Beginners course in HTML

[Ste]

I have suddenly decided to see if I can learn a little bit of HTML.

The frustrating thing is that the books that I have looked at regurgitate the usual uninformative rubbish about how great it is to use and provide a few examples. (Probably stolen off other books).

But they seem to forget about telling you how you actually turn the code into a web page.

A bit like telling you about driving on a freeway but not telling you about ignition, clutch control, etc!

Has anyone got a few operations that I can perform including how to turn the code into something?

Cheers

[Dreadful Scathe]

yes - what isp are you with first ? they often give free web space and its a good palce to start

[RedFox]

...how to turn the code into something?

Not sure how basic you mean? If you mean very basic, write the HTML code in a text file, save & close it, change the file extension from .txt to .html and you've got a page to open in your browser.

[Beowulf]

HTML is really easy once you start using it.. if you can post here and understand the use of Bold, Italic and underline commands then you've already got a basic grasp of the fundamentals.

An HTML file is just a text file that's "decoded" by the browser. The ML of HTML stands for markup language.. that is for example, if you put a <b> before and a </b> after the word Bold you'll get a BOLD (on the forum use [Square brackets]

A really good site for learning HTML is the W3 Schools page. Loads of web tutorials from the basic to the advanced.

HTML Tutorials

[StokeBloke]

HTML is really easy once you start using it.. if you can post here and understand the use of Bold, Italic and underline commands then you've already got a basic grasp of the fundamentals.

An HTML file is just a text file that's "decoded" by the browser. The ML of HTML stands for markup language.. that is for example, if you put a <b> before and a </b> after the word Bold you'll get a BOLD (on the forum use [Square brackets]

A really good site for learning HTML is the W3 Schools page. Loads of web tutorials from the basic to the advanced.

HTML Tutorials

Beo beat me to it. The W3 school is a fantastic resource, was so pleased I read right through before linking off to it

[Mac]

Hang on im confused now!
Im sure you must be takiking about dance here as there is nothing else in the world ever ! (is there??)

Surely HTML is Highly Tensified Male Lead ?
and isn't ML Modern Latin? like M J is Modern Jive

and is W3 a venue like J 18?

Please tell me its so please im scared now!

[Ste]

Hi.

I was trying out different things throughout the evening. The w3 site was helpful thanks. And your posts.

1. My PC. Wrote out HTML code in notepad but when I tried to use IE to open it, nothing showed up in the file. I managed to open it but it just showed the code.

2. My Mac. I wrote out HTML code in text edit.Included code for text color and (I think) background. I opened it with IE. It didn't show the commands (success) and it did show some of the website material (success) but no colors and no background.

Now I am getting incredibly frustrated!

[bigdjiver]

Hi.

I was trying out different things throughout the evening. The w3 site was helpful thanks. And your posts.

1. My PC. Wrote out HTML code in notepad but when I tried to use IE to open it, nothing showed up in the file. I managed to open it but it just showed the code.

2. My Mac. I wrote out HTML code in text edit.Included code for text color and (I think) background. I opened it with IE. It didn't show the commands (success) and it did show some of the website material (success) but no colors and no background.

Now I am getting incredibly frustrated!

on your PC try cut and paste the 1st example into notepad and save as mypage.html. Does that work in IE?

[Dreadful Scathe]

1. My PC. Wrote out HTML code in notepad but when I tried to use IE to open it, nothing showed up in the file. I managed to open it but it just showed the code.

Notepad saves it with a .txt extension. When you select "save as" type "myfile.html" - WITH the quotes and it will save it correctly and work

2. My Mac. I wrote out HTML code in text edit.Included code for text color and (I think) background. I opened it with IE. It didn't show the commands (success) and it did show some of the website material (success) but no colors and no background.

You probably got something wrong. You can post what you did here if you like. Also, bear in mind, these are not commands in any way - a web browser simply sees anything between < and > as a possible formatting tag it will try and use. it will simply ignore it if its wrong and you won't see anything.

The good thing about the w3c test pages are they are completely interactive - select ANY example and type in any test you like.

[knightengale]

I have suddenly decided to see if I can learn a little bit of HTML.

The frustrating thing is that the books that I have looked at regurgitate the usual uninformative rubbish about how great it is to use and provide a few examples. (Probably stolen off other books).

But they seem to forget about telling you how you actually turn the code into a web page.

A bit like telling you about driving on a freeway but not telling you about ignition, clutch control, etc!

Has anyone got a few operations that I can perform including how to turn the code into something?

Cheers

Morning Ste

I have some training manuals I got from an old job a few years back. They are in PDF if you PM me I can email you them. There nothig to complex. WIth there being 4 in total. 2 of which are manuals and the other 2 are workshops.

If you want them let me know your email address (PM me ) and ill send you them along . Total size is 3.46MB.

[TurboTomato]

Beo beat me to it. The W3 school is a fantastic resource, was so pleased I read right through before linking off to it

Another thumbs up for the W3 schools site - very useful!

[Gadget]

1. My PC. Wrote out HTML code in notepad but when I tried to use IE to open it, nothing showed up in the file. I managed to open it but it just showed the code.

Just to expand on the blue one's solution and tell you why it works;
Windows by default hides the bit at the end of files that it uses to tell it which program to open it with. (File Extensions) These are normally three letters like .txt .doc .htm .exe .msi .zip etceteras.

When you edit, open, save... a file it will always keep the same extension related to the program you are using. When you "Save As", it normally changes the extension (& does other stuff) so that the file will open with another program.

When you "rename" a file (in XP and Vista) it still hides the extension and you just change the actual 'name' (eg changing a notepad "test" to "test.htm" actually changes from "text.txt" to "text.htm.txt" so it's still a notepad document.)

When you use quotes in the "save as", you tell it to rename the file exactly as you typed it, and never mind with this silly extension business.

Personally, I would change the view to show extensions, then you can actually see what's what and change it. (Explorer|tools|folder options|view|Hide extensions of known files - tic this off {it's somewhere different in Vista, but it's the same option})