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Basic HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language


(The brain damage that makes the web work behind the scenes.)

HTML is a simple markup language. Just the same as when you use your word processor, Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, or other program, you want the words to be bold, italics or different colors.

We also want some words to be hyperlinks (also called 'links' or URLs) that are gateways to other useful documents like this one.

In order to tell your web browser that you want the words, or text, to be treated in special way you need to use an HTML 'tag'.
The tag surrounds the text or is placed betwen text that you want formatted in a specific way. There are many visual HTML editors that are similar to using Microsoft Word, but you still want to know how it works in the background.

< less than
> greater than

These are the special charecters that we use to tell the browser when to pay attention for special formatting. Without both the open and close alligator charecters (Don't they look like alligators?) The browser will just dump this text onto the web page like everything else.

If I want to bold some text I surround the text with these tags.

<b> text </b>
text

The first bold tag starts the bold formatting, the second bold tag stops the bold formatting. With out the / slash in the close/end bold tag the whole rest of the page would be bolded.

If we an italics we do this.

<i> text </i>
text

We create different colored text like this.

<font color="red" face="arial"> text </font>
text

The start font tag tells us that we want to change how the text will appear, what color and even what face to use. You might know these font faces.
Ariel
Verdana
Times
You can use pretty much any font installed on your computer, but remember not everyone will have the same fonts as you. Stick to the three above and you'll be safe.
Most web browsers understand most colors even light blue and light green, but not all, and you can get some strange reactions, like light gray. If light gray is important to you, use the exact HEX code (another opportunity for brain damage)
<font color="CCCCCC" face="arial"> light gray </font>
To get light gray.

We also need line breaks, or carriage returns. Otherwise the text will just run together and look strange.

<br>
line
break

Lastly, let's look at how an Anchor tag (hyperlink, link or URL) works.

<a href="http://www.agenthelper.net/seminar.html">Agenthelper - Marketing and Technology Experts in Columbus, Ohio</a>
Agenthelper - Marketing and Technology Experts in Columbus, Ohio

We can see that the alligator starts the open Anchor tag, we specify where the other resource or webpage is and then we close the Anchor tag. We are also using an Absolute URL, stating exactly where the document is. You don't always have to use the domain name in the link, but it a good habit to have. I am pretty sure MSN prefers absolute URLS for some reason. This can be helpful later, and also avoid embaressing mis-links.



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