Activity 1

Creating Your First HTML Document

 

  1. If it is not open already, launch your text editor program.
  2. Go to the text editor window.
  3. Enter the following text (you do not have to press RETURN at the end of each line; the web browser will word wrap all text): 
         <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
     <html>
     <head>
     <title>Volcano Web</title>
     </head>
     <!-- written for the Writing HTML Tutorial
     by Lorrie Lava, February 31, 1999       -->
     <body>
     In this lesson you will use the Internet to research 
     information on volcanoes and then write a report on 
     your results.
     </body>
     </html>

    NOTE: Look where the <title>...</title> tag is located. It is in the <head>...</head> portion and thus will not be visible on the screen. What does it do? The <title> tag is used to uniquely identify each document and is also displayed in the title bar of the browser window.

    Also note that we have inserted a comment tag that lists the name of the author and the date the document was created. You could write anything in between the comment tags but it is only visible when you look at the source HTML for a web page.

  4. Save the document as a file called "volc.html" and keep it in the "work area" folder/directory you set up for this tutorial. Also, if you are using a word processor program to create your HTML, be sure to save in plain text (or ASCII) format.

    NOTE: For Windows 3.1 users, you must save all of your HTML files with names that end in .HTM, so in this case your file should be VOLC.HTM. Do not worry! Your web browser is smart enough to know that a file that has a name that ends in .HTM is an HTML file.

    You can create files with names like VOLC.HTML if you use Windows95 or a later Windows operating system.

    By using this file name extension, a web browser will know to read these text files as HTML and properly display the web page.

 

Displaying Your Document in a Web Browser

  1. Return to the web browser window you are using for your "work space". (If you do not have a second browser window open yet, select New Window or New Browser from the File window.)
  2. Select Open File... from the File menu. (Note: For users of Internet Explorer, click the Browse button to select your file)
  3. Use the dialog box to find and open the file you created, "volc.html"
  4. You should now see in the title bar of the workspace window the text "Volcano Web" and in the web page below, the one sentence of <body> text you wrote, "In this lesson..."