Tips on Creating Online HTML Forms

My daily routine includes checking the implementation of web forms by my clients. When checking the forms, I have noticed that the same mistakes are made again and again, so I thought that writing some tips on creating online HTML forms would be helpful. First of all, let me clarify, when I say “forms” I mean the “online forms” or “web forms” or “HTML forms” on a website. In general, forms are made to collect information from website visitors; and then a form processor sends that information to certain email addresses or saves it to database.

Note: To prevent auto-editing, the symbols “Less then” and “Greater than” have been replaced with “[” and “]” in this article.

Tip 1. Properly enclosing form’s elements.

A form begins with a [form…] tag and ends with a [/form] tag. All form’s elements must be enclosed within the [form…] and [/form] tags.

Some examples of form element are: text field, checkbox, radio button, submit button.

Any elements placed outside of the [form…] [/form] area will be ignored.

If there are more than one form on a page, make sure that you close one form before opening another; in other words, one form must not be a part of another form.

Tip 2. Naming form elements properly.

The “name” attribute of an element must contain only letters, numbers, underscore and dash. The “name” attribute should not start or end with an underscore or dash. Here are some examples:

These name attributes are correct:

Tip 3. Validating form with JavaScript.

In most cases it is beneficial to check if the form was filled out correctly. If a visitor made a mistake, the form should not be processed and the visitor should be presented with a friendly message explaining the mistake.

Usually a JavaScript function is called from the [form] tag. Here is an example to verify if the “YourWebsite” field is empty or not. If the field is empty, the JavaScript will notify the user to enter a website address. Here is the code:

Tip 4. Implementing anti-spam solution.

Online forms on web pages can be easily found by myriad spam-bots also known as spiders or crawlers. When the spam-bots find your unprotected form, they would:

– send you spam through your form,

– send spam to other people using your mail server and often using your email address.

One way to prevent this from happening is to use a Captcha image. Captcha is a contrived acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. Humans can read distorted text on a picture, but current computer programs can’t.

Tip 5. Testing the form!

Testing a newly created or modified form is very important. A small mistake may stop the form from sending visitor’s or client’s requests; you might never know that someone wanted to contact you or have placed an order.

How to test a form? After your form is ready, fill it out with the information, pretending you were a website visitor. Submit the form, and then check your mail box. There should be a new message with the data you entered into the form. If you do not see the new message, then there might be a mistake in the code. Fix it and repeat the test again.

There are several ways to handle the drudgery of cleaning the Chicken coop and controlling odor. Some coops are built with a floor of chicken wire or metal screen that allows the waste to fall through and collected below. I am not an advocate of this design as it is a poor surface for the chickens to walk around on and it can make drafts within the coop difficult to control. Another option is to place straw over the floor of the coop, and simply remove and replace as necessary. This method is fine but as the straw becomes wet, it will produce odor and add humidity within the coop. Depending on the size of your flock, this could require daily replacement of the straw to maintain a clean and odor free environment.

My preferred method is sometimes called the deep litter method. With this method, the coop is filled with 4-6 inches of pine shavings. By raking the top spoiled material into the bottom of the pile and allowing fresh shavings to the top a virtual odor-free environment can be maintained. Over time the level of the mixture will compress and new shavings can be added to bring the level back up. To hasten the absorption of the wetness, some will mix in a small amount food grade DE (diatomceous earth) to the surface. Once or twice a year the mixture may be removed and added to the garden or compost pile. Aside from raking the poo into the mix every day or so, there is very little effort involved with this method. And I have found that there is virtually no odor; visitors are always amazed when I show them the coop and there is no detectable odor.

Another strategy to some implement to the make the cleaning process more efficient is to provide a removable drip pan directly below the perch within the coop. Since the chickens will prefer to spend a great deal of time on the perch when they are inside the coop, a majority of the waste can be intercepted before it falls on the floor. By making this tray easily accessible, it can be removed every day or so and the contents dumped into the compost pile. This strategy is by no means required as some just prefer to keep it simple and use only the deep litter method with great success.

Irrespective of the size of your business, back office sorting can only be accomplished if your data is maintained in the most versatile format. Today, across the globe corporate offices are on a head hunt for timely and compatible conversion and maintenance of professional data. To this end, document conversion from PSD to HTML is by far the most sought after.

