You shouldn't have to worry about anything - as soon as you save the file with the .html or .css extention, the syntax colouring will sort itself out.
I wrote these for another forum:
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10 minute guide to HTML
"
This is a short introduction to writing HTML. What is HTML? It is a special kind of text document that is used by Web browsers to present text and graphics. The text includes markup tags such as <p> to indicate the start of a paragraph, and </p> to indicate the end of a paragraph. HTML documents are often refered to as "Web pages". The browser retrieves Web pages from Web servers that thanks to the Internet, can be pretty much anywhere in World."
read on...
Getting started with HTML
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HOWTO: Teach yourself HTML
This is
not a HOWTO for
HTML, instead, it is quick guide on how to
teach yourself.
When I made my first web page, way back around 1997, the web browser Netscape came with an application called
Composer. I used this, but soon noticed it had a few 'characteristics' which I didn't like, for example, it would seem, for no apparent reanson, to add extra linebreaks (<br>) where I didn't want them. So, I started to look at the
HTML file with Notepad. I knew nothing about
HTML then, but noticed at the end of every line was the (<br>) tag. Where the extra line-breaks were, there were
two such tags. I also saw where I had bold text, the text was enclosed in the tags <b>and </b>, and so on.
I then did a web search for
HTML specifications and found the
W3C home pages.
I printed up the
HTML 4.01 specifications and used it to read up on what each of the tags did.
From then on 99% of my web page editing has been done in plain text editors.
Useful applications
Your PC comes will all the necessary tools to create your own web pages. For Windows, these include Notepad, Wordpad and Internet Explorer. However, they are very basic, and in the case of Internet Explorer, not very compliant to the
W3C requirements.
You can many applications that make web design much easier, even
without having to learn the codes behind the page. These include web page editors where you literally see what the page looks like as you work on it, much using a word-processor, such as
AbiWord or
Microsoft Word. This method is known as
WYSIWYG. There are also enhanced text editors that highlight the code, for example:
<a href="http://www.somewhere.net" title="An example link">Text about link here</a>.
The one's I have listed below are all
freely available to download and use:
-
Nvu: A graphical web page editor;
-
Notepad2: A plain text editor with code high-lighting.
-
Firefox: An alternative web browser to Internet Explorer.
Some more are listed here:
Free web building tools
Also, either download or bookmark these:
-
W3C HTML4.01 specification: The
HTML '
rulebook';
-
W3C CSS1 specification: The
CSS '
rulebook'.
I have not listed any image editors, as there are so many out there, and you can put together a useful web site
without graphics.
Teach yourself
The best way to learn something is to do it yourself. The next best way is to look at examples done by others.
Open a plain text file and write "Hello World", then save it as
hello_world.HTML.
Now look at it with the web browser.
Use the
HTML specifications to read how to make bold text, italics, justify paragraphs and so on.
Also, when you visit web pages, if you see an effect you like,
right-click on the page with your mouse and select
View page source - this will show the raw
HTML code.
These days, using
HTML to format and style web pages and discouraged. The preffered methed is to use style sheets, know as
CSS. This evolution of
HTML is known as
XHTML.
In the
header of your
HTML document, you will tell the browser that the web page is styled using
CSS, and you provide a link to the style sheet. Like
HTML documents,
CSS documents are written in plain, readable text, but have the extention
.css, the most common one is
style.css.
Style sheets are much better than trying to format everything in
HTML. For example, if you use several different fonts, colours and sizes. In
HTML, you have to define the font face, colour, size, and so on,
every time you change from one style to another.
There are plenty of tutorials and sites to help you, the one considered the best is
W3Schools.
The internet is huge place, a library greater than the one at Alexandria
*. Use search engines such as
alltheweb,
Google Yahoo!, to name but a few.
Notes
[table][tr][td]
CSS : [/td][td]
Cascading Style Sheet[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
HTML : [/td][td]
Hypertext Mark-up Language[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
WYSIWYG : [/td][td]
What You See Is What You Get[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
W3C : [/td][td]
World Wide Web consortium[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
XHTML : [/td][td]
Extensible Hypertext Mark-up Language[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
XML : [/td][td]
Extensible Mark-up Language[/td][/tr][/table]
* Search for it
