Luca
Member
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2008
- Sythe Gold
- 10
- Messages
- 54
So You Want To Learn HTML?
Introduction
What is an HTML File?
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
An HTML file is a text file containing small markup tags
The markup tags tell the Web browser how to display the page
An HTML file must have an htm or html file extension
An HTML file can be created using a simple text editor
Try It?
If you are running Windows, start Notepad.
If you are on a Mac, start SimpleText.
In OSX start TextEdit and change the following preferences: Open the "Format" menu and select "Plain text" instead of "Rich text". Then open the "Preferences" window under the "Text Edit" menu and select "Ignore rich text commands in HTML files". Your HTML code will probably not work if you do not change the preferences above!
Type in the following text:
HTML:
<html>
<head>
<title>Title of page</title>
</head>
<body>
This is my first webpage <b>This text is bolded</b>
</body>
</html>Save the file as "mypage.htm".
Start your Internet browser. Select "Open" (or "Open Page") in the File menu of your browser. A dialog box will appear. Select "Browse" (or "Choose File") and locate the HTML file you just created - "mypage.htm" - select it and click "Open". Now you should see an address in the dialog box, for example "C:\MyDocuments\mypage.htm". Click OK, and the browser will display the page.
Example Explained
The first tag in your HTML document is <html>. This tag tells your browser that this is the start of an HTML document. The last tag in your document is </html>. This tag tells your browser that this is the end of the HTML document.
The text between the <head> tag and the </head> tag is header information. Header information is not displayed in the browser window.
The text between the <title> tags is the title of your document. The title is displayed in your browser's caption.
The text between the <body> tags is the text that will be displayed in your browser.
The text between the <b> and </b> tags will be displayed in a bold font.
HTM or HTML Extension?
When you save an HTML file, you can use either the .htm or the .html extension. We have used .htm in our examples. It might be a bad habit inherited from the past when some of the commonly used software only allowed three letter extensions.
With newer software we think it will be perfectly safe to use .html.
Why do We Use Lowercase Tags?
Although HTML tags are not case sensitive: <B> means the same as <b>. If you surf the Web, you will notice that plenty of web sites use uppercase HTML tags in their source code. We always use lowercase tags. Why?
If you want to follow the latest web standards, you should always use lowercase tags. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends lowercase tags in their HTML 4 recommendation, and XHTML (the next generation HTML) demands lowercase tags.
This is the fundementals of HTML. For further info on HTML Coding, Check out my website: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_elements.asp
Or PM me / Add my msn: [email protected]
I would be glad to help you with whatever you need.
-Luca
