HTML Crash Course

Many people want to know how to use special formatting in their pages, messages and registration forms. The following are some simple commands that should cover most formatting requirements and at least get you started.

Bolding:

Text can be made bold with the , tags. That is, inserting a tag in your text will turn bolding on and a tag will turn it off as in the following example:

You type:
This is some bold text.

Which becomes:
This is some bold text.

Italicizing and Underlining:

The same sort of technique can be used to produce italic text using the , tags or underlined text with , tags.

You type:
This is some italic and underlined text.

Becomes:
This is some italic and underlined text.

Combined Attribute Tags:

You can also combine attribute tags in almost any way you like such as the following:

You type:
This is some bold, italic and underlined text.

Becomes:
This is some bold, italic and underlined text.

Font Manipulation:

The , tags provide complete control over font faces, size and color. Font tags use attributes to specify different properties of the enclosed text such as the following:

Face - Use this attribute to specify the font face. You can use any face you like but be aware that not all computers support all font faces. If a font face is not available on a user's computer, their browser will use a default face instead. Some common font faces are: Arial, Times New Roman and Verdana. To specify a new font, do the following:

You type:
This is some Times New Roman text

Becomes:
This is some Times New Roman text

Color - The color attribute can be used to change the color of the text that follows the font tag. You can specify color using either a color number or a name. Color numbers are hexadecimal values preceded by a pound symbol (#) representing the intensity of the Red, Green and Blue hues respectively. For example, the value '#FF0000' creates red text. The FF is the highest hex value and since it occupies the first two places turns the red value all the way up. The remaining 0s turn Green and Blue off. You can manipulate these values to come up with almost any color you wish.

If however, you don't want to be bothered with this kind of coding scheme, you can just use color words to specify colors like "red', 'green', 'blue' and many more. For a complete listing of all the color names, click here. Bear in mind however that not all browsers support using color names. Many older Netscape browsers for instance do not. Here are a few examples of using the color attribute with fonts:

You type:
This is some red text and this is some darker red text.

Becomes:
This is some Red text and this is some darker red text..

Size - The Size attribute can be used t specify the type size of the font. There are a number of ways to do this. If you know the "point" size you want to use, you type it like '12pt'. HTML has various default sizes that are specified with just a number. These sizes are as follows:

1 - (8pt), 2 - (10pt), 3 - (12pt), 4 - (14pt), 5 - (18pt), 6 - (24pt), 7 - (36pt)

To use the Size attribute, do the following:

You type:
This is some big text.

Becomes:
This is some big text.

Combining Attributes:

You can combine font attributes to achieve almost any effect you want. You can even combine font effects with bolding and other effects. Here's an example:

You type:
This is some big, red, bold, italic, Arial text.

Becomes:
This is some big, red, bold, italic, Arial text.

Hyperlinks:

You can create hyperlinks to other web sites using the <a>, </a> (anchor) tags. The <a> tag has two attributes that can be used to determine where to go and how to display the linked page. The "href" attribute is used to specify the address of the web page you want to link to as follows:

You type:
<a href='http://LeagueAthletics.com'>Click here to go to LeagueAthletics.com</a>

Becomes:
Click here to go to LeagueAthletics.com

If you want the linked page to appear in a new window, you can use the "target" attribute with a value of "new" to specify this as follows:

You type:
<a href='http://LeagueAthletics.com' target='new'>Click here to go to LeagueAthletics.com</a>

Becomes (try it):
Click here to go to LeagueAthletics.com

Wrap up:

That's all we're going to cover here but there's MUCH more you can do with HTML coding. For a more in depth reference, check out Microsoft's MSDN Online Library by clicking here. NetStrider.com also has an excellent reference. click here to go there.