Don’t Fear the Internet

BASIC HTML & CSS for NON-WEB DESIGNERS

by Jessica Hische & Russ Maschmeyer

Are you a print designer, photographer, fine-artist, or general creative person? Do you have a shitty website that you slapped together yourself in Dreamweaver in that ONE web design class that you took in college? Do you not have a site at all because you’ve been waiting two years for your cousin to put it together for you? Well, we’re here to help. We know that you have little to no desire to do web design professionally, but that doesn’t mean that you want an ugly cookie-cutter site or to settle for one that hasn't been updated since Hackers was in theaters. Through short tutorial videos, you’ll learn how to take a basic wordpress blog and manipulate the css, html (and even some php!) to match your aesthetic. You’ll feel empowered rather than crippled by the internet and worst case scenario you’ll at least end up having a better idea of how professional web designers turn your design dreams into a reality on screen.

About the Authors

Links and Resources

Do the fonts look kind of weird? Switch to Safari or Chrome as your browser. You’ll thank me later.

Not A Series of Tubes An Internet Primer

In this episode, we’ll introduce you to the internet, give you a simple framework for how the web works as well as introduce you to what a website is on a practical level.

Despite popular belief, the internet is not a series of tubes or your web browser. If you grew up in the 90s with movies like Lawnmower Man, Hackers or The Net your brain has been tainted by Hollywood's vision of internet cyberspace. We'll take you on the dime tour of the web, dispelling myths about tubes and Second Life-like virtual realities. We'll also show you that a website is just a collection of files connected to a domain name that link to each other.

We'll round out the video with a short introduction to the two most important coding languages on the web: HTML and CSS. We'll discover that HTML is used to encode all of your site's content, while CSS is the style master, controlling the visual appearance of that HTML content. Check out the example site that we built, which we’ll reference later on in the series as we explain more about HTML and CSS. In next week’s episode, we’ll dig a bit deeper into HTML!

Sam says:

August 30, 2011 at 10:45 pm

I was tought that HTML and CSS are not exactly coding languages. Coul somebody clarify?

Reply
- Russ says:
  
  September 2, 2011 at 1:29 pm
  
  Hey, Sam! This is definitely a finer point. HTML & CSS are coding, but they’re not “programming”. For a more in depth description see: Programs vs. Markup
  
  Reply

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Jessica Hische is a letterer, illustrator, and avid internetter in Brooklyn, New York. You may have stumbled across one of her side projects such as Daily Drop Cap or the “Should I Work for Free?” flowchart. Jessica and her work have been featured in many publications, she has traveled the world speaking about lettering and illustration, and she has probably consumed enough coffee to power a small nation.

@jessicahische / portfolio

Russ Maschmeyer would like to think of himself as a digital craftsman; a dyed-in-the-wool maker. He’s a web designer, inventor, musician, writer, DIY enthusiast, and champion intramural collegiate ping-ponger. He’s just about done with a two year stint at The School of Visual Arts earning an MFA in Interaction Design and learning from some brilliant folks while pursuing personal projects and freelance work.

@strangenative / portfolio