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By
Hans Nyberg
For Dot Com Magazine
TSo, you want a Web page, but don't have the money or need
for a professional page? If you have money and need an extensive
Web site for your business, or if you don't want to deal
with learning a computer language, go ahead and pay someone
to do it. But if you have time, patience, and want a simple
Web page, learning some HTML might be a good idea for you.
HTML?
Sound scary? It's not. It's just an acronym for HyperText
Markup Language. Another language? You could only (barely)
make it through one year of Spanish in High School? Don't
worry: there are no verbs or pronouns you have to think
about. Just a few little things you need to know. If you're
going to make a web page, though, HTML's what you're going
to use.
First
of all, what is HTML? It's what your Internet browser (like
Internet Explorer or Netscape) uses to display Web pages.
If you want to see what some HTML looks like, load a web
page (like http://www.gbem.org - a little plug for one of
my own sites) and go to either "View source" (IE)
or "View page source" (Netscape). At first it
will look confusing, but later, you'll begin to understand
it.
To begin
with, if you want to do any writing, you need to have a
program to do it in. At first I used Notepad, but as I was
more interested, I (luckily) found and downloaded a great
program called "1st Page 2000." It's a free program,
but fully featured. If you are interested in writing Web
pages and want to spend the time downloading it (it is 5MB),
you'll find it's worth it. Download it at http://www.evrsoft.com/download.
Now
to the very basics. HTML uses something called tags. There
are two types; stand-alone and container. For now, we'll
use just container tags. There are two components of a container
tag: an opening, and a closing tag. The opening will always
have the format of <***> , and the closing will have
the format </***> . Any time I use asterisks (***),
that means the content can and should be changed. Every
Web site must have a few specific tags. The first of these
tags lets the browser know that this is HTML. The <HTML>
tag encloses everything on the web page.
<HTML>
***The actual page information will go here.
</HTML>
HTML
is not case-sensitive. That means that I could also use
<hTmL> or <html>. The only exception is anything
inside quotes, which is interpreted literally. Every page
also has HEAD and BODY tags. Generally everything within
the HEAD tags is hidden, except the title. The BODY (just
like in a letter) contains the information you will see.
<HTML>
<HEAD>
***The TITLE tag will go here.
</HEAD>
<BODY>
***The information you will see goes here.
</BODY>
</HTML>
The
title is what you see on the title bar on the top of the
browser window. It usually says something like "Yahoo!
- Microsoft Internet Explorer". The "Yahoo!"
part is the title. For now, the only thing we will put in
the HEAD tags is the TITLE. You can type in whatever you
want your title to be.
For
now, just type some text within the BODY tags so you can
see what we have done. We will now save your new page and
test it out. Go to
"File ... Save As". On the top of the window,
there is a "Save In" box. Click on it and select
"Desktop." On the bottom of the window is
a "File Type" box. Click on it, and select "All
Files." Now, in the "File Name" box, type
"mypage.htm", or whatever you want to call it.
Just
make sure you have the .htm at the end. Click on "Save,"
and then minimize, or close the window. There should be
an icon on the desktop that says "mypage." Double
click that and it should open either Internet Explorer or
Netscape with your page on the screen.
Congratulations!
You made your first web page! If you want to edit the text,
either go back to the window you were working in, or go
to "View source / page source". Save the page
again, and then click on refresh or reload on the browser
to see the updated page.
Contact
the author at [email protected].
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