Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) lay the foundation for web development in this era focused on enhancing user experience.
HTML is the foundation of web pages, giving structure and defining elements. It offers semantics, making content understandable to search engines, accessibility tools, and other technologies. On the other hand, CSS enhances the presentation and styling of web pages by allowing developers to customise layouts, colours, fonts, animations, and more.
HTML and CSS form a powerful duo working harmoniously to make websites visually appealing and user-friendly. This dynamic collaboration empowers developers to craft engaging interfaces that captivate visitors and guide them through an immersive digital experience.
Learn the basics of HTML and CSS and how a DevOps development course can help solidify your online presence in the ever-evolving web development landscape.
Understanding HTML – Basics and Purpose
HTML’s structural prowess helps organise and define the elements. It provides the structural skeleton upon which web content thrives, from headings and paragraphs to images and links.
Structure and syntax of HTML
HTML elements and tags: HTML elements, represented by tags, define the purpose and structure of different parts of the webpage. Each element has an opening tag, content, and closing tag. This organised structure allows for efficient content organisation and presentation on the web. Developers can leverage tags to easily manipulate and style elements, creating visually captivating and engaging web pages.
Example: <p>This is a paragraph.</p>
Attributes and their role in customisation: HTML attributes offer customisation and additional information to HTML elements. These attributes are added to the opening tag of an element using name-value pairs allowing defining properties such as colour, size, alignment, and behaviour. Incorporating attributes provides flexibility and versatility to enhance elements’ visual appeal and functionality in an HTML document.
Example: <img src=”image.jpg” alt=”Image description”>
Commonly used HTML elements:
Headings, paragraphs, and text formatting:
- Headings: <h1> to <h6> for different levels of headings.
- Paragraphs: <p> for paragraphs of text.
- Text formatting: <strong>, <em>, <u>, <s>, <sup>, <sub>, etc.
Links, images, and multimedia:
- Links: <a> to create hyperlinks to other web pages or resources.
- Images: <img> to insert images into the web page.
- Multimedia: <audio>, <video>, <iframe>, etc., for embedding multimedia content.
Lists, tables, and forms:
- Lists: <ul> for unordered lists, <ol> for ordered lists, and <li> for list items.
- Tables: <table>, <tr> for table rows, <th> for table headers, and <td> for table cells.
- Forms: <form>, <input>, <select>, <textarea>, etc., for creating interactive forms.
Understanding CSS – Basics and Purpose
CSS, an integral part of web development, follows the key principle of separating style and content. With CSS, developers can customise the presentation and styling of elements, making each web page eye-catching.
Structure and principle of HTML
Separation of style and content: While HTML defines the structure and content of a web page, CSS handles the styling and layout aspects. This separation allows easy modification of the website’s appearance without altering the underlying HTML structure. This principle enables developers to gain greater flexibility and efficiency in building visually appealing and immersive websites.
CSS selectors and their role in targeting HTML elements: CSS selectors are essential for styling HTML elements. They determine the elements on the page to be influenced by CSS rules. With various types of selectors, such as element selectors, class selectors, and ID selectors, you can target specific elements based on their tag name, class name, ID, attributes, and relationships with other elements. Mastering CSS selectors enables developers to exert precise control over their web page’s appearance.
Commonly used CSS properties for controlling styling
Colours, fonts, and backgrounds: CSS properties determine the visual aspect of text and backgrounds, including colour and font.
- Colour values can be specified using names, hexadecimal, RGB, or HSL values.
- Fonts are customisable with family, size, weight, and style options.
Layout and positioning: CSS properties like display, position, float, and flexbox control the layout and positioning of elements.
- The display property defines how an element is rendered, such as block-level, inline, or flex.
- The position property allows elements to be positioned using relative, absolute, or fixed values.
- The float property controls the placement of an element to surrounding content.
Box model and element dimensions: The box model is a fundamental concept in CSS, defining how elements are structured and sized.
- CSS properties like width, height, margin, padding, and border control the dimensions and spacing of elements.
- The box model contains content, padding, border, and margin, determining an element’s total size.
Applying CSS to HTML
Inline CSS
Inline CSS in HTML involves adding styles directly to elements using the style attribute. It offers convenience for styling specific elements and allows quick changes. However, it may result in code duplication and make complex styling harder to read and maintain.
Example: <h1 style=”color: red; font-size: 20px;”>Heading</h1>
Internal CSS
Internal CSS refers to the practice of embedding CSS within the HTML document using the element in the section. This allows for defining CSS rules that apply to multiple elements within the document. For instance, by using the element, you can specify properties such as colour and font size for headings, ensuring a more organised and centralised approach to styling.
Example: <style>
h1 {
colour: red;
font-size: 20px;
}
</style>
External CSS
External CSS simplifies HTML document styling by creating a separate .css file linked using the element. This file contains CSS rules and selectors, allowing for easy application of styles to HTML elements. External CSS allows styles to be shared across multiple HTML pages, improving organisation and easing maintenance.
Example: <link rel=”stylesheet” href=”styles.css”>
Integrating HTML and CSS Using JavaScript
JavaScript empowers developers to enhance the presentation and structure of web pages by dynamically modifying content, attributes, and styles of HTML elements. JavaScript can respond to user actions and conditions using Document Object Model (DOM), enabling various actions, such as updating text, changing class names, adding or removing elements, and animating elements.
Through accessing and manipulating the DOM, you can retrieve references to HTML elements, modify their text content, apply new styles, create new elements, or remove existing ones. Use the style property of an HTML element to manipulate CSS styles. This property allows you to modify CSS properties like colour, font size, or background colour.
Example: Use the given code to change the colour of a paragraph element to blue by assigning a new value to the corresponding style object property:
<html>
<body>
<p id=”p2″>Hello World!</p>
<script>
document.getElementById(“p2”).style.color = “blue”;
</script>
</body>
</html>
Conclusion
By mastering HTML and CSS, developers can create dynamic web pages that seamlessly adjust to various devices. This expertise elevates the user interface and experience through effective styling and layout techniques.
Full-stack developers play a crucial role in building end-to-end web solutions. A comprehensive DevOps development course enables individuals to become proficient in front-end and back-end development.
Imarticus’s Full Stack Developer Pro course covers HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node.js, MongoDB, and other relevant technologies equipping students with the necessary knowledge to build a successful dev ops career.
