HTML Basics
So we start with the basics. HTML files are basic text files that web browsers read to build web pages on the screen. All the instructions for putting together a page are contained in these scripts. In order for the browser to be able to read them, they have to have the file extension ".html" attached to the file names. For example, the file name of this page is "basics1.html". Sometimes some servers truncate this to ".htm" but that is done at the server end. The rule of thumb is to stick with ".html". Because this text file is basic text, it's best to create it with a basic text editor. In the PC world, the program NotePad, which comes with every PC, does the job admirably. In the Macintosh world the program SimpleText does the job nicely. It also comes with every Mac machine. It may be tempting to create the script on a regular word processor but you have to be absolutely sure that you save the file in "text only" format or none of this is going to work. HTML is called a "descriptor" language. It is in basic english so there shouldn't be too many words that will be difficult to understand. It's called a "descriptor language" because it describes the web page to the browser. When you work with a word processor, every time you format something ie. bold a word or italicize a word, or make the text larger or smaller, etc. there is a descriptor language being used in background to record these changes. When the file gets sent to the printer, the language is called "postscript". It tells the printer how to print the page. It is the same with HTML. The script tells the browser how to put a page on the screen. HTML does this through the use of TAGS. A tag is a descriptor word that begins and ends with brackets < >. There will be quite few of these tags introduced throughout the following pages. To start off our script, we have to define our page. This is done with these tags. The HTML tag states that this is an HTML document. If that tag wasn't there the browser would ignore the file. You'll note that there is another HTML tag at the end of the file but it is preceded by a /. With most tags there is an opening tag and a closing tag. If either one of those tags is missing the browser ignores the whole file. Next in the script is the <HEAD> tag. Between it and its closing tag the <HEAD> tag decribes the <TITLE> of the page, and with <META> tags (coming later) describes the contents of the page, the creator of the page, and words to help find the page on the web. Next you will find the <BODY> tags. All information that will appear on the page, including text, graphics, animations, videos, you name it, all appear between the <BODY> tags. Finally, there is the closing tag for the HTML tag </HTML>. This closes the file. Now let's check out More HTML Basics |