Advanced Web Pages (Self-Guided)

Lesson 1

What Is Advanced Web Design?

If you want to take your web pages from okay to "wow," it's time to move up to Web 2.0. In this lesson, you'll explore the core elements of advanced web design: interaction, animation, and page design that's flexible and accessible to visitors on any device.

Creating Your First CSS Style Sheet

In this lesson, you'll enter the world of advanced web design by building your first CSS style sheet. When you're done, you'll link this style sheet to an HTML page and discover how you can instantly make changes to that page—or even to a thousand pages at the same time! In addition, you'll explore some key elements of web page design.

Formatting Your Text

Your website text isn't just a collection of words—it's also a design element that can tell your visitors what you're all about! In this lesson, you'll find out how to specify the appearance of your text using your CSS style sheet. You'll learn about setting your font size, color, line spacing, alignment, background, borders, margins, and padding.

Designing and Formatting Links

Links are a key part of any web page, and there's more to designing them than you might think. In this lesson, you'll learn how to create links that suit the purpose of your site, the technological sophistication of your audience, and the image you want to portray. In addition, you'll analyze a controversial question when it comes to link design: to underline, or not to underline?

Formatting Selected Text and Creating Content Boxes

In this lesson, you'll expand your horizons by learning how to format selected page content. After that, you'll take a big step into advanced design by discovering how to use class styles to design content boxes. In the process, you'll learn all about two powerful web design tools: div tags and span tags.

Creating Containers, Headers, and Footers

Each web page is unique, but three elements are almost universal: a container, a header, and a footer. In this lesson, you'll build these three elements by combining a new tool—ID styles—with div tags. In addition, you'll find out how to embed div tags within containers.

Adding Columns and Interactivity

In this lesson, you'll take your layout to a new level by adding columns to your web page. You'll discover how to place multiple columns on a page, how to pad your columns, and how to create an attractive column layout that's easy to read. In addition, you'll make your columns interactive!

Making Your Pages Look Great on Any Device

Do you use a mobile device to browse the web? More and more people do—and to keep them happy, you'll need to provide mobile-friendly content. But how can you do that, and still design a page that works on a big screen? This lesson will teach you how to create web pages that look different, but still great, on both full-sized monitors and mobile devices.

Designing With HTML5

Web designers always need to be thinking about the future—and that future will include HTML5. In this lesson, you'll learn all about the advantages of this versatile markup language, and you'll add HTML5 elements to your own web page. In addition, you'll find out which environments currently support HTML5 and which ones don't.

Embedding Video in Your Web Pages

A great video can increase your website traffic, sell your products, or even make you a superstar. But here's the big issue you'll face as a web designer: Not all video formats work with all browsers. In this lesson, you'll learn how to overcome that problem as you master simple tricks for embedding videos that will play in any browsing environment.

Creating Forms

What do you need to know about your website's visitors—their names, their email addresses, or maybe even how they rate your site? In this lesson, you'll find out how to collect information like this (and much more) by adding forms to your pages. In these chapters, you'll build your own form, add form fields, and define where your collected data will go.

Uploading and Fine-Tuning Your Pages

You've mastered it all—interactivity, animation, and accessibility—and you're ready to call yourself an advanced web designer. Now it's time to take the next step and reveal your site to the world. In this lesson, you'll learn how to upload your site to the web and how to check your spelling, links, accessibility, and browser compatibility. Here's the great news: You'll do it all for free!