How to Make Your HTML Code Virtually Deprecation-Proof
Contributed by Jay Schroyer
I’m sure you’ve been to plenty of web pages that have told you that the document was done loading, but that there were some errors on the page. These errors can be caused by numerous things: unlinked images or corrupted media files to name a couple, but sometimes these problems can be caused by the actual code that is used to program these pages. The coding which is called Hypertext Markup Language, but is better known by its acronym HTML, is a rather complex language that tells your computer how text is arranged on the web page you are viewing. Individual coding tells your computer to indent a paragraph (a structural markup element) or make a heading bold and thirty-two point (a presentational markup element) or tells it to display a message in Courier font.
The chances are very good that the programmer that coded the page knew exactly what he or she was doing, but unfortunately since the page was designed, some of the code, and this occurs to a lot of presentational markup elements, may have become obsolete. The fancy, computer world term for this obsoletion is deprecation.
The code used will work fine in the version of the web program that it was created in, but in subsequent versions, it will show up as an error. Deprecation occurs for numerous reasons: the original coding may have caused a security breach leaving the website open for attack or the new version coming out has improved on that function or maybe the new version just won’t be able to support this feature in its next reincarnation. Either way, deprecation can cause a lot of problems for people that either don’t know how or don’t have the time to update and fix the coding for their websites.
You could always take the easy way out and learn to use Microsoft® FrontPage® to put together your website (where the coding is done for you), but if your site goes beyond what FrontPage is capable of, there is a way to avoid deprecated HTML especially in the presentational element of the coding.
Imagine that you could access a sort of template that contained all of the presentational elements of your web page and instead of coding each line of text, you could simply apply this template (almost like a macro). As coding changes through software upgrades, you could then simply alter your template and apply it to your web page thus avoiding anymore HTML deprecation or time-consuming recoding.
If this sounds like a good idea to you, then you should take advantage of CSS or Cascading Style Sheets. CSS can control the colors, fonts, text size and alignment, borders, spacing, and other design elements of your web pages. With just the click of the mouse, you can apply your CSS and have your web page running smoothly with no worries of deprecation. As with any software there are some drawbacks to CSS that have arisen especially vertical placement of text and the inability for a single CSS to support more than one page background, but these are small matters compared to recoding an entire web page due to outdated HTML code.
CSS consists of a set of rules that the computer will follow when it is applied to a web page. Each rule is like a stacking Russian doll: within the rule is a selector and a declaration block and within the declaration block are declarations and finally within each declaration is a property and a value. These items will be identified by the punctuation that separates them from each other.
The following is a very brief example of what you could include in a CSS to format your own web page using the above information.
p {font-family: "Times New Roman";}
h2{font-size: 125%; color: black; background: red;}
Let’s decode these two rules. The “p” and the “h2” tell us that these declarations are to be applied to the paragraph and the second heading of the web page. Then the property is addressed: “font-family” and “font-size” followed by the value for each property: “Times New Roman” for the font and “125%” for the font size. “Color,” of course, refers to the color of the type (black) and then the code tells the computer that the background will be red. At first, it looks like some arcane gibberish, but once you understand the logic behind the abbreviations and punctuation, you begin to see how HTML coding works.
But more importantly, you can see what a timesaver this CSS would be if you didn’t have to type in this code each time you wanted to alter a portion of your web page or worry about whether or not the next version of the software dumps the font that you’ve chosen and your code becomes deprecated. Instead, you can prepare your CSS once with this code and then simply apply it to your page information and update just one set of codes as necessary.
Hopefully you’re convinced now that Cascade Style Sheets can really work in your favor when it comes to your website. If you don’t know much about HTML and would like to learn more, you can search for online software training and get the latest scoop on what’s new in the HTML world. Avoiding deprecation in your websites coding can go a long way in making your website a resource that people come back to over and over again.
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About the Author:
Jay Schroyer has worked in the client and customer service end of business for over five years in retail, advertising, and printing. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English writing and communication.
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