|
|
| Home | Old Issues | Examples |
Welcome to Nathsite's weekly 'Around the Web in Eighty Kilobytes', a 20-part free guide to building a website of your own, and using the web well.
To stop getting ATWI80KB's, send an empty email to atwi80kb@homepage.com with 'NO MORE THINGIES' as the subject. To look at examples and previous ATWI80KB's, go to http://atwi80kb.homepage.com
AROUND THE WEB IN EIGHTY KILOBYTES 1.3 - 1.4
ATWI80KB 2
April 14, 2000
1) Tags
2) Formatting text
Example
1) TAGS
Tags in HTML are like color in a painting. Trying to paint without color is possible, but I don't think many people would buy a black and white painting. An HTML page without tags would be a plain text document.
Anyway, make a new folder on your hard drive to save your HTML files in. Open your text editor and type this:
<html>
<head>
<title>Last Elephant in Antarctica</title>
</head>
<body>
This is my first HTML document (today)!
</body>
</html>
Save the document in your new folder, and call it "page01.html" (remember the quotes if you use Notepad!). If you have, when you go to your folder you should see this: page01.html
The things inside the pointy brackets, '<' and '>' are tags. The '<html>' tags tells the browser that the document is an HTML. '<head>' tag is used for the page title and a few other things I'll tell you about (write the title between the <title> tag and the </title> tag).
The '<body>' tag is the page itself. Most tags are written again later on with a slash (/). The second version is a 'closing' tag.
eg. OPENING TAG: <body>
CLOSING TAG: </body>
How do tags work? Simple - I'll explain using the <body> tag as an example. The opening <body> tag tells the browser that the body starts there, and the closing </body> tag tells the browser that the body ends there.
2) FORMATTING TEXT
I told you that the main reason that HTML tags are used is to format the text, as not many people can read more than two pages of boring old plain text before falling asleep. But the page you made was a plain text document, because you hadn't formatted anything yet. Now you're going to learn how to.
One of the most common tags is the <b> tag, to make text bold.
eg. This is one <b>big</b> sandwich!
The <b> tag says that the text starts being bold from here onwards, and the </b> tag says the text stops being bold here.
By the way, tags aren't case-sensitive, and can be in capital letters or small letters, it doesn't make a difference. A <body> tag or <BODY> tag or <bODy> tag or whatever can be closed by a </body> or </BODY> or </bOdy> etc.
Two more common tags are the <i> tag for italics and the <u> tag for underlining. Look at the example to see these tags at work.
EXAMPLE
<html>
<head>
<title>Don't Shoot the Pencil</title>
</head>
<body>
HTML is <i>fun</i>. <b>Who threw that rubber at me?</b> Underlining <u>doesn't</u> look good.
</body>
</html>
See you in a week!
Aniruddh Nath
Email questions to atwi80kb@homepage.com - I'll reply if I have time. I might write stuff from your email in later ATWI80KB's.
NOTE: I'm not responsible for any damage done to your computer because of this tutorial.