MA10126 Introduction to HTML Gavin Shaddick www.bath.ac.uk/~masgs/ma10126.html
Web addresses URL - Uniform Resource Locator "protocol://address" protocol is something like http, gopher, FTP, telnet address is merely the server and pathname (if any) of a given resource or page For example, http://www.bath.ac.uk
What is HTML? HTML – “hypertext mark up language” a format that tells a computer how to display a web page in a browser, e.g Explorer, Netscape. The documents themselves are plain text files with special "tags" or codes that a web browser knows how to interpret and display on your screen.
Where do you create HTML files ? Any text editor program capable of creating plain text files e.g. emacs, pico or even notepad in windows. Dedicated HTML editor or generator, e.g. Frontpage You cannot guarantee that your document will appear to other people exactly as it does to you.
Tags HTML is composed of tags. HTML tags are always enclosed in angle-brackets, < > Tags typically occur in begin-end pairs. These pairs are in the form <tag> ... </tag>
Begin-end tags
Document tags The first and last tags in a document should always be the HTML tags <html> </html> If you were to load such a page into a Web browser, it wouldn't do anything except give you a blank screen
Heads and titles HEAD TITLE contain all of the document's header information, e.g. title <head> </head> TITLE This will appear at the top of the browser's title bar, and also appears in the history list. Will also go into a bookmark list <title> Document Title </title>
Body BODY comes after the HEAD structure. Between the BODY tags, you find most of the content that gets displayed in the browser window. <body> This appears in the browser window </body>
First web page <html> <head> <title>MA10126 - HTML</title> </head> <body> This appears in the browser window </body> </html>
Putting it all together
Comment Tags If you want to leave yourself notes in an HTML document, but don't want those notes to show up in the browser window <!-- Hi, I'm a comment. --> you do need an exclamation point after the opening bracket, but not before the closing bracket. there is no end tag, i.e. </!-- text --> This is an empty tag
Headings Used to set apart document or section titles. There are six levels of headings, from Heading 1 through Heading 6. Heading 1 (h1) is "most important" and Heading 6 (h6) is "least important." <h1>Heading 1</h1> <h2>Heading 2</h2> <h3>Heading 3</h3> <h4>Heading 4</h4> <h5>Heading 5</h5> <h6>Heading 6</h6>
Paragraphs The beginning of a paragraph is marked by <p>, and the end by </p>. <p> Paragraphs can often be far too long, wandering on with no clear sense of direction or purpose, boring the reader to sleep and obscuring the point of the message contained within the text. </p> <p> On the other hand, they can be pretty short. </p> <p> Really short. </p>
Line break If you want to end a line after a certain word, but don't want to start a new paragraph Use the <br> tag There is no </br> tag – another empty tag <p> If you want to force a line break for some reason, but it doesn't make sense to start a new paragraph, then you can use the line break tag just as I will do at the end of this sentence.<br> See the forced display on the next line?<br> How about there?<br> Or there? </p>
Hyperlinks HREF stands for "Hypertext REFerence” Have you seen the <a href="http://www.bath.ac.uk/"> Bath home page </a> <a href=“c:\web\example1”> Click here to see this example </a>
Images Images are placed in Web documents using the IMG tag, <img> Kept in separate files Use a SRC attribute - "source" Can be a web address or a file <img src="URL of graphic"> <img src=“c:\web\figures\boatseattle.jpg">
Creating your own home page on BUCS Run the mkhome command on UNIX server Creates a basic home page (ie name, postal address, phone & fax numbers and e-mail address). Home page is called index.html Created in a directory called public_html in your UNIX home directory Also accessible on H drive under public_html
Your homepage on the web Once you've created your personal home page it will be added to the list of all personal home pages at Bath URL: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~username/ index.html will be the first page that opens This facility is provided as a personal privilege and should not be abused