HTML5 Markup Basics

HTML5 Markup Basics Put away those permanent markers, because markup has nothing to do with drawing all over your wall. You might have been wondering what HTML actually stands for. It means Hypertext Markup Language, which is basically all of the code that is used to create the structural parts of webpages. HTML does not actually create the styles, which is a whole different topic.

For now, you are going to learn how to create a basic webpage, without worrying about how it will actually look. That can be done at a later time. For now, focus on the fundamental elements.

Make a new folder on your computer, and label it with the title of your website. Since it will only be used as part of this guide, you can just make up any old name for now.

The next thing you need to do is open Sublime Text 2 (or another text editor, if you have decided to use something else). Make a new file, save it in the folder that you just made, and name it “form1. html”.

Next, you are going to write some actual code. You will notice that Sublime Text 2 changes various parts of your text into different colors, and also suggests different tags for you. Don’t worry about that just yet, but it will become extremely helpful as you start to do more coding. You will also notice numbers along the left side of your text area. This is simply an easy way to keep track of things, and has some other uses.

Type the following into the new file that you just made:

<! doctype html >

< html lang =" en" >

< head >

< meta charset =" UTF-8" >

< title > Document </ title >

</ head >

< body >

</ body >

</ html >

 

This is a basic “boilerplate” sort of text, and is present on just about any website that you look at. Many people would have created theirs manually, while others allowed a management system to do the behind-the-scenes coding for them.

After you have saved an HTML file, you can open it with your regular web browser. It will still be offline, on your system, and not online yet. However, you will be presented with your HTML, as it would look online (if you were to upload it somewhere).