HTML (Part 1)

By Unknown
A lot of people are wondering how to do the cool scrolly things that I have on my blog, among other things.

Well, it's not that difficult, really. HTML is your friend and it's a good thing to know. I learned the basics from the guide on Neopets (yes, Neopets). I also took a class on web page design (which is where I learned the scrolly thing). But I'm going to be nice and not make you do that. ^_^

(Keep in mind that I don't know everything about HTML. I just know what works most of the time. I'm going to use that Neopets guide to help me as I write this, so don't sue me for plagiarism.)

HTML is what websites are made out of. Hit Ctrl+u (press and hold "control" and press the "u" key) and you'll see a nice little window pop up showing all the HTML code on the page you're on. Chances are it'll overload your brain a bit, but don't panic. You don't have to be that fancy just yet. Unless you just...want to...O_o

The first thing you need to know about HTML is that all the codes start with a < and end with a >. They're known as brackets, but I'm going to call them carrots. Because they look like little sideways carrots to me. Yeah.

Well, those little carrots form things called tags. You start a code with a start tag (<code>), and at the end of the area you want to be HTML-ified, you use an end tag (</code>) to stop using that particular code.

To do simple things like italics, you use a <i> tag at the start of the text you want italicized and end it with a </i> tag. If you type <i>I like cheese</i>, you would get I like cheese. There are a few codes that don't actually need to be ended, but I'll mention those later on when they become relevant. (Go here if you want to see a better example.)

Some more useful tags are line break (<br>) and paragraph (<p>). Line break is like pressing "enter" on the keyboard and doesn't require an end tag. Paragraph is basically a double line break and also doesn't need an end tag, but it's still a good habit to end all your tags to keep things from getting all messed up.

Want to change your font away from this boring, black, normal-sized text? Well, that's easy too. The "font" tag can be used to change font size and color. You can type <font size=" " color=" "> to change either size or color, and combine them both into one nice neat little tag. Spiffy. You use a number system to change the size. Size 1 font is more this size while size 7 font is more like this.

Color is a little different. For basic colors, most of the time you can just type the name of the color in between the quotation marks. However, this is very unreliable and sometimes you'll end up with really weird colors that make no sense. Either that or they just won't work at all.

*Keep in mind that HTML is spelled using Standard American English, so don't go off using "colour" or anything weird like that. Not that it really applies to you, but just in case it does...well, now you know.

More specific colors require things called hexadecimal codes. (Heh heh...try saying "hexadecimal" three times fast.) A hexadecimal code is made of six letters and/or numbers, each of which represents a different attribute of the color. (When entering a hexadecimal code, don't forget to have the number sign [#] before the code.) Most people use color code charts to figure out these cryptic combinations of letters and numbers, but even then you can't always get the specific shade you're looking for. Here's a few basic ones:

White: #FFFFFF
Black: #000000 (Those are zeroes, not the letter "o".)

Bright Red: #FF0000
Bright Green: #00FF00
Bright Blue: #0000FF

So if you wanted small, bold, bright green text, you would type:

<font size="1" color="#00FF00"><b>Pie is the best food ever.</b></font>

If you want to find the exact color you want, go to this website. It's actually used for creating gradient text (This is gradient text), but I use it to get whatever color code I want.

If you want to make the pretty scrolly thing, use the word marquee for the code.

To review:

<command>Text to be HTML-ified goes here.</command> All text typed out here would be normal.

<i>Text</i> becomes Text

<b>Text</b> becomes Text

<font > would make small, bright red text.

DO NOT FORGET TO END YOUR TAGS. OR YOUR PAGE WILL BE VERY LOOPY.

Well, this is a really long blog entry, so I'll cut it short here. No sense in conquering the whole blog all the time. ^_^* If this is useful to anyone at all, let me know using COMMENTS. It just might make me want to post more HTML help for you;)

2 comments so far.

  1. Mr. Dooley December 7, 2007 at 7:09 AM
    Excellent work here Christine! Thanks for putting some stuff up on our class blog to help your classmates out - it is greatly appreciated!

    One hint about posting HTML code here - if you want to post the code as it would appear (meaning it is posted with the brackets or carrots) use the following text to represent the brackets.

    & l t ; take out the spaces and this equals the left bracket

    & g t ; take out the spaces and this equals the right bracket
  2. Anonymous December 7, 2007 at 6:18 PM
    Yea thanks to both of you, that could really help us out.

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