HTML stands for "HyperText Markup
Language"
HTML is not a programming language; it's a markup
language.
When you write HTML code, you are simply importing
raw text data and marking it up with tags that indicate where ceartain
formatting options begin and end.
What makes a tag? Well, a tag is a word or
abbreviation that represents a formatiing option and is enclosed in the "less
than" symbol "<" and the "greater than" symbol ">". Examples of common
tag names would be:
<P>
<I>
<B>
<BR>
<FONT>
<TABLE>
If you have a string of text such as "The rabid
orangutan darted swiftly through the canopy", and you insert a <B> tag
before "orangutan", you will tell the browser that from that point on, it
should make everything BOLD. So the following line of code:
The rabid <B>orangutan darted swiftly through the canopy
Will yield the following text in the browser:
The rabid orangutan darted swiftly through the canopy
You'll notice that everywhere after the <B>
tag, the text is now bold. How do you fix that? Use an end tag! End tags are
the second half of a tag and tell the browser where to stop applying the
formatting that is caused by the first half of the tag. They look the same as
the first part of the tag except for one minor difference. They contain a
forward slash "/". Here are examples of common start tags and their companion
end tags.
<P> </P>
<I> </I>
<B> </B>
<BR> </BR>
<TABLE> </TABLE>
If you add the appropriate end tag after the word
orangutan, you will see the following.
The rabid <B>orangutan</B> darted swiftly through the canopy
Which will yield the following text in the browser:
The rabid orangutan darted swiftly through the canopy
NOTE: Generally, I do not like to leave space
between the HTML tags and the code they affect. The reason for this is that it
may be possible to apply several text formatting attributes to an invisible
character such as a space " " which could wreak havoc on your troubleshooting
efforts.
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