What is HTML?
First, some simple background as to why:
The Internet?
The internet is, essentially, millions of computers and servers which are connected together in one giant network. A great number of these computers / servers remain permanently switched on and provide the backbone for the transmission of data (webpages / email / databases).
World Wide Web?
Where the internet is a collection of connected computers, the World Wide Web (www) is a collection of interconnected documents; such as webpages and websites.
What is a website?
A website is a collection of webpages. Each webpage is a document that is written in a language (often HTML - HyperText Markup Language) that can be interpretted by a web-browser.
Web Browser?
Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are web-browsers (along with Netscape, Safari, Konquerer, Sea Monkey and about 100 others including the recently added Mobile Browsers). They are all software applications that can enable a user to view / interact with the content on a webpage.
HTML?
HyperText Markup Language is the primary language of the web. Others attach to it or have developed from it, but HTML remains the building blocks of most websites. It is a "simple" standard that allows for a uniform interpretation of the content of the web.
An HTML page is essentially composed of the following primary sets of tags:
- <html>
- <head>
- <title></title>
- </head>
- <body>
- Visible page content goes in here.
- </body>
- </html>
Each tag opens <tag> and closes </tag> and the following ones should appear in every page you build (in the order shown above).
<html></html> is a declaration of the language, for the browser to interpret / render for the end-user.
<head></head> is where we hide some of the interesting stuff; such as CSS for styling the page & the page <title></title> which appears in the Title Bar at the top of the browser window. The title of this current page is:
HTML - What is HTML? - Sebastian Meer (smeer) - www.SM.gs
<body></body> is where we put everything that will appear to the end-user. There are exceptions to this, but generally this is where you place your content.
> Next Take a look at A Simple Page that incorporates these main tags. There are a number of examples on the page.
HTML Help
For additional help with HTML, you must visit these friends:
Pinsoft - For complete beginners! A little download that teaches you basic HTML with a key-by-key approach. It's really easy to pick up the program and the basic of writing webpages.
HTML Goodies - A fantastic repository of tutorials. Use it to learn, brush-up or extend your coding knowledge.
Dynamic Drive - For a wide range of scripts; including Calendars, Games, Image Effects, iFrames and ready-made Menus.
PMOB - Paul is great with CSS and provides CSS/HTML templates for websites, menus and some great roll-over, image & text effects.
Websites
Now you've written some pages, you may need a webhost so you can put your new code on the web:
Beginners can do worse than signup for a FREE account at one of the big players like Angelfire, Yahoo Geocities or Google Pagemaker.
Blatant plug...
BagOfNuts offers a great service for everyone else...Link on the left of every page.
