HTML - It's Easy To Write (not very) Secret Code
What is HTML and why should you care?
HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is the code that makes up every web page, this one included. If you want to see it, just place your cursor anywhere on the page and right click. One of the selections offered is "view source." Click on that and have a look. Go ahead, I'll wait. ... Back already? What you saw was the HTML that told your browser how to display this page. All of that code might have looked confusing but as soon as you know a few things about it the mystery disappears. If you want to build web sites, you need some basic knowledge of HTML so you can tweak your pages and make them look just right. Most of the code will be created by your software program, but you can adjust it as you see fit.
What makes HTML so easy?
If you look at HTML, the first thing you notice is you can read the words. It isn't made up of Greek symbols, just plain old English language words. There are some brackets and commas and quotation marks to keep everything in the proper place but other than that you just need to know a few terms and where they go and you're on your way.
Don't believe me? Here's a complete web page:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
This is my web page.
</BODY>
</HTML>
That's it! And you do not need any special software to create it. If you are using Microsoft Windows, just open Notepad, the most basic word processor on your computer, type in that file exactly as you see it and save the file as mywebpage.html. Notice the extension "html." You must use that extension or "htm," NOT txt, so your computer knows it is an HTML file and uses the right program to open it, which is your browser. If you save that file somewhere on your computer and then open it by double clicking on it, your browser will open and display your page. Go ahead, try it. ... If you did try it instead of just reading along then you just made your first page. And it was easy!
There's more to it than that, isn't there?
Yes, there is more to it than that but you saw the basic components. The entire page starts with <HTML> which tells the browser your HTML code starts here. The page has a head and body and then it ends with </HTML> which says the codes ends there. Notice the forward slash "/". All of the terms are grouped in pairs, one starts a section and another with a "/" ends it. Every web page starts that way, has a head and body and then ends that way. Take a look at the code of this page again and see. There's a lot of stuff in the middle but it is just as easy as what you just learned.
