About HTML
To begin learning about HTML, we will first go over what HTML is and what editor is used to write it.
Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), is the standard code format used to create a web page. These codes, also referred to as tags, are enclosed by the lesser than (<) and greater than (>) brackets and are most often written in lowercase letters.
HTML Tags
HTML tags are used to format web pages displayed within a web browser. They can be used to specify text size, fonts, colors, layout and much more.
Text Editor
Before you begin writing your HTML code, you will need to get a few things in order.
You will first need to decide what program you will use to write your code. If you want to write all of the code yourself, without any assistance, you can open a text editor on your computer.
If you’re a Mac user, you can open TextEdit, which should already be installed on your computer. You can open it from your ‘Dock’ or in your ‘Applications’ folder. Or, you can download the free text editor, TextWrangler.
If you’re a Windows user, you can open Notepad, which should already be installed on your computer. You can find it within your ‘Accessories’ folder. Or, you can download the free text editor, NoteTab.
HTML Editors
Although using a text editor is definitely an option, you may want to consider using an HTML editor, as it will make the process much easier.
If you’d like to use one of the best HTML editors available, Dreamweaver is the best. However, it is rather expensive. If you’d rather not spend a lot of money, there are other options.
If you’re a Mac user, you may want to use an HTML editor, such as PageSpinner or Taco HTML Edit. If you have a Windows operating system, you may want to use Coffee Cup HTML editor.
WYSIWYG Editor
The easiest type of HTML editor to use is known as a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. A WYSIWYG editor. This type of HTML editor is by far the easiest editor to use, as they don’t require any knowledge of HTML. Some of the editors mentioned above also have visual editors. If this is the type of editor you’d like to use, please ensure that you review the features prior to making a purchase.
This concludes this basic overview about HTML. In the next section, we will go over creating a folder, copying and pasting, saving and viewing your HTML documents.