Somebody remind me... I am a Web designer, right? That's what I do for a living, isn't it? I think my business card... yep, it says "Web Developer."
So why am I drawing a complete blank when it comes to some basic HTML coding?
Over the last few years, I've become so accustomed to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and the terminology that it employs, that I've begun to take its benefits for granted. Whether I'm handcoding the CSS or relying on WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver to autocode it for me, it's been my language of choice when it comes to encoding text-related aspects of Web design.
Yesterday, however, I needed to write the code for an HTML e-mail that is going to be sent out by an advertiser. They told me that it would work best if I just designed the e-mail in Dreamweaver as a webpage, have it approved, and send the code to them to drop in their mail program.
Their one caveat, however, was that I not use CSS anywhere in the code.
I never realized what a pain in the butt this request would become until I tried to remind myself how to code a font family and relative font sizes within the actual body of the HTML. These are things that CSS has taken care of on my behalf for years.
For the life of me, I could not remember how to do it. I couldn't remember the phraseology that HTML uses. It's almost the same as CSS, but just different enough that it escaped me. It is some of the most basic code that Web developers use, but it eluded me today for reasons unknown.
I actually dug up my copy of Timothy Gottleber's Excellent HTML -- the very book I used when I first began to learn Web design eight years ago in grad school. The pages of this book have not seen the light of day since that particular class.
As foolish as I may have felt keeping this on my bookshelf at work all these years, right about now I'm glad I did.
All you professional designers out there, go ahead and laugh. I deserve it.
This is just one of those brainfart sorts of days.
