Teach me HTML

[FarmerDave]

hello, recently I've attempted a HTML tutorial and "it was Greek to me".
So I've decided to ask around the forums to see if any of you could help to somewhat clarify it for me.

the reason that I'm trying to do this is so I can make the NFCPS or the North Florida Carnivorous Plant Society website because I've just basically started the base and foundation for it with the help of about 5 other people. Because surprizingly there was never one, yet a good deal of the US CPs are native to our area.

 

[nepenthes_ak]

basicaly you have these things <> with certain letters

b for bold
u for underlined
I for italicised

Thats for basic text, you put the <x> with a letter in it for w/e code you want, then what you want to type, after that you move in into this again only with a /x then the letter.

Images are the same way except for img it gets complicated after that and I dont have time to explain

Theirs BIG books you can buy at officemax im sure!

 

[FarmerDave]

thanks!

 

[FarmerDave]

I tried it again and now I slightly get it!

 

[Joseph Clemens]

Basic HTML simply amounts to "tags". Sections of text are bracketed by tags, a start or open tag before the text, and an end or close tag after the end of that text section. And a few other types of tags to insert spaces, line breaks, and such. There are also special tags that apply to the entire page, and to specific portions of it.

Most of the usual word processing programs work the same way, using their own sets of proprietary "tags". These HTML tags are used by programs, such as Internet Explorer, so they will know how to display the information contained in the web pages.

I have some basic familiarity with HTML code, but I am much too lazy to use it raw, except for the simplest things. I prefer to use programs such as FrontPage (which can be used as a basic HTML editor), or even Microsoft Word, which can encode pages with HTML tags, if you save them in that format.

 

[Est]

Check google.

There's free sites that explain things to varying degrees.

If you're serious about making a site, you can hedge your bets on a what-you-see-is-what-you-get program like Front Page, etc, or you should pick up a book somewhere. The basics are easy, but if you want to create a site, you're going to probably want a bit more proficiency.

 

[endparenthesis]

For the good of the internet, please don't use Frontpage to build a site. It creates pages filled with nasty proprietary code that browsers outside Internet Explorer may or may not recognize. It's considered a joke in the web development world.

The best WYSIWYG program I know of is Dreamweaver (and maybe Homesite for simpler functionality). But it can still screw things up pretty good... I only really use it so I can see what I'm doing, and so I can FTP in the same window.

Everything you need to know about HTML can be found online. I'd find a tutorial on how to make something really simple, and once you're comfortable, do a more advanced tutorial, and keep going until you can pull off a whole layout. I wouldn't even bother learning how to use a WYSIWYG editor. It's good for getting immediate feedback, but HTML isn't any more difficult. In many cases the editor can make it harder because of all the unexpected results it'll create. If you just know the HTML you can fix anything directly instead of having this veil of mystery between you and your code.

An HTML editor can only be so smart, so really it's like hiring an idiot to do your job for you. Once you get smarter than the idiot, which doesn't take long at all, he just gets in your way. The internet myth that "no one needs to know HTML anymore" is flat-out untrue.

This is probably a useful place to start out, because with most of the tutorials you can open a window where you can modify code and watch what changes as a result:
http://www.w3schools.com/html/

If you're at all serious, CSS is also essential, among many other things, but it sounds like you just have one specific task you want to get done, so I don't want to pile too much on you. I just don't want you to be misled that all one has to do to make a quality website is buy a program or two.