What is HTML?

The purpose of this tutorial is to teach you the basics on how to create your own Webpages. So here we go...

What is HTML?

HTML stands for the HyperText Markup Language. HTML is the major language of the Internet's World Wide Web. Web sites and web pages are written in HTML. With HTML and the world wide web, you have the ability to bring together text, pictures, sounds, and links... all in one place! HTML files are plain text files, so they can be composed and edited on any type of computer... Windows, Mac, UNIX, whatever.

Before You Start

Before you start your page, there are a few things you may need. Firstly, a HTML Editor, but if you don't have one of these, which you probably don't have, you can just use Notepad. That's what I normally use. All that a HTML Editor does is supply you with all the HTML stuff that you can use, but after you study all my tutorials you probably won't need one. But just in case you want to check out the HTML editor that I use from time to time, go to: http://www.coffeecup.com

With HTML you can have bold and italicized, Larger and Smaller, or it could look like Typewriter Text. You can even color it!

What you've just read in text, two paragraphs above, will look like this in HTML:

With HTML you can have <b>bold</b> and <i>italicized</i>, <font size=+2>Larger</font> and <font size=-2>Smaller</font>, or it could look like <tt>Typewriter Text</tt>. You can even <font color="red">color</font> it!

HTML code for this looks like a lot of gobbledygook, doesn't it?.

So what do these "<" and ">" things do and what are they called? They're called "lesser than" and "greater than" and when you place a certain word within these, you are making something known as a tag. For example the <b> tag is saying to start bold text, and the </b> tag is saying to stop bold text. The tag with the slash (/) is known as the closing tag. Most opening tags require a closing tag, but not all do. Tags make up the entire structure of a HTML document.

Here is an example:

<b>This Is Your Text</b>

<b> = Opening Tag
</b> = Closing Tag