Getting Started with HTML - How to Build a Home on the Web

by: Marty Beall

Okay, now let's let everybody know who you are, what your interests are, or whatever else you want the world to know. You can format the text in many different ways. You can use the U tag, B tag, I tag, and there are many other ways of formatting text with the FONT tag.

First, let's make a linebreak under the image. Do you remember how to do this? If not we can either use the BR tag or the HR tag, let's use the BR tag. The BR tag is invisible if you forgot.

Let's start with the U tag, the U stands for underline and guess what that does...Right! it underlines the text.

So, all together you have:
-------------------------------------- New Document-------------------------------------------------

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> This is Where your Title Goes </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000AA" VLINK="#0000AA" ALINK="#FF0000">
<H1>The is My Headline</H1>
<HR SIZE="4" WIDTH="75%">
<IMG SRC="http://www.domain.com/path/to/my/picture" BORDER="2">
<BR>
<U>This is underlined text.</U>
-------------------------------------- New Document-------------------------------------------------

Remember: Close off your tags when you're finished with them. Or it will cause some undesired effects.

Okay, now let's skip a line under the "This is underlined text." line. To do this we'll use a new tag, the P tag. The P stands for paragagh and it's like skipping a line between paragraphs. It's how we skip lines on these pages.

Now let's use the B tag, the B stands for bold and I think you know what this will do. It's used exactly the same as the U tag except instead of a U it's a B.

So, all together you have:
-------------------------------------- New Document-------------------------------------------------

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> This is Where your Title Goes </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000AA" VLINK="#0000AA" ALINK="#FF0000">
<H1>The is My Headline</H1>
<HR SIZE="4" WIDTH="75%">
<IMG SRC="http://www.domain.com/path/to/my/picture" BORDER="2">
<BR>
<U>This is underlined text.</U>
<P>
<B>This is bold text.</B>
-------------------------------------- New Document-------------------------------------------------

Okay, now let's skip another line using the P tag and use the I tag. The I tag stands for italics and is used exactly the same as the previous two tags except with an I.

So, all together you have:
-------------------------------------- New Document-------------------------------------------------

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> This is Where your Title Goes </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000AA" VLINK="#0000AA" ALINK="#FF0000">
<H1>The is My Headline</H1>
<HR SIZE="4" WIDTH="75%">
<IMG SRC="http://www.domain.com/path/to/my/picture" BORDER="2">
<BR>
<U>This is underlined text.</U>
<P>
<B>This is bold text.</B>
<P>
<I>This is text is italized.</I>
-------------------------------------- New Document-------------------------------------------------

Now that we've covered the basics for formatting text, let's try using the FONT tag. Note: not all browsers support the FONT tag.

The FONT tag can have three different attributes, the FACE attribute, the SIZE attribute and the COLOR attribute. What do these attributes mean? FACE can change the font style right in the middle of a page, SIZE can change the size of the text in the middle of a page, and COLOR can change the color of the text in the middle of a page.

Let's use another P and use all three attributes of the FONT tag at the same time in the next example.

So, all together you have:
-------------------------------------- New Document-------------------------------------------------

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> This is Where your Title Goes </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000AA" VLINK="#0000AA" ALINK="#FF0000">
<H1>The is My Headline</H1>
<HR SIZE="4" WIDTH="75%">
<IMG SRC="http://www.domain.com/path/to/my/picture" BORDER="2">
<BR>
<U>This is underlined text.</U>
<P>
<B>This is bold text.</B>
<P>
<I>This is text is italized.</I>
<P>
<FONT COLOR="#hexnum" FACE="fontname" SIZE="2">This is text is formatted by the FONT tag.</FONT>
-------------------------------------- New Document-------------------------------------------------

Color is another RGB color or hexidecimal number, face is the actual font name (I use Arial on these pages), and size can be an integer from 1 to 7 (7 being the largest).

Remember: you don't have to use every attribute at the same time for anything.

1. Got that?
2. Need help?

Baltimore MD : Technology : Getting Started with HTML : How to Build a Home on the Web