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| What Is HTML? |  |
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HTML: The Language of the World Wide Web
The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the language used to create web pages. Web pages are nothing more than simple text (ASCII) files containing a series of HTML commands that are interpreted by a browser to display a page. These commands, or tags, are always surrounded by angle brackets (< >), are typically used in pairs (or containers), and look something like this, where <TAG> is the beginning of a pair, and </TAG> indicates the end:
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<TAG> all the command content goes here </TAG>
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Not all HTML tags require an end-tag (i.e. they're empty). For example, <HR> is used to put a line on your page that can be used to separate it into sections. This is an empty tag and requires no end-tag. HTML tags are case insensitive, which means that Tag, TAG, and TaG all represent the same thing.
Many start-tags have arguments, or attributes, that allow parameters (attributes) to be passed to the browser to act upon. For example, the HR allows you to specify how high you want a separator line to be. You specify this size by adding the SIZE attribute to the tag. Something like this:
would make the separator line appear on a page, and it would be displayed with a height of 5 pixels.
There are a few basic HTML commands that should appear on every web page. The HTML in the box below represents the minimum needed to create a web page. You can copy and paste it into your web page editor and use it as a template to get started creating your own page.
Change "Put the title of your page here" to reflect what you want to call your page, and replace "Put all the rest of your text and HTML tags here" with the contents of your page.
Below are brief descriptions of what each of these tags mean, and where they should be placed. Each of the tags listed below require both a beginning and ending tag.
| HTML Tag |
Attributes (options) |
Description |
| HTML |
none |
Defines the beginning and ending of your web page. <HTML> should always go at the top, and </HTML> should always be the last line on your page |
| HEAD |
none |
Defines the HEAD section of your page, and contain descriptive information about your page. The HEAD section should always be placed after <HTML>, and before <BODY>. |
| TITLE |
none |
Specifies the title of your page. TITLE must be placed within the HEAD section. |
| BODY |
BACKGROUND="filename"
BGCOLOR="#xxxxxx"
TEXT="#xxxxxx"
LINK="#xxxxxx"
VLINK="#xxxxxx"
ALINK="#xxxxxx"
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Defines the BODY section of your page, and allows you to specify text, background, and link colors for your page. <BODY> should be placed directly after <HEAD>, and the ending </BODY> tag should go immeditately before </HTML>. The body section is where all your text and HTML tags should go. It is also where you specify text and background colors. For more detailed information on the attributes for the BODY tag, see the Text and Background Colors page. |
HTML does offer some tags that allow you to control the size of your text in order to provide a little visual interest to your page, as well as to break up your page into "sections". For more information on tags which allow you to control text size, some page formatting and otherwise making your page look presentable; see the Controlling Text Size and Formatting page.
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