Basic HTML

This Web page demonstrates how Hypertext Markup Language works. By looking at the source document and printout of the display form, you can learn how the tags work. A html file includes the text that you want to appear on your web page plus tags, text surrounded by pointy brackets. Some tags come in pairs. HTML files include a head and a body section. Look at these tags in the HTML source file. Notice also that line breaks and white space is generally ignored. The big letters were started using the h1 tag and then turned off using the /h1 tag.

In HTML, b stands for bold, i for italic and p for paragraph. A p tag generally skips a line. I say 'generally' because the exact action depends on the browser. A br (for break) tag causes a new line, with no extra spacing.
HTML files are all text. You include images (and other things) in a Web page by using tags. The tag to include an image is the img tag. The source parameter (src stands for source) tells the browser where to find the file. In this case, the birdhome.gif file is located in the same folder as this html file.

A hyperlink is done using an a tag (a stands for anchor) and a closing a tag. The a tag includes a href (hyperlink reference) parameter that indicates the new file. Here is a link to the Purchase College web site . What is in-between the a and the /a is what you see to click on. You can test your html file even if you are not connected to the Internet. In this case, the browser will display an error message indicating that it could not find the file.


The hr tag stands for horizontal rule. This is a line across the page. You can nest tags. To make an image a link, you put the image tag within the a and /a tags. . In this case, the same image used above is used to be a link. Notice also that we modified the size. Lastly, we include a link to another page located in the same folder. A web site usually includes many different HTML files. This is an example we will get to later in the course on image maps .

You can create a link for sending e-mail. It will only work if the computer has been set up to do e-mail. This is not the case in the computer lab.