Tutorial for beginners : Basic HTML part 1

If this tutorial is too basic for you, be sure to come back in a couple of days to see my next tutorial on how to debug your HTML layouts (for advanced users).

Basic HTML Part 1

You can use all those tricks when you write text into your profile on MySpace.com or when you write comments (unless the person that you write the comment to disabled HTML ). Of course, you can also use those tricks on all the places where you can write an HTML document.

HTML Tags : A simple definition

A HTML tag is simply a “special text markup” that changes how the text after or between it is displayed.

There is two “familly” of tags, a loner and a tag with a BODY. A “loner tag” is a tag alone like . It just sits there and doesn’t need to be closed. Buy the way, a BR tag is just a “Break Space”.

The tag with a BODY is a tag that needs to be closed and will affect the text between the opening of the tag and the end of the tag. For example, if I write hello in a HTML document, the HELLO text will be displayed in bold. So the is the opening tag, and the is the end tag. So B is a tag that needs to open and close. If you don’t close it, all the following text will be in bold !

BOLD

To make a text in BOLD just put the text you want to be bold between “B” tags like the following :

this text would be displayed in bold

This code gives : This text would be displayed in bold

ITALIC

To make a text appear in italic, just put the text between “I” tags like this :

this text is in italic

This code gives : this text is in italic

BREAK

To force a “enter” (or break space), just use the tag BR like this :

This line should be displayed on two lines if it is in a HTML document !

This code gives :
This line should be displayed
on two lines if it is in a HTML document !

Links and tag parameters

To make a link, you need to know what is a “tag parameter”. Lets say that the tag “superman” exists. It doesn’t, but lets pretend it does… So if I use <superman> in a HTML document, it does something (it’s up to your imagination). So if you see <superman cape=”red”>, then CAPE is a parameter of the tag SUPERMAN, and RED is the value of the parameter CAPE.

Superman, cape.. red.. What the hell am I talking about ?!… Okay, anyway, to make a link on a text, you would use the tag A with the parameter HREF (HREF is an acronym for Hypertext REFerence by the way) . The VALUE of the HREF PARAMETER should be the url of your links.

You’re lost ? Me too !! Okay, lets make an example…

Lets say that I want to make a link to MySpace.com but I want the site to be displayed when I click on the text “My favorite website”. So I’ll need the HREF PARAMETER of the A tag to be http://www.myspace.com (just like in the browser URL bar)

So, using the A tag with the HREF parameter, the code you need to use is :

<a href="http://www.myspace.com">My favorite website</a>

This code gives : My favorite website

So that’s it for the first basic HTML tutorials. I’ll make an advanced tutorial soon, on how you can debug your layout ! So if this tutorial is too “Newbie” for you, check back in a couple of days for the following tutorial !