Lesson #1 -- HTML One Step at a Time

Lesson #1

Example HTML Code

<html>
<title>This is the title of the page </title>
<body>
Hello World
</body>
</html>

Example HTML Code as it would be rendered

Hello World

These are the basic HTML tags that all webpages will contain. You may as well get used to the word "tag". We will be using it to refer to the funny markup gizmos and widgets that are used to instruct the browser software how to present the HTML page.

<html>: The HTML Start Tag is the first thing at the top of the file. This code tells a browser to "get ready to do some page layout there's html tags coming." This labels the page as an html page.

<title>: This is the Title Begin Tag. It tells the browser that from here on every thing you see is part of the page title. Hence, the Title Begin Tag and the Title End Tag are used to define the Page Title. If the Title End Tag is missing I guess the browser would think the whole page was just one big title.

This is the title of the page: This is the title of the page. In Netscape you will see it at the top of the screen in the blue bar. On this page you will note the title is "Lesson #1 -- HTML One Step at a Time" That is because on this page the stuff between the Title Begin Tag and the Title End Tag was "Lesson #1 -- HTML One Step at a Time".

</title>: This is the Title End Tag. This tag alerts the browser to the fact that the end of the title has been reached. You will note the / used in the end tag. This will be true for all end tags. The Title Begin Tag and the Title End Tag are used to define the Page Title. If the Title End Tag is missing I guess the browser would think the whole page was just one big title.

<body>: The Body Start Tag is used to indicate the beginning of the Body of the HTML Page. The Body of the page is the stuff that is painted on the screen. You'll notice that the names of the tags and their purposes are very straight forward. If only one can take this little by little and hold to the simplicity it shouldn't be that difficult to master html.

Hello World: In this case the body of the HTML page is "Hello World". A rather simple page body for rather simple lesson. No point clouding the issue by inserting a complex page in this format. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid)

</body>: The End of the Body Tag is used to ...... yep you guessed it: signal to the browser program that the end of the html page body has been reached.

</html>: This last tag on the page is the HTML End Tag. It should be the last thing on the page. And even if some browsers will tolerate missing tags, please don't fall into the habit of leaving them out. This is the grand "it's all done" tag.