How many know HTML? (1 Viewer)

[Brad_W]

I know a lot of basic HTML and will sometimes use the view source feature to learn how to do certain things. I used to make websites completely by hand in HTML.

Anyone else know/use HTML?

Why do I ask?

boredom.

 

[nolesrule]

I know it. Taught it to myself in college. Now I get paid to know it.
But when it comes to the web, HTML is really such a minor part of the whole ball of wax these days, especially with programs like Dreamweaver where you can throw together your layout in no time (I never use FrontPage as it provides pretty bad HTML output) so you can concentrate on the scripting for dynamic sites.
Good tools to know these days include:
SSI
PHP
PERL
some flavor of SQL server (I tend to use MySQL)

 

[Brad_W]

Now I get paid to know it

How does one get paid to know it? Do you have a Web Designer degree or something? Since I too taught it to myself, I was always thinking about doing this. How is it working out for you?

 

[Kevin Leonard]

Well, like you two, I was self-taught and got a job as a webpage designer that I worked at until late September.

If you want to get paid for your web designing skills, it doesn't hurt to have a computer-related degree on the resume. However, when I got hired, I was fresh out of high school, and had no college degree to my name, so you may be like me and luck out. Location and each companies' hiring methods/requirements also play a big factor in getting paid for your HTML knowledge.

 

[nolesrule]

I have a job at a website publishing company. We own lots of quality domains and put up sites at the domains. We're a small company (just 5 employees) so the dot-bomb crash didn't hurt us too much. When I was hired, there was only the boss and one other person. I was hired because I could hand-code HTML and could clean up their FrontPage messes. There's not much market for such a limited skill set like that anymore. At the time, my resume consisted of a football team fan website (which has since closed its doors, but the archive is still online) and a BA in Communications.

But I do sites outside of my employment to constantly improve my skill set. I have a hobby-company for website design and hosting for individuals and small businesses (i.e. I built and host sites for my dad's CPA firm, my synagogue, a friend's parents' real estate business, etc.) Brings in a little extra cash as well.

I also volunteer as the Assistant Technical Director and a Staff Writer for the premier Arena Football fan site (I'd post the URL, but I don't know if it's allowed). We're pretty popular. That site is 100% volunteer based (8 staff, 20+ writers, 3 editors) where all the staff contribute whatever skills they have. We have a couple graphics designers (including the owner who worked on Halo for the xbox) who put together the look and feel, a couple of tech guys for PHP, MySQL (including me) which is the basis for the site. Yes, hundreds of pages of content and stats stored in a database. In fact our database was design by the Tech Director who used to work at STATS, Inc., which does MLB's official stats books. I worked my way up from fan to #3 on the totem poll in less than a year, just because of my general knowledge of Linux, PHP, MySQL, HTML.

All in all, good resume material. But you have to take the initiative.

 

[Nathan_R]

I started playing around with html in high school. It helped get a foot in the door for IT. It started with HTML in my current job, now I do Java.

~~Nathan

 

[Patrick Sun]

I know rudimentary HTML which I use on my boring webpages. I was always more into content than pizazz.

 

[Darren Lewis]

Last April I wanted to have a go at putting up my own site. I bought the book "The Idiot's Guide To Creating a Web Page" and taught myself from there. I too often use the "View Source" option to learn how to do things.

I'd like to learn PHP, SQL and Javascript. Maybe even some Flash stuff. Time is the limiting factor for me though - this is just a hobby.

Do people use Notepad, or one of the other editors eg DreamWeaver?

 

[Neil Joseph]

I know it too although there are some things I don't know in html still. I learned the hard way by doing a webpage without any clue what I was doing.

 

[TomF]

I got my start with a two-day seminar on Microsoft FrontPage. But despite that handicap, I was able to put it behind me and actually learn HTML. My background is communications which (combined with technical skills I picked up), has been a big help with my 2.5-year-old Web development career.

 

[John Besse]

I learned HTML the easy way... View source, copy and paste. I got quite good at it and write everything myself now. Well, all my eBay adds at least!

 

[Darren H]

Five years ago, a co-worker and I were told to build a company web page, so we bought a book, opened up Notepad, and taught ourselves HTML. I'm glad I learned it that way, but have since migrated (gratefully) to Dreamweaver, which has quickly become my favorite software application.

 

[Duane_T]

I had to learn it on the job as I went - I was stuck with making changes and adding to the company's site. I started with the view source/notepad and a copy of HTML for Dummies. I've learned a lot since then but I would like to find the time to learn more.

 

[Kevin P]

I know HTML, since I "be" a web developer.
KJP

 

[Danny Knapp]

I taught myself to use HTML a while ago. It's no big deal. Very simplistic.

 

[John Johnson]

Ditto most people in here. Taught myself HTML in college to do my fraternity web site Link Removed (see if you can find me :b )
Haven't really used it since I graduated...

 

[Sean Conklin]

I don't even know what HTML stands for, I know nothing about it at all.:b

 

[Brad_W]

I don't even know what HTML stands for, I know nothing about it at all.

HTTP = Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
HTML = Hyper Text Mark-up Language
There ya go Sean, know ya know and knowing...

 

[Sean Conklin]

Thanks Brad, now I at least know what those letters stand for. Now if I could only make some money using them

 

[nolesrule]

Do people use Notepad, or one of the other editors eg DreamWeaver?

I've been using HomeSite for about 5 years as my primary HTML editor. It has excellent color-marking of tags and also for various scripting languages. Many other great special features, like when you type the beginning of a tag, it'll provide a dropdown list of attributes, and also options for the attributes. The dialog boxes for editing tags are excellent, and can be edited because they use a special markup language to create and display them that is editable directly in the program. Also, many users of HomeSite have created additional toolbars, scriptlets (like macros), buttons and extended help for HomeSite to make the program even better. Some of the older user-created functions have been incorporated into newer versions. The WYSIWYG portion of HomeSite is lacking which is why...

I use Dreamweaver to design the initial layouts. Especially table layouts because they can be problematic sometimes.

I use CSE HTML Validator to make sure my code is as clean as can be.

I use TopStyle for my style sheet editor.

CSE HTML Validator and TopStyle can be integrated into HomeSite, and HomeSite can be used as the HTML editor for Dreamweaver. All these tools together work great for web development.

As a side note, the creator/author of Topstyle is also the creator of HomeSite, which was bought by Allaire a few years back (Allaire was the makers of Cold Fusion). Recently, Allaire was bought by Macromedia, which makes Dreamweaver.

As for FrontPage, that definitely is a handicap. If your goal is clean, correct code, you'd be better off working by hand in notepad than using FrontPage.