HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE
INTRODUCTION
SO YOU WANT TO CREATE A HOME PAGE ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB? WELL IT'S NOT HARD AS YOU MIGHT
THINK A I HOPE THAT THIS PAGES WILL TEACH YOU ENOUGH OF THE BASICS TO GET STARTED.
HOW DOES A HOME PAGE WORK?
The program you are using to view this page is called a web-browser and the contents of
this page are stored in a file called an HTML file. This HTML file is nothing more than a set
of very simple instructions which your web-browser follows when displaying the page concerned.
The HTML files are stored on your service provider's machine in your own special directory
When an internet "surfer" enters the address (URL) of your particular home page, this machine
is contacted and ask to send the contents of the HTML file. This whole process is not too dis-
similar to simply viewing an ordinary text file except that some parts of the HTML file will
cause your web-browser to change the way information is displayed.
HTML-THE WEB-DESCRIPTION LANGUAGE
HTML files can be created with a simple text editor, and infact many professional web deve-
lopers prefer to use a good text editor rather than one of the many web development tools that
you can find on the net. HTML is a very simple language and there's not a lot to remember, so
sometimes the familiarity of your favorite editor is more productive than struggling with an
unfamiliar tool.
THE ANATOMY OF AN HTML FILE
All HTML files start with the &ItHTML> instruction and end with the < HTML> instruction.
All the other instructions that describe your web page must be inbetween.
Within those two instructions we find that HTML files consist of two main parts:
The HEAD
The BODY
THE HEAD AND TITLE
In simple HTML files the head section contains only the title information, that's the text
you see on the title bar of your screen. Right now that title bar should say the Idiots Guide
of Creating a Home Page on your web browser.
Your web browser was told to display that the text on the title bar by the following ins-
tructions:
&ItTITLE>The Idiot's Guide of Creating A Home Page
Note that the area of text which is not to be displayed is preceeded by the &ItTITLE> ins-
truction and followed by the instruction. This &Itinstruction> xxxxx
sequence is quite common in the HTML files. The first instruction turrns on a particular "mode"
and the second version, preceeded by a slash / turns it off.
The BODY section contains all the instruction that produce the content of the web page and
started with the &ItBODY> instruction. The complimentary
instruction is used to mark the
end of the body section. Can you guess how we would mark a piece of text as being BOLD?
If you guessed that we'd use &ItB> xxxxx then you were right.
NOTE 1:
HTML instructions are not case sensitive so you can use instead of &ItTitle> if you
want but it is easier to read your HTML files if you stick to upper case for all the instructions
it makes them stand out from the rest of the text.
NOTE 2:
One of the most common HTML programming error is to forget to match up your <instruction> with
a corresponding </instruction>.
<h1 align=center>SETTING TEXT SIZE</H1>
The standard font is fine for the most text but it's always nice to have a big bold headline
at the top of youre pages, here's the standard HTML way of changing the size of your text.
There are six extra font sizes to choose and they are set or reset by by using the H instruction
like this:
<H1>H1 largest text
<H2>H2 large text
<H3>H3 medium text
<H4>H4 small text
<H5>H5 smaller text
<H6>H6 smallest text
<h4> When your web browser program encounters these commands it will change the size of the text
like this:
<h4> largest text
large text
medium text
<h4> We might also want to center our headline on the web page. This is done using the CENTER and
/CENTER instruction.
<h1 align=center>CENTERED</H1>
<H4> NOTE 1:
<H4> Note that the American spelling is used, CENTER, not the English spelling CENTRE.
<H4> NOTE 2:
<H4> Standard HTML only allows you to see one type-size per line. Whenever you change the size of
your text using an Hx instruction, a new line will automatically be started.
<h4> Obviously it would be nicer if our headline was both centered and big. It's easy enough to
combine the two instruction we've learn so far to do that:
<H4> CENTER H1 center /H1 /CENTER
<h4> This code will now produce the following output:
Centered
<H1 ALIGN=CENTER>PARAGRAPHS AND LINE BREAKS </H1>
<H4> HTML will automatically format your text to wrap at the right margin and it ignores the for-
matting contained in your HTML file, instead requiring special line break and paragraph commands.
<h4> Note that these commands don't need a matching /BR or /P command since they don't mark an area
of text, just a point on the page. Lets change our simple web page so that it consist of two lines
in one paragraph.
<h4> Note that we put BR on the end of the line but placed the P instruction on the of it's own.
This isn't essential, it makes no difference on how the browser display the page but it's nice
convention to use as it results in a format which looks very similar in the HTML file to that which
is displayed by browser. You'll see what I mean when you click HERE to see the page produced by this
new version of our HTML file.
<h1 align=center> ANOTHER SEPARATOR</h1>
<H4> Another very simple way to break up the text is the Horizontal Rule. You'll notice the shaded
horizontal lines which appear throughout this page, that's a horizontal rule. They are created by
by using the &ItHR> instruction, it's good convention to put it on a line of it's own. Again, since
this instruction what happens if you make your browser window smaller and wider. Notice how if the
line is too long for the window it will be automatically wraped in to two lines.
<center>
<div>
<br>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="https://ads.geocities.ws/ads/show_ad.php?width=300&height=250&cache=0"></script>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="https://ads.geocities.ws/ads/show_ad.php?width=300&height=250"></script>
</div>
<br>
<br>
</center>