On Why I Do NOT Like HTML
by so i'm in this web page design class.. i am NOT good with computers to say the least and the only reason i signed up for it was because it was the only class being offered the period i needed it... any way, i am currently failing because I just don't get it! Our first project was to created a home page and i did that but for some reason, i just don't get the tags and i use them inncorrectly (or forget to use them at all) and then he fails me for not doing it right... so here is the delema i am in: our final project due this friday is to use all of the tags that he has taught us so far in one page... we have learned 40 all together and most of them are basic (b, a, body, head.. ect) but the thing i am having problems with is this META tag business (aparently there is 3 of them yet i don't know any thing about them)... also something about DOCTYPE settings which i also can't figure out... i have tried to go see my teacher after school and on off periods but unfortunatly he is also the soccer coach so he rarely has time to help me and when he actully does have time i leave more confused then before... so i was wondering if any of you could be of some help to me... is there some site that lists all the tags and the proper way to use them that any of you know of? and what exactly is this meta buisness really all about?
I plan on periodically updating this thread when we learn more stuff that i don't get that maybe you can help me with..... thanks guys :)
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so recently, we had to update our index.html pages to "css standards" so i really tried hard to do it on my own... but i'm just not that smart... so i updated it.. and i refreshed the page and it was BLANK! i started flipping out! so i IMed my teacher and told him my problem and the convo went sumthing like this:
AOmeL143: i am having a problem with this assignment!
MrGyulay: Shoot
MrGyulay: its not hard. just update your pages with the color and text using the style tags
AOmeL143: I KNO! and i tried! but then i reloaded the page and it was blank!
MrGyulay: you didn't close the tag i bet
AOmeL143: NO! I DID! i'm not that stupid
MrGyulay: lol
AOmeL143: ITS NOT FUNNY!
MrGyulay: well it is a little bit don't you think?
AOmeL143: NO! it is not funny at all! help me!
MrGyulay: you do know that the style tag goes inside the head tag right?
AOmeL143: ooo... no.. i put it in the body! HAHA! c ya tomorow!
MrGyulay: and you also do know that this assignment was due sunday right?
AOmeL143: um... if i say no will you not mark it late!?
MrGyulay: no you are already downgraded 20 points. C YA TOMORROW KIDDO! hahhaha
so basically, there comes a point in your life when you say to yourself "just how stupid am i that my own teacher can have a good laugh at me?" and that my friends is yet another reason why i do not heart computers....
Wow. He was mean. I don't think I've ever laughed at one of my students in front of them.
Are you a teacher? That's exciting! What do you teach?
When I'm a teacher I fully intend to be one of those cool buddy-buddy teachers that everyone loves just so I can laugh at them and no one will get mad.
I'm a math graduate student, so some semesters I have to TA for courses to get supported. This semester I'm TAing for precalculus. In the past I've TA'd for first semester calculus and multivariable calculus. I think I liked TAing for multivariable calculus the most, but only since I didn't have to deal with many freshmen. No offense meant, but freshmen can be pains to teach.
Oh my..are you a math genius? I avoid precalc like the plague. I was in it for 3 days senior year before I dropped it, too much thinking involved. I can do math but it requires a lot of time and thinking for me.
i HATE math... i'm not even taking a math this year cuz i'm SO bad at it
I tried to not take one but they made me take stupid prepare-for-college math. It was such a joke! We learned how to graph lines (something I could do since 7th grade) and ate lots of candy..and colored in those things where the same colors can't touch each other.
was it called like "advance senior math" or sumthing? cuz sum of my friends got stuck in that cuz they didn't wanna take calc... i just avoided it altogether haha
Yeah, something like that! It's initials were CMT..OH! College Math Topics. Yeah..it was pretty freakin' great, all the people in there were calc dropouts. Our teacher always fed us food to help us learn like learning some type of division we had to divide muffins between three people equally. And when doing circuits we watched Gone In 60 Seconds for some reason.
People have said that to me, but I dislike being categorized that way. I just really love math, and think it can be really fun if you get into it.
IT GETS WORSE! today in class he spent 5 minutes going over style tags and how they belong in the head not the body cuz "obviously some people in here weren't paying attention when I went over it the first time" !!! i told him that he was mean and was not my favorite person.... and hes all "you all have my screen name and you can always contact me if you need help or don't understand something, but if you are making a stupid mistake, be prepared to feel stupid when I correct you... or laugh at you in Melodys case" yea.. when i'm a teacher, i'm gonna be NICE!
haha, he sounds like a pretty cool guy. how old is he?
um.. like 25.. give or take a year or 2. Hes young and very not teachish... he HATES kids, hes one of those teachers who complains about students ALL day. Also, he has frosted tips on his hair like hes trying to be 14.... but hes a funny guy sometimes...
I hate teachers who don't like kids. What the heck are you teaching High School for then!? Young teachers can be cool most of the time but they don't have the experience to..I donno be better then just that cool young teacher.
best. teacher. ever.
is his name mr. gay guy-cus that's how i read it
There are tons of HTML primers online. Here's one. Here's another. Both of them have at least a rudimentary discussion of the META tag, but here's my explanation:
The META tag is a tag that goes in the header of your document that gives information to the browser about the content of your page. Most of the time, if you are just viewing webpages you won't be able to tell the difference between ones that have META tags and ones that don't, but they provide very useful information to search engines and other indexing programs. One way to use a META tag is as follows:
< META HTTP-EQUIV=type CONTENT=content >
Here, type is usually either refresh, keywords, or reply-to.
If it is refresh, content should be a positive integer. This tells the browser how often, in seconds, you want it to refresh the page. This is useful if you have a web-cam, for example, since you'll want the page to be refreshed every few seconds so that the picture changes.
If it is keywords, then content should be a string delimited by double-quotes of words or short phrases separated by commas, which briefly describe the contents of your site. Search engines use this information to automatically index pages in their database for easy retrieval.
If it is reply-to, then content should be the e-mail address, delimited by double-quotes, of the person that you should contact with questions about the website. This is not a very common tag. Usually there is just a link to the webmaster's e-mail on the home page.
Another way to use a META tag is:
< META NAME=name CONTENT=content >
In this format, name is usually author, description, or copyright. In each of these cases content should be a string delimited by double-quotes containing the name of the author, a description of the website, and the copyright of the website respectively.
There may be other uses for the META tag but these are the most important and the only ones I can think of right now.
actually, keywords uses the name attribute, not the http-equiv. oh, and some other good uses for the meta tag is to control cacheing of the page. you can make a page immediately expire, or say it can be cached for x amount of time.
This guide is pretty good. it's an overview: http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/
meta tags are just hidden information about the page, such as the description and keywords for search engines, and other information. that link i just gave you has a whole page on meta tags, but here is another little article on what meta tags are all about: http://www.webdeveloper.com/html/html_metatags.html
finally, the doctype tag your teacher was talking about. it's mainly for programs to validate your html code to see if it's correct or not. it's not required, and isn't used as much as it should be, but, basically what you're looking for is just a tag like this right at the first line of your html page:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
ok so since i have to use this meta tag... what exactly would i write? like what does the actully tag say?
ok so that daves site is freaking awsum... it helped SO much.... i finished my project! and i talked to my teacher today and i totally didn't fail... in fact, my average was like a B+ but since he told me that he knows i'm really trying, he gave me an A! i think its cuz i go to see him all the time and e-mail him with all my questions haha its good to suck up sometimes....