The conversion is one that allows you as an entrepreneur to efficiently address all your back office work in a format that the world is following. Data conversion of PSD to XHTML, as the name suggests, is the conversion of data from the Adobe suite to that of Hyper Text Markup Language. The transition from one format to another is pursued with the main intent of achieving:

• Easy accessibility of data

• Enhanced file management

In order to convert PSD to XHTML major business establishments outsource the job. Today, there are a number of professionals who are adept at handling conversions such as PSD to XHTML coding and that of other formats to the preferred table-less HTML, XHTML slicing and table-less XHTML coding.

They amply fill in for the requirement of corporate establishments who find it difficult to handle the data and document conversion in house. This could be either due to the lack of know-how within their offices or the lack of business time.

Why is the conversion important?

The endeavor to convert PSD to HTML or any other language coding is important for numerous reasons. It is a commonly known fact that bulk data is usually stored in house in varied formats. This makes it very difficult for office staff to maintain and organize the data.

In different formats, the data organization can become very time consuming. This only adds to the common back office chaos.

Across the globe, companies are pursuing conversions like PSD to CSS and the challenge to convert PSD to CSS to evade huge expenses incurred while compiling and processing files in-house.

Beyond being time consuming, the process is also highly impractical considering that all the help for the conversion and reformatting is really at hand. There are many reliable data conversion companies now offering their services online as well as offline and they make the documentation available 24×7 at a click in the preferred format!

Addressing outsourcing

PSD to HTML is handled by numerous outsourcing companies. Not only do they take up the responsibility of reformatting the data into the required format, but they also deliver the processed files on time, every time. They partner the in house business endeavor and help you to achieve deadlines. These companies address conversion of different transitions sought for small and large volumes of data.

The files are processed at their facilities and then sent to the in house team. Many of the outsourcing companies also address transferring the files to offshore branches and time and cost effective management of data.

Depending on your specific needs, the data and documents are converted into different formats. The work could also include reformatting of scanned document and books.

In today’s world, governed by the Internet, everybody wants to build a website, and the major question comes in: How? The research begins, most of the times on the same media you’re trying to break in, and you end up with more questions than answers. How should you handle this amount of information? The opinions of those that are already in are always different and you end up lost like in the beginning.

This might happen because the answer to the questions “should I learn HTML code or just use a WYSIWYG editor? What’s better for me?” depends most on your expectations, needs and intentions and not only on the characteristics of the tools available. While some people prefer to measure things using a square rule because they have more uses, others prefer the standard rule because it’s more portable. Each object has its advantages and disadvantages and you can’t say exactly which one of them is better. So, to clear the things out, let’s look at the differences between HTML and WYSIWYG editors.

Time to learn

This is the biggest advantage of WYSIWYG editors because building a website with them is easier and more intuitive. Who ever wrote a letter in a text editor or drawn an image in a picture editor knows what this means. For those who have never used them, it’s like opening a website in your navigator and be able to click the text and start editing it, changing the size, the color, moving images, changing them, etc., all through clicks, tool bars and menus.

In the other hand, writing HTML tends to be more complicated, even when it’s an easy language. HTML is a markup language, and the reason why it’s easier than other languages is that the resulting web page is interpreted by a code (it has no cycles, no functions, no changing variables). Anyway, learning HTML may give you long term advantages once you’ve passed through the learning experience.

Time to build

This is a diffuse point, given that many people think that the method they use is better and faster. The truth is that this time depends a lot on the expertise level of the designer but, even when the difference could be depreciable, it’s more probable that a web page could be finished faster with a WYSIWYG editor.

Knowledge

Even when knowledge can be acquired anywhere (if you know how), in this case HTML offers more chances of expanding your mind and rise up your intellectual coefficient. It’s a good point if you’re trying to learn beyond of it. HTML coding will give you practice while, as it’s an easy language, will introduce you to the programming world (also a part of the web design and development).

Portability

While HTML code can be written in any text editor, even the most basic one, you cannot build a website in a WYSIWYG editor if you don’t have the editor. This may become a portability problem for those who don’t know HTML because they will need to have the editor installed in the computer they want to use to build, modify or update a web page (no matter how big or little the update is).

Code properness

When using a WYSIWYG editor, the web page is constructed by the user in a visual way that’s translated to HTML code by the editor engine. This means that the direct responsible of writing the HTML code is the editor, even when the directives are imparted by the designer. This many times makes that the web pages have incorrect, malformed or non-standard code, and very often additional (not wished) meta tag code.

When using HTML, the only person that decides which code goes and which code doesn’t, is the designer. You have the liberty and authority of choosing how the code will be written in your HTML document, if it will respect the standards, if it will be accessible, and many more.

