Intro & Getting Started | Viewing Source & Tags | Making & Testing a Page | Basic Text Formatting | Images
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Introduction - What is HTML?:
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the language used to make a web page. HTML tells your browser how the web page should appear. It's the "source code" of a web page. As computer languages go, HTML is relatively simple. Anyone can learn it.

Getting Started:
There are a few things you'll need before you actually get started with your HTML programming.

The first is a web browser to view the page (Microsoft Internet Explorer should be your first choice, with Netscape Navigator in second; other choices include Mozilla and Opera).

Second, you'll need a program to type and edit the HTML. Since HTML is a text-only document, programs such as Notepad (for Windows users) or SimpleText (for Mac users) are perfect. It's OK if you wish to use a word processor like Microsoft Word however, keep in mind that you MUST save as "text only," otherwise, the word processor will add its own proprietary formatting. In most programs, this is done by selecting "Save As" and changing the option in the drop-down box from whatever format your program is, to "Text Only."

When saving, always make sure that you are saving with an ".htm" or ".html" extension (".html" is the preferred), instead of ".txt" (even though they are text documents). The extension ".html" tells the browser to interpret the text as HTML, rather than just text.

You don't even need to be online to write and edit (or even view!) your HTML (and thus, web pages). Once you want to get them up on the web and view them there, however, you will need to have a connection to the internet.

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