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Getting Started With HTML |  |
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The Basic Web Page:
There are a few basic HTML commands that should appear on every web page. The HTML 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.
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Put the title of your page here</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY> |
Put all the rest of your text and HTML tags here
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: 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: 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: Specifies the title of your page. TITLE must be placed within the HEAD section.
BODY: 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, link, and background colors. For more detailed information on the attributes for the BODY tag, see our 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 our Controlling Text Size and Formatting page.
Learning the Language:
As many people have discovered, one of the best ways to learn HTML is to study what other web page authors have done. When you're visiting a site and you see something interesting that you might like to try on your own page, simply take a look at the source code of that page and study the HTML tags that the author has used.
To view the source code of a page you're visiting, click on "View" on your browser's menu bar, then on "source" or "document source". A window will pop showing you the code the author used to create that page.
If you do this when visiting a framed page, what you'll see is the code the author used to set up his/her frames. To view the source code of one of the individual frames when using Internet Explorer, right click your mouse in the frame you want to see the source code of, then select "View Source". If you're using Netscape, click in the frame you want to view the source code of, then select the "View" option on the top menu bar, then "Frame Source".
Please note that while I encourage you to study what other web page authors have done, do not copy the entire page and use it for your own. Nor should you copy any text from the page (unless you have permission from the author). If you do, you open yourself up to potential copyright problems. Instead, copy and paste only those bits of HTML code that interest you, and incorporate those into your own creation.
HTML Guides and Tutorials:
There are a large number of sites on the web devoted to providing HTML information, including our own Reference Library. There you'll find detailed descriptions and examples of many of the most commonly used HTML tags.
Some other excellent HTML references are:
A Beginner's Guide to HTML, which is probably the most referenced HTML guide on the web and covers almost every aspect of creating web pages. Although it doesn't offer a lot of coding examples, it does offer tons of other excellent information.
Netscape's HTML Reference Guide: Tags provides a complete alphabetical listing of the HTML tags supported by Netscape Navigator and gives descriptions of each.
For a more complete listing of other HTML guides and tutorials, check out our "Cool Tools."
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