Combined file HTML + CSS for opening in browser - html

I was wondering if there is a file format around where I can put (one or multiple) .css and (one or multiple) .html files, for example as a .zip (or similar) file AND your favourite browser can recognize it and opens it as a sort of static local "web page".
My use case would be to create html reports of some program execution, style it with a standardized css file and upload it on a cloud service, such that anyone with access can view it direcly in the browser.
I know a litte about html and css, but not enough to answer this question myself.
And "combine html and css" is not searchable on the web, so I'm asking you.
I'm not looking for a solution which bakes everything into one file.
I'm also not looking for an unzipped version of this (a folder), since that is not uploadable to most cloud storages I am aiming for.
Thank you.

AFAIK, there is no file format for that, but what you can do is create a folder in your htdocs or public folder and add all your .css and .html files in there. Then access it in localhost/yourfolder or if you are using a host http://yourdomain.com/yourfolder. For your HTML files to display the style correctly, they should be linked with the .css files or with the style inside each .html file between <style></style> tags in the <head> section.
You will see something like this, where you and others can preview and navigate through all HTML and CSS files.
Note: I've never done this on a host only on localhost, if you are using a host you will probably need to create permisions to access this folder, in that case contact your host so they can explain.

Related

Why are my CSS files not linking to my HTML files?

I am currently facing a problem of not being able to link my CSS files to the HTML files that are located in the same folder. About a year ago, I did a project where I built a simple website using HTML and CSS. Now when I download the folder from my Google Drive and try to open the HTML file with Chrome, I see that the CSS effect is not applied. However, after going back to the folder to open and close the corresponding CSS file, when I try opening the HTML file again, then the CSS effect is shown. I have no idea why this is happening but does anyone have any idea? I have a folder called snappers and inside that folder, I have three different folders, one that stores HTML files, one that stores CSS files, and one that stores images used for the website.
Based on your folder structure you have to go one directory up to access the css-folder:
"../css-folder/css-file.css"

Multiple index.html files inside folder structure

I just came up with an idea. Instead of using an .htaccess file to remove .html from the URL, why not just use a simple folder structure and in each folder add an index.html?
For instance:
example.com/index.html → Home
example.com/about/index.html → About
Now simply use a hyperlink on the homepage to the about folder, since typically index.html files are opened automatically.
The upside of this kind of navigation, is that it would be easily possible to create sub pages with no crazy database / .htaccess setup.
Now my question is: is there any reason not to create a webpage like that and is it legitimate to use multiple index.html files?
I appreciate all the help.
With the index.html route, there would be three URL's that can access the same page. For example for an about page:
www.yourwebsite.com/about
www.yourwebsite.com/about/
www.yourwebsite.com/about/index.html
Using the .htaccess file would likely give you more benefit from an SEO perspective. You can tell the search engine which one to use, by using 301 redirects. See more about how Google does this here:
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/to-slash-or-not-to-slash.html
Of course you could set up your website using folders and index.html's, and still
use the .htaccess file to take care of the SEO. But, depending on your sites size and structure, this might be more work.
The only downsides would be having to create a folder in addition to a file whenever you want to create a new page, and having to take more time to navigate into a folder in order to edit a page.
As long as you are using Apache, or a similar server software, multiple index files will function normally and be served from each folder.

CSS won't link to my HTML

I've been trying to resolve this issue with my website (www.wintonbrownmusic.online). I've attached a picture of how my site looks locally. When I upload it through GoDaddy, the site looks differently. I understand that others have had this issue but not sure where/how to change the CSS file to link to my website so it'll look the way that it should. Can someone assist?
I'm not sure what your hosting / creating it with, but I had a quick look at your site and found one issue.
Your HTML file is looking for the bootstrap.css file in the assets/css folder, but it appears to be in the root folder.
unless your hosting with something that is supposed to find it there.
not sure.
but when is use http://www.wintonbrownmusic.online/assets/css/bootstrap.css is doesn't work, but if I use http://www.wintonbrownmusic.online/bootstrap.css it does work.
hope that helps.
You have problems with path, If you open the console in inspect element it will show you that you have problems in calling the required files css, js, and other files.
You need to upload folders properly in the host, you need to add folders like you have in local folders in your computers. "assets" folder is missing and you just upload files inside there.
change your folder name as either assets or css ....
assets/css is a folder name because of the slash (/) browser looking for css folder inside assets folder...just give the folder
name correctly try to avoid usage of special character ,punctutation
in folder name

why can my browser still open an html file not served through a static file server?

