Basic HTML Information
Continue on with Lesson 1
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What you need to know before you actually begin writing webpages:
Hypertext Markup Language is not difficult. It just a matter of knowing
where to place the tags and remembering to close the tags that you
open. If the rest of this section does not make sense right now. It will
after you begin to work the assignments.
Tags may be typed in lower or upper case.
You must save the html file in an ascii or text file. You may use notepad
or wordpad or any word processor that allows you to save in ascii format.
You may also use a special program called an HTML editor.
Tags do not have to be in capital letters. It makes no difference if they
are in upper or lower case. I have used upper case letters for the tags
in this tutorial for clarity purposes only.
Tags are like commands, they tell the computer what to do with the
information immediately following the command and continuing until
another command is given.
<P>Some tags must be used in pairs. That is a command placed at
the beginning of the area to be affected and another closing command
is placed at the end of the area, telling the computer to end this task.
For example: <CENTER>Where the Red Fern Grows</CENTER>
This will center the title "Where the Red Fern Grows" on the page.
Other commands do not require the closing tag.
After typing in your HTML documents check to see if all the tags work
by pulling up the file in Netscape or some other web browser. You do
this by starting the web browser program, select "file", then, "Open file".
I like to have both my browser and the program I'm writing the HTML
document in open at the same time on the screen. That way as I write
the document I can simply hit "reload" on the browser to check my
progress as I add each element to the webpage. That way if something
doesn't work, I can correct it right then. Remember to save any changes
to your document before you reload it or the changes will not appear.
You may want to do this off-line so that you do not tie up the phone lines
unnecessarily.
You do not have to be neat about this. The computer will not recognize
blank lines in your document unless you tell it to. So you can put blank
lines to separate sections of the document or run the whole thing
together. It will not make a difference in the way the document looks on
the web.
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