Simple HTML Tutorial

Introduction

This page is the starting point for a very easy & gentle introduction to HTML4. There are other tutorials available, but probably the best place to go for information is at the Web Design Group's hang-out.

HTML4 is what we shall be learning as this is the latest ratified version and mainly because it is the version I was taught at night school recently.

In order that these pages download quickly, I shall refrain from fancy flashy stuff like Javascript etc - unless I need to have one so that you can see the results of a session.

Navigation

You will notice along the top of each tutorial, a navigation bar which allows you to jump from one lesson to the next. Alternatively, there is a 'next & previous' navigation at the bottom of each lesson.

Contact me

You can contact me here (at home) or here (at work) for requests, corrections, comments etc. (If you want !)

Download

You can download the individual html files here. Unzip them all into the same directory and load up 'index.html' in your browser.

Requirements

You will need the following tools in order to use this course ...

A Browser

This is required so that you can see the results of the code you have written. If you have more than one browser, this is even better because some 'standard' HTML facilities are not implemented in all browsers. In order that you can see what your page will look like, it is best to view it in at least two browsers. Internet Explorer & Netscape Navigator are the most popular for Windows at this point in time. Opera is another excellent one - which is starting to build up a following.

A text file editor

This is required so that you can actually do some HTML coding. You don't need any special stuff like word processors, a plain text editor (NotePad is adequate, PFE is much much better) is best. Word Processors can save files as HTML - I have found that this is a bit hit and miss - especially if you type HTML tags into one and then save as an HTML file. What happens is that all your text gets HTMLised and leads to all sorts of problems.

I personally use AceHTML4 Pro for my web page building. This is not one of those WYSIWYG editors like Front Page 2000 or Hot Metal etc, but it is a text based editor with additional facilities for editing tags and their attributes. WYSIWYG is for people like managers who don't like to get their hands dirty in the coding department :o)

Without any further ado, lets get on ......