Reach

How far can you go building websites through WYSIWYG editors? Well, as far as the program lets you. Today’s WYSIWYG editors bring easy and advanced solutions to designers incorporating markup languages, server-side languages, client-side languages, plug-ins and more. This will help designers to build up web pages and fill them with effects, functionalities and interactivity. This is good, and is very good if you’re not intended to go to a higher level, given that the functions provided by the editor (or by other sources) will work great with your expectations.

In the other hand, HTML is just HTML, but if you’re visionary, you’ll see that HTML is the doorway to further learning which will have, as we mentioned before, a long term benefit. The best thing of knowing HTML, as any other language, is that you’re not limited to the number of functions that the editor has to offer. You can always create your own customizable functions and code, which will look and feel exactly as you wish them to do.

Credibility

If you’re working for, or trying to catch a client, it’s not that same to say that you know and handle HTML that say that you only can use a WYSIWYG editor. Knowing HTML gives you an extra point: credibility.

A third option comes in if you decide to learn both of them. Most WYSIWYG editors have the option of parallel edition of the HTML code which opens a new possibility. Anyway, you can always modify the HTML files generated by the editor. This way you can get the benefits of both.

In conclusion, the best way to follow depends on your intentions. HTML, harder to learn but more customizable and independent, or WYSIWYG editors, easier but more editor-dependent. If your intention is to “just design a website” then you may find a WYSIWYG editor good enough, but if you’re looking serious to the web design then HTML is a must.

Moving files into the HTML/CSS format is a challenging thing for designers to do. This problem can be taken care of with one of three options. A designer can code it on one’s one into an HTML format. This is a very long process though. A designer can work with a program that automatically converts the file too. A designer can even outsource the task to someone else.

Now, the usual question might arise. Which of the three options is the best option? You will need to look into your strategies and budgets when determining an answer. The first option is good for a small budget because you are taking care of the process yourself. The third option can work for a high budget process. The options need to be chosen with respect to the situations and people one works with. A big factor to see here involves website designs. Websites are more noticeable not by their content but by how they look. At such a crucial juncture, the designer plays a pivotal role in the website’s success. Hence, conversion needs to be top notch!

Getting a Conversion to Work

The flexibility and openness of your options will be important. When converting design files to HTML/CSS it helps to think about your knowledge of tutorials, service provider reviews and automated conversion tools. Even old processes should be considered. Older processes can give you some good tips with regards to newer processes.

A good thing to do is to personalize your list. Having a list of your own is always good to do. Thinking about alternates and your urgent options can help. One might need an urgent conversion. Select service providers/tutorials who do this best. In many cases specialist providers can help. These are providers that specialize in conversion processes. Shortlist the most widely used forms and the respective providers of those conversions. Also, keep an update on your requirements from such Service Providers. It changes from time to time.

Furthermore, consider work volumes, project needs, budget, your knowing of PSD to HTML conversions and so on. Automated or outsourced processes can work if you have a good budget. Have a flexible list which works for your situations. There is always the possibility that someday you can publish this on various sites as your own special list.

To answer the question of what is PSD to HTML, it is best to begin with why it is done. Once you understand the reason for doing the process, how it is done becomes easy. Converting the former into the latter is needed if you want to use a perfectly edited image for your website. Conversion is made easy through available software and tutorials online.

Website Making

When creating a website, it is easier to formulate codes directly from the website itself. A tool maybe needed for testing codes prior to actual application to the site. For which, website making applications can be used.

Most of which are downloadable for free online. Personal images and graphics you want to add to your website are easily edited through these tools. Converting psd into html and PSD to CSS and how it is done can be accomplished by these tools. Image editing is better done through external applications such as the Adobe Photoshop. Herewith, an enhanced final output can be created. Effects, sizes, masks, colors, and all other possible alterations can be done. To use a Photoshop file for your website is the challenge which follows after. You need to convert the Photoshop file to a readable format online.

PSD and HTML

Changing files from PSD to HTML becomes easy when you understand what both files is PSD or Photoshop Document is made through a software or application which allows editing of imagery. From which, a file with the extension name.psd is created. Hypertext Markup Language with a filename extension of.html is a widely used format for internet pages.

Its transfer from servers to browsers is done through HTTP or the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. XHTML which is a newer version that is already used but is still open for developments.

