A twenty minute primer on HTML

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. In this case hyper- means "beyond or outside of" the text, because the original web pages were largely text. It works by a system of "tags", which identify the commands your browser uses to present a web page. This is what a tag looks like.

It says "make a horizontal line", like this. It doesn't need a "closing tag".

We can dress it up a bit.

Here is another example of a tag which doesn't require a closing tag.

It says "make a line break", a term from a time when teletype machines were used as computer printers. It's one of the most common tags used.

The tags below all use closing tags. The first one just says "center everything between the two tags".

The next one says make the text italic.

This is italic

These say make the text bold.

This is bold.

We can center the bold text.

The next tags say "begin and end a paragraph".

The next two tags are very important because they provide links to other internet addresses. The first one says "go to mypicturesite.com, look in directory (folder) images and download image001.jpg to this page. The next one says "when the text here is clicked on, go to the home (main index) page of mypicturesite.com".

We can combine the two tags. Now they say "when I click on the picture downloaded to this page from mypicturesite.com take me to mypicturesite's home page".

More paired tags.

Start and end a table.

Start and end a table row.

Start and end a table data cell.

Use this size, face and color of font.

Colors are usually specified by a number placed between the quotation marks, Red=#FF0000. Here is a chart with the "safe" colors.