HTML, CSS, & JavaScript All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 1

Getting Acquainted with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

IN THIS CHAPTER

Finding out a bit about what you’re getting yourself into

Befriending HTML

Introducing yourself to CSS

Shaking hands with JavaScript

Well begun is half done.

— ANCIENT GREEK PROVERB

In the early days of the internet in general and of the web in particular, people often used the abbreviation RTFM, which stood for (in the bowdlerized version), read the freaking manual. In days of yore, software programs came with little booklets — called manuals — that described the workings of the program. Look-before-you-leap types would carefully read the manual and would therefore know how to use the program. But a sizable proportion of the population would rather leap than look, meaning they would just start using the software, poking around willy-nilly to try to make things happen. Those dedicated leapers would inevitably end up on message boards or forums, desperately seeking solutions to the problems their haphazard experimenting caused them. The answer, more than often than not, was a simple one: “RTFM!”

This book ...