hi!\< /b\> It sounds like a warning more than a problem with your code. I haven’t used Netscape Composer, though. You young’uns…I used to write my code in Notepad! And I had to walk uphill both ways to school, too! 😉
Hoping the codes work on this message…
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“Eppur, si muove!” - Galileo Galilei
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**Author:**  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/4 "1999-09-21T05:35:00Z")
Could be any of the above or maybe something else. Why don’t you post here some of what you’ve coded.
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**Author:**  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/5 "1999-09-21T08:28:00Z")
It might be (what the hey, lets confuse him even more) that you have a close tag for something that hasn’t got an opener.
I hate all these wysiwyg tools that say “even you, a total loser that talks to his mouse, can make a professional looking webpage!” which is a total LIE!
Okay, so I’m a web designer who handcodes, okay? 😉
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**Author:**  [@Nickrz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nickrz)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/6 "1999-09-21T08:56:00Z")
(Gasp) You had notepad? I used to write my code with edlin!
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**Author:**  [@lovelee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lovelee)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/7 "1999-09-21T12:45:00Z")
(Gasp) I had to learn vi before I even _got_ to do HTML code! You lucky bastard.
lovelee
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**Author:**  [@Danny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Danny)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/8 "1999-09-21T13:05:00Z")
(Gasp) You mean you guys never had to learn to use an IBM punch card machine? Or even a paper tape reader? What are they teaching these days, my god!
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**Author:**  [@AuraSeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuraSeer)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/9 "1999-09-21T13:08:00Z")
They let you use vi? Ha, slacker! All I got was a bank of toggle switches and a wall full of lights. 😉
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**Author:**  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/10 "1999-09-21T14:00:00Z")
Toggle switches and a wall full of lights would be easier to use than vi. feh
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Tom~
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**Author:**  [@Gr8Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gr8Kat)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/11 "1999-09-21T15:20:00Z")
I haven’t coded a single thing, that’s the problem. I really don’t know any HTML, I just “borrow” it from other sources (that say, cut and paste the HTML below; I ain’t a plagariser!). Sometimes it works great, and sometimes I get this “error” message.
Anyhoo, the bit of code that’s giving me fits this time is at [http://www.ida.net/users/elaine/pedigre2.htm](http://www.ida.net/users/elaine/pedigre2.htm)
To me, it all looks totally incomprehensible. Is this the wrong forum to ask for a crash course in coding, or should I just buy the aforementioned “Dummies” book?
* * *
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
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**Author:**  [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/12 "1999-09-21T15:30:00Z")
Can you link us to the page you have put your code in? I C&P’ed the code from the pages you linked to and it worked fine for me. You may have accidentally deleted a bit of it.
* * *
“Eppur, si muove!” - Galileo Galilei
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**Author:**  [@AWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AWB)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/13 "1999-09-21T15:38:00Z")
_ **Gr8Kat: I don’t know a lick of HTML code. I hope to go to school and learn one of these days, but in the meantime I’m using Netscape Composer.** _
Try this site to learn HTML, Perl, and all sorts of other things about Web programming:
[The Web Developers’ Virtual Library](http://www.wdvl.com/)
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**Author:**  [@Gr8Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gr8Kat)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/14 "1999-09-21T15:50:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Can you link us to the page you have put your code in? I C&P’ed the code from the pages you linked to and it worked fine for me. You may have accidentally deleted a bit of it.
Netscape Composer won’t let me add the tag to my page until whatever it is that it perceives as a problem is fixed. I’ve tried recopying and repasting the code, but I keep getting the “premature close of tag” error. And Netscape is bound and determined to not let any “errors” be pasted in, even if maybe I _want_ them there.
GuanoLad said:
> [@](#):
>
> I hate all these wysiwyg tools that say “even you, a total loser that talks to his mouse, can make a professional looking webpage!” which is a total LIE!
Yeah yeah yeah, bite me 🙂
* * *
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
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**Author:**  [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/15 "1999-09-21T15:58:00Z")
You can email me the code if you like; just C&P it into an email. [sburch@pcquote.com](mailto:sburch@pcquote.com). But first try pasting it into Notepad (in your “accesories”) and save it as foo.html or whatever, and open it in your browser. It may be a problem with Composer and not your code. I suspect, though, that the problem is that your are pasting a page within a page, and that is what is the problem. If you have two \
**Author:**  [@Gr8Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gr8Kat)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 1999, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/16 "1999-09-21T16:42:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> You can email me the code if you like; just C&P it into an email. [sburch@pcquote.com](mailto:sburch@pcquote.com). But first try pasting it into Notepad (in your “accesories”) and save it as foo.html or whatever, and open it in your browser.
Hey, yeah, that worked.
> [@](#):
>
> It may be a problem with Composer and not your code. I suspect, though, that the problem is that your are pasting a page within a page, and that is what is the problem. If you have two \
**Author:**  [@Gr8Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gr8Kat)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 1999, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/17 "1999-09-22T05:52:00Z")
Thanks everyone for your help! By fiddling around and inserting the code in Notepad, then sending it back to Netscape Composer, I was able to do some of the stuff I couldn’t do before 🙂 Thanks again for the advice!
I may learn how to do this for real yet 🙂
* * *
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
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**Author:**  [@Louie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Louie)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 1999, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/18 "1999-09-22T07:55:00Z")
If you need more help, check out the [the HTML tutoral](http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000194.html).
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**Author:**  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 1999, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/19 "1999-09-22T08:14:00Z")
See? I wasn’t picking on you, Gr8Kat, I was picking on things like Frontpage and Composer, that present you with the illusion that you are creating a webpage, when really it’s making a mess of things that needs constant cleanup.
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**Author:**  [@Nickrz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nickrz)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 1999, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403/20 "1999-09-22T09:16:00Z")
Claris Homepage does a pretty good job without any dicking around with html.
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-coders-help/3403.md?page=2)