Introduction
As a professional who deals with web files
(either as a webmaster or a Help programmer), you will consider an HTML
file on two fronts: what the browser "sees" and what the viewers see
(that's what the browser displays). This means, from your standpoint,
this kind of file is set in two versions. What the browser "sees" or
reads is made of special instructions you give to the browser. The
browser interprets your instructions and displays the result to the best
of its interpretation.
Although the HTML language is regulated
and monitored by an independent organization (www.w3c.org), not all
browsers read everything the same way. We will cover as many
instructions as necessary for our HTML Help lessons and as read by
Microsoft Internet Explorer.
An instruction you give to the browser is
called a tag. This means, an HTML file is made of tags, and there are a
lot of them. Since we have already mentioned that an HTML file is
considered as two versions of the same files (what the browser sees and
what the file viewers see), and both versions can be written in the same
language (in this case English), you need to let the browser know what
and where is a tag, and what and where is not a tag. Therefore you
enclose a tag between a < sign and a > sign. For example, a tag
could be written <house>; when the browser sees <house>, it
treats it as a tag and it will not display it. It will look into its own
dictionary and find out what the <house> tag mean.
If it can
interpret it, then it displays it accordingly, if it can't, then it
follows other instructions; for example, it could skip it, or display it
"as is". As a result, some browsers cannot read some tags while others
can…
You have two choices with regard to the text you want to display on the
file: you can type it "as is" or enclose it between specific tags. For
example, if you want to display the words Microsoft Internet Explorer,
you can just type them like that and they will be displayed fine. But if
you want to display them in a particular way, for example as Microsoft
Internet Explorer (notice that Microsoft is underlined and Internet is
in bold characters), you need to give special instructions to the
browser. In this case, all three words share a certain common
instruction, the first has its own instructions, and so does the second.
To make the browser display a word or group of words in a certain way,
you need to tell the browser where the word is or where the group of
words are, and to give a (or some) particular
instruction(s), you surround the word or group of words with
appropriate tags. To specify where the instruction, which means tag
starts, you type it as we have already learned, for example
<house>. To specify where the instruction, which means tag, ends,
you include the same tag but to show that this is the end of the
instruction, you add a forward slash "/" between the < and the tag
name. In this case that would be </house>. Everything between
<house> and </house> will be treated according to the
browser's interpretation of the <house> tag.
Almost all tags should have a beginning
and closing in your file(s): don't forget it. We will eventually find
out how to open and close a tag, and which tags don't need to be closed.
The tags you include in your files are not
case sensitive. This means <HTML>, <HTml>, and <html>
are interpreted in the same way. Unless stated otherwise, I like to
keep my tags in lowercase, as in <html>
Whenever the browser finds text in your
file, it tries to know how you want your text to display. You are
allowed to change a font's style, its color, or its name.
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