Convert PSD to HTML

Converting PSD to HTML is now made easy through various websites, applications, and software. There are PSD to CSS downloadable software and applications which can be installed to your computer. Free versions can be downloaded. Trial versions can also be installed prior to actual purchase of products which are not free. There are even services which offer conversion online. Some are free. Some are available with an applicable fee. Instructional websites can also be used for reference if you would like to complete the conversion process by yourself. Step by step tutorials with videos and screenshots are included.

Prior to dwelling on the technical aspect of the conversion process, most people who have built their own site through PSD files advice that you focus on the purpose first. Gather ideas about what the site or page will look like in general. Next, analyze the files.

Study the consequences of converting PSD to HTML and/or PSD to CSS. There are benefits as well as setbacks which need to be identified right away. When both steps are accomplished, you are ready to exert all efforts on the technical side.

Using any software made for this task; the PSD file is sliced and/or divided into layers. These may include the header, footer, left, right, and center navigation. Text boxes, buttons, and links will be added right away. Boxes will then be filled with content. Lastly, the converted output should be tested with various browsers prior to final upload.

Valid HTML code is very important because it helps accessibility in the ever growing platform and user agent market such as smart phones, tablet computers, the Android browser and more. It also helps show professionalism and good practice, aids debugging and future proofing.

Languages and Rules

Web pages are written in the language of HTML and the current version is HMTL 5. Every language has its own syntax and therefore every document written in the language of HTML is supposed to follow its official rules.

The rules set out define how the syntax can be used, what order the language can be written in and how it all fits together. For example, you will always start a web page with the opening HTML tag and finish with the closing HTML tag. Between these tags is the head tag and body tag. The body tag comes after the head tag.

The rules also specify how certain syntaxes work and shouldn’t work. In a HTML list you use a block level item, such as a “<div>” tag, as a list item.

What is valid HTML code?

Valid code is HTML code that follows these rules set out by the W3C is dubbed “valid code”. This is because the code is properly formatted, based on standards created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Any code that is not properly formatted is dubbed invalid code. Invalid code can be a result of typing mistakes or HTML code that was once valid but now obsolete. For example the “<b>” tag for bold is invalid and superseded by the “<strong>” tag.

Why should you as a designer validate your code?

The main reason designers should be strongly encouraged to check their code and use validation services like the W3C’s very own HTML validation tool for accessibility reasons.

With the arrival of Web browsers on tablet computers, smart mobile phones, games consoles and televisions it has become nearly impossible to predict just how your website will viewed. Any incorrect HTML can create an error in the browser or prevent your document from working in a particular browser. This will then turn any your audience.

For example, if you’re going to be running a social media campaign and planning on running a story on Digg and the majority of Digg users use Safari or Firefox. If your website fails to load correctly because of bad code or poor CSS formatting, your story is going to get no attention and you’ll be missing out on the potential of hundreds of organic editorial links.

Validated code is simply more predictable and makes life for Internet browsers and assistive technologies easier in order to present websites and their content in an accessible way.

Other reasons to validate your HTML code

Validation is a sign of professionalism

Today there is little certification for Web professionals beyond NVQ levels and computer and Information Technology related degrees. Many web designers so far have to learn by themselves. Seasoned designers can take pride in creating Web content using well-formed markup. Validation can then be used as a quick check to determine whether the code is the clean work of a seasoned HTML author, or quickly hacked-together tag soup. Validation therefore can set you as a designer apart from others and show you as the professional to hire.

Validation helps teach good practices.

Many professionals have been authoring the Web with HTML and CSS since the beginning and will know these technologies by heart. Beginners and students will find automated checking tools invaluable in spotting mistakes and make a good introduction to broader, more complex quality concepts such as accessibility.

Validation as a debugging tool

While many contemporary Web browsers do an increasingly good job of parsing even the worst HTML “tag soup”, some errors are not always found. Very often, different software on different platforms will not handle such errors so easily.

Using standard markup and style sheets offers a much greater chance of having your webpage and website handled consistently across all platforms and user-agents. Indeed, most developers creating Web applications know that reliable scripting needs the document to be parsed by User-Agents without any unexpected error, and will make sure that their markup and CSS is validated before creating a rich interactive layer.

Validation as a future-proof quality check

Checking that a page displays properly in several contemporary Web browsers may be a reasonable insurance that the page will work today, but it does not guarantee that it will work tomorrow. Internet browsers change and new versions appear all the time. Everyone who accessed the Web will use a different browser that is older or newer that your version.

Validation is one of the simplest ways to check whether a page is built in accordance with Web standards, and provides one of the most reliable guarantees that future Web platforms will handle it as designed.

