HTML: The Basics
HTML stands for Hyper Text Mark-Up Language. This is not important to know if you just want to design a web page, but it is cool to scare your grandparents and the computer-phobic etc. by saying you can do it!
All HTML takes place within tags contained in angle brackets. These look like < and >. So now you can stop wondering what those keys are for!
HTML tags often have attributes, which are what defines the look and usability of your page. Attributes often have values attached to them by means of the equals (=) sign. These, again, influence the look and usability of your page. Most values are enclosed in quotation marks (") but sometimes are not necessary.
Some tags need to be closed, usually by repeating the initial tag but with a forward slash (/) in front of it. For example, if you want bold text you type:
<b>bold text</b>
and get:
bold text
The closing tag (</b>) stops any following text from being bold too when you don't want it to be. However, not all tags need to be closed and some don't even have codes to close them! You can find lists of codes in the HTML Directory.
Here's the essential code for starting a webpage, my comments are in pink:
HTML is NOT case sensitive, although some people like to highlight their code this way for easier editing. XML/XHTML are case sensitive, although this is not important to know if you just want to do HTML. Another important fact to remember is that if, like me, you are British, or any other nationality for that matter, all code is in American-English. Some words, like colour, won't have any effect on your page unless spelt in American-English (color).
The easiest piece of code that is essential to know is the link. These 'link' pages and sites together across the whole web! Usually you link to an external file, but when you know more code you can link to specific places within a document.
To start, you need to type in:
Type in the URL of where you want to link to, close the tag. Then type in whatever text you want to be the actual link. I'm going to put Click Me! Then, you MUST close the link code by typing </A>. This tells the page where the link ends. So this:
<A HREF="http://www.little-miss-alien.co.uk/images/shelley_grin.jpg">Click Me!</a>
Will give you this:
Hurrah! You've just linked to a picture of me with a goofy grin! Now you can check out the other tutorials for some specific codes!
