| What is HTML
HTML is
an acronym for HyperText Markup Language and is used to create all the pages
that exist on the Internet. Put in very simple terms HTML is a way of generating
a page of a book electronically. It is interpreted by a web browser so that
words and pictures can be displayed on your computer screen. In fact a website
could almost be described as an online book.
HTML is written in plain
text and therefore needs to be created in a text editor such as Notepad. Your
HTML must not be saved as for example a Word document as this will not work. To
run Notepad click on the start button, select Programs, then Accessories and
finally Notepad.
The first page of your website is always called
index.htm. This is the page the browser will display when it visits your site.
With this in mind, you should perhaps try and capture the nature of your website
on the index page and have links to additional pages from there. The extension
".htm" must be used for all web pages so that the browser knows it is an HTML
page.
Note: You MUST create the index.htm page or your website will
NOT work.
HTML
code
There are two main parts to HTML. Text that is held
within angle brackets and text that is not held within angle brackets. Just
incase you are wondering what an angle bracket is they are the < and >
brackets.
Any text inside these angle brackets is called an HTML TAG,
this means it is part of the HTML language. Anything else is the text that is
going to be displayed by the browser.
Most HTML commands have an opening
and closing tag. For example:
<HTML>
is the opening tag, where as,
</HTML> is
the closing tag.
The only way to distinguish between the two is that the
closing tag contains a forward slash, ie /. Anything that is held within
an open and a close HTML tag is affected by that tag. This will become more
apparent later in this guide. In this case the tags tell the browser that
everything between them is part of a web page.
Basic HTML
Tags
Your first page must be saved as "index.htm", this is the page that
will be displayed whenever anybody visits your domain name. If you fail to have
such a page all visitors will see is the default freenetname page.
There
are a number of tags that must be included in every HTML page, these are the
basic foundations without which the page won't work. These are:
<HTML> &
</HTML>
This tells your browser that
all information between these tags is HTML code, without these your page
will not work. |
<HEAD> &
</HEAD>
Between these tags you will
enter the <TITLE> tag for your web page and at a later stage tags
called meta tags. |
<TITLE> &
</TITLE>
The text between these tags
is the title of the page, this will appear in top bar of your browser. For
example this page's title is "freenetname | how to... | web tutorial -
page 2" |
<BODY> &
</BODY>
This tag tells the browser
that what follows is all the text and pictures that are to be displayed by
the web browser. It also allows you to tell the browser what background
colour to display. This is achieved by using the bgcolor="" command. As
you will see in our following example the background colour is set to
white: bgcolor="#ffffff" |
| |
On the right is the order in which the
above tags must be placed. |
<html>
<head>
<title>
</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html> |
|
Your first page
Below is an example of what you
first webpage could look like. As you can see it is very plain, but if you work
through this guide you will see how it can be livened up. As well as the
essential tags above it also makes use of the line break tag.
<BR>
This tag
inserts a single line break in the page. You can double up the tag to
produce gaps of one or more lines.
Example:
There is one
line break at the end of this sentance.
There are two line breaks at
the end of this sentance.
The <br> tag is also an example of
a single HTML tag - you use it once to produce an effect, there is no
closing </br> tag. |
| Create a page |
The screen shot below is of the page we want to
create, and beneath that is the HTML code required to do so. Copy this
into Notepad, making any alterations you wish and try it out for yourself.
To view your page save the file somewhere on your desktop as "index.htm"
and then view it on your browser by double clicking on your newly created
html file.
|
| The HTML |
<html>
<head>
<title>My Home
Page</title>
</head>
<body
bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
Hello,<br><br>
Welcome to my
website.<br>
I hope you like
it.<br><br>
Rob
</body>
</html> |
That's
all there is to it. Before you carry on try playing around with these elements
to ensure you understand them. Remember to save your first page as
"index.htm".
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