The Basics
This section will give you an overview of HTML and inform you about how to incorporate JavaScript into HTML pages. If youre already familiar with HTML and youve already worked with JavaScript, you can skip right over this section. The Necessary Software As Ive already mentioned, all youll need is a text editor and a browser. Text editors come with practically every operating system. Under Windows 95/98, the editor can be found by clicking Start/ Programs / Accessories / Notepad. Youll find browsers that you can download for free over the Internet at the Netscape Website (www.netscape.com) and the Microsoft Website (www.microsoft.com). Given an average downloading speed and average online costs, however, its cheaper to buy a computer magazine that contains a CD. Many of these silver disks contain the latest versions of the browsers.
For example) and those that format the text (italics would be an example of this). The text formatting tags require a companion tag to the introductory tag at the end of the text youd like formatted a particular way. A few practical examples will help you understand the functions of these tags: Here is a <br> Pagebreak. <i>This text will appear in italics.</i> These HTML code fragments must be incorporated into the basic HTML structure. The complete code would look like this: <html> <head> <title>Title of the Page (appears in the browser in the title line)</title>
HTML What are HTML Pages?
HTML is a text-layout language, with help of which the most diverse systems can produce nearly identical results. This is due to the fact that the files in which the HTML code is saved, that is, files with the endings *.HTM or *.HTML, contain only ASCII text. The code in these files specifies, for example, which background color, which text color, which text and pictures in which order the page should contain. In order to make this topic more concrete, heres a brief
</head> <body> Here is a <br> Pagebreak. <i>This text will appear in italics.</i> </body> </html> The entire source code must be saved in an ASCII file. But the file extension must be either *.HTM or *.HTML, not *.TXT. Be careful: many text editors, especially Windows editors, save files whose names are given as *.HTM as *.HTM.TXT. In this case, you must change the filename manually in the file manager or Windows Explorer.
introduction to HTML. Brief HTML Reference Guide
In a nutshell, HTML consists of so-called tags, which are always placed inside pointy brackets <>. These tags are, in turn, divided into those that cause a certain action (a line break,
Now you need to start the browser, either Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer, and open the file youve just created. Usually, you do this by selecting File / Open, but this can differ according to
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which version of which browser youre using. The page should look like this (this page was displayed with Netscape Navigator 4.7):
And dont forget to save your files! The result should look like this when viewed with your browser:
Here are a couple more things you should know tags that begin with / always indicate the end of text formatting and Ü is the international way of creating a : <html> <head> <title>Title of the Page (appears in the browser in the title line)</title> </head> <body> <h1>This is a title that contains a word beginning with Ü</h1> Here is a <br> Pagebreak. And here is a<p> paragraph <i>This text will appear in italics,</i> <b>this, by contrast, in boldface,</b> <u>and this text will be underlined.</u> <a href="page2.htm">There is also a link</a> and <img src="picture.gif"> you can even include pictures. </body> </html> Before you can view the page, youll need to save a file with the name PICTURE.GIF. This file can contain any image you want. For example, you can create a picture using Paint under Windows 98. When saving the file, you need to make sure that it has the extension .GIF. Alternatively, you can go out and find a graphics file, a finished .GIF file, somewhere on the Internet. If you want the link to work, youll need to create another HTML file, which in our example, is called PAGE2.HTM. This name appears in the source code.
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