Basic HTML

While many faculty members will allow you -- even encourage you -- to create Web pages by using "HTML saves" in MS Word, or by the use of some Web-authoring software, it's always good to understand the fundamentals of HTML. This is a very basic explanation of HTML files and the codes, or "tags", used to create them.

First of all, it's important to understand a couple of very fundamental things about HTML files. Here they are:

A basic HTML file is nothing more than a TEXT file that includes HTML "tags". You can create an HTML file in any basic text editor, such as Notepad.

HTML "tags" are nothing more than shorthand directions that show the WEB BROWSER (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) how the contents of that file should look when they appear on your computer screen.

Most, but not all, HTML "tags" come in pairs; one that tells the browser to start doing something new -- like putting text in bold -- and one that tells the browser to stop doing it.

Once an HTML file has been created (the file name must end with .htm or .html) and transferred (using FTP) into the public_html directory/folder of an active account on an Internet Web server, it can be viewed by anyone with Internet access.

There's nothing magic about this stuff. It's almost like finger painting. It's fun!!

If you want to see examples of some of the most commonly-used HTML "tags", click here.

If you want to see an example of a very basic Web page (that you can re-create for yourself, if you wish) click here.

 

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