Web Site Design, Getting Started with HTML

by | Dec 7, 2005 | Web design | 0 comments

This is a short introduction to writing HTML. What is HTML? It is a special kind of text document that is used by Web browsers to present text and graphics. The text includes markup tags such as to indicate the start of a paragraph, and to indicate the end of a paragraph. HTML documents are often refered to as “Web pages”. The browser retrieves Web pages from Web servers that thanks to the Internet, can be pretty much anywhere in World.

Website Design
This is a short introduction to writing HTML. What is HTML?

 It is a special kind of text document that is used by Web browsers to present text and graphics. The text includes markup tags such as to indicate the start of a paragraph, and to indicate the end of a paragraph. HTML documents are often refered to as “Web pages”. The browser retrieves Web pages from Web servers that thanks to the Internet, can be pretty much anywhere in World.

Many people still write HTML by hand using tools such as NotePad on Windows, or SimpleText on the Mac. This web site design guide will get you up and running. Even if youdon’t intend to edit HTML directly and instead plan to use an HTML website design editor such as Netscape Composer, or W3C’s Amaya, this guide will enable you to understand enough to make better use of such tools and how to make your HTML documents accessible on a wide range of browsers. Once you are comfortable with the basics of authoring HTML, you may want to learn how to add a touch of style using CSS, and to go on to try out features covered in my page on advanced HTML.

p.s. a good way to learn is to look at how other people have coded their html pages. To do this, click on the “View” menu and then on “Source”. On some browsers, you instead need to click on the “File” menu and then on “View Source”. Try it with this page to see how I have applied the ideas I explain below. You will find yourself developing a critical eye as many pages look rather a mess under the hood!

This page will teach you how to:

start with a title
add headings and paragraphs
add emphasis to your text
add images
add links to other pages
use various kinds of lists

If you are looking for something else, try the advanced HTML page.

Start with a title
Every HTML document needs a title. Here is what you need to type:

Change the text from “My first HTML document” to suit your own needs. The title text is preceded by the start tag . The title should be placed at the beginning of your document.

To try this out, type the above into a text editor and save the file as “test.html”, then view the file in a web browser. If the file extension is “.html” or “.htm” then the browser will recognize it as HTML. Most browsers show the title in the window caption bar.

read more:http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/

Tidying up your markup
A convenient way to automatically fix markup errors is to use the HTML Tidy utility. This also tidies the markup making it easier to read and easier to edit. I recommend you regularly run Tidy over any markup you are editing. Tidy is very effective at cleaning up markup created during website design by authoring tools with sloppy habits.