An brief introduction to HTML


HTML stands for Hypertext Mark-up Language.

HTML is a language that defines the internal structure of web documents, or put more simply it tells the webrowser software how to display the page.

HTML is comprised of a number of tags that are placed around text to tell the web browser what to do with it.

The <html> tag tells the browser that this page is in html, a bit like a person saying to you "Hi I speak English!"

Almost all tags in html are followed by a closing tag to tell the browser that it has finished using that tag. A closing tag always has a / and looks like this: </html>


A few HTML tags do not a closing tag and they are listed below:
<br> - Line break
<hr> - Horizontal rule
<vr> - Vertical rule

Why do you think these tags don't need a closing tag?


Starting your first web page

1. Open notepad

2. Save your file - YES even though it is still blank
- create a folder to keep all of your website files in. This is very important you will understand why later on.
- the first page in a website should always be called index.html
- make sure that you choose the file type: All files

3. Now that you have saved your webpage, you can:
- find the file through my computer
- double click to open it in explorer
- everytime you make a change in notepad, save in notepad
- press F5 in explorer to see if your change has worked

4. Use Alt and Tab to switch between application, it is quicker.


A basic HTML web page

For your web page to work you need to include certain tags, it is worth typing in these tags at the very start, as your web page may not display properly otherwise.

<html>

<head><title>This allows you to put text in the blue bar at the top of the web browser </title></head>

<body>

</body>

</html>


The main content of your web page needs to go inbetween the two body tags: <body> and </body> .