How to write HTML - Part 1
Recently a co-worker has been interested in learning a little bit of HTML. He’s very insightful in realizing the huge value you get for investing a little time. Honestly there’s really only a little bit you need to learn in order to have a pretty good understanding of HTML. I always tell people, “I could teach you in 5 minutes - it’s simple.” I’m going to give you a really quick introduction before we get going. (It is actually a fairly simple concept… sort of.)
Here’s an example of some basic HTML code (don’t take it too seriously.)
<html> <head> <title>This is my web page.</title> </head> <body> <h1>I hope you like it.</h1> <p> It's <b>bold</b>, and should <i>really</i> highlight my web design <strong>ability</strong>, <del>seriously</del>. </p> </body> </html>
That is actually enough code to create a whole page but I’ll return to it later. Before that I should explain some things about HTML (I always remembered stuff better in classes when the professor explained the scope of the subject first.)
Here are some primary points about HTML:
- HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, is pronounced by saying the letters “h-t-m-l”, and has been around at least since I was 13 when I started learning it.
- HTML is not a programming language, it is, was intended to be from its original conception (but hasn’t always been used as:) a “(Semantic) Markup Language.”
- HTML is what the majority of the web pages on the internet are written in.
- HTML pages can be used with other languages and techniques (which I will eventually write about) including Java Script, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), XML (Extensible Markup Language), or other web design languages.
- You can call an HTML page: an HTML file, an HTML document or an HTML page - they all mean the same thing.
- You can write an HTML page in Windows Notepad. You don’t need any special programs, just save your file with the .html extension.
- For example, when you go to http://www.google.com you’re actually looking at http://www.google.com/index.html because the default file that loads when you go to a website is index.html
- The way it works is very simple: in an HTML file, you write content (like an article) and place “tags” around your words, sentences & other content to describe it’s meaning.
- An HTML page always starts with <html> and ends with </html>.
In the above code, the sentence, “I hope you like it.” is surrounded by h1 “tags” (<h1>…</h1>). The h1 tags tell the browser that the sentence “I hope you like it.” - is the heading (specifically a level 1 heading.) Also note: ALL of the content is surrounded by HTML tags (<html>…</html> - again, they are always the first AND last tags in an HTML file - the HTML tags tell the browser that we’re looking at page written in HTML (not some other kind of language like XML, Java Script, PHP, etc.))
There are a ton of HTML tags you can use to describe different types of content like: <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6> (but not <h7>, <h8> and on…), <b> (bold), <i> (italic), <u> (underline), … here is a list of all the current HTML tags.
I mentioned earlier that it was insightful for my coworker to to take on a moderate interest in learning HTML for several reasons. The majority of businesses interact online now already but that percentage is only going to grow over time. This means the majority of our population will be communicating through a medium written in this language. You might think this reasoning is sort of akin to saying a long time ago, “You should learn about radio wave frequencies because radio is going to become a big thing in the future.” but I disagree. I believe this medium is more accessible than any previous one. Think about MySpace and everyone customizing their pages (to look horrifying) - they’re writing in a web language (not specifically HTML) but the fact is that if kids are doing it now on a huge-scale level, it’s going to stay with them as they grow and it will become a part of our future society. I think if it’s a language that a large percentage of people understand already, then it will indirectly cost less to solve problems by using that preexisting knowledge later on. I could speculate all day on the future but in the end, I really probably just don’t know what I’m talking about.
In the next part to this exciting lesson series, I will talk about some more technical stuff, and give some super exciting examples of the things you should probably know first. If you have suggestions for something you want me to explain, please comment.
Check out the other parts in this article series:
How to write HTML - Part 2 ยป
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
I have visited your site 612-times
Aug 14th, 2007
Heidi Cool
I think it is helpful for any communicator to learn a bit of HTML. Even if they won’t be using it themselves it helps them work with the people who are doing the coding. Last summer I wrote a bit about learning HTML (and provided a homework assignment) to help the two writers on my team learn the basics. Since then they’ve taken over the project of producing our daily email newsletter. Before we did this they would write the copy then send it to me to put into HTML. Now they just write it in Dreamweaver and a great deal of time is saved by all.
They were intimidated at first, but picked it up quite quickly.
Aug 23rd, 2007
aianduskool@aed.rapina.ee
zetia
May 4th, 2008
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