Something new every day
You do learn something new every day, and so do I. What’s really great though is when one realizes that something new. I am beginning to develop a syllabus for a new class I will be teaching at Umpqua Community College in November. In doing so I am reading through a possible set of tutorials I will use to aid my teachings.
HTML Dog
htmldog.com has an excellent tutorial for the HTML novice. I was reading the first lesson tonight thinking that even though I know all this stuff already I’d like to read through it and make sure that it is worth it’s salt. I found out quickly that not only can you teach an old dog new tricks, but that I am very pleased with my new found information of the day.
What exactly did I learn
When you create a link that leads to a new page it looks like this:
<a href="anotherpage.html">Another Page</a>
When you create a link that leads to another area of the same page it looks like this:
<a href="#secondpart">View Second Part</a>
Here’s what I learned. When you click on a link that goes to another part of the same page you have to mark that part of the page with a name like this:
<a name="secondpart"></a>
Only, I didn’t realize that I was doing this in an older, sort of deprecated way. Apparently, now all you have to do is add an id attribute to an already existing element you wish to jump to like this:
<h2 id="secondpart">Second Part</h2>
Teaching
So, there you have it! You can and do learn something new everyday. The really cool part is when you recognize it! Thanks to htmldog I learned (and realized) something new today and will be a better coder (and teacher) for it. I was also reminded of something that I forgot over two years ago: The best thing about teaching is learning.