HTML

HTML

° HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language)
TUTORIAL

What is the World Wide Web?

The World Wide Web (WWW) is most often called the Web.
The Web is a network of computers all over the world.
All the computers in the Web can communicate with each other.
All the computers use a communication standard called HTTP.

How does the WWW work?

Web information is stored in documents called Web pages.
Web pages are files stored on computers called Web servers.
Computers reading the Web pages are called Web clients.
Web clients view the pages with a program called a Web browser.
Popular browsers are Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.

How does the browser fetch the pages?

A browser fetches a Web page from a server by a request.
A request is a standard HTTP request containing a page address.
A page address looks like this: http://www.someone.com/page.htm.

How does the browser display the pages?

All Web pages contain instructions on how to be displayed.
The browser displays the page by reading these instructions.
The most common display instructions are called HTML tags.
HTML tags look like this <p>This is a Paragraph</p>.

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

Do You Want to Try It?

If you are running Windows, start Notepad (or start SimpleText if you are on a Mac) and type in the following text:

<html>
<head>
<title>Title of page</title>
</head>
<body>
This is my first homepage. <b>This text is bold</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 <body> tags, is the text that will be displayed in your browser.

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 <b> and </b> tags will be displayed in a bold font

HTML Tags

HTML tags are used to mark-up HTML elements
HTML tags are surrounded by the two characters < and >
The surrounding characters are called angle brackets
HTML tags normally come in pairs like <b> and </b>
The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
The text between the start and end tags is the element content
HTML tags are not case sensitive, <b> means the same as <B>

HTML Elements

Remember the HTML example from the previous page:

<html>
<head>
<title>Title of page</title>
</head>
<body>
This is my first homepage. <b>This text is bold</b>
</body>
</html>

This is an HTML element:

<b>This text is bold</b>

The HTML element starts with a start tag: <b>
The content of the HTML element is: This text is bold
The HTML element ends with an end tag: </b>

The purpose of the <b> tag is to define an HTML element that should be displayed as bold.

This is also an HTML element:

<body>
This is my first homepage. <b>This text is bold</b>
</body>

This HTML element starts with the start tag <body>, and ends with the end tag </body>.

The purpose of the <body> tag is to define the HTML element that contains the body of the HTML document.

Why do We Use Lowercase Tags?

We have just said that HTML tags are not case sensitive: <B> means the same as <b>. When you surf the Web, you will notice that most tutorials use uppercase HTML tags in their examples. We always use lowercase tags. Why?

If you want to prepare yourself for the next generations of HTML you should start using 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.

Tag Attributes

Tags can have attributes. Attributes can provide additional information about the HTML elements on your page.

This tag defines the body element of your HTML page: <body>. With an added bgcolor attribute, you can tell the browser that the background color of your page should be red, like this: <body bgcolor="red">.

This tag defines an HTML table: <table>. With an added border attribute, you can tell the browser that the table should have no borders: <table border="0">

Attributes always come in name/value pairs like this: name="value".

Attributes are always added to the start tag of an HTML element.

Quote Styles, "red" or 'red'?

Attribute values should always be enclosed in quotes. Double style quotes are the most common, but single style quotes are also allowed.

In some rare situations, like when the attribute value itself contains quotes, it is necessary to use single quotes:

name='John "ShotGun" Nelson'

Basic HTML Tags

Headings

Headings are defined with the <h1> to <h6> tags. <h1> defines the largest heading. <h6> defines the smallest heading.

<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<h2>This is a heading</h2>
<h3>This is a heading</h3>
<h4>This is a heading</h4>
<h5>This is a heading</h5>
<h6>This is a heading</h6>

HTML automatically adds an extra blank line before and after a heading.

Paragraphs

Paragraphs are defined with the <p> tag.

<p>This is a paragraph</p>
<p>This is another paragraph</p>

HTML automatically adds an extra blank line before and after a paragraph.

Line Breaks

The <br> tag is used when you want to end a line, but don't want to start a new paragraph. The <br> tag forces a line break wherever you place it.

<p>This <br> is a para<br>graph with line breaks</p>

The <br> tag is an empty tag. It has no closing tag.

Comments in HTML

The comment tag is used to insert a comment in the HTML source code. A comment will be ignored by the browser. You can use comments to explain your code, which can help you when you edit the source code at a later date.

<!--This is a comment-->

Note that you need an exclamation point after the opening bracket, but not before the closing bracket.

Basic Notes - Useful Tips

When you write HTML text, you can never be sure how the text is displayed in another browser. Some people have large computer displays, some have small. The text will be reformatted every time the user resizes his window. Never try to format the text in your editor by adding empty lines and spaces to the text.

HTML will truncate the spaces in your text. Any number of spaces count as one. Some extra information: In HTML a new line counts as one space.

Using empty paragraphs <p> to insert blank lines is a bad habit. Use the <br> tag instead. (But don't use the <br> tag to create lists. Wait until you have learned about HTML lists.)

You might have noticed that paragraphs can be written without the closing tag </p>. Don't rely on it. The next version of HTML will not allow you to skip ANY closing tags.

HTML automatically adds an extra blank line before and after some elements, like before and after a paragraph, and before and after a heading.

We use a horizontal rule (the <hr> tag), to separate the sections in our tutorials.

Basic HTML Tags:

NN: Netscape, IE: Internet Explorer

Start Tag	NN	IE	Purpose
<html>	3.0	3.0	Defines a html document
<body>	3.0	3.0	Defines the document's body
<h1>-<h6>	3.0	3.0	Defines heading 1 to heading 6
<p>	3.0	3.0	Defines a paragraph
<br>	3.0	3.0	Inserts a single line break
<hr>	3.0	3.0	Defines a horizontal rule
<!-->	3.0	3.0	Defines a comment in the HTML source code

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