Chapter 4, Exercise

If you really don't need the practice, you can advance.

Nothing solidifies learning like practice. That's all this exercise is for. Try doing the exercise without help from the lessons, and see how you make out. Then consult the lessons as required to make your page come out correctly. If you really get stuck, go to the example solution. And when you're done, compare your solution to ours. (But don't presume that because you did it differently than our example that it's wrong; rather, compare so as to see different ways of doing the same thing; it can be quite educational). We suggest submitting your page to a validation service, just to catch any errors that aren't obvious at first glance. Two free services that I know of are Doctor HTML and TechWeb's HTML Validation Service

Here's the practice exercise:

Build a web page called "Web Page Plans" and do the following:

• start with a large headline and call it "Web Page plans" (or whatever); HOWEVER, instead of using the '<Hx>' tags, use a 'FONT' tag with attributes to simulate a "headline" at least 2 sizes bigger than the default font.
• center the headline (above), but instead of using the <CENTER> tag to accomplish that, include the headline in a paragraph and use paragraph attributes to center it.
• under the headline, draw a horizontal line, with no grey-shading, 1 pixel high, extending horizontally 75% of screen width, and centered on the screen
• next, include a short (3 sentences or so) text passage about what your general plan of action is for building a new web page. Word-wrapping should be "on", i.e., don't use explicit line-breaks. INDENT this text passage without using '&nbsp;' special characters.
• in the above text passage, place only the second sentence into fixed-spaced font, without causing line-breaks by doing so.
• write another 3-sentence text passage about what you hope the results of your web page will be. INDENT this text passage even more than the first text passage. (Hint: you'll probably want to "nest" tags)
• draw a grey-shaded horizontal line all the way across the screen (not indented)
• make a text title for a list that we'll create in the next step, called "Things I Have Planned for the Web Page:". Bold the entire line, and italicize the word "Planned", and underline the words "Web Page"
• change to a fixed-spaced font, and make a text list of things you plan to include in your web page. Have at least 3 items, and number them 1., 2. , 3....., and make the number one size larger than the default text. Leave 3 spaces between the each number and that item's text, but DON'T use '&nbsp;' special characters to accomplish the spaces. Also, have each numbered item (with it's text) on a separate line, but DON'T use <BR> or <P> tags get a line break.
• Don't forget things like the html, head, title, body, and title tags
• Don't forget to use closing tags where they are required.

If you find the instructions difficult to follow, you can look at an example of the working web page in action, and try to duplicate it's behavior by writing your own HTML file. Have fun with it! Try out different things, to see what works and what doesn't, but try to end up with something that pretty much complies with the HTML guidelines. If you get stuck, check out our example solution.

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Overseer: Monty Northrup ... ... leave e-mail ...

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