Basic HTML Tutorial - A Starting Point
You read Day 1 of Web Thang's "Learn HTML in 3 Days" tutorial, right? (No? Don't cry - yet.) After reading through the Introduction, Basics, Text, Fonts, and Lists, you want to work through the tutorial by actually doing what it tells you to do. (Except where noted below.)
Caution: Gordon Knapp gives us some deprecated (that's a fancy word for "outmoded", "no longer cool", or "bad") advice. (Hey, he wrote this tut in 2001, so give him a break if it's not totally relevant for today!)
.:Knapp says to save your file as .htm. Don't do it. Type the extra letter and name the file" xxxx.html". Thanks.
.:Knapp tells you (on the Basics page) that it's OK to write your markup in capital letters. No, it isn't!! It USED TO BE OK, but current (and future) web standards call for lowercase tags. Trust me, I know from experience that it is much easier to learn good markup practices at the start than it is to unlearn bad ones later. Use the lowercase, please.
.:Knapp is feeding you coding practice, circa 2001. That stuff still works, so it isn't exactly wrong. But pay attention to a couple little things now, so that you're aware of the subtle changes we'll make in a few weeks.
-----Text & Fonts pages: Knapp shows you how to specify text and font "attributes" in-line, or in the HTML code it self. (Things like bgcolor, font-face, font-size, etc.) Good practice calls for moving this information out of the HTML document and putting it in something called a "Cascading Style Sheet" or "CSS". For now, follow Knapp when he tells you to do things like type "<BODY BGCOLOR="#0000CC" TEXT="#CCCC00" >," but please, please, please make the tags and attribute names lowercase (see point above), as in <body bgcolor=#0000CC" text="#CCCC00">. Doing this will you a good feel for the source code in your websites, and a real appreciation for the power of CSS.
-----Fonts & The BReak tag: Knapp slips in a valuable little tag in the section on Fonts, but doesn't tell you about it. It's the "break" tag, and it creates a line break (a single space between lines of text. It's really useful for you, and you need it. In addition to writing <br> in lowercase (as indicated above), you want to be aware that it is special. Most elements have an opening tag (as in, <body>) and a closing tag (</body>). The break element does not need to be closed; or, more properly, it closes itself. Right now, just write <br> when you want a line break. But in a few weeks we'll be adding the closing piece to our break so we can comply with current standards. No biggie. We'll just be writing <br />. Funny, huh?
Don't believe me on this stuff? That's cool. Go to the W3Schools' HTML tutorial. It's more complete and correct than Knapp's. But Knapp adds flair to his tut, making it more fun to read. Your choice. (Oh, and since you have a choice, why not consider HTML Dog's tuts?) It doesn't much matter to me, so long as you start playing in the markup.
Enough with the boring stuff. Get on with Coding Assignment 2.