=---------------------------------------------------= LITTLE INTRODUCTION TO HTML CODE by ThanatouAnghelos, 2000 You can dowload some useless articles like this at the following URL: articles.tahome.cjb.net. =---------------------------------------------------= You certnaily heard someone talking about HTML, wondering "but what are they saying?" and something else. HTML just stands for HyperText Markup Language, and it's a real language, like BASIC or Pascal. The only difference is that HTML is not used to make programs (as BASIC and Pascal do instead - even if is known to everyone that Pascal is better...), but just to be used in combination with a browser (like Lynx, Mosaic, Internet Explorer, Netscape, and so on). The HTML programming is, as of course any coerent language programming, quite difficult to learn. This is absolutely right, because is normal that the work of programmes has as target only a little percentual of the total computer users in the world, isn't it? But you are very lucky, the Death Angel loves you all and want to help you to learn the basics of this language. FIRST OF ALL: THE HTML's PHILOSOPHY and TERMINOLOGY HTML, as the name suggests, was born with the initial aim of being only a simple language to create hypertext: pages that contain link to other pages to jump from a page to other without following a sequential order as a typical text or book. So there was a code like this: [it indicates the begin] This document is an example. To read something about anything else you can jump to the page about something else [this is the link] or you can end here. [it indicates the end] As you can note, each HTML command is enclosed in brackets (eg. ), and at the end of the command there is a slash to indicate the end of the command (eg. ). The HTML command is called "tag", while the command with the slash is the "closing tag". Some tags don't require closing tag. The tags of course were very useful in the past, because they worked as a sort of "attributes" of the text (for example you can use text to make this text bold) like a formatted document; but now, the evolution of HTML required the using of other kinds of attractions like images, animations or even the need of making little applications to embed in the HTML code. The using of scripts (like Java, that you surely have heard lots of times somewhere), supplied to the inability of the HTML code to give interaction to the user (showing then only a 'static' hyper- text) using only the tags. The text the follows the tag name until the closing bracket (eg. HREF= something_else) is called "parameter" of the tag. the parameters usually are required to tell the browser to execute the command in a particular mode (I mean, apart from the defaults of the browser). As first, there was simple browsers that understood the HTML targets: they supported only text and links. Nothing else. There is also a browser for Linux (Lynx) that still does not support graphics. The first that began supporting them was Mosaic at the middle of '90s. Then Netscape and IE and the other graphical browsers were born more or less togheter. SECOND OF ALL: STRUCTURE Usually to introduce any programming language the authors make a little stupid application called "Hello world!" that just prints "Hello world!" and exits. Here is a typical "Hello world!" in HTML: Hello World! Hello World! Try it copying and pasting it on a file called for example helloworld.htm or .html. These are the default extensions for HTML documents. As said on the previous chapter the tag and is closing define the begin and the end of the code that the browser should consider. The tag defines a special area like a "header": these informations will not printed. The "core" of the document is the tag. Here you can insert the text that you will see on the browser window. Of course you can also add some informations making a document like this: Hello World!

Hello World!

Hi to everyone! In this example you saw some other tags like "META" that is usually used by search engines to find your page using some data about it (for example author, description, keywords, and so on).

puts on the center of the window the text. You can also use
, that offers you even the possibility of setting other aligns like ALIGN=LEFT, ALIGN=RIGHT or, rarely, ALIGN=JUSTIFY. tells the browser to show an image called smilingface.jpg.
is used to tell the browser to make a carriage return (that is the same as you write a document and then you press "Enter" or "Return"). Keep in mind that if you press Enter in the HTML code, the browser does not make a carriage return, but keeps on the same line. You need to use

to make a longer cr (used to divide paragraphs of a document). Ok, stop now, there are so many books to see if you want to learn more about HTML language. Good luck! -=EOF=-