What is HTML?
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a formatting language used to create files that is computer platform and software independent. It can be read over a network by a web browser. Tags are pieces of code surrounded by the symbols "<" and" >," for example <html>. Browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) or Mozilla Firefox, read these tags in order to format the web pages on the screen.
Introduction to HTML
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is formatting language used to create files that is computer platform and software independent. It can be read over a network by a web browser. Tags are pieces of code surrounded by the symbols < and >, for example <html>. Browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) or Mozilla Firefox, read these tags in order to format the web pages on the screen.
There are only two software programs needed to create an HTML document. A text editor such as Notepad on a Windows machine or SimpleText on a Macintosh system, are standard software provided for free. A browser such as Netscape Communicator, IE or Mozilla Firefox can be downloaded for free from their respective company websites. Special HTML editors, called WYSIWYGs (What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWGs), like Macromedia Dreamweaver may be used, but are not required.
XHTML
XHTML: eXtensible HyperText Markup Language is a reformulation of HTML, a hybrid of XML and HTML. XHTML is the bridge between HTML and XML. It allows a true separation between the content of a Web page and its manner of presentation. It is stricter syntax than HTML but creates pages that are more portable between devices. There are several benefits for moving to XHTML:
o A painless transition to more advanced technology
o Cleaner, more logical markup
o Increased interoperability
o Greater accessibility
Opening Dreamweaver
Locate Adobe Dreamweaver or a similar editor on your computer and open it.
Switch to the code view by clicking on the Code icon on the top right hand corner of the window. Now in the code view we can evaluate the code already present and add more code to build our page.
Click on the "code" button. As you are looking at the document you will see that there are many different tags already in the document.
Code View
Notice the code displayed in the code view. There are a number of tags followed by a paragraph. In HTML, each line break has to be explicitly declared. Even if there were spaces between the sentences or paragraphs, none of those spaces would appear in the browser, unless declared.
Overview of Tags
Locate each of the following tags: <!DOCTYPE>, <html>, <head>, <title>, </title>, </head>, <body>, </body>, </html>.
Each of the tags are surrounded by brackets <tag>. For most tags both an opening and closing tag are required. Closing tags are marked by an additional slash </tag>.
The XHTML standard requires that all tags are kept in lowercase.
Each of the following tags are required in every HTML document:
o DOCTYPE - Declares the type of page the browser is displaying and is important for the validation of HTML pages.
o HTML - The opening and closing html tags surround the whole page indicating its an HTML document.
o HEAD - Gives descriptive information about the document, such as a title, meta tags for searching and background scripting information. The head tag, which can be thought of as a section contains the title tag. The closing head tag follows all other tags in this section.
o TITLE - The title of the web page always appears in a browsers blue title bar and is the information saved for bookmarking and searching.
o BODY - The body tag or section, contains all other tags for the HTML document that will format items in the document. The closing body tag should always come right before the closing HTML tag.
Adding a Page Title
Locate the title tags located between the head tags of your HTML document. Titles display in the blue bar of the browser and are the first things that search engines search for, so make sure the title of the page is concise and reflects the general idea of what the document is about.
Saving the HTML Document
All HTML files should be named with the extension .html or .htm (e.g. index.html or index.htm). The company that hosts your website files will indicate which extension to use. It is usually dependent on the web server software. The initial HTML file should be named index unless indicated otherwise by the company hosting your website files. The index file will be loaded into your browser first when someone visits your site. Filenames should follow these guidelines:
Filenames should not contain spaces or special characters (?, *, /, \, |, >, <, &, %, $, #, @, !, etc.).
Filenames should be in all lowercase.
Some examples of good filenames are "computerhelp.html", "computer-help.htm" or "computer_help.htm". Notice that the file name of "INDEX.HTML" is not the same file as "index.html".
1. Navigate to File -> Save As on your menu bar.
2. Locate Edshare or another location where ALL your html and related documents will be saved.
3. Save your initial page as index.htm. All following pages can be named with a meaningful filename. i.e. the main page about the Visiting Berlin Website would be called "index.htm", and if there was another page that described the Berlin Wall, a good meaningful name would be "berlin_wall.htm."