Index:
What
is HTML?
HTML is a simple markup language that tells a browser how to "render"
a page. A Simple HTML document looks like this:
<HTML>
<BODY>
Simple HTML
</BODY>
</HTML>
This will display the words "Simple
HTML"
Tags
A tag
describes something about the document.
Tags are enclosed in angle brackets, <like this>.
Tags come in two
varieties: single tags (aka empty tags) and pairs of tags. The difference
is that a single tag occurs on its own, while a pair of tags must
have an open and closing part. The closing part is just like the opening
except that it is prefixed by a slash.
Single tags are used
for separators or for inserting a single item. They do not have a matching
closing tag. For example, some common single tags are:
-
<BR>
marks the end of a line. (BR stands for line BReak.)
-
<HR>
marks a Horizontal Rule. (A line across the page.)
All the tags in the
first example are pairs.
-
<BODY>
marks the start of the HTML document.
-
</BODY>
marks the end of the HTML document.
Some other pair tags
are:
-
<EM>
and </EM> for emphasis.
-
<B>
and </B> for bold.
-
<I>
and </I> for italics.
-
<H1>
and </H1> for headings.
Note that pairs may
be nested, but you must nest them properly:
Example:
<B>This is <I>important</I> stuff</B> you need to know.
Would look like:
This is important
stuff you need to know
Formatting
All formatting is done by writing HTML tags in the document. The viewer
ignores all the normal text formatting like line breaks and text breaks
and instead uses the tags to mark-up how the document should look.
For example: all
line breaks are treated as a space, so having your document formatted
like this:
This is one paragraph. It contains all sorts of information.
We want to keep it separate from the other paragraph.
This is another paragraph. It is totally unrelated to the first.
will look like this when
viewed over the Web:
- This
is one paragraph. It contains all sorts of information. We want to keep
it separate from the other paragraph. This is another paragraph. It
is totally unrelated to the first.
Not pretty is it?
- So we use paragraph marks <P> to separate paragraphs of
text. The above then becomes:
This is one paragraph. It contains all sorts of information.
We want to keep it separate from the other paragraph.
<P>
This is another paragraph. It is <EM>totally</EM>
unrelated to the first.
which looks like you
would expect:
- This
is one paragraph. It contains all sorts of information. We want to keep
it separate from the other paragraph.
This is another paragraph. It is totally unrelated to the
first.
Line
Breaks and Rules
One problem is that paragraph
marks tend to insert extra space between the lines to indicate the paragraph
break. This is a pain when writing addresses and so on, so you can use line
breaks instead:
John Doe <BR>
<I>75 Johnson RD.<BR>
Anywhere, US.</I>
which comes out of the
viewer looking like this:
- John Doe
75 Johnson RD.
Anywhere, US.
You can put a horizontal
rule or line break wherever you could put a paragraph break.
End of Book<HR><B>Author</B><P>
The Author of this book is:
End of Book
Author
The Author of this
book is:
