HTML, which stands for hypertext markup language, is the basic programming language
for the web. All webpages, such as the one you are viewing, are produced from a source
code. The source code is written in html. If you are using the Explorer or Netscape
browser you can see the source by right clicking your mouse in the text area, and
clicking on view source. Go ahead! Try it now on this page. The code you will be viewing
is html.
Now let's make a simple webpage. Copy the following code. Hilite
the code by holding down your left mouse button, covering all the code. Right click,
and click copy.
<html>
<head>
<title>A Sample Web Page</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="ffffff" text="000000">
<br>
<br>
<center>
<font color="black" face="arial" size="6">Hey! Look what I made!</font>
</center>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>
Now, open a text editor. On Windows that would be Notepad. To open Notepad on windows
click [Start]+[Programs]+[Accessories]+[Notepad]. Right click on Notepad, and click
paste. You should now be able to see the code. Now save this file. Click on file in the
top left hand corner, click "save as". Save file as index.html. You can save to your
desktop, or your preferred directory. Make sure to select, "All files" in the
"save as type" field. Now when you look on your windows desktop, you should see a browser
icon entitled "index.html". Click on it. When the browser opens, you should see your first
web page. Click on this Sample Web Page link to see how this
page should look. If you can't make this work, don't get discouraged. We will be using the
Web Page Maker later, and it does all the work for you.
If you need help or have any questions, you can contact me on the
Help Page.
Let's look at the code. First, notice these "<tag>" things all over the place. These are called tags. They
are used to format the page. Most of your html language is enclosed in <tags>. Most, but not all tags have
a beginning <tag>, and an ending </tag>. Every web page source code should begin with <html>, and end with
</html>. Within these tags the page is divided into two main parts, the head and the body. The head is enclosed
in the <head> & </head> tags. The body is enclosed in the <body> & </body> tags. The title is located in
the head between the <title> & </title> tags. The title will appear at the very top of the browser in what
is called the browser window. The title in the code above is, "My First Web Page." A few other tags are
sometimes placed in the head section, but are not necessary at this time. Most of the visible data on the
web page is placed within the body section. The body tag in the code above contains the background color,
which is "ffffff" (white), and the text color, "000000" (black). These colors are written in hexidermal. You
can find hex color charts all over the web. Just do a search in your favorite search engine. The <br> tag
is the line break tag. You can use this tag to break for a new line. I am using it as a vertical spacer above.
The <br> tag does not have a closing tag. The <font> tag is used to specify the size, face, and color of
text. The text, "Hey! Look what I made!" ends with the </font> tag. The text is aligned in the center of the page
using the <center> & </center> tags. At the end of the body we see the </body> tag, and then the </html>
tag to end the code, and that's it. See! It's not really that hard! On the next page we will make the same page again with
some additional features. Click the "Next" link below to proceed to the next lesson.
