What do you wish you knew then ...

I had particular trouble with tables. I was never able to relate the tag structure with visual output properly, and none of the tutorial sites explained clearly how it worked.

A bit later, the and tags posed a problem -- I couldn't figure out their purpose and how they did what they did. Also had trouble with relative/absolute positioning.

That's all I can recall for now. I hope it helps and good luck.

Yes, I am a little better now.

For me it is still forms, not plain html part, but for exsample, contact or feedback form which your visitor fill and you receive.

Forms were pretty hard in the beginning - all the different element types and attributes were pretty confusing.

A good exercise for figuring out tables is to just make a basic table and then play with the border, cellpadding, and cellspacing attributes. Leave two static and make the other really big. I see that you've done something like that in here but it could help to do a graphic diagram with labels for the different parts. It may also help to use a bigger table, like a 4-cell or larger.

You may also want to think of some way to highlight the important parts in your code snippets. Like when you're demonstrating cellpadding you could highglight those attributes.

Sorry, you didn't ask for a critique here One thing I had trouble with when learning CSS is how the cascade is supposed to work. You could add an "FAQ" area where you could list all those things people frequently ask about - coloured scrollbars, a:hovers, iframes, things like that.

Edit: You may want to consider teaching only valid xHTML rather than old style HTML. I wish that I didn't have break old habits of using font tags out of laziness and not closing img tags etc.

i wish that i knew that all browswers didnt recognize things the same way, along with screen resolutions...one of the first pages i built looked fine on my screen (just used basic tags and to organize), but on my friends screens (bigger and smaller) everything was messed up...

i have to agree, forms were a pain in the butt (add to db (flatfile), not email)

and one more thing, i think you should note that all tags will be required to be under-case and all number values and variables (eg: font size="12px" instead of font size=12)

...just a thought

Yes, forms are a pain in the butt. And tables... god *shudder* those tooke me a good year to figure out how to do it right almost every time. And make sure they know that there are other resolutions out there to worry about.

Well, I definately have to say frames/iframes. Especially the frameborders/borders=yes/no/0-scrolling=yes/no/auto-marginwidth/height-framespacing-and-so-on-story drove me crazy.

Thanks everyone, and keep them coming

the new site will be more xHTML style but will mention/show the older tags, font, center, b, i ... more to show its easier to switch to css instead of repeating tags. Everything should be valid (should validate)

I notice no one has said images, a lot of HTML sites out there show you to use the img tag but don't show the importance of the width, height and alt tags.

Yes, images, this was pain using Notepad at very beginning, to go to my PhotoImpact all time to check width and height. Now I am using AceHTML and still do all coding by hand, but images I am inserting via image insert and it is giving already width and height.

About alt tags - yes there are plenty of people who still do not use them and also would be good to point HOW to write them and that decorative elemnts also should have alt="".

Another thing I didn't get the hang of easily was remembering properties like what Jack said.

Things like: does align/valign/border belong to or or ...??
And especially the properties of JS popup windows and frames. A handy reference list would have been useful.

Well, when I was first dabbling with HTML there were no such thing as FRAMES, and the BLINK tag was in full swing. I don't think SpyGlass Mosaic even supported TABLES so there was not even a need for them.

So I guess I have developd my skills along side HTML. learning new tricks and technologies when they are released. Now, with so many emerging standards and technologies I tend to pick and choose what will be most approrpiate for my line of work.

As in, I know have to choose between Perl, CFF, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, JSP, ASP, .NET, etc. etc. When I first started out it was Perl or Java, so I chose Perl.

What I'm trying to say is that the choice was much more limited back then so it was easier to pick up some knoweldge of everything while these days I tend to concentrate on gaining a lot of knoweldge about a specific something.

Cheers

Quote: Originally posted by Abhishek Reddy
Things like: does align/valign/border belong to or or ...??
And especially the properties of JS popup windows and frames. A handy reference list would have been useful.

Agree. I had a simple HTML reference that I made up myself (derived from other sources) that listed all the common tags along with their attributes and explanations of what they do. It was a good thing to print out and keep handy for reference, and to help learn the code. You could provide something like that for your visitors.