HTML: beginning the code journey (a tutorial)

HTML has not been around for many years. November 1990 marks the day of the first web page and back then there were little to no HTML standards to be followed. A group called the World Wide Web Consortium was then formed and have since set the standards that are widely accepted and we will base our teachings around them.

Since my initial plan to get into my own integr8dsoul.com was foiled for now by a lost password, I took up Semeicardia's idea: go to Tizag.com and try programming tutorials there on notepad.

Mostly, I copied code and pasted it into the notepad, saving my changes. Tizag has a link straight to a notepad; you can also access your computer and search for "notepad" and you'll get one.

My next option was to download something called "Crimson Editor" as a more sophisticated substitute for the notepad, which I can also continue to use.

My next lesson told me two things about code: is a necessary command, and so is . I was asked to examine these closing tags. They tell the browser certain tags are ending. Tizag tells me:

The "/" that is placed before the tag's name informs the browser that you would like to stop using the specified tag. is used to begin a tag and is used to end a tag.

The order that opening tags appear and ending tags appear follow an important rule. If an HTML tag is opened within another, for example the body tag is opened inside the html tag, then that tag(body) must close before the outer(html) tag is closed.

We ended the body tag first because it was opened most recently. This rule of "closing the most recent tag before closing older tags" applies to all HTML tags.

Then, I'm given some more code to copy, and paste onto my "index.html" notepad document.

The next new tags are: < and "head" and>, then < then "title" then >, < then a "p" and close with >, and < then the letter "h" then a >.

I can't type these in without messing up my blog post! It's < then h then 2 then > but if I type it like the others, it will not publish my blog---because it's code, and the blog reads it as code. In fact, typing any of these, code style, affects my post!

Head tells the browser useful information like title and topic. Title is where the title bar will be. H2 represents one of the six different sized headers; h2 is the second largest available, good for distinguishing your title.

goes at the beginning of a paragraph;

ends a paragraph.

(I actually typed a bracket <, then the p, then the > but it disappears, as does < then / then p then >. Typing the commands within the blog post causes the browser to read them like code, which they are! This is an example of how code is used every day to compose these blogs and give them special features, using other code commands, inserted into the text. It just complicates me showing you the terms on a blog, doesn't it? LOL)

Now, it seems, we're heading for REAL html coding!