The Pocket HTML Tutorial

Welcome to the Pocket HTML Tutorial. HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the language designed for publishing pages on the Web. Along with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), HTML enables you to design web pages according to your exact specifications.

The tutorial is available in the following formats, which you may copy and redistribute according to the license:

The original location for this tutorial is http://www.goer.org/HTML/. If you are reading this tutorial at some other location, you might not have the latest version.

Note

If you use Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox, Netscape 6+, Mozilla, Opera 5+, or Safari, you should be able to view the tutorial and follow the examples with little trouble.

If you use Internet Explorer 4 or lower, Netscape 4 or lower, or a text-based browser such as Lynx, the tutorial loses most of its formatting, and you will only be able to do a limited set of the examples. To continue with this tutorial, please download an up-to-date version of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, or Opera.

Chapter Summaries

The Pocket HTML Tutorial includes these chapters:

About This Tutorial

Level: All. Outlines the basic philosophy behind this tutorial, answers browser compatibility questions, and provides the usage and copyright statement. You can easily skip the Preface and plunge right into Chapter 1, Getting Started.

Getting Started

Level: Beginner. Explains the nature of HTML elements, document structure, and how to use your browser to help in your web design. If you’ve never written HTML code before (or if you don’t know what a web page “is”), start with this section. Otherwise, skip ahead to Chapter 2, Markup Basics or beyond.

Markup Basics

Level: Beginner. Demonstrates how to use HTML to mark up a simple document, creating paragraphs, headings, and links. If you have a little bit of experience with HTML, you can skip ahead to Chapter 3, Styling Basics.

Styling Basics

Level: Intermediate. Formally introduces Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which can change the presentation of a web page (the fonts, colors, and visual layout.) The previous sections refer to CSS in passing, but here we begin using CSS much more heavily. If you already have some experience with CSS, feel free to skip ahead to Chapter 4, Tables.

Tables

Level: Intermediate. Discusses HTML tables and how to format them using table attributes or CSS.

Next: About This Tutorial