PHP

The following screencast is a little intro to what PHP is. It will discuss some of the common things that PHP can do for web designers and explain a little about how it works when interacting with databases. This will just be a short intro, as PHP can do a lot more when it comes to more advanced features, but these will be slightly more common examples that you are using even while reading this blog post.

Screencast Link

Interesting HTML/CSS Wikis

• Webdesign (Wikicomplete)


• HTML (Wikia)

Listed above are some handy wikis that deal with Web Design. Some contain information about Javascript or Php, but all of them have basic information about HTML. The first site, Webdesign from Wikicomplete, has a nice amount of pages that show some more technical features about certain tags. It shows a couple ways of using certain codes. One of the big dowfalls to this wiki though is that a lot of the pages that contain tags like "strong" or "em" haven't been created. It would be nice if people can come along and create it, but the site limits it to members, mods, or admins. And since there is only 1 person total that is a member of any of the groups, it's highly doubtful he will do it him/herself. It would be nice if it was open to the public, or restricted to certain people that were allowed to make helpful pages.

The second site, HTML from Wikia has a nice layout and updated content. It doesn't contain deprecated tags. Unlike the first site, this one is open to the public. Though there are only about 44 pages, this site looks promising if someone was willing to make a bunch of pages.

Deprecated Tags (part 2)

This is continuing the deprecated tags post from earlier. It shows the list of tags that should not be used and the alternatives for them. Remember, this list isn't the complete thing, but it contains the most common tags that are deprecated.

<center>

As the tag name says, this was used to center items in html. It was one of the most useful tools as it would center just about anything you put inside of it's tags. For text, the alternative would be to put something like "<p align='center'>". This can also be done by css by using the "text-align:center;" code. Different browsers display the same code in weird ways so it is a hassle trying to find the correct usage that will work on each of the browsers you need it on.

<font>

Ages ago, people would use this code like <font color='someColor'> to give the text inside of it a certain color. Now that is accomplished with CSS. You would use the appropriate tag in the css style, and add the code "color:someColor;" to change it. The bonus to this, is that it affects everything on the page with that tag, and you no longer need to put the <font> tag in each section you needed it on.

<dir> and <menu>

The 'dir' and 'menu' tags were used to create unordered lists. These would be just bullets organized in one column to list items. The alternative is a shorter <ul>. You would add that to start a tag, then for each item in the tag, you use <li></li>. I'm not sure why there were 2 tags to accomplish the same thing, but now it's much easier to remember since this tag is for "U"nordered "L"ists.

Deprecated Tags (part 1)

From a past post, a couple comments led to me thinking this would be helpful, so here it is. This is a list of tags that were once used, but are now deprecated. Deprecated tags are tags that are no longer used and may someday be not functional. You could use them, as they do work, but it's best to revert to the new version which often offers more customization. I'm splitting this into 2 posts because of the amount of time it took to type up. I will finish the other part later when I find time. This list isn't complete, but it contains the most common tags that are deprecated.

<i>

This tag was used to give text a slanted look. "i" is short for italicize as most people know how it looks like. The alternative to this is now <em>. "em" stands for emphasized text. It is used the same way the 'i' tag has been used (and still used on applications like Myspace).

<u> and <strike>

These tags was used for decorating text with lines, and though underlining it still works, it is not recommended, even if you use the alternative. People generally refer to underlined text as links and could cause the person you are trying to get to read it some strain. The alternative to the 'u' tag is using Cascading Style Sheets. It takes a bit more time to type but offers more benefits. Using css, and the text "text-decoration:underline", one can achieve the same effects. The text-decoration can do four different techniques:

text-decoration:overline
text-decoration:line-through
text-decoration:underline
text-decoration:blink

<b>

Also known as the bold tag, this was used to .... well ... make text bold. The alternative is the <strong> tag, but this can also be achieved using css. Using css, it can do more than just make something bold. CSS allows you to specify a number for the boldness, 400 being normal, 700 being regular bold. Though using any of the numbers, and varieties, I have not noticed anything different so it could be browser specific.