Web pages use HTML to display information over the Internet, using a browser (i.e. Firefox, Internet Explorer). According to dictionary.com, one definition for design is: to intend for a definite purpose. This implies that a designer should have forethought when constructing a web page design such that there is a definite purpose for each page. Of course the web site owner will want their site to be popular, and business web sites desire traffic to achieve a return on investment (R.O.I.) and traffic is the key. It is the search engine that returns the results page for a search. The keywords used help the search engines determine relevancy of the search to the web page.

The search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo!, MSN) are not human, but are programs written by humans and cannot actually “see” the images or “read” the text on the web page. It is important to impart to them well researched information that will lead the search engine to your web page and return your web page link to the searcher in a results page. Optimization of a page (Meta tags, keyword research, keyword density, and relevant links) can make the difference between whether your web page is returned in the first results page, last page or somewhere in between.

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. HTML contains the blue print of the web page and the specific information for the browser as to the layout of the page and how the search engines robots and people will view it alike. Each web page should be optimized individually, choosing appropriate keywords and connected including internal links and related external links to other web pages. This is important because the Search Engines do not spend lots of time indexing any one particular website, therefore making sure the pages are updated and link correctly will tell the robots that the website has not been abandoned and can be indexed.

HTML is used to formatting the page, creating lists, providing links between pages, add images, and use tables to keep this information in order and provide the information that may get you those top 10 results using well-researched keywords. The Meta Tags used in the HTML tells the search engine robots how to categorize the information and returns information to the screen for the user in the form of a results page. This is usually the result of a search performed by a user. At its most basic, a web page could be composed of a few basic tags and most likely it will also include words or rather content.

Additional Meta tags can be used to be more specific in its formatting and display instructions to the browser. For Example: Keying this into the Google search box results in reveals that there are 131,000,000 results for the keyword phrase web page design in .24 seconds and returns the first 10 web pages. This does not include the sponsored links (paid placement) using this keyword phrase. Then by examining the HTML page source (right click the mouse and choose view source) the Meta Tags for this particular HTML can be displayed. The number one web site (excluding the sponsored links) revealed that the title made use of the keyword phrase. The keywords included website, design and web design and the meta name description content contained the keyword phrase “web page design”.

If all of the tags are removed from the source code, what remains is the heart of the page, or rather text. If a page is well written it will impart the information to the user desired when he or she selected the page from the results page. It is likely that the page will provide information for the viewer to read, look at or listen to in the form of a video, audio file, image or text. How the page is displayed is a choice of the author and this can make the difference between a plain page and a page that has all of the window dressings. Whether the reader has a pleasant experience or one that causes the reader to click off the page, and never returns to the web page in the future is dependent on whether the needs of the user were met.

The search engines robots (Google, Ask, MSN, Yahoo!, and others) look for and gather the text on the page using an algorithm and store this in a database. This algorithm determines what the search engines tasks are and tell them exactly what duties to perform and what information to look for on their search. Providing Meta tags the robots will assist them in their task to gather and categorize the web pages information in its database (used later in retrieval as a result of search). This is why optimization of a page can make the difference between whether your web page is returned in the first results page, last page or somewhere in between.

Remember to carefully choose keywords, and to use those keywords in the body of the web page, as well as in the title and even in the web page title, Meta description tag. Be sure to submit your websites URL to the search sites and directories and look for sites to link to yours to improve your search engine ranking and search engines will soon return your web page at the top of the results.

They’re becoming ever more popular as a form of cheap, affordable and effective marketing but HTML emails can still be a pain in the arse mainly due to the dated rendering by most email clients. They’re something I’ve found myself doing ever more frequently recently so here’s my 10 basic tips for putting together your own HTML email newsletters.

1. Forget how to code HTML properly

Remember when you were told that tables were evil and not to be used for layout? When you finally took that on board and starting floating things around the page and banished your tables for good? Well that’s about to change, welcome back your friendly layout based on, yes, tables!

To be honest it’s not too difficult and I’m sure for most it’s tucked away in the back of your mind just cringe as you write it and remember background images are out.

2. Indent your code

All those nested tables can get quite hard to track so it’s pretty useful to make sure your HTML code is indented and neatly organised otherwise you can soon get lost in there.

3. Style inline

For most email clients this isn’t a problem anymore but you still get the odd few that won’t read external style sheets so stick a copy in the body of your HTML just to be safe.

4. Alt tag your images

HTML emails rely heavily on images to constitute a large amount of the content and nowadays most email clients don’t download images automatically. So as well as slicing your images up sensibly make sure you have alt tags that include any text that appears on the image.

