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Week 2
HTML talk
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HTML: Hypertext Markup Language
Hypertext markup language (HTML) is, essentially, is a type of word processor defined as a "line editor". Unlike most modern word processors, in which whatever you type on the computer screen comes out as you typed it in, with line editors you must tell the computer how to format the document. That is, you must make explicit through commands where paragraph breaks should be, how far to indent a line, when to change a font style, etc. HTML actually gives a user a great deal of power with regard to page format. However, the basic commands are really very easy. A perfectly acceptable web page can be constructed with no more than 12 HTML commands.
HTML commands, called "tags", are surrounded by left and right angle brackets (< >). Here, I am captializing HTML commands to make they stand out. However, HTML is case-insensitive, so upper or lower case type can be used interchangably. Any text that is in italics indicates a point where the designer must provide text or file names.
Below is an example of the HTML code needed to give structure to the most basic web page.
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>- text goes here
</TITLE></HEAD><BODY>- text goes here
</BODY><HTML>
Take this link to see what the page made by with the code above would look like (use your web browser's back arrow key to return here).
Ok, if you took the link you'd notice that the page wasn't very exciting to look at. Fortunately, it is easy to jazz up a web page. Here are some of the most basic command tags for formatting text, adding links, and placing figures.
Page Layout
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<P>paragraph break <BR>line break <HR>horizontal rule <CENTER> </CENTER>centre something
Text
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<B> </B>bold <I> </I>italics
Link
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<A HREF="URL goes here">link name here</A>makes hypertext link
In-line image
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<IMG SRC="file name here">places picture