HTML Primer

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What can be done with HTML? Let's see, it can be used to create a one page website, or a thousand page website. Maybe somewheres in between that would be a good way to start.

HTML can change text font, size, color, make text bold, italic, underlined, strikethrough, superscript, subscript.....

It can also change the color of a page, add a background image to a page, add an image on a page, create borders around that image, specify the border style, width, and even color.

HTML can create tables, which allows you to create a chart-like place to display information.

HTML does have rules to go by, and they aren't hard to learn. Start out by following the examples within this site, and alter them to meet your own needs,

HTML commands are enclosed in tags. Generally, tags need to be used in pairs . The first tag starts something to be done a certain way, and then, of course, there is an ending tag.

Let me give you an example. The start tag for creating bold text is and the ending, or closing tag is . They look pretty much alike except for that slash mark on the end tag. All words enclosed within these tags will be bold.

Whether you use upper or lower case letters within your tags is up to you. If you use upper case, it makes them easier to spot when your are updating the file.

Let's look at that simple HTML page again

<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 final//en">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> My First Page </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
The words you wish to display are entered here.
</BODY>
</HTML>

Title of your web page, well that's easy enough, it's just the title of your web page. However, entering it here will not make it show up within the page, it will be displayed at the upper left of your browser. Look at your browser in the upper left corner, and you will see HTML Primer, the title of the page you are viewing.

The main part of this html sample, the words, will continue on until they run out of room in your browser, and move on to the next line. That is all fine, but what if you don't want it to be one big huge paragraph?

At the place you wish to begin a new line, enter the tag , this tag, break, causes a line break. The next words will begin on a new line. If you wish a blank line between your paragraphs, insert again. If you want to add multiple blank lines, keep adding until you get the look you like.

Well, this HTML stuff isn't so bad after all, is it? Think you can create a simple HTML page with words, paragraphs, and bold text here and there? Try it by copying the simple example above, open your Notepad program, paste it there, save as type "all files", and enter the filename index.html and click on save. Remember where you saved it, My Documents is a great place, perhaps in a new folder titled website stuff.

Want to see what it looks like as a web page? First, don't lose this page, open a new browser window. On your new browser window, click on file, open, find your file, and open it up and have a look!

Still have Notepad open? Add a few words or sentences within the body of the HTML document, try that break tag to start new lines, save it, and refresh your browser to admire and think about your changes.

This page's goal was to help you create your first web page using HTML, Notepad, and then your browser to view it.