HTML Tutorial

HTML: An Introduction

A web page is nothing more than a file, a HTML file to be exact. It's called HTML because web page documents have the file extension .html or .htm. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. HTML is a computer language that is interpreted by a browser, and as such it has some specific rules that must be followed. In other words, it has a defined syntax, a strict way in which it must be written, and, when the time comes, read. HTML is also a hypertext markup language. Hypertext is text, in any format, with an added feature: parts of the text is linked to other parts of the text, making it easy to jump from one part of the text to another.

HTML for Fun and Profit

But hypertext links aren't just shortcuts. Just like markup, they mean something. HTML is all about document semantics. A document by itself may be informative, but to be truly useful, you must have a way to get to its meaning. Once you have a way of encoding the document's semantics, you can manipulate it in many interesting ways.

By defining the links from a document to a table of contents that lists it, to the next or previous documents if it is part of a series, to a glossary or copyright notice, we give the document itself more meaning, and hence, more value. The primary purpose of any document is to convey information, and by specifying the semantics of a document we supply even more information, which can only be a good thing. That is, if it's done right. *(1).

HTML is a set of special codes that can be embedded on text to add formatting and linking information. HTML is specified as TAGS in an HTML document (i.e. the Web page). The skill in creating an HTML (web) page would lie in knowing the functionality of all HTML tags and tags attributes where applicable.*(2). For complete tutorial please visit: Web Reference.

How To Include Image on Your Page

When you include images on your web page, remember that they contain alot of data and therefore can be slow to load. One way to reduce the size (by size I mean Kb) is to reduce the dimensions. Cutting the length and width in half results in an image only 1/4 the size in Kb. Also you can reduce the number of colors. Here are a few examples:

Dimensions 310 x 304
# of colors- 238
Size - 69 Kb

Dimensions 207 x 203
# of colors- 238
Size- 34 Kb

Dimensions 207 x 203
# of colors- 48
Size - 19 Kb

Graphic Interchange Format Gif Wizard is a very helpful tool from Raspberry Hill Publishing that will help you reduce the size of your images. (Note that the GIF Wizard is not a part of this tutorial. It is a program that resides on a computer at Raspberry Hill Publishing. This is simply an interface. Also you must be online to use it.)

Step 1		One way or another they need to get your image. You have 2 options... Option A: You can type in the URL of an image that is posted to a web server (the URL of the image... not the URL of the page that it's on). Netscape users right click on an image in a web page and choose Copy Image Location. This copies the image's URL to the clipboard. From there you just paste it into the window - OR - Option B: You can send them the image straight off your hard drive. Definitely the "cool" way to do it. (Not supported by MS Internet Explorer)

Step 2 A & B both are optional		A) You can pick the appropriate background color. It is preset for white. "ND" colors are non-dithering. If not sure what to do here, just do nothing. Red Green Blue B) Your image can be resized if you'd like. Enter the new image size expressed either in pixels or as a percentage. Leave blank for no dimension changes. Width= Height=

Step 3		You will get back several versions of your image in varying degrees of "shrunkenness".