HTML

Tips and tricks for editing raw HTML

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FP and IE display (parse and render) HTML slightly differently depending upon which version of each is installed. Working with common source HTML files on different development machines can lead to inconsistencies in display. What looks good on your machine (with your configuration settings), may not look the same on another's machine (with their configuration settings). 

This topic lists some of the behaviours we've encountered when working with raw HTML in FP and displayed in the preview tab (which uses IE components).

Things that make you go hmmm...

How do you comment out something in the head?

I think you can use the "<!—" and "—>" HTML tags. Wrap them around the section you want hidden.

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Working with HTML

HTML takes you behind the scenes to the code that displays the page. Unlike Microsoft Word (which shields you from the code which displays the page by only letting you work in the final WYSIWYG environment), HTML editors like Microsoft FrontPage (FP) provide you with the means to view (and directly edit) the raw HTML code if you wish.

HTML is a structured plain text based language which can be viewed in any text editor (like Notepad). HTML is the acronym for Hyper-Text Markup Language, is a subset of the SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) and has a recommended standard as approved by the World Wide Web Consortium.

See:

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Space formatting in HTML

If you're new to HTML, and have come from the WYSIWYG editing environment of a word processor like Microsoft Word, the way spacing and text layout is handled in HTML is the biggest thing which will affect the way you work, and may take some getting used to.

HTML does not support the tab space character, nor multiple contiguous spaces. If you used tabs (or multiple spaces) to align text in Word, you cannot do that as simply in HTML. Tabs, multiple spaces, linebreaks and carriage returns are all treated as a single space character.

To overcome this limitation for those used to a different word processing paradigm, HTML tables were used extensively to position page elements. However, this practice has been discouraged since the release of the second generation of HTML standards HTML 2.0 in 1995. This has subsequently been further updated to HTML 4.01 released in 1999.

The recommended method for positioning elements on the HTML page is to use appropriate styles.

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Linebreak formatting in HTML

Where you place your linebreaks in the raw HTML does appear to have an affect upon the rendered display. For instance:

 

How to display a hyperlink target in a new window

xyz

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See Also

Jump to site home page Lotech Solutions' Tips, Tricks, and Procedures

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