Documentation:EHealth Strategy Office/Tech Support/Website/HTML Basics
HTML Resources
- Getting Started with HTML - World Wide Web Consortium
- HTML Introduction - W3 Schools
- HTML Beginner Tutorial - HTML Dog
What is HTML?
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is a way of describing how a set of text and images should be displayed to the viewer, similar in concept to a newspaper editor’s markup symbols.
HTML is very easy to use; it was designed that way. You don’t have to be a programmer to use it. If you can edit a text file, then you can write HTML (and if you can write an email, you can edit a text file).
HTML Elements (Tags)
The basic unit of HTML markup is called a Tag. You wrap tags around chunks of text that you want to manipulate. These chunks might be <p>paragraphs</p>, they might be <strong>bold text</strong>, they might be <a href="http://www.google.com/">hyperlinks</a>.
The reason we say “wrap” is because every tag that is opened, must eventually be closed.
- An opening tag looks like this: <a>
- A closing tag, which begins with a slash, looks like this: </a>
- Tags that do not require both an opening and a closing tag, such as line breaks, look like this: <br />
Commonly Used Tags
- p. Paragraph. This makes a chunk of text appear like a paragraph, with a little bit of space at the bottom.
- br. Line Break. This tag forces a new line to begin. Used to hard wrap text.
- a. Anchor. These make links. Not sure why they don’t call it a link, but hey.
- img. IMaGe. Allows you to insert images into your page.
- div. Division. This is a general block element that allows you to create styles around.
Attributes
Most tags also carry things called attributes. This is a way of specifying specific things that you want to make happen.
Tags with attributes inside it looks like this:
<a href="http://www.google.com/">This will be a link to Google.</a>
- Tag : a
- Attribute 'href'. Reference: website that the link will go to. (Don't forget the http:// !!)
<img src="http://flickr.com/.../example.jpg" alt="An example image" height="250" width="400" />
- Tag : img
- Atrribute 'src'. Source: where the actual image is located (most often a URL)
- Attribute 'alt'. Alternate text: words that are used by screen readers for blind visitors and search engines.
- Attribute 'height'. Specifies how high (in pixels) you want your image to appear.
- Attribute 'width'. Specificies how wide (in pixels) you want your image to appear.