Using a template page
| Introduction The basic tools A Page Template Formatting text Making a list Using colors and backgrounds Glossary |
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A template page is a
starter page, one that has the basics already on it, so you don't forget
the essential tags that every html page MUST have. 'Tags' are simply text commands that tell a browser how to display the text and images on the page. If the browser sees the tag to start bold text, everything after that will be displayed in bold, until it sees the tag to stop bold text. When it sees a tag to change font size or color, it obligingly changes the font size or color. Some tags tell the browser to jump to another place in the document, or even to a different address on the internet and display what it finds there. Other tags control how and where images appear. Every action that a browser is capable of taking is represented by a corresponding html tag. All you as the website designer has to do is use the correct tag for the operation you want to occur. It really is as simple as that. Here is a sample to download; feel free to copy and paste it as your own. If you click on the link, you'll see the text and can select it and copy it into your editor. Name it index.htm (or index.html, if your host server requires that). Click on 'Back' to return to this page. You can also use your browser's download facility to copy the index.txt file directly to your hard disk. In that case, rename the file to index.htm Here is what the template page will look like in your editor, with a brief description of each of the html tags. You don't need to know all the details of all of them at this point, only that these minimum tags must be present. By the way, don't copy and paste from the code on this page. To enable a browser to see the tags as text rather than commands, they must be typed on this page in a special way. If you cut and paste from this section of the page, you'll get the text equivalents of the tags rather than the tags themselves. If you want to use the sample file as your template, download it using the link above. < !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN" > <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Title Goes Here</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> Displayable text and graphic images go here, between the BODY tags </BODY> </HTML> The first line (DOCTYPE, etc.) is just a comment and doesn't have to be present, but its presence is a statement that you as the designer are adhering to the HTML specification. The <HTML> tag tells a browser that this page contains html tags and should be displayed according to the browser's rules for html. Notice that there is another HTML tag at the bottom, with a slash in front of it. The first <HTML> is the 'opening' tag and the second one is the closing tag. (The slash tells the browser that it is a closing tag.) You can see that both HEAD and TITLE have opening and closing tags. The TITLE tags are usually both on one line, around the title text. Note: Whatever you put between the TITLE tags will be displayed on the title bar in your browser program, not as a heading within the page area itself. See the next lesson on text formatting for the best way to create a headline or title for your page. The displayable text and graphics on your page must go between the opening and closing BODY tags. In other words, only the text and graphics between the BODY tags will be displayed. Previous page - the right tools Next Page - Formatting Text |