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Starting HTML

HTML Tutorials and Courses for Beginners

If you are creating web pages, whether a blog, website, or social networking site then you will encounter HTML.

Learning HTML isn't strictly necessary in order to make web pages or indeed a website as there are many tools (web page editors) which create the HTML for you.

However having a basic knowledge of HTML and how it is structured does make creating web pages much easier, especially if you encounter formatting problems, and for adding third party content e.g. scripts to your pages.

What is HTML ( HyperText Markup Language)?

HTML ( HyperText Markup Language), is a mark-up languages used to encode Web pages. It provides the information to the web browser for laying out and presenting web pages.

HTML is also invisible to  viewers of the web page as it is only meant to be used by the web browsers.

The current version of HTML is version 4 i.e. HTML 4.01 but the newer HTML 5 is widely implemented in most modern browsers even though it isn't yet an official standard.

Learning HTML

There are many books available on HTML and I would recommend you get one for reference. However I find most books try to cover too much and don't concentrate enough on the basics so that a beginner can build a solid foundation.

Once you have a solid understanding of the basics then it is much easier to learn the intricacies of the language if you really want to.

My aim here is to cover the basics of HTML so that you can start using it and feel comfortable with it. HTML is not used in isolation on web pages and you will also encounter CSS (cascading style sheets), JavaScript and even PHP, and we will cover how these fit into the overall picture.

Test Your Current Knowledge

Here is a very basic HTML quiz.

Note: answers are below

Question 1: - What HTML tag will you see at the top of a web page?

  1. body tag
  2. Head tag
  3. Title Tag
  4. HTML tag

Question 2: - What is the HTML tag <b> for:

  1. To Insert a line break
  2. Make the text bold
  3. Used to begin a new line

Question 3: - What is the HTML tag to insert a line break:

  1. <br>
  2. <break>
  3. <b>
  4. </br>

Question 4: - What  HTML tag isn't used with lists:

  1. <ol>
  2. <li>
  3. <ul>
  4. <list>

Question 5: - What do you think the HTML tag <img> is used for:

  1. To make text italic
  2. Insert an Image
  3. Insert a video
  4. To create a border

Your Results:

If you achieve 80% ( 4 correct answers) or more and felt comfortable with all your answers i.e. no guessing , then the basic course will probably be too basic for you.

Otherwise I would recommend you try the basic course to get your started.

Answers

  1. D the HTML tag <HTML>
  2. B -Make the text bold
  3. A -The <br> tag
  4. D -the <list> tag
  5. B - To Insert an Image

 

HTML Course, Workshops and Resources

Basic Course

This free course is for beginners starting to learn HTML, and who have never written any HTML before and want to learn the basics of HTML.

This course consists of 5 short lessons containing exercises which I recommend that you do on your own computer. Is is designed to teach you all the HTML you need for making basic web pages and more even more importantly for editing and other HTML web pages.

Course features and what you will Need:

I would recommend that you follow through in order but the links to the individual sections are also given below.

Note: You may have noticed the term XHTML appearing. The HTML standard maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has been through many revisions the last one being is HTML 4.01 and XHTML was meant as replacement for HTML. 

 However HTML version 4 will now be superseded by HTML version 5.

In reality there is very little difference between HTML and XHTML, and as a beginner you shouldn't worry about these differences.

HTML Books

 I tend to use books as a quick reference, when I need to do something. You will find a huge selection of HTML related books at Amazon:


 

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