Just wondering how/why this works, when I'm making a simple html file and linking in some css, then dragging my html file into the browser, no static web server is needed for me to view the file.
Why is that so..
I'm looking at my browser's network tab, and no request is made for the css file, and my browser still displays it perfectly..
Is there a way to do without a static file server on the web for html, css, js files, like when dragging and dropping a file into a browser?
Just going back and requestionning basics here..
Thanks in advance!
Because the link to your CSS file is relative, and your CSS file is accessible locally. Browsers can be used to access local files, not just files on the Internet.
When working with links, you may see just the name of the file referenced, as such:
Link
This is known as a relative link. file.html is relative to wherever the document is that is linking to it. In this case, the two files would be in the same folder.
There's a second type of link, known as an absolute URL, where the full path is specified.
Consider a typical absolute website link:
Link
With a local file, this would essentially be:
Link
The file protocol can be used to access local files.
Considering both the homepage (presumably index.html) and file.html would live in the same folder on both a web server and your local machine, Link would work for either scenario. In fact, with a relative link, the location of the second file is automatically determined based on the location of the first file. In my example, index.html would live at file://[YOUR WEBSITE]/index.html, so your browser is smart enough to known to look in file://[YOUR WEBSITE]/ when searching for any relative URLs.
Note that the same scenario applies to any other file! <link> and <script> tags will look for files in the exact same way -- that includes your stylesheet :)
Hope this helps!
Sounds like you are new to HTML and web development.
It all has to do with relative versus absolute file paths.
Check out these articles and have fun coding! Always remember that Google is your friend, improve your search-foo and you will not have to ask questions like this.
God speed.
http://www.geeksengine.com/article/absolute-relative-path.html
http://www.coffeecup.com/help/articles/absolute-vs-relative-pathslinks/
How to properly reference local resources in HTML?

Is there a way to export a page with CSS/images/etc using relative paths?

I work on a very large enterprise web application - and I created a prototype HTML page that is very simple - it is just a list of CSS and JS includes with very little markup. However, it contains a total of 57 CSS includes and 271 javascript includes (crazy right??)
In production these CSS/JS files will be minified and combined in various ways, but for dev purposes I am not going to bother.
The HTML is being served by a simple apache HTTP server and I am hitting it with a URL like this: http://localhost/demo.html and I share this link to others but you must be behind the firewall to access it.
I would like to package up this one HTML file with all referenced JS and CSS files into a ZIP file and share this with others so that all one would need to do is unzip and directly open the HTML file.
I have 2 problems:
The CSS files reference images using URLs like this url(/path/to/image.png) which are not relative, so if you unzip and view the HTML these links will be broken
There are literally thousands of other JS/CSS files/images that are also in these same folders that the demo doesn't use, so just zipping up the entire folder will result in a very bloated zip file
Anyway -
I create these types of demos on a regular basis, is there some easy way to create a ZIP that will:
Have updated CSS files that use relative URLs instead
Only include the JS/CSS that this html references, plus only those images which the specific CSS files reference as well
If I could do this without a bunch of manual work, if it could be automatic somehow, that would be so awesome!
As an example, one CSS file might have the following path and file name.
/ui/demoapp/css/theme.css
In this CSS file you'll find many image references like this one:
url(/ui/common/img/background.png)
I believe for this to work the relative image path should look like this:
url(../../common/img/background.png)
I am going to answer my own question because I have solved the problem for my own purposes. There are 2 options that I have found useful:
Modern browsers have a "Save Page As..." option under the File menu, or in Chrome on the one menu. This, however does not always work properly when the page is generated by javascript
I created my own custom application that can parse out all of the CSS/Javascript resources and transform the CSS references to relative URLs; however, this is not really a good answer for others.
If anyone else is aware of a commonly available utility or something like that which is better than using the browser built in "Save page as..." option - feel free to post another answer.