more advanced after this. My brother took this class too, and its pretty much. Like, ok post an image, write some text, change the background… blah blah blah…
Yes i know what CSS is. I know html is pretty much out
and html is a hell of a lot more forgiving than say… xml, where everything HAS to be lower case, and closed. where html you can not include some parts captalization doesn’t matter. and such.
But yes i agree you need to learn it the right way. In his case I don’t know how much it will really matter.
edit: oh and guess what… later on, he’ll have to do an assignment… with FRAMES… trust me the class is stupid and really out dated
Well, HTML isnt out, hehe. Even languages like PHP and ASP write html out to the screen.
And from an educational standpoint, if it was a high school class, you would try to get out with doing as little as possible. But for a college course, that you are paying good money for, it would be foolish to not get the most out of any course, and learn how to do things the right way.
–mark
learn it the right way…whatever…its not just this ‘html’ class…i think its a statement on universities being behind the times on providing skills that can actually be used once a person graduates…
html…i would have no use for that person on my dev team if all they knew was what this instructor was pushing.
case in point…when i went for my comp eng degee, my programming classes were …wait for it…Pascal…
at the time C was where it was at in the business community…but i gues it was either Pascal or Cobol they could offer. great!
What about us who graduated with these degrees and now do it for a living very successfully
There is a place for every language. People will argue “I used to code with punch cards, therefore i’m a better programmer then you”. If you learn your trade, and then perform it, I think the universities are doing their job well 
–mark
Yeah, but you graduated RIT which, in my experience, keeps up with industry 100x better than most universities.
i have never heard anyone who used punch cards say they were great. if they do, they deserve to be smacked.
looks like i started quite the debate here…
anyway, the teacher is being a dick and is giving me a 0 grade (out of 20 possible points) because the page didnt initially show up. so basically, i might as well have not even done it in the first place, because i would have gotten the same grade. i believe that i should at least get SOME points because i actually sat down and put a little bit of time into it and made an attempt. but thats neither here nor there.
that sucks man
oh and a wise CS professor once said,“In this field, the only thing that is constant, is change.” the point is that programming concepts are all the same. If u can code in c++, you can code in Java, or any OOL. same with scripting languages. its not really hard to learn syntax, especially with sweet code editors like eclipse, or to stay on topic, dreamweaver, that compile on the fly and tell u what ur doing wrong
stick with it man. oh and you should always start with a basic html file that looks something like this
<html>
<head>
<body>
</body>
</head>
</html>
edit: i dont think thats completely right, but im sure someone will point out whats wrong
then put all ur code in the appropriate sections