Design Brief: Learning HTML

Beginning Tags

The foundation for any web page is hypertext markup language (HTML). HTML commands are expressed in tags. Tags are inclosed in < and >, and most tags require a closing tag, < /  >.

The beginning of every web page must say:
< !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" >

Next there must be an < HTML > tag, a < head >, < title >, followed by the < body >.

Text Tags

Inside the body, Basic HTML tags are used:

< p > denotes a paragraph, with additional space above and below. The paragraph is one of the few that does not require a closing tag.

< h1 > < h2 > < h3 > etc. are header tags, where h1 is the largest and boldest, with subsequent numbers diminishing in size.

The < font > tag allows you to set attributes like font size and color. Colors are expressed in hexadecimal code. < u > underlines text, < i > puts text in italics, and < b > bolds text. All require closing tags.

Table Tags

Tables are useful for controlling where pictures and text appear on the page. < table > marks the beginning of a table. < tr > is the beginning of a row, and < td > is the beginning of a cell. There can be multiple cells in each row, and multiple rows in each table. In the < table > tag, the width of the table can be defined either as static or dynamic (a percentage of the page).

Links

Links are an important part of any web page because they take you to other pages. To make a word a link, the word is enclosed in the < a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com" > and < /a > tags.

To make your link open in a new window, just add target="_new" after "http://www.yourwebsite.com", inside the >.

Pictures

Pictures can be added using < img src="imagefilename.jpg" >. Pictures can also be links, using < a href="http://website.html" > < img src="imagename.gif" /> < /a > . Placing the < /a > closing tag after the < img > tag causes the picture to be the active link.

Basic HTML Commands                 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)                FTP