Basic HTML Document

All webpages are made with tags. There are tags to start and end a page, add a title, change font size, add a link, etc. Tags tell the browser what to do. The browser converts the tags what is shown on the webpage. The tags are contained in the Hyper Text Markup Language, or HTML, which is also know as Source Code

To view the source code for this page, go to your menu and click

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Document Source
Notice all the tags? Tags have two basic parts: the opening tag and the ending tag, in this format
<TAG>
</TAG>
The first tag is the opening tag. It consists of the tag contained within brackets. The second tag is the closing tag. It consists of a slash in front of the tag type, and again it is contained with brackets. All tags are written in this format. The < > tells the browser that anything contained within the brackets is a tag, and the </ > tells the browser that a tag has ended.

The basic webpage has three main parts. The first is an <HTML> tag, which you can see at the top of the Document Source. (For a look at a simple source code, scroll down) It tells the browser that this page is not just a text page, it has tags and is a Hyper Text document. Everything you see on a webpage is contained within the opening and closing <HTML> tag.

The second part of the webpage is the <HEAD> tag, which gives the browser information on how to load the page (i.e. background, text color, link color, etc.) that isn't shown on the webpage. In the Head is the <TITLE> which, if you look at the top bar of you browser, is shown. In this case it says Basic HTML Document. Also in the head is most of the Javascript that is used on a page, but I'll get into that later.

The third part of the webpage is the <BODY> where all the information that is shown on your page is contained. It includes pictures, links and text. The Body contains most of the Tag commands, and is a very important part of the webpage.

All these parts taken together make up the webpage, and each have different commands associated with them. These commands will be shown later.

Example Document Source Code

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE> Title goes here
</TITLE>

</HEAD>

<BODY>
Text goes here

</BODY>
</HTML>

As you can see, the basic webpage is pretty simple. To see what this page would actually look like, click here. Be sure to look at the document source.

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