The basic elements of a html document

The basic elements of a html document

HTML TAG	Explanation of function
<html>	Introduces a "this is language you will understand" message to the browser.
<head> <title>This is where the title of the page goes which will appear right up the top of the browser window</Title>	Tells the browser that the title and other important document info will be found here

Note: It is is now also quite common (and progressively more important as new standards and browser versions cascade into excistance) to include a reference indicating the"Type of document" or Doctype tag.
Netscape 4.01 (used as editor) begins the page with:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
   <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
   <META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Werner Hammerstingl">
   <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Mozilla/4.01 (Macintosh; I; PPC) [Netscape]">
</HEAD>
If you write code using HTML 3.2 as your language, you would state:
<!doctype html public"-//w3c//dtd html 3.2 final//en">
<html>
<head>
<title> This is my document title</title>
</head>

The fact is that most browsers can presently live happily without this info (they are designed to pick up which version of html is used) but as more people design their own browsers, esp. now that Netscape gives away it's source code, you'll see a lot of confusion and cluncky behaviour emerge.

Body
and it's text and background attributes

HTML TAG

Explanation of function

The attributes following the body tag define the behaviour of text on the page.
Note: Colour reference is RGB from left to right.
That means if the left two digits have letters or numbers and the others are zeroes you have specified some kind of RED
The tags:
BODY TEXT is the general colour of the text
BGCOLOR is the background colour of the page
LINK (or BODY LINK) decribe the colour difference of text which is clickeable and will take you to another location
VLINK is the colour that clickeable text assumes after it has been clicked(visited).
ALINK is similar to Link in that it specifies an active link.

Actual text that will be visible as a body of text is specified by instructions such as the ones shown on the left/FONT>

Note:
If you wish to specify a background image instead of a plain colour, you must use a .gif or.jpg saved image, keep it linked using correct directory attibutes and specify it to function as background by stating:
<Background="whatever.gif">
If the image lives in a different folder it is describes as: <Background="Pictureorwhetever foldername/whatever.gif">
You should note that the .gif image will tile to fill the browser window and unless you want to make one large "backdrop", you can get awy with a symmetrically flippable image. Try this with a texture.

Closing the document

HTML TAG	Explanation of function
</body> </html>	These two statements tell the browser your document is finished. The / in html is alsways used to signify "end"

Make sure you save the document (as text only) aswhateveryoucallit.html or whateveryoucallit.htm Both work but be consistant. It's also a good idea to avoid any spaces ie. don't save as "whatever you call it .htm", use "whateveryoucallit.htm" instead.

If you want to know how to construct links click here.