HTML For Webpages
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On this page I will explain how to use
HTML tags to make your webpage. This is not a
course in HTML but should give you a basic
foundation for writing an HTML page. This
first page will cover; the PAGE HEADER
HTML STRUCTURE
the <BODY> tag
the <TITLE> tag
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Skip to Tags for:
CENTER, H#, HR, P, BR,
SPACER
TEXT, FONT, MARQUEES
IMAGES, LINKS
TABLES
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The Page Header
<HTML> </HTML>
This is the
first tag that must appear on the page. It tells
the visitors browser that this is an HTML page.
The last tag on the page is always </HTML>
Your will notice that the closing tag is the same
as the opening tag except it has a slash mark (/)
just inside the 'less than' sign. With few
exceptions, every opening tag must have a
complementary closing tag. Some exceptions to
this rule are;
<![CDATA[ <P> <BR> <SPACER>
<HR> <IMG> <META> ]]>
These tags will be discussed later.
<HEAĐ> </HEAD>
This is the
tag
for your page header.
Information in the header is read by the browser
but does not appear on your page. Contained
between <HEAĐ> and </HEAD> tags are the
<TITLE> </TITLE> tags and the <META>
tags. Javascript codes are often found in here
too.
<TITLE> </TITLE>
The TITLE tag
contains the page information that will appear in
the
status bar at the bottom of your screen.
This is often the same as the title at the top of
your page. This page will be titled "My HTML
Webpage". You don't need meta tags yet so
I'll leave them out for now. The page so far
should look like this:
HTML STRUCTURE AND FORM
So far, the tags we have used are simple tags
containing only the tag name. From here on we
will be using more advanced tags so you need to
understand how to write these tags. Common tags
have contained within them the tag name, tag
elements and their values. Tags can have more
than one element and each element will have it's
value attached to it. Since our next tag we will
be using is the <BODY>
tag I will use it for
the example. This is what a simple body tag
looks like:
<BODY BGCOLOR="WHITE" TEXT="BLACK">
Where BODY is the tag name, BGCOLOR= is the first
element, "WHITE" is it's value, TEXT= is the
second element, "BLACK" is it's value.
Values
are usually put in quote marks but this is not
always necessary. As a rule of thumb, if the
value
contains only numbers with no symbols or
characters
then you probably don't need them. If you're not
sure if you need them, use them. Notice the
single
space between the elements in the tag. These are
required and are the only places that a space is
allowed in any tag. The formatting of tags is
critical to many browsers.
Another important thing to remember is that tags
must be closed in the mirror image order that
they were opened. You will often have occasions
to be using more than one tag at a time to define
a text or image field. The last one opened is
the first one closed and the first one opened is
the last one closed. Do not allow tags to
'overlap' another tag. For example:
<TAG 1> <TAG 2> <TAG 3> FIELD </TAG
3> </TAG 2> </TAG 1>
<BODY>
</BODY>
The <BODY>
tag is the next tag on the page and
may have many elements. It is used
to define your page and text color, your
background, the color of your links and visited
links and even the way your page loads. Since
your browser has default values for these
elements, they are all optional but you must at
least have the <BODY>
tag on your page.
Common elements that are used in the BODY tag
are:
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ELEMENT & VALUE | COMMENTS
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BGCOLOR="value" |
•The value may be a color or an RGB
number |
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BACKGROUND=URL |
•URL is the location of the background
image |
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TEXT="value" | •The
value may be a color or an RGB
number |
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LINK="value" | •Value is the color of your link
text |
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VLINK="value" | •Value is the color of your visited
link text |
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TRANSITION="value" | Value may be wipeup, wipedown,
wipeleft, wiperight, scrollup, scrolldown,
scrolleft, scrollright |
The BODY tag for this page
looks like this: