What is an HTML
File?
- HTML stands for Hyper Text
Markup Language
- An HTML file is a text file containing
small markup tags
- The markup tags tell the Web browser
how to display the page
- An HTML file must have an htm
or html file extension
- An HTML file can be created using
a simple text editor
Do You Want to Try It?
If you are running Windows, start
Notepad.
If you are on a Mac start SimpleText.
In OSX start TextEdit and change
the following preferences: Select
(in the preferences window) "Plain
text" instead of "Rich text" and then
select "Ignore rich text commands
in HTML files". This is very important
because if you don't do this HTML
codes probably won't work.
Type in the following text:
<html>
<head>
<title>Title of page</title>
</head>
<body>
This is my first homepage. <b>This text is bold</b>
</body>
</html> |
Save the file as "mypage.htm".
Start your Internet browser. Select
"Open" (or "Open Page") in the File
menu of your browser. A dialog box
will appear. Select "Browse" (or "Choose
File") and locate the HTML file you
just created - "mypage.htm" - select
it and click "Open". Now you should
see an address in the dialog box,
for example "C:\MyDocuments\mypage.htm".
Click OK, and the browser will display
the page.
Example Explained
The first tag in your HTML document
is <html>. This tag tells your
browser that this is the start of
an HTML document. The last tag in
your document is </html>. This
tag tells your browser that this is
the end of the HTML document.
The text between the <head>
tag and the </head> tag is header
information. Header information is
not displayed in the browser window.
The text between the <title>
tags is the title of your document.
The title is displayed in your browser's
caption.
The text between the <body>
tags is the text that will be displayed
in your browser.
The text between the <b> and
</b> tags will be displayed
in a bold font.
HTM or HTML Extension?
When you save an HTML file, you can
use either the .htm or the .html extension.
We have used .htm in our examples.
It might be a bad habit inherited
from the past when some of the commonly
used software only allowed three letter
extensions.
With newer software we think it will
be perfectly safe to use .html.
Note on HTML Editors:
You can easily edit HTML files using
a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you
get) editor like FrontPage, Claris
Home Page, or Adobe PageMill instead
of writing your markup tags in a plain
text file.
But if you want to be a skillful
Web developer, we strongly recommend
that you use a plain text editor to
learn your primer HTML.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: After I have edited an HTML
file, I cannot view the result in
my browser. Why?
A: Make sure that you have saved
the file with a proper name and extension
like "c:\mypage.htm". Also make sure
that you use the same name when you
open the file in your browser.
Q: I have tried to edit an HTML
file but the changes don't show in
the browser. Why?
A: The browser caches your pages
so it doesn't have to read the same
page twice. When you have changed
a page, the browser doesn't know that.
Use the browser's refresh/reload button
to force the browser to read the edited
page.
Q: What browser should I use?
A: You can do all the training
with all of the common browsers, like
Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape,
or Opera. However, some of the examples
in our advanced classes require the
latest versions of the browsers.
Q: Does my computer have to run
Windows? What about a Mac?
A: You can do all your training
on a non-Windows computer like a Mac.
However, some of the examples in our
advanced classes require a newer version
of Windows, like Windows 98 or Windows
2000.
HTML Basics
[HTML
Tutorial] [HTML
Introduction] [HTML
Elements] [HTML
Basic Tags] [HTML
Formatting] [HTML
Entities] [HTML
Links] [HTML
Frames] [HTML
Tables] [HTML
Lists] [HTML
Forms] [HTML
Images] [HTML
Background] [HTML
Colors] [HTML
Colorvalues] [HTML
Colornames]
HTML Advance
[HTML
Layout] [HTML
Fonts] [HTML
4.0 Why] [HTML
Styles] [HTML
Head] [HTML
Meta] [HTML
URLs] [HTML
Scripts] [HTML
Attributes] [HTML
Events] [HTML
URL-encode] [HTML
Webserver] [HTML
Summary]
HTML References
[HTML
Tag List] [HTML
Attributes] [HTML
Events] [HTML
Colornames] [HTML
ASCII] [HTML
Entities] [HTML
URL Encode] [HTTP
Messages]
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