A Complete Guide to Web Design

Name your files according to the following guidelines:

• Use proper suffixes. HTML documents require the suffix.html(or.htmif on a
  Windows server). Suffixes for a number of common file types can be found in
  Table 4-3.


• Avoid spaces and special characters such as ?, %, #, etc. in file names. It is
  best to limit file names to letters, numbers, underscores (in place of spaces),
  hyphens and periods.


• File names are case-sensitive in HTML. Consistently using all lowercase letters
  in file names, while certainly not necessary, may make them easier to remem-
  ber.

Mind your line endings.
Although not mandatory, it is accepted practice to keep your line lengths to
under 80 characters to make the document easier to view on a wide variety of
platforms.
In addition, you should be certain that you set your HTML editor to use Unix-
style Line Feed (LF) line endings, particularly if you have a Unix server.*
Other line ending possibilities are Carriage Returns (CR) used by Macintosh,
and Carriage Return + Line Feed (CR+LF) used by PCs. Some editors, such as
BBEdit, allow you to set the line feed style under the Save Options.

Line breaks and extra spaces can create unwanted white space in

certain contexts. For instance, if you have a string of graphics that

should abut seamlessly, adding a line break or a space between the

<img>tags will introduce extra space between the graphics (even

though, technically, it shouldn’t). In addition, extra spaces within

and between table cells (<td>tags) can add unwanted (and mysteri-

ous) spaces in your table. This is discussed further in Chapter 10.

Specifying Color in HTML

You can specify the color of certain page elements using HTML tags. There are
two methods for specifying colors in web documents: by RGB values and by color
name.

• This tip taken fromCreative HTML Design, by Lynda Weinman and William Weinman, pub-
  lished by New Riders Publishing.