Online Mentoring: Lesson 8

What is HTML

Hyper-text markup language is the "code" that web servers and web browsers speak. Somewhat like a computer programing language it is actually just ascii text with certain sets of symbols representing the various commands that allow graphics to be sent from the server to the client, and hyperlinks to be pointed to an entirely different site anywhere else on the Internet. Because they are not used very often in normal writing HTML uses the less than, "<" and greater than, ">" symbols to indicate an HTML function. Below are a couple sample lines of HTML code. The actual commands will be explained in the other sections of this lesson.

<HTML>
<HEAD>

</HEAD>
<BODY>
<A HREF="www.wmc.edu">Western Montana College</A>
<IMG SRC="picture.gif">
</BODY>
</HTML>

For now, let's just look at some of the common things you'll see in various HTML code. First, notice that the first and last lines are similiar. As a matter of good HTML "style" it is standard to put a HTML "start" line at the top of the document and a "stop" command at the bottom. A command by itself is a start of a function. A command with a / in front of it is the end of a function. In this way, commands can overlap or be embedded within one another. Notice in line six of the example that a similiar thing is done with the "anchor" (A) function that connects the URL with the text that is will appear as a hyperlink on the page.

After you have set up your start and end of your HTML document, you should put in the two major parts, the headers and the body. The header section (HEAD) is where you place tags which apply to the entire document. An example is the <TITLE>, which is the site name that is listed across the top of your browsers window. For instance, for this lesson the title is "Online Mentoring: Lesson 8." The BODY section, is where you put the text, graphics, and hyperlinks that appear on the page.

Text paragraphs like the one you are reading now, are handled by placing a at the beginning of the text, and a at the end. For example:

For now, let's just look at some of the common things you'll see in various HTML code. First, notice that the first and last lines are similiar. As a matter of good HTML "style" it is standard to put a HTML "start" line at the top of the document and a "stop" command at the bottom.

Sometimes you'll want to force line breaks at certain points in your HTML documents. The code forces the lines to break at the places you specify. An address is a good example:

Western Montana College 
710 S. Atlantic 
Dillon, MT 59725 

Otherwise, the text will automatically wordwrap to the width of the web browser being used to look at it.

Finally, you have undoubtedly noticed that this the examples show the greater than and less than characters and enclosed functions as text instead of actually acting upon them. This is because HTML also allows you to use special codes to represent characters that wouldn't normally be displayed. The code for the greater than symbol is & gt, without the space in between. The space is inserted because without it you'd end up seeing the > symbol. Using these codes you can also insert a number of special non-ascii characters such as the copyright symbol, ©.

To see a chart of the characters and their code, click on: Codes