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Making a webpage

Making webpages is conceptually quite simple. The user creates some text files containing HTML, and uploads them to a web server, where they are served to clients (web browsers).

Table of contents

1 Extensions

2 Active pages

3 Anatomy of a webpage

4 Different tags you can use

5 CSS and the new standards

6 External links

Extensions

Most web browsers understand more than straight HTML (which is in essence a subset of XML). The most common of these extensions is CSS, which allows the author better control of the browser's presentation of the HTML.

Other extensions that can add interactivty of more complex features to pages (often referred to as client-side scripting) include:

However if the author wishes to maintain compatibility with the widest range of browsers, it is best to stick to standardised HTML as defined by the W3C.

Active pages

Often, pages served to the browser will need to be active (i.e., generated on the fly, for example presenting contents of a database to a user). The important thing to remember is that the pages that arrive at the browser are still normal HTML. This is usually referred to as server-side scripting. Examples include:

Anatomy of a webpage

Each webpage has a HTML header, and a body. The header is composed of elements. An element is also sometimes called a tag, and looks like this:

<html>

<head> <--- The start of the header.

<title>Foobar</title> <--- The title.

</head> <--- The end of the header.

<body> <--- The body

<h1>Hello world!</h1>

<br>Hello world!<br>

</body>

</html>

As you can see, all the elements end with another tag, apart from <br> which denotes a new line. If you typed that into a text editor and then saved it as "index" without the quote marks around it, you will have a new webpage all your own.

Different tags you can use

(see also HTML tag)

<i> </i> <-- These make writing between the two italics.

<b> </b> <-- These make writing between the two bold.

With that tag, it enables you to choose the look of all the writing between the tag. The size, color, and align properties are self-explanatory.

But you should know, that where Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and the newer Netscape Navigator support written colours such as "red" and "blue", to be compatible and to get certain colors you must use a system called hexadecimal. White would be "#ffffff". Black is "#000000".

This tag will insert the image located at the "src" URL.

This can insert not only an image but other media objects as well.

<a class=encyclopedia href="insert a webpage address">Write here what the link should say</a>

This makes the text between the opening and closing tags a link to the page or object located at "class=encyclopedia href".

CSS and the new standards

HTML is governed by the W3C, and the new standard is XHTML 1.1, which uses CSS, short for Cascading Style Sheets.

External links

To see a webpage made using this, visit http://starriches.tripod.com
http://www.w3c.org/ is the website of the W3C
http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp if you want to learn more about HTML

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

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