Quackit

This is the print version of http://www.quackit.com/html/tutorial/getting_started.cfm

Getting Started (Print Version)

OK, lets get straight into it. Here, you will learn just how easy it is to create a web page. In fact, by the time you've finished with this web page, you will have created your own web page!

When you create a web page you will usually do something like this:

  1. Create an HTML file
  2. Type some HTML code
  3. View the result in your browser
  4. Repeat the last 2 steps (if necessary)

Creating a Webpage

OK, let's walk through the above steps in more detail.

  1. Create an HTML file

    An HTML file is simply a text file saved with an .html or .htm extension (i.e. as opposed to a .txt extension).

    1. Open up your computer's normal plain text editor (this will probably be Notepad if you're using Windows or TextEdit if you're using a Mac). You could use a specialized HTML editor such as DreamWeaver or FrontPage if you prefer.
    2. Create a new file (if one wasn't already created)
    3. Save the file as html_tutorial_example.html

  2. Type some HTML code

    Type the following code:

    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Tutorial Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Less than 5 minutes into this HTML tutorial and
I've already created my first homepage!</p>
</body>
</html>

  3. View the result in your browser

    Either...

    1. Navigate to your file then double click on it

    ...OR...

    1. Open up your computer's web browser (for example, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape etc).
    2. Select File > Open, then click "Browse". A dialogue box will appear prompting you to navigate to the file. Navigate to the file, then select "Open".

  4. Repeat the last 2 steps until you're satisfied with the result

    It's unrealistic to expect that you will always get it right the first time around. Don't worry - that's OK! Just try again and again - until you get it right.

Explanation of code

OK, before we get too carried away, I'll explain what that code was all about.

We just coded a bunch of HTML tags. These tags tell the browser what to display and where. You may have noticed that for every "opening" tag there was also a "closing" tag, and that the content we wanted to display appeared in between. Most HTML tags have an opening and closing tag.

All HTML documents should at least contain all of the tags we've just coded and in that order.

The next lesson goes into a bit more detail about HTML tags.

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