HTML: Not a big, scary monster

Often, people who work with HTML refer to themselves as "Web programmers" or "HTML programmers", and that can lead to the intimidating thought that you will need to learn to be a computer programmer to build a Web page. Actually, only people who do not work with real programming languages (such as C, C++, Java, etc.) refer to themselves as such. Although you can utilize advanced features of HTML to do some fairly impressive displays, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the computer equivalent of making a homemade poster for your school president's election. "Should I make BIG LETTERS or make them different colors?"

Many Web sites are constructed using very high-powered technology, and have more complex applications built into the pages, but you can construct very good, professional-looking sites with very little experience or effort. The secret is to let the language do the work, so you look like a wizard. In order to do this, you need to understand the basics of HTML, and how it can help you.

The first thing you should know about HTML is that the language is based entirely on the use of tags. Tags are simply bookends that describe the information between them. For instance:

<B>This is Bold Text</B>, while this text is not.
will display as:
This is Bold Text, while this text is not.
The <B> tag says that the following text is to be displayed as BOLD, and the text will continue to be BOLD until the </B> tag, known as the closing tag, is located. In theory, every tag has a closing tag, but some do not require it. For instance, a <P> tag creates a new paragraph. There is a closing tag, </P>, but it is often left out because a browser will just automatically begin a new paragraph when a new <P> tag is encountered.

The first tag that should be placed in your document is the <!DOCTYPE ...> tag. Here is an example:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Final//EN">
This should be the first line in your document, as it tells your browser that it is working with an HTML document, version 4.0 of the W3C standards, displaying in English. True, a browser can display your page without this tag, but it may be garbled depending on language preferences or unreadable if the browser uses an older version of W3C standards to interpret it.

The next tag your page should begin with is <HTML> and your page should end with </HTML>. This lets the browser know that everything in between is an HTML document. For a basic page, that's all you really need. Just type text in between and you've created an HTML 4.0 document! Don't believe me? Try it! Open a text editor and type in:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Final//EN">
<HTML>
Hello, everyone!
</HTML>
Now save the document with a ".htm" or ".html" extension and open it with your Web browser. Congratulations! You're a "Web programmer"! (It's OK to giggle now).