How do I get better at HTML (aka Why Don't My Tables Work)?

[noisedude]

Hi guys,

I have a whole bunch of small websites up and running for various people, I code them by hand in Context or Notepad and I keep coming across the same problems. When I check them in Firefox, which is my usual browser of choice, they always work how I expect them to. However, every site I write seems to display wrongly in IE! I think it all comes down to tables but I can't see what's wrong with them and end up changing things around or doing things really inefficiently (nesting table after table or doing the old <p align=gowhereisaythistime> hack).

My question is in two parts -

1. What might I be doing wrong specifically with this problem?

and

2. How do I get better at this so I don't spend so long doing what is really quite simple stuff? I got a copy of Netobjects Fusion 8 free with my webhosting package, which I've never looked at. Should I just give up my ideological quest for old-school HTML and just use that or something like it?

Thanks for any and all help!!!

Nik

[ShuckyD]

a great place to learn HTML among many other things is www.w3schools.com and then their Learn "blank" on the left side.. in there you'll see stuff for HTML tables and you also be able to have a "whiteboard" session with the code to see what (after you read up on it there) the parameters etc actually do to the thing

[noisedude]

Wow that site actually goes into more detail than I had realised. I would point out that I'm not a complete beginner, I just seem to have picked up one or two bad habits or slack uses of code.

The site I'm fighting with at the moment is here:
www.rallyguitars.co.uk

It shows up just how I want in Firefox, and nothing like how I want in IE. Makes me look a bit of a spanner.

So do you reckon it can still be done by hand? Or should I give up and have some software make me a bloated and even less efficient version??

[Iturea]

The way I learned HTML or actually XHTML was with Topstyle Pro. It lets you choose a document type and it only gives you the valid attributes for that document type for any given tag making validation that much easier. It even helps you finish a tag by giving you a drop down list of tags of what you might be trying to type out. It has XHTML and CSS validation tools built in as well which allows you to fix things by telling you what you did wrong, and it has the ability to compare your site in IE and Firefox at the same time just by hitting a function key.

TopStyle: http://www.newsgator.com/NGOLProduct...rodID=TopStyle

[kenboyles72]

Or you can try HTML-KIT. There's a free version and registered version. I myself use the free version and been using it for threee years now. It's real easy to use, but doesn't have all the fancy features that dreamweaver or similar programs have. It has a feature to check your code (HTML Tidy) based on W3C standards.