HTML Made Really Easy

HTML is very easy to use; it was designed that way. You don’t have to be a programmer to use it. If you can edit a text file, then you can write HTML (and if you can write email, you can edit a text file). If you tried to learn before and couldn’t, then someone wasn’t telling you the right things.

This tutorial will explain the structure of HTML quickly and clearly, and show you through examples the practical things you need to know, so you can be making your own pages soon (like, this afternoon). The whole tutorial is about 14 printed pages, but you only need the first four or so to be off and running.

In this tutorial, you’ll create small pages and view them. There aren’t really any “required” exercises, but you should play with new concepts until you’re comfortable with them. If your browser supports frames, fire up this HTML Test Bed (non-frames version), where you can type HTML in one frame and see the resulting page in another. Resize the input and output frames/windows for best viewing.

If your browser doesn’t support frames, or when you’re making real pages, you’ll want a real text editor. Start up TeachText on the Mac, pico in Unix, or Notepad in Windows, or a better one if you have it (here’s a directory of text editors at Yahoo). Give your HTML files names ending in “.html” (or “.htm”). Use your browser to view the HTML files you create, with the menu command “File/Open File” or something similar; use the “Reload” function after each change.

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