Basic HTML
This page will only cover the most basic tags used in HTML, hypertext markup language. There are many excellent books and on-line tutorials available for those who need more in-depth help. I recommend checking out the NCSA (at UIUC) Beginner's Guide to HTML. Perhaps the most useful site I have found for the beginner is Annabella's HTML Help. This wonderful sight begins with the most basic, and goes into much greater detail than I am planning to do here. Another excellent page is HTML Goodies. This page is loaded with tutorials and primers.
We will start with formatting commands. All HTML documents should follow the same basic format:
HTML tags are enclosed in brackets, < & >, and most commands have an opening and a closing tag. The first tag, <html> tells your browser that this document is written using hypertext markup language and is closed by the final tag, </html>.
The <head> tags enclose information about your page, such as the title and "meta-tags", the description and keywords used by search engines to find your page. Some code for javascripts and other applications will also be inserted in the head, which is then closed with the </head> tag.
The <title> tags are nested between the head tags, and obviously enclose the title of your page. You should choose the most definitive title you can, given the limit of 64 characters. The title is picked up when a page is bookmarked, and it can be confusing if all the pages bookmarked are titled "My Homepage". If you view the source code for this page, you will see <title>Star Route HTML Help Page</title>.
The <body> tags enclose the main content of your page, the text, the images, and all of the source code that tells the web browser how to view them. The last tags in your source code should be </body> </html>. The <body> tag can contain attributes, specifying a background color, background image, or both. It can be important to include a background color (example: bgcolor=black) even if you have a background image, especially if you use white text on your page. If the background image doesn't load, most browsers will default to a white background, and your text will not show. The body tag can also contain "on-loads", such as the scrolling text you should see in the status window of your browser. If you view the the source code for this page, you will see: <Body background=234e.jpg onload="scroller_m4()">. 234e.jpg is the filename for the marble background I am using on these pages.
Many of the problems I see on webpages that do not load properly are caused by errors in these format tags. Often this happens when people cut and paste from different locations. Check to make sure anything you want to show on your page is between the <body> and </body> tags. Be sure you do not have duplicate tags. I see a lot of pages with more than one body or head tag.
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