• 4 - Overview of HTML
  • What is HTML?
  • File Format for an HTML Document
  • General HTML Concepts

What Is HTML?

• HyperText Markup Language
• Provides instructions to World Wide Web browsers such as Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Browsers translate instructions in order to display documents
• Document structured with headings, lists, tables
• Include graphics in your document
• Change the color of your text and background
• Create links to different sections in your document
• Create links to other documents

Formatting options include:

Different Level Headings

Different Level Headings

Different Level Headings

Text attributes: boldface, italicized, or even both

You can also center the text.

Bulleted lists:

• Like this
• And this
  • With different levels.
• Last item

Numbered lists:

1. Like this
2. And even this

File Format for an HTML Document

• Plain text file (saved in ASCII format)
• Windows Notepad editor automatically saves in ASCII format
• Windows 95 Wordpad has text save option
• Word processors such as WordPerfect or Microsoft Word must "Save As" ASCII format
• Newer software has "Save As HTML" option
• Generally saved with the extension .html (such as deptinfo.html ).
• HTML file on your PC can be viewed from Netscape, IE
• To share documents, you must install them on a networked computer running WWW server software (Netscape, Apache, Microsoft)

General HTML Concepts

• Document content (text):
  • New text entered to create the document
  • Existing document converted to HTML format
• HTML instructions or tags
• Bracketed commands using the less than and greater than signs (< and >)
  • Tag to begin boldface text: <B>
  • To end formatting, same tag with a slash (/)after the first bracket (end of bold would be </B>)

  <B> Bold text </B>   <I> Italics text </I>

As an example, the formatting commands displayed in the previous section (boldface, italicized, or even both) would use these pairs of tags:

If your source reads:

This is paragraph one. This is paragraph two.

This is paragraph one.

This is paragraph two.

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• No closing tag required (no </BR> or </P> tags)
• HTML tags are not case sensitive
  • Can be typed as uppercase (<BR>)
  • Or lowercase (<br>)

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