HTML Introduction

My inaugural lesson into HTML - inside the code - introduced me to the concepts of HTML syntax. Our Information Technology teacher introduced us to the wonders of block-level and inline elements, opening and closing tags, and those wondrous self-closing tags.

We were also introduced to those HTML tags mostly used for segmenting - later to be known as page architecture - and HTML tags mostly for formatting. We were also introduced to doctypes and that nasty word "deprecated", when browser vendors like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera decide to comply with the recommendations provided by the W3C. Yes we even covered the W3C!

These HTML, CSS and JavaScript lessons were the lessons we covered for each of the weeks in our course, for each semester. I completed the lessons in class, saved all the lessons on a USB stick. A month later I invested in a domain name, website hosting, and Notepad++. I wasn't so great on the terminology back then. But I was eager to learn. Looking in the source code now I see how far I've come. I built this website. Then I built the websites of a handful of other people. Then I developed on a commercial scale. And now I come back full circle, to the inaugural lesson that led to one web page, that led to one website , that led to many.

Below - and inside the code - is the knowledge that I absorbed like a sponge to form the backbone of my expertise in the field. I hope it can become yours.

Line Breaks

The main tags in html that create new lines are:

Paragraph <p> and

Line breaks <br /> where the line break should occur.

Divisions <div> and Headers <h1> as inherent formatting also have line breaks.

Headers, Divisions and Spans

Divisions <div> allows you to apply styles to big chunks of your page at once. A line break is the only formatting inherent to a division.

Headers <h1> through to <h6> is basic html formatting used to quickly create section headers.

Inline spans <span> allows you to style smaller text or inline elements (elements nested within other elements). The unique style is recalled from CSS.

The distinction between inline and block tags is that "in-line" tags are placed anywhere within a line of text. Block-level tags are always displayed on a new line.

Basic HTML Formatting

There are a number of formatting elements for changing the font, size and color, that while still technically legal and widely supported, are being phased out of HTML

Bold <b>
Italics <i>
BIG <big> and small <small> are relative but different browser specifications dictate how much bigger or smaller to make text.
Big and small tags have a cumulative effect if used more than once <big> <big>

Use <code> <tt> <ktb> or <samp> To format with a monospaced font that you wish to offset from the main text.

₁²sub and superscripts <sub> and <sup>