Learning HTML5

So I've finally decided to get on board this whole HTML web design thing. It's something I've been meaning to do for awhile, but I've obviously taken my sweet time getting around to it.

I've discovered that it's not all that bad. Once you start understanding the syntax and structure, it starts making sense. The only problem I have is that it's slow. Just making a basic page of something I could whip up in 3 minutes in a word processor has taken me roughly 6 hours of learning to do.

The one thing I'm having the most trouble with is figuring out how to align and orient things on my webpage. I want to make it so that there's an image along the bottom of my nav bar that center aligns with my fake link text. Everything I try makes it jerk too far too the left, or too far to the right. I want more control over how I place things, but so far, I haven't been able to figure out how it works.

On top of that, I'm still trying to figure out how to align things in general. I'm using percentages rather than pixels, because that seems to make more sense to me in this day and age of multisized screens that lean more on PPI than they do raw resolution. Thing is, I'm not sure how HTML defines its ratios. I believe it's 3:4ish, a'la the iPad in portrait orientation, but that doesn't always seem to be the case. If I can't tell what 100% is, I obviously won't be able to tell what 35% of that is.

Here's a link to my current webpage. Yeah, it's only my 3rd attempt, so don't expect anything too grand. You can kinda see what I'm trying to do. The code in the style section is my 5th try to write something that'll get things to center properly, and the one that's currently there isn't doing anything. I have been able to get my picture in the body of the text to align, though only roughly.

I'm not expecting anyone to write my code out for me in breathless detail, but a few hints and tips, or a couple good links would be appreciated. Also, feel free to critique the code itself, because I want to know if I'm doing something wrong or stupidly, and it'd be nice to kill any bad habits I might be developing before they set in.

 

It is a webpage. I guess I should treat it as such, and post a link to it.

Here

I've since discovered exactly what you're telling me now, that CSS is the way to go for styling. In other words, HTML is for the raw text, while CSS is the layout editor.

In a weird, roundabout way, I have kind of touched on CSS already without realizing it. Though instead of including it on its own page, I've embedded all my styling into the header.

But anyway, I'm now following a structured set of tutorials, rather than just randomly banging out bits and pieces to see what they do, and how they work. So with that, and the link you provided, I should hopefully be able to make something a little more worth showing off.

Thanks.