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HTML and CSS are declarative programming languages. They are fun, easy, and necessary for the layout of the webpage and all the elements contained within. If you thought HTML and CSS coding was fun, just wait till we take it to a new level with JS. Now we are really coding and getting into a the element of a computer programmer.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a programming language for the web. CSS is used to style webpages and works in tandem with HTML and JavaScript. CSS is a declarative programming language like HTML. These languages are easy to use because they are primarily descriptive in nature and don’t require any understanding of logic. HTML marks up content by wrapping it in tags that denote the beginning and end of an element or container. CSS involves supplying name-value pairs. CSS has pre-defined properties that style the HTML layout in different ways and expect certain values. For example, sometimes a strategy for showing different layouts depending on the screen size the page is being rendered on is to include all 3 layouts in the same webpage and set the display property of a layout container to the value block or none depending on screen size rules defined by media queries. CSS properties are applied to HTML elements through the use of selectors. Some ways CSS can apply a property to an HTML element is by using the elements id, class name, or tag name. Many CSS properties can be applied to the same HTML element inside a block of code denoted by curly braces (e.g., left and right). Each CSS rule or name-value pair inside the block is punctuated by a semicolon (i.e., line terminator).
CSS is easy and fun to work with. You can do a lot of styling with CSS. CSS can be used to move elements in the direction of up, right, down, and left. This is achieved with the margin property. The values that margin takes are numbers as amounts of space to move. If you are placing an element inside a box with a background and the element is touching the edges of the box, the presentation may not look right. The solution is to add some spacing around the element in the box. This is done through the CSS padding property. The padding properties takes numbers as values as the amount of space to place around the element from the walls of the box or container.
Length, width, and height are CSS properties that expect numbers as values when sizing elements. A fixed width option is not always the best option for flexible layouts that must scale with the screen as it changes size. Instead of providing numbers as values to the length, width, and height properties you can supply percentage values that will adjust relative to what the current state of the screen size is.
How about lining elements up in a row side by side? That is where the CSS float property comes in. Float takes the properties of the keywords left or right. The float of an element must be cleared or elements that follow will be out of position. The clear property that takes values like left or right is used to clear the float. The display property can be used to have elements formatted into a grid structure of rows and columns. Supply the value grid to the display property if you want to position elements inside a container in rows and columns. The properties grid-column start, and grid-column-end are used to define how many columns are required. Grid-row-start and grid-row-end define how many rows of elements there will be. Placing an icon next to paragraph text is normal practice for creating buttons that look good and are self-explanatory.
Dealing with structure and layout is satisfying if you like applying principles of order, symmetry, size, and shape. However, what about principles of light like color? Be conservative with color when designing for web. Color is hard to work with, however, can be satisfying when you get the balance just right. Using color correctly can seriously enhance your web design. There are a thousand shades of the same color and lots of different color palettes to work with. Choosing the right color palette can be approached scientifically. There are only a handful of colors, and some colors are known to go together. Neutral colors can be used to help improve the harmony and balance of the color palette.
For text, the color property can take several value types. Some keywords like blue, green, and orange can be used as values for the color property. If you want more fine-grained control of the color you want to use, then you can use hex values with the hash tag symbol as the value for the color property to choose the exact shade of the color you want to use. The background-color property will fill a container with the color value supplied to it. Gradients are awesome to work with because you can apply shading to backgrounds or blend different colors in different directions and patterns. CSS has three types of gradients you can work with. For example, there are linear, radial, and conic gradient types. For gradients we are supplying values to the background-image property. Linear gradients means that the color can move in several constant directions in a line. The colors can change in the direction of down, up, left, right, and diagonal. For a linear gradient, the background-image property is assigned a CSS function called linear-gradient that expects a parameter for the direction and several colors.
CSS is the best way to make your webpages responsive to different screen sizes. JavaScript (JS) can also make a webpage responsive, however the user can turn off JS in the browser. CSS cannot be turned off so it will always work in the user’s browser. We can accomplish a responsive webpage layout with CSS media queries. I like to make a small, medium, and large version of each webpage I make if I am building a custom website from scratch. How do media queries work? Media queries define a block of code where a webpage layout is defined inside which is triggered and then displayed when the devices window is the size of the dimensions defined in the media query. The media query has a few parts to it. The @media keyword is declared before any dimensions of the window are provided. The window dimensions are then declared inside left and right parenthesis and separated with the and keyword if there are multiple dimensional rules defined. The min-width and max-width properties expect numbers as values that define the boundaries of the layout and elements contained therein.
