Boot Camp

Tools for Web Authoring
With these concepts in mind, markup validation can be defined as the process of checking
a web document against the grammar (generally a DTD) it claims to be using.
HTML validators operate by comparing the mark-up on a web page to the W3C standards.
The standards vary depending upon the declared doctype version and so the validator
will start by reading the doctype declaration to see which set of standards to apply.
Once the validator has read the page and determined the applicable standards it looks for
such things as missing opening or closing tags, missing quotation marks and other handcoding
errors. The validator then provides a report indicating that the coding is correct or
not. Errors are noted in a list.
Professional Practices
The busier you get, the less time you will have to build everything from scratch. Therefore,
you should create a template directory in your web authoring file area where you
can keep reusable information. Just have stuff ready to grab and go!
Placeholders
You will often, in building a web page template, need to add placeholder text and images
while you wait for the real thing from clients or design team members. Here are some
tips:
• Use Lorem Ipsum: Lorem ipsum text is placeholder text (filler text) commonly
used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation,
such as font, typography, and layout. The lorem ipsum text is typically a section
of a Latin text by Cicero with words altered, added and removed that make it nonsensical
in meaning and not proper Latin. You can find free sources and generators
online: http://www.lipsum.com/.
• Images: Create placeholder image boxes of several sizes. You should have standard
thumbnail, small, medium, large, and screen-wide placeholder image boxes
at your fingertips so you can place them in place of pending images. Consider the
dummy image generator: http://dummyimage.com/.
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