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Commands
Commands, or "tags" are the orders of the language. They instruct the browser what to do. All commands in html are written between the left and right parenthesis that look like greater then/less then symbols (located above the period and comma.) These < >.
Commands are placed before whatever you want to format. HTML is read the same way regular English is read, left to right, working down the page. So, your first command will be <br>
<br> is the "break" command. It is used in exactly the same way the [Enter] key is used.
Without the break command, everything runs together. Here's an example:
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no breaks
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
with breaks (randomly inserted)
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work
and no play
makes
Jack
a
dull
boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work
and no play
makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
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The nice thing about <br> is that it's very simple. You put it in there, and it's done. Most of HTML isn't quite like that. You have to start and stop it. You have seen how to start things (although you may not realize it) stopping them is a bit different.
To start a command, you put the command in the brackets <command> to stop it you put a slash in the brackets, before the command name </command>
So, you might have something like this....
<command> text text text text </command>
and that would format the text with the command.
Nothing to it.
Here's some real commands.
<b> = bold
<i> = italics
<u> = underline
here they are in action, cut and paste them into notepad. “Save as” that file as something.html file. Close it then double click the icon to see the formatting at work.
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<b> bold! </b> <br>
<i> italics!</i> <br>
<u> underline!</u> <br>
================================================================
Try some your self. Don't forget the closing tags!
Oh yeah! that actually brings up a good point. sometimes you will put more then one command on something, like, maybe you really want to make a point, and you want bold text, but underlined for emphasis. To do that, you have to pay attention to the order that you put in the commands, and the closing commands. It is always done this way:
<command 1> <command 2> text text text </command 2> </command 1>
Do you see how the first command to open is the last to close? That keeps all the commands from knotting up. A real example (bold, underline) is as follows. (again, feel free to cut, paste, save as a .html and view the saved document )
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<b><u> THAT'S A LOT OF NUTS! </u></b>
<br><br>
or
<br><br>
<u><b> THAT'LL BE FOUR BUCKS BABY! YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT!?</b></u>
<br><br>
but never, ever
<br> <br>
<u><b> I am bleeding. Making me the victor. </u></b>
it works fine in this example... but, trust me, you don't ever want to mix that shit up.
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That's the basic gist of HTML. You start a tag, you close the tag.
Here's some more simple tags (that need to be closed once opened)
<BIG> makes text bigger
<BLINK> but that's an old tag that might not be supported anymore.
<CENTER> centers text
<S> strikes out text
<PRE> A poem:
Formats text
just as you put
in in the editor
and between the tags...
It changes the font though.
<SMALL> makes text smaller
Onto more complex tags