TML
Basic Format
Now we are going to start talking about HTML tags. A tag will
always begin with a less than sign, like this: <. The tags will end
with a greater than sign, like this: >. An example would be the tag
used to underline text, <U>. You would place this before the text you
want to underline. This is called an opening tag, which begins the
operation you wish to perform. In order to end the underlining, you
must use a closing tag. A closing tag will always be the same as the
opening tag, but will have a forward slash before the command, like
this: </U> . So, if you would like to underline the phrase "HTML
Rules!", you would write the following in your text editor:
<U>HTML Rules!</U>
The result of this would be:
HTML Rules!
Not all tags will require a closing tag. An example would be the image
tag, which will place an image on the page. It looks like this: <IMG
SRC="myimage.gif"> . I will explain all the extra stuff later, this is
just an example of a tag that requires no closing tag to follow it. Other
examples would be a line break: <BR> , a horizontal line: <HR> , and a
paragraph: <P> . Also, you do not need to capitalize the tags. <P>
is the same as <p>. You can also use as much space between things as
you like. So:
<U> Underline Me! </U>
Is the same as
<U>Underline Me!</U>
Is the same as:
<U>
Underline Me!
</U>
A basic HTML file will have the format below. Read through and see if
you can guess what the different tags will do: (Don't worry, I'll explain
them at the end of the example.)
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>I Love HTML</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Everything displayed on your page will be in here.
</BODY>
</HTML>
Okay, to make sense of this, go through and find the pairs of opening
and closing tags. The first one we see is <HTML>. This signals the
beginning of an HTML file. The closing tag , </HTML>, is at the very end
of the document. As you might have guessed, it signals the end of the
HTML document. Everything (tags, text, images) should be between these
two tags, as they are the beginning and end of your page. The next
tag we see is the <HEAD> tag. This opens a section in which you can
title your page, use keywords, and add other descriptive information to
the page. The section ends with the </HEAD> tag. At this time, the only
part of the HEAD section we will deal with is the TITLE, which brings
us to the next tag.
The <TITLE> tag allows you to create a title for your page. The
title is only used for bookmarks, search engines, and as the name of the
browser window. It will not show up on your web page unless you type it
in the BODY section.(explained below). To end your title, use the </TITLE>
tag. For instance, in the example, the title is "I Love HTML".
(That's not true all the time, though).
The <BODY> tag opens the section that will be displayed in the
web browser. This is where most of our work will be done. To end the body
section, use </BODY>. The above example makes a rather boring web
page (even worse than the one in the previous tutorial). The browser would
display this:
Everything displayed on your page will be in here.
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