New Comers HTML and CSS 101

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein

HTML (hypertext markup language) and CSS (cascading style sheets) are two of the core technologies for Web development. HTML provides the structure of the page, CSS the visual and aural layout, for a variety of end user devices. Along with graphics and scripting, HTML and CSS are the base foundation for building Web pages and Web applications.

WHAT IS HTML?

HTML is a markup language which consists of a set of markup tags, tags used to describe document content. It gives the author the means to publish online document with text, tables, lists, photos etc.; retrieve online information via hypertext links; design forms for conducting transactions with remote services, for use in search information, making reservations etc.; include spread-sheets, video clips, sound clips and other applications directly into their documents.

WHAT IS CSS?

CSS is the language that describes the presentation of Web pages, including colors, layout and fonts. It allows one to adapt the presentation of the page to different types of devices, like large screens, small screens and even paper, printers and other media.

CSS is independent of HTML and can be used with any XML-based language. Separating of HTML from CSS makes it easier to maintain sites, share style sheets across pages and tailor pages to different environments. This is referred to as the separation of content from presentation.

Knowing what are they used for the next step is to become familiar with the tags they use so you can write the code that suits your purposes. Don’t bother to remember all of them at once as they will easily get impress into your memory when you’ll start using them frequently later on. You can even search on the Web, when there is a memory lapse, and there are lots of sites where you can find and from which you can learn and practice HTML and CSS.
First of all start reading wherever you can find some tutorials or any other related information (as I said before just search on Google and that should do the trick), then apply what you learn. You can do this either on the sites you learn (most of them will give you this opportunity) or just start writing in a text editor your tags and save it as “.html” and open with a browser to see how it looks like. The commonest editor you can use is Notepad, even though most Web Developers prefer to use more powerful ones like: Dreamweaver, Notepad++, Sublimetext and others.

Basically both HTML and CSS are design tools, helping you to style and structure your content. To add functionality you must evolve into JavaScrips, PHP and jQuerry languages and their secrets.