Week 8: Reading notes

W3schools HTML tutorial

• HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language - markup tags tell the browser how to display the information
• HTML tags are surrounded by the two characters <> = angle brackets
• tags are not case sensitive, but usually written with lower-case letters
• some tags do the formatting for you, like heading and paragraph
• tag attributes are case sensitive
• viewing HTML source code for webpages can help in understanding HTML
• This site has lots of good tips about HTML, but the ads are a little distracting.

HTML cheatsheet by WebMonkey

• This would be really helpful to have open while working in HTML
• Provides definitions for a lot of tags, but not a lot of context - would be best paired with the previous resource.
  

W3schools Cascading style sheets tutorial

• CSS = cascading style sheets
• Allows the user to change the look of many pages at once, by editing one document (the style sheet)
• Three parts of CSS syntax: selector - the HTML element/tag you wish to define; property - the attribute you wish to change; value - the value given to each property
• User can include comments within the CSS code - not seen by browsers
• Plenty of examples

Goans, D., Leach, G., & Vogel, T.M. (2006). Beyond HTML: Developing and re-imagining library web guides in a content management system. Library Hi Tech, 24(1), 29-53.

• GSU library wanted to develop web-based research guides, so each librarian made his/her own by subject - disparities of training and skill among librarians resulted in guides that were not similar to one another
• As a result, the library hired a web development librarian to handle these issues, who developed their content management system
  
• "In a CMS, the content is disconnected from the layout and design elements of the page. Librarians create their guides in a forms-based environment, which levels the playing field for possessing HTML skills. Anyone, regardless of previous experience creating web pages, can create a basic guide in the system. Instead of devoting time with HTML or FrontPage to create the structural or presentational display where the content resides, the librarians can focus instead on identifying, creating, annotating, and selecting the content itself. "
• "ASP-generated templates using cascading style sheets (CSS) are used for the GSU guides to control how content is delivered and presented to the users, from fonts to text placement to branding. By controlling how content is presented, arranged and structured, the templates create a common style as well as navigational consistency across the guides."