Back to the Basics
If you are reading this than it's safe to say that you are a newbie to HTML. That's okay though, everyone has been or will be there (even me!). HTML can seem a little strange and difficult to understand at first but soon you will be an expert and will be able to recite long passages of tags for hours on end. Who knows... you might even start dreaming in HTML!
Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to use a particular program to write HTML. Windows Notepad or WordPad will do just fine. The only difference between these and a professional program is that the program might have tag short cuts, colour differentiating and/or some other fancy stuff to include in the writing of HTML.
Keep this in mind; tags most often than not travel in pairs. Starting with <name of tag> and ending with </name of tag>. Be sure to remember the front slash / as that is what tells the browser that it is the end of the tag.
The basic HTML page begins with the tag <html> and ends with </html>. Between these two tags are the header and the body.
header <head></head> this contains information that won't be directly shown on the web page itself. Examples of tags within the header are <title></title>, <Base>, and <Link>.
body <body></body> this is the most crucial part of any web page as the <body> contains everything that will show up on the site.
This is what your basic page should start out with this. you can copy and paste this into your HTML editor.
<html>
<head>
<title>Untitled</title>
</head><body>
</body>
</html>
NOTE! Make sure you save your documents as .html or .htm or even .php
Technically your page should be blank when you view it in your browser except maybe the title which will be at the very top of the bar to the left (you can see 'maddymaba.com' at the top of your brower).
So what goes into the <body>? Well... lots of things! But here I'll only put the most used tags that can help in defining the look of your page.
<p> defines a paragraph. Basically puts a space where you might have typed "enter". Notice that it does not have a closing tag.
<br> defines a line break. Will start a line directly under the one you previously typed. Also does not have a closing tag.
<b></b> bold text
<i></i> italic text
<u></u> underlined text
<hr> Horizontal rule. Makes a thin line accross the page. Can be modified by adding color="" and width="" to the tag. No closing tag.
<a></a> defines a link. To make a full link add
href="" to the tag.
Example of a full link tag
<a href="your url/path to file.jpg or file.html">This is a link </a>
<small></small> small text
<big></big> big text
<super></super>
<sub></sub> SUB text
<strike></strike> stiken text
So is that all I need to know? Well no. Sorry to say, but there is much much more that you will need to learn; most of it is not going to be within this tutorial. HTML is something that you have to get into and rip apart and analyze from top to bottom; most of what you'll learn will be from trial and error.
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