HTML Basics HTML stands for HyperText Markup Lanuage HTML consists of on and off switches. Switches reside in angled brackets ( lessthan and greaterthan signs. i.e. < > ) All switches begin with the word in angled brackets and end with the word preceded by a slash. For example: and Switches can have many options, such as or

. All documents to be read as HTML by web browsers must begin the and end with They also must have a after the at the beginning and a before the at the end. Switches to consider are:

is for a paragraph. That will insert two breaks, or enters, so the next word begins with on a new paragraph.
is a break. It is just like pressing enter once in a word processing document. BODY/BACKGROUND: If you make a web page with just the very basics, the HTML would look like this: This is some text. Without any instruction as to what the text or page should look like, you will see a bland background with small, black text (the browser chooses the default font type). But to add background colours or images, you can use the following: -- This would make a black background -- This would make a picture the background, so text would write overtop of it. In HTML, you can't have a background image not repeat itself. To see one picture of an image in the background, rather than repeat it, you would have to either use Cascading Style Sheets (also known as CSS) or make the picture so big (1024 x 768) that chances of anyone having a larger resolution would be very minimal. FONTS:

through

are font sizes, with h1 being the largest. H stands for Header. Remember when you want the size to stop, you must type in

(or whatever size you put in). If you start with

and put in

at the end, it won't work. All letters will be

size until you put in the closing

switch. For font colours and sizes, you use the switch. for example, will make your text grey until you use the closing switch. Note that the colour code will not work by using "colour=". The American spelling of "color" is the only spelling that is accepted. Other switches include: size="+1". You can vary the number from + to - but the variables must be in quotations. To change the font type, you should make certain you use one that is fairly common, like Arial, Times New Roman, or some such font. The command would be face="font name". The implementation would be: And from there, you could use a combination of variables: as an example. PICTURES Pictures are termed "images" in html, so if you see something like "

The name of the file depends on its location. If the name of the file is in the same location as the HTML file you are making, you don't have to give it the full path. If it's in a different directory, you will have to tell it where. For example, if I have a directory called "pictures" but all the images are in a directory called "images" inside of "pictures", I would have to type this:

If you want to have the text wrap around the image, or just have it placed on the left or right hand side, you use the "align" option. So,

would place your image to the left of all text. What if you wanted to create a link out of the image, or text, so when people clicked on it, they would be taken to that link? LINKS You create an ANCHOR, or link. the command means anchor the hypertext reference to the following subject. There are three parts to creaking a link. The first part is the link, itself. The second part is the subject (whether it's an image or text) that is clickable and the third part is closing the link. ALWAYS REMEMBER TO CLOSE THE LINK. The three parts look like this, individually: 1. 2a. Click here to go to the site OR 2b.

3. The closes the anchor. So if you put

that would work fine. NOTE WELL: You MUST use "http://" as opposed to just starting with "www". This is because HTTP stands for hyper-text transfer protocol, so it knows to use a web browser. If you just typed you would get an error. Once again, ALWAYS remember to CLOSE the anchor with . Have fun experimenting!