Notes: Chapter 5 and 6

Things that the novice needs to learn:

1. How do you adjust the size of your browser window? MacDonald says that your page should be usable in a window that's 640 X 480 pixels. It should look its best at 800 x 600. It should still look respectable at sizes above 800 x 600 as higher resolutions (1024 x 768, e.g.) are increasingly common.

2. The difference between structuring a document (arranging it into sections like headings, paragraphs, lists) and formatting a document (making the sections look different.)
Logical tags (structuring) describe kind of content: headings, paragraphs, ect. WHAT it is.
Physical tags (formatting): italics, underlining, etc. HOW it is.
Style sheets are used for formatting.

I'm doing the exercises in Chapter 5. Even though I do exactly what the book says, the things don't look right. I noticed that after I worked in the tag window, looked at the preveiw and went back, the tag window looked different. I don't know what's up with that, but I'm trying not to get too upset with it; maybe it's just something that Kompozer does.

I've hit some snags and they are very hard to overcome. Today is Monday, the start of a new week, and I am still on last week's reading of Chapter 6. I spent all day yesterday trying to fix what are probably minor things, like making my picture show up on my web page. I sent out an S.O.S. letter to Prof. S and Pamie because I did not understand what their instructions were. Chapter six is LONG and it seems to be taking me an inordinate amout of time to do these exercises. I need to become fluent in this stuff, though, so I'm going on with chapter 6 and hoping that I'll be able to catch up somehow. There are only so many hours in a day, and I have to work.

Chapter 6
CSS rules: selector {property: value}

Cascading refers to the way the browser decides which rules take precedence when you have multiple sets.
The steps at the bottom of this list overwrite those above:
1. Browser default
2. External style sheet
3. Internal style sheet (inside the head tag)
4. Inline style sheet ( inside HTML element)

External style sheets are best.