So you just read through all the new stuff on the site and now you want to
post a shoutout to the folks at gURL. But you want it to be bigger than
your average shoutout, or maybe you want it to blink, or to be written in red. What
are you going to do?
You'll have to learn HTML.
HTML is short for Hyper Text Markup Language, which is a tool that is used to
format text and images so that they can be displayed on a web browser. All of
the pages that you see when you surf have been formatted this way,
including the pages at gURL. If you want to see for yourself what HTML
looks like, point and click on the 'View Source' option of the web browser you
are using. On Microsoft Explorer, this can be found by clicking on the 'View' menu,
then selecting 'Source'. On Netscape, this can be found by clicking on the word 'View' on the
menu bar, and selecting 'Document Source' from the pop-up menu that appears.
With HTML, you can bold the text you type,
italicize it, indent or align it, make it red or blue or green. You
can also embed images in your document, make text move and blink, and (the most
fun part) you can link your text and images to other web pages that
you've written, or to pages on the web that you really enjoy.
An Example to Get You Started
So you just read the the hair removal methods chart and are totally grossed out.
While on an ordinary day you might just sit back and forget it all, today you're not going to let it pass! You really want to post
the following message on the shoutout to gURL:
Dear gURL:
This time you've gone too far!
Your body hair chart has totally grossed me out!
Click on this hairy picture to go to a chart about body hair removal:
Well, calm yourself down for a moment, and we'll take you through the steps that you need to post your thoughts on the web and make them stand out.
First, get familiar with the basics.
Before you begin, you'll want to take a minute to get used to the look and feel of HTML.
Here are some to consider:
<i>
<center>
"gURL grossed me out!"
</center>
</i>
This, when you look at it with a browser, will read:
"gURL grossed me out!"
As you can see, all HTML tags are located between two brackets (<...>).
You can also see that HTML tags generally travel in pairs (like, for every '<i>'
tag there is a '</i>', for every '<center>' tag a '</center>', etc.). This is how the browser knows where to begin and end an HTML effect. In the example above, the words "gURL grossed me out!" are sandwiched between the tags <center> and </center>. This lets the browser know where to begin centering text, and where to stop.
Lastly, closing tags are all in the form: '</...>'. You will never see it any other way.
