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WEB DESIGN: BASICS

What is HTML?

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the code used to write most documents on the World Wide Web.

HTML codes (called "tags") tell your browser how to arrange text and images on the computer screen.

You can write the code yourself using any text editor, or can use any one of several commercially available HTML editors to create a document (e.g., Dreamweaver).

HTML TAGS consist of a tag NAME and one or more tag ATTRIBUTES.

A tag begins with "<" and ends with ">". For example the tag that declares that the page is an HTML document is <HTML>

Most tags require an open tag and a close tag. For example at the beginning of a page, use <HTML>; at the end of the page use </HTML>. The difference between the two is the "/" before the tag name in the close tag.

Try this: Bring up a webpage in your browser and select View --> Source to see the HTML tags.

Additional Material

  1. Information on HTML from the W3C.
  2. Online tutorial from W3Schools.
  3. HTML cheat sheet


WEB DESIGN: Basics • Last Modified: September 2004