5. Don’t stress about the details

There are that many email clients that it is very difficult to make sure that your email will appear 100% correctly in each one. The only real way to do so would be to just include one image for the entire email and you’re risking falling foul of a lot of spam filters by doing that.

So don’t stress if you’re emails aren’t pixel perfect in Lotus Notes or there’s a little extra padding when Hotmail users view it. As a general rule I’d suggest making sure your email can be read in Outlook and Hotmail and then keep an eye on your stats to see what client most of your readers are using and fix for that in future mailings.

The only place to make sure your email is pixel perfect is your web version (a hosted version of the email that people can view). At the end of the day there aren’t any excuses for that one not looking right!

6. Get a good mass mail client

Don’t send to 100’s of emails using the copy to field in Outlook! I’ve seen it done and apart from being unprofessional it lacks any form of feedback facility. Being able to view stats on bounce rates, opens and click throughs is invaluable to your email marketing strategy.

There is a great variety of email marketing software out there and if I detailed them all I’d need a whole other post! What to pick will depend on your available budget and the amount of emails you’ll expect to send. Personally I use Campaign monitor a lot but there are plenty of others, a few I’ve used or looked at in detail are Mail Chimp, Interspire, Vertical Response and DotMailer, but that isn’t even scratching the surface of what’s available out there!

7. Test

Test the email, not just for appearance but for tell tale signs of spam. Most spam filter providers will have available rules for how they filter out emails such as Spam Assassin’s tips. Also make sure you’re adhering to the rules regarding who you can send to and keep within the bounds of the law, a good starting point is CAN-SPAM.

This will also be helped by following tip number 6 as a good mailer will have inbuilt appearance and spam tests.

8. Make sure your links are in

Make sure you have unsubscribe links in for a start, a lot of spam filters will check for them and some readers may well mark your email as spam if they aren’t there.

Also include a “view web version” link, and make sure it’s at the top of the email before any content. If your email doesn’t look right users aren’t going to scroll through looking for the link, quite often they’ll only use the a preview pane, so put it where they can see it right away.

Apart from that a forward to a friend link and plenty of calls to action linking to relevant parts of your website are a must.

9. Text version

Again for most spam filters this is essential but also for mobile readers and some other email clients. Make sure all of your text is included in the text version, importing it from your HTML can easily miss out any text included on an image.

10. Read it again!

Send it to yourself and read it, and get someone else too, there’s nothing more embarrassing than rushing an email only to realise it’s full of typos, or repetitive phrasing or something similar. I’ve received an “Octomner” newsletter before today!

So there you go, your basics for HTML emails.

Photoshop document or PSD, hypertext mark up language or HTML and cascading style sheet or CSS are different types of software and computer languages that web designers use to design and upload web pages on to the browser. If you want to design your own website or webpage, be it for personal or commercial reasons, you may go to a web designer.

The designer will create a layout of how the website will look like in PSD or Photoshop document. This looks like a picture and is a mock up of the final design. After deliberation and changes according to the client’s wishes the mock up or layout is passed. But one cannot upload the PSD format onto the browser.

The final product that you see on the internet is created only after the entire design is encoded in hypertext mark up language or HTML. Your web page which is written in HTML is styled by CSS which is a style sheet language that describes the presentation details of a document written in mark up languages.

HTML is the most popular mark up language in use. It is written in a specific format which included HTML elements comprised of tags surrounded by angle brackets like or . These tags are always in pairs; the first in the pair is called the start tag while the last in the pair is called the end tag.

These tags are not displayed in the web page. The web browser uses these tags to interpret the document and display it in form of a web page.

Thus it can be said that HTML is the building blocks or foundations of a web page. Web pages written in HTML or XHTML are styled by style sheet languages among which CSS is the one most commonly used with mark up languages. What CSS really does is separate the content of the document from the presentation of it.

Elements of document presentation like layout, colour, font, pictures are governed by CSS. This separation of document content from document presentation is useful in many ways. It can mean better accessibility to web page content, multiple pages can share formatting, greater flexibility and control over the presentation features and enable less complexity in structural content.

Is this proving to be too complex and technical for you? Are you stumped by the terminology? Does all these seem like Hebrew to you? Well don’t worry there is hope for you yet. You do not need to know much about the intricacies of computer terms and languages to design your won website.

All you need is passion and some know how of the use of Abode Photoshop. Once you have approved the design all you need is send it to a company who will convert your document from PSD to HTML.