Introduction to HTML
March 18, 2008
What is an HTML File?
· HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
· An HTML file is a text file containing small markup tags
· The markup tags tell the Web browser how to display the page
· An HTML file must have an htm or html file extension
· An HTML file can be created using a simple text editor
The first tag in your HTML document is <html>. This tag tells your browser that this is the start of an HTML document. The last tag in your document is </html>. This tag tells your browser that this is the end of the HTML document.
The text between the <head> tag and the </head> tag is header information. Header information is not displayed in the browser window.
The text between the <title> tags is the title of your document. The title is displayed in your browser’s caption.
The text between the <body> tags is the text that will be displayed in your browser.
The text between the <b> and </b> tags will be displayed in a bold font.
<!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]> SHAPE <![endif]–><!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]><![endif]–>
HTM or HTML Extension
To save an HTML file, you can use either the .htm or the .html extension. The used .htm in the examples, It might be a bad habit inherited from the past when some of the commonly used software only allowed three letter extensions. With newer software we think it will be perfectly safe to use .html.
<!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]> SHAPE <![endif]–><!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]><![endif]–>
Note on HTML Editors:
You can easily edit HTML files using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor like FrontPage, Claris Home Page, or Adobe PageMill instead of writing your markup tags in a plain text file.
But if you want to be a skillful Web developer, we strongly recommend that you use a plain text editor to learn your primer HTML.
How to View HTML Source
To find out, simply click on the VIEW option in your browsers toolbar and select SOURCE or PAGE SOURCE. This will open a window that shows you the actual HTML of the page.
<!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]> SHAPE <![endif]–><!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]><![endif]–>
<!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]> SHAPE <![endif]–><!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]><![endif]–>HTML Elements
<!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]> SHAPE <![endif]–><!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]><![endif]–>HTML documents are text files made up of HTML elements. HTML elements are defined using HTML tags.
<!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]> SHAPE <![endif]–><!–[if mso & !supportInlineShapes & supportFields]><![endif]–>HTML Tags
· HTML tags are used to mark-up HTML elements
· HTML tags are surrounded by the two characters < and >
· The surrounding characters are called angle brackets
· HTML tags normally come in pairs like <b> and </b>
· The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
· The text between the start and end tags is the element content
· HTML tags are not case sensitive, <b> means the same as <B>
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