What about movement with the element of time? CSS has pre-built properties and functions for so many different types of animations. Keyframes are used to denote blocks of code where you can target CSS properties to have them change over time. The keyframe is assigned to a class selector that you can assign to any element you wish the behavior to apply to. How do the different animation rules inside the keyframe block change over time? Using the from and to keywords is one way to have one animation rule change into another. Another option is to define each animation rule with percentage values that define at what point each animation rule is triggered and when it ends.
The color property can be animated to have single or multiple colors change at varying speeds. If you are interested in having elements change position then you must target the top, left, right, and bottom properties and provide numbers or percentages as their values for how much they should move and in which direction. Would you like some of your webpage elements to grow or shrink in size for certain periods of time? If this is true, then target the width and height properties when defining an animation rule in your keyframe block. Maybe you would like some of your elements to do a vanishing act. If that is the case, the opacity or display property is what you wil be looking to target in your keyframe block. The opacity property expects a numeric value from 0-1 while the display property expects a keyword such as block or none.
HTML runs on the client’s machine and is used for the structure and content of a webpage. It is defined as a markup language because it is based on tags. Layout components that HTML takes care of include buttons, boxes, tables, paragraphs, headings, labels, sections, headers, and footers. Learning how to nest HTML elements is important for creating complex page layouts. HTML is a programming language that is used for the web. It is a language that is used on the front-end of an online web application. The front-end is what the user sees and interacts with and is where the Graphical User Interface (GUI) is displayed. The front-end exists on a device screen or window. An alternative to a GUI to control the computer and its programs and resources is a command prompt or terminal. Front-end programming languages include HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. All web languages work together often in the same file. The back end of a web application is everything that isn’t to do with the user interface. PHP code runs on the back end on the web server that runs on the main server. Some use cases for PHP include data storage, webpage layout templates, persisting data across pages with cookies, and creating real-time chat boxes.
Some common elements exist between web pages. Most webpages will have a header and a footer. In between will be a main section. A header tag will be the container for the header elements. A footer tag will be the container for the footer content. More elements will be nested in between the header and footer containers. The main section could be a section or a div tag. A div is a generic box element to place other elements inside. Many more elements will go inside the main content section. HTML elements that are block elements by default take up a whole line of space. Just having a webpage with elements that flow in a single column is boring for the user. More complex and a variety of layouts is the answer to creating a interesting and professionally looking webpage. I would rather use tables than the CSS float property to line elements side by side in a row. CSS properties other than float can be used to create rows and columns of other html elements. I think that tables are the easiest to work with. At this stage, the developer will have to work closely with CSS to get the positioning and size just right for the layout so that further content will be placed inside like text, images, and video.
What’s the Difference Between Frontend and Backend in Application Development?
A webpage layout must be flexible and adaptable to different environmental contexts. A webpage takes up a defined amount of space. The shape of the space is always a rectangle. The device or the program that is displaying the webpage layout is the environment that the layout is rendered in and defines the space that the webpage will be displayed in. The webpage layout must be fluid so it can fill each environment that it is rendered in and maintain its structure and content. A responsive webpage will make the best use of all the space it is displayed in because it is adaptable, flexible, and fluid. It is fluid because it has code that asks what type of dimensions the environment it is displayed in and adjusts the layout accordingly before being displayed.
A webpage becomes fluid because predefined rules have been prescribed with computer programming code. A web developer can use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or JavaScript (JS) to make a webpage layout flexible, adaptable, and fluid. CSS media queries are a safer bet for making a webpage layout always fluid because JS can be turned off in the browser in the settings panel. PHP is a backend programming language that gets run on the server and cannot change the layout once it is rendered in the user’s browser. One type of fluid webpage layout design is to define 3 different layouts for the same webpage that covers small, medium, and large screen sizes. A webpage layout that falls short of 640px in width is considered small. A medium size webpage layout has a width in between the range of 641px and 1007px. A layout with a width that is greater than or equal to 1008px is a large layout. The web developer can make the three different layouts as templates in HTML or PHP files. The layouts are included in the main PHP webpage file with PHP include statements and triggered with CSS media queries that target certain HTML elements with CSS selectors.
