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Making your own webpage is not as difficult as you might think.
You can learn HTML with nothing more than a plain text editor (e.g., Notepad)
and a web browser (e.g., Firefox). There are also plenty of websites where you
can study HTML in depth. W3Schools.com is my favorite one to use. There's a
"try it editor" where you can write your HTML and view the result side by side.
But let's start with some basics.
What is HTML?
HTML stands for "hypertext markup language". It's basically
a way of telling a browser how to display the content on a webpage. This is
done through the use of HTML tags. These HTML tags are enclosed by angular
brackets and generally have a start tag and an end tag (a slash represents an
end tag).
Here is a list of some of the most common HTML tags:
<html> </html> All html
tags are put between these tags
<body> </body>The
visible content of the webpage is displayed between these tags.
<h1> </h1> Any text that is between this tag will be
displayed as a heading; 1 is the largest and 6 is the smallest.
<p> </p> This tag separates the text into
paragraphs.
<b> </b> Any text that is between this
tag will be displayed as bold.
<i> </i> Any text that is between this
tag will be displayed in italic.
HTML is not case-sensitive. However, because other languages
(such as XML) can be, it's best to use lowercase text for tags. (In case you're
wondering, XML stands for "extensible markup language" and is a general-purpose
specification for creating customized markup languages.)
Proofing and
Troubleshooting HTML
If you're using a text editor and want to see what the HTML
you just wrote will look like, save the document with a .html extension (e.g.,
homepage.html) and open it with a web browser. If the HTML does not display the
way you want, the problem is probably either a spelling error or forgotten
bracket. Organizing the tags so that they can be easily read is important - and
becomes even more important with bigger web sites.
Once you get started, HTML gets even easier. Remember, too,
that if you come across a web site and want to know how something is done, you
can use the View Page Source feature in your browser. The HTML behind the
website will be displayed.
In future blog entries, I will explain how to use tables to
help organize content. I'll also discuss changing fonts and sizes, using backgrounds
and colors, and adding images and links.
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