The One Minute HTML Primer

An HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) file, is basically just an ASCII text file with funny little codes in it.

The funny little codes are created by surrounding certain "code" words and phrases
         with angle brackets, " < > ". The bracketed codes are called:

  • "directives",
  • "HTML codes" or
  • "HTML tags"
and they instruct an HTML browser to display the text and graphics in particular ways. Some HTML tags require a beginning tag, <TAG> and a cancel tag, </TAG > at the end of an entry, telling Web browsers where to begin and where to end special formatting.

To create a very basic HTML document:

  1. Open some sort of editor or word processor that can save a document as ASCII text.
  2. Type:

      <HTML>
      <HEAD>
      <TITLE> (Type a title here.) </TITLE>
      </HEAD>
      <BODY>
            (Copy and paste - or type -
            the text you want the browser to display.
            Place a       <P> tag between paragraphs.)
      </BODY>
      </HTML>

  3. Save the document with an .html extension.
    Example: myfile.html
    The End.

Everything else is gravy.

Notes:

  • Normally an ASCII text file would be any file with a .TXT extension. To save any .TXT file as an HTML file, just change the file extension to either ".HTM" or ".HTML"

  • The title will be not be displayed with the rest of the document in the browser.
    Also, type the word "TITLE" in all caps so that search engine robots can easily read it and add your page to their databases.

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