Let's Make Some HTML!

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Let's Make Some HTML!

This section of the Internet Playpen is intended to be a simple description and demonstration of HTML and its elements and concepts. This site will not make you an expert, but will hopefully get you off to a solid understanding of what a "web page" is and how the World Wide Web functions.

How To Use This Site...

Some people distain and ignore instructions, but for the rest of you (and you aforementioned people currently whitenuckling this paragraph), here are some explanations that will make your use of this site more effective:

Home Page: This is it. Clicking the logo in the upper left of any of our pages within will bring you back here.
Index: The Table Of Contents with links to each section of this site.
Glossary: A list of HTML tags explained in this site with links to our explanations.
Theory: Just some stuff to think about when you're doing this HTML thing. (Still adding to this one.)
Practice: The FuzzPad 1.0 will let you surf this site and actually practice some of the stuff explained in this site!
Back: Click the word "back" to retrace your steps.
Next: Click the word "next" to go to the next page when you're ready to.

Things We Cover Here

This is a manual for people who have never written a web page and want to see what goes into it, or for people would like to stop by and see what condition their HTML condition is in. We cover the basics in about 25 sections, including text elements, images, paragraphs and other block elements, lists and tables.

And by the way, the fact that you may not know how to make a web page doesn't make you a "dummy." After all, you found our site, didn't you?

Things We Barely Touch On

We would like to add to this site, if there is a demand for it. Topics we are thinking about fleshing out a bit more include image maps, frames, meta tags and forms.

Things We Don't Cover Here

If you find this Basic HTML Primer helpful and would like to see more, remember to let us know. If there is a demand for it, we will add to it. There is a feedback form on the one of the last sections and an email address. We get enough questions from our paying customers but will be glad to help you out once you've perused this site further. Secrets not revealed:

Using UNIX or FTP to upload your web sites. We may in the near future.
Using HTML editors. There are about three thousand of them. It's probably best to just type in your first attempts into a plain old text editor when you are first learning. We use HomeSite 2.0 and really don't like WYSIWYG HTML editors. They've destroyed more than a few of our sites.
JavaScript. We love it, we use it and may someday add a section of little handy JavaScript items to use in your own pages.
Cascading Style Sheets. We like CSS alot, but it's not entirely universal enough to include here at this time.
Bells, whistles and other system drains like audio, animations, VRML, Java (different than JavaScript) and Plug-Ins. They're fun, but beyond the scope of this primer. We discuss some of them, but not in an entirely instructional manner.

NOTE: This Web Site is purposely designed to look different in different browsers. This was done to further enhance your understanding of one of the inherent problems in web site design.

FuzzyRule Number One: That what you often design for your computer may look vastly different on somebody else's computer. In fact, it may look different on your own computer after a few strokes of the mouse. Think about portability.

It's probably a good idea to know some things about the internet before you start making web pages. For a very simple primer on internet basics, be sure to peruse FuzzyLu's Internet Playpen by clicking the Playpen logo at the bottom of each of these pages.

Next: What is HTML?
clickity click click....

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