My Title

H:\!DOCS\MSOFFICE\WINWORD\TEMPLATE\NORMAL.DOT BEGINNING HTML Charles V. Balch Charles V. Balch Beginning HTML Charles Balch, Spring 96 V 1.1 The World Wide Web (WWW) or Internet is a great place to post inforamtion or make personal statments. HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the universal language WWW browsers interprit to allow formating of documents across computer platforms and architectures. HTML uses tags to define styles and sections of documents. HTML Documents: To insure interplatform compatibility, HTML documents are in text format. Since all word processors have a “SAVE AS Text” option, any word processor may be used to create HTML documents. Specialized HTML editors make editing HTML documents easier. Utilities that claim to convert documents into HTML code are useful for converting existing documents but, in most cases for new documents, it is better to start from scratch than to convert. Regardless of editor used, the easiest way to check your work is to launch both editor and the browser and continually view your document as changes are made. HTML documents are most useful when they are accessible over the web (Internet). To make your document accessible, you will need to place (post) it on a WWW server. UVI has a number of such servers. Commercial web servers also post documents. Before others can use your document, you must give them its Universal Resource Locator (URL). More on URLs later. Your First Document: The best way to start is to steal a page with a look you like! Leave the tags alone and replace the text with you own. It’s OK -- everyone does it. Tags: With few exceptions, HTML tags are in the format of text where the text between the tags is affected by the tags. Tags may be nested (i.e. text

text

). A minimal HTML document could have no tags at all. Unfortunately, all formatting (if any) of the original document would be lost. HTML even ignores paragraphs! The most used tags are:

(End of paragraph, note that there is no

) Bold Text

Long Quote

Entire Document except Title
(Like

but leaves less space)

Text (n=1-7) Heading Text (n = 1-6, a heading level) Document (Not req. but good form)

(horizontal line across the browser window) Italic Text

Some Text

(Text is exactly as typed.) My Title (title in Windows title bar) Many tags have options. In example:

and tags may contain ALIGN=CENTER|MIDDLE|RIGHT (i.e.

) tag options allow control of colors. Linking to Other Documents They call it HyperText ‘cause you can use it to link to other docs. Links are designated by using tags that look like Indicated Link URLs describe how to find a HTML document and what to do with it. URLs are in the format: scheme:[//host/path/]filename[#bookmark] The brackets indicate optional portions of the URL. If the document is in the same directory as the calling document, you may skip the path and simply use its filename. Bookmarks point to specific sections of a document and are also optional. Scheme is one of File, HTTP, Gopher, Mailto, News, Telnet, or WAIS. The most common scheme is HTTP which indicates a HTML document. In addition to scheme, many browser interprit the extension at the end of the document. HTP or HTML are the prpoer extensions for HTML documents. The easiest way to get a working URL is simply to copy and paste it from the location bar at the top of the browser. You may need to ask your system administrator for the URL of your document. Images and pictures are inserted with the tag. Images are generally in JPG or GIF format. Bookmarks are used to refer to specific sections of HTML documents. Bookmarks are marked as follows : and referred to as follows Pointer to Ref Lists: The three major types of HTML lists are: Unnumbered, numbered and definition. All use beginning and ending tags to indicate list type and another tag to indicate list items. Unnumbered, and numbered list items do not have ending tags. Nested list tags (i.e.

) allow for sublevels. Unnumbered Lists:

Entire List using

for new list items; Numbered Lists:

Entire List using

for new list items; Definition Lists:

Entire List using alternate

Defined Term

for and

Term’s Definition

. Suggested Further Studies Tables organise information Forms allow users to send information Normal Heading 1 Heading 2 Heading 3 Heading 4 Heading 5 Heading 6 Default Paragraph Font Header Footnote Text List Table Footnote Reference Bibliography Example Quote Question Answer wfxRecipient wfxFaxNum Heading UVZc0 Telecom_Out Telecom_In Page_Heading wfxDate Title_Heading wfxTime wfxSubject tempq Charles V. Balch%H:\!DOCS\CLASSDOC\WINDOWS\HTMLBEG.DOCÿ@HP LaserJet 4 Plus/4M Plus LPT3: HPPCL5E HP LaserJet 4 Plus/4M Plus HP LaserJet 4 Plus/4M Plus Symbol Palatino Book Antiqua Courier Courier New BEGINNING HTML Charles V. Balch Charles V. Balch