Creating Web Pages
Over the next few issues of our TXT Newsletter I will conduct a tutorial on Creating Web Pages. It really isn't as difficult as it may appear.
Web pages are written in HTML (HyperText Markup Language), a text-based language. Internet Browsers like Netscape, Internet Explorer and Mosaic read the HTML files, and display them on the screen. The difference between an HTML document and a word processing document is that the same HTML document can be read on many different computer platforms, for example PC, Macintosh and UNIX whilst the word processing document can not.
If ever you want to see what makes a web page "tick" all you have to do is display the page on your browser then click on VIEW, View Source. You will see all the special codes used in HTML that tell the browser how the page is to be displayed.
Although the newer versions of many popular word processors allow
you to convert a document to HTML format, they are not true Web Editor programs.
I have become familiar with a program which is available on the WEB called
FlexED. It is a stand-alone program. This means that it doesn't need an
expensive word processing program to run. It also means that you
can deal with your HTML documents directly, instead of having to
"pretend" that they're standard word processor documents. While
you are creating your HTML documents, you can view the document
at hand with FlexEDs viewer. That is, you can view your Web Pages
as it would display in any Web Browser while you create your
documents.
You do not need a web editor to create a web page. All you need really is a very
basic editor like Notepad that creates a pure text file without adding any additional
characters to your file. A Web Editor however allows you to create complex web pages
without actually having to learn HTML.
Web Editors like FlexED offer many ways to creating HTML documents easier. If you are an experienced HTML author, you can type all the formatting tags directly, or select them from menus and pop-up lists Many hours of productive time on your pages are saved. If you are new to HTML, FlexED has screens and wizards to allow you to create and format your documents easily, insert images and tables, and create hypertext links or hot spots (links to other documents) onto your document without having to learn the HTML language. HTML tags are color coded so they can be easily distinguished from your own text.
The following will create a very stripped-down web page. Please notice that many HTML tags or codes are used in pairs to indicate the beginning and end of of that code.
<html> and </html> indicate that all between these tags is part of the web page written in HTML
<head> and </head> indicate that all between these tags contain special instruction for the browser and search engines. Here will be other tags like (title, meta name=, meta description=) that's for later.
<title> and </title> indicate that all between these tags is the page title which displays at the top of your browser.
<body> and </body> indicate that all between these tags contain the main body of the web page. <body> and </body> allows many switches which control how your page will appear. You can have special instructions here that will pick the default page background color (or even a picture file for a background), font color, and the color that links and expired links will appear in.
<p> and </p> indicate a paragraph
What do you think of having "The TXT" on-line? E-mail Bob Pajot ---> rdpajot@netcore.ca