Learnings of the Week [ February 2-6, 2009 ]

In this week, we just review our lesson about HTML.

What is an HTML File?

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language

An HTML file is a text file containing small markup tags

The markup tags tell the Web browser how to display the page.

An HTML file must have an htm or html file extension

An HTML file can be created using a simple text editor.

HTM or HTML Extension?

When you save an HTML file, you can use either the .htm or the .html extension. We have used .htm in our examples. It might be a bad habit inherited from the past when some of the commonly used software only allowed three letters extensions.

Note on HTML Editors.

You can easily edit files using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor like Frontpage, Claris Home Page or Adobe PageMill instead of writing your markup tags in a plain text file.

But if you want to be skillful Web developer, we strongly recommend that you use a plain text editor to learn your primer HTML.

HTML Elements.

HTML documents are text files made up of HTML elements.

HTML elements are defined using HTML tags.

HTML Tags

HTML tags are used to mark-up HTML elements

HTML tags are surrounded by the two characters <>

The surroundings characters are called angle brackets

The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag

The text between the start and end tags is the element content.

Tag Attributes

Tag attributes can provide additional information about the HTML elements in your page.

Basic HTML Tags

The most important tags in HTML are tags that define headings, paragraphs and line breaks.

Comments in HTML

The comment tag is used to insert a comment in the HTML source code. A comment will be ignored by the browser.

You can use comments to explain your code, which can help you when you edit the source code at a later date.

HTML Character Entities

Some Characters like the <>

To display a less than sign (<) in HTML, we have to use a character entity.

A character entity has three parts: an ampersand (&), an entity name or a # and an entity number, and finally a semicolon(;).

To display a less than sign in an HTML document we must write: < or <.

The advantage of using a name instead of a number is that a name is very easy to remember.

Posted by:

RAE ANGELINE S. PALEN

IV - Rizal