One of my goals in this book is to show all you Webophobes out there that putting together HTML pages that are both useful and stylish is a lot easier than you may think. As proof, this chapter covers all the basic information you need to produce an honest-to-goodness Web page, suitable for mass consumption by hordes of Internet surfers. (Not to worry, though: I explain everything in this chapter in more detail elsewhere in the book. I'll point out the relevant chapters as we go along.) So, without further ado, I hereby present my Ten Step Program to a Perfect Web Page:
If you've seen some World Wide Web pages in your Internet travels, you might think you need some high-end word processor or megabuck page layout software to achieve all those fancy-schmancy effects. No way, JosΘ. In fact, any program that enables you to peck out pure text is good enough for creating Web pages that rival anything produced by humungoid corporations or artists with unpronounceable names. That's right: Even the humblest text editor (such as the Notepad accessory that comes with Windows) is all you need to get started in the Web page publishing game.
So, the first order of business in creating a Web page is to fire up your favorite text editor or word processor (such as Word for Windows) and launch a new document. (In most cases, the program will start up a new document for you automatically.) Okay, you're ready for action!
| Don't Forget to Save! |
| As with any computer-related endeavor, you should save your Web work regularly. Browsers always look for files that have names that end with either .HTM or .HTML, so be sure to use one of these extensions (for example, HOMEPAGE.HTM). If you're using a word processor, though, make sure you save the document as a simple text file. HTML pages that were saved in the word processor's native format will give any Web browser a bad case of indigestion. |
Web pages are relatively simple affairs. You just type in your text and then you insert markers-called tags-that spell out how you want things to look. For example, if you want a word on your page to appear in bold text, you surround that word with the appropriate tags for boldfacing text.
In general, tags use the following format:
<TAG>The text to be affected</TAG>
The TAG part is a code (usually one or two letters) that specifies the type of effect you want. For example, the tag for boldfacing text is <B>. So if you wanted the phrase ACME Coyote Supplies to appear in bold, you'd type the following into your document:
<B>ACME Coyote Supplies</B>
The first <B> says: "Yo! Start showing the text in bold." This continues until the </B> appears. The slash (/) defines this as an end tag, which says: "Okay, enough with the boldfacing already!" As you'll see, there are tags for lots of other effects, including italics, paragraphs, headings, page titles, lists, and lots more.
HTML (which stands for HyperText Markup Language) is just the sum total of all these tags. You'll find out more about HTML in Chapter 3, "A Brief HTML Web Page Primer," and I'll serve up some more tag trivia in Chapter 4, "Laying the Foundation: The Basic Structure of a Web Page."
Your HTML files will always lead off with the <HTML> tag, which you type at the top of the file. This tag doesn't do a whole heckuva lot except tell any Web browser that tries to read the file that it's dealing with a file that contains HTML doodads. Similarly, the last line in your document will always be the </HTML> tag, which you can think of as the HTML equivalent for "The End."
So each of your Web pages will start off looking like this:
<HTML> </HTML>
The next tags serve to divide the document into two sections: the head and the body. The head section is like an introduction to the page. To define the head, you add a <HEAD> tag and a </HEAD> tag immediately below the <HTML> tag you typed in earlier. So your Web page should now look like this:
<HTML> <HEAD> </HEAD> </HTML>
| Down with Drudgery! |
| To ease the tedium of these early stages of Web page creation, you'll find some help on the disk that comes with this book. I've included a file named SKELETON.HTM that contains all the tags that make up the bare bones (sorry about that) of a Web page. |
The body section is where you enter the text and other fun stuff that will actually appear on the Web page. To define the body, you place a <BODY> tag and a </BODY> tag after the head section (below the <</HEAD> tag), as follows:
<HTML> <HEAD> </HEAD> <BODY> </BODY> </HTML>
Yawn. So far, so boring. Unfortunately, these early stages of Web page creation are only marginally more exciting than watching paint peel. It's a necessary evil, however, and it's one I'll discuss in more depth (I'll bet you can't wait for that) in Chapter 4, "Laying the Foundation: The Basic Structure of a Web Page."
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