Lesson One

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Just like 'follow the bouncing ball', power up Notepad and start with this...

<HTML> </HTML>

Each one of those is called a tag. There is a starting tag and a closing tag. To make a closing tag just add a / to the starting tag. Most, but not all tags have a closing tag.
Think of tags as talking to the browser, or better giving it instructions. What you have just told the browser is 'this is the start of a HTML document' (<HTML>) and 'this is the end of a HTML document' (</HTML>). Now we need to put some stuff into it.

Every HTML document needs a pair of HEAD tags.

<HTML> <HEAD> </HEAD> </HTML>

The only thing we have to concern ourselves with in the HEAD tags (for now) are the TITLE tags.

<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE></TITLE> </HEAD> </HTML>

And the bulk of the page is going to be within the BODY tags.

<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE></TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> </BODY> </HTML>

Oh, and one more thing, give your document a title.

<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>My home page</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> </BODY> </HTML>

Now save it, not as a text document, but as a html document. Save it as page1.html in a new folder somewhere. (Windows 3.x users save it as page1.htm) If you're not aware of how to do this then here's what you do... In your Notepad window click File then Save as.
You will be presented with a dialog box. Make a new folder by clicking this ->
Name it whatever you want. Then double click on it to open it up. Where it says File name: type in page1.html Where it says Save as type: make sure it says All Files(*.*)
Hit return and you're done!

Congratulations! You are the proud parent of a fully functional Web Page! You could upload it to a server and the whole world can see your creation! If you are using Netscape, the file you made should look something like this...

(if your Netscape icon is a little different, it doesn't matter)

You can double click on it now and see the results of your handiwork.

Unfortunately, as you can see, the page is just a little bit blank (but it is still a legitimate HTML document!). Next order of business is to start putting some neat stuff in your page.

The best way to use this tutorial is to run Notepad and two instances of Netscape. One Netscape window containing this tutorial and the other containing your new page. Just toggle between the three windows. If you are looking at this lesson in Netscape right now, you can open a second instance of Netscape in one of two ways- 1) Find the icon of the html file you just made (page1.html) and double click on it. Or- 2) In Netscape, click on File/Open File In Browser and browse to the file (page1.html).

Two quick points before we go on to lesson 2. One, what you made is a skeleton HTML document. This is the minimum required information for a web document and all web documents should contain these basic components. And two, the document title is what appears at the very top of the browser window.

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Lesson 1