Don´t Forget to Close Your Tags!

Since the introduction of the 4.0 browser and HTML 4.0, it’s become increasingly important to ensure that all tags within your HTML code have a closing tag. By doing this you greatly increase your page’s compatibility with the Netscape browser, and equally important, you reduce the time it takes for your page to load because the browser doesn’t have to do time-consuming guesswork when interpreting your code.

Entities

Have you ever wanted to place special characters in a web page? HTML allows us to view special characters and other symbols that would otherwise be interpreted as markup by the browser through the use of character and numerical entities. All characters in the ISO8859-1 character set have a numerical and/or character entity. Here’s a quick example:
type: & e grave (without extra spaces)
to produce this: è

Placing Comments

When you write your HTML documents, insert comment tags to remind yourself what you’re doing, when things need to be updated, and anything else you think might be useful in the future. Comment tags begin with !-- and end with -- (inside brackets < > )

It’s generally a good idea to follow these 2 rules when using comments; first, place comments on a line apart from other HTML text. Secondly, don’t use special characters (<, >, !, &) within your comment tag.

So you want to add a table..

Tables, when used properly, allow webmasters an easy way to attractively organize the content of web pages. Don't be intimidated by tables, they're your friends.

The most important thing for beginners to remember is to make sure that all rows have the same number of columns (that's not to say they have to, but that's a little more advanced topic). Even if the columns are left empty in some rows, they must be included. Now I'll show you 2 things; a very basic table, and the code that produced it. From this basic example you should be able to expand it to meet whatever needs you have. Try varying the number of rows and columns until you are comfortable working with tables. Once you master the table, the possibilities are endless.
Tr = table row td = table column

Now, the code.

<table>
<caption>The 3 Stooges</caption>
<tr>
<td>Moe</td>
<td>Larry</td>
<td>Curly</td>
</tr>
</table>

Good Luck!

Validate

Ensuring that your HTML code complies with the latest specs allows you to be seen by the largest number of people, regardless of browser. All browsers can interpret valid HTML, the problems arise from new versions of both the browser, and HTML. Many tricks are browser specific, meaning they work fine in one browser or browser version, but not in another. These enhancements are generally written by the browser maker (ie Microsoft or Netscape) and don’t fully comply with HTML Standards.
If you are not knowlegeable in HTML code, it is worth the expense to find someone to validate your code. It’s much cheaper than having someone completely design your site, but will identify to you any errors and potential problems with the code. Having valid code will usually make your pages load faster also.