Richard Kearney's Home Page

HTML: A Semantic Markup Language

Editing Tools

Basic HTML 4.0 Tags

Organizing Text In A Document

Adding Images

Hyperlinks

Tables

Frames

Forms

Design Considerations

Beyond HTML: Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript

My Mailbox: Talk to Me

Learning HTML: An Introduction

These pages were written for students taking my two-part course on Learning HTML at the Englewood Public Library in Englewood, New Jersey. The menu on the left includes links to the main topics of the course. The topics are listed in their order of presentation in the class. Each topic section contains an outline of the main concepts and illustrates them with some examples. The links below point to tools and other materials students can use to move forward with HTML once the class is over.

Because the course involves only two hours of contact time spread over two days, my goals are modest. HTML is not a difficult language to learn, but mastering all the tags, attributes, special features, and quirks requires more time than we'll have. My intention is to present fundamental concepts about what HTML is and what it does while introducing some of the most important tags. Rather than spend a lot of time dealing with HTML in the abstract, we'll jump right into practical applications using text and other raw materials. Between the first and second meeting, you'll have an opportunity to draft a home page. We'll then cover some more advanced tags you can use to refine your page.

If you leave the course with a basic understanding of HTML's capabilities and an interest in learning more, I'll consider my goals accomplished. If you have suggestions, comments, or questions during or after the course, please feel free to offer them in person or by electronic mail. All contributions are most welcome.

Online Tools and Other Resources

HTML: HyperText Markup Language

• The HTML 4.01 Specification is the "official" recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It's as dry and boring as a technical document can be, so I don't advise you to read it for fun; but it is detailed, thorough, and complete as far as the language itself goes
  
  
• HTML 4.01 Quick List - Useful one-page reference to the most common HTML tags, formatted with examples of each. Part of a larger HTML site hosted by W3Schools.com.
  
  
• The Bare Bones Guide to HTML by Kevin Werbach neatly lists all of the HTML tags named in the Version 4.0 Specification on one page, grouping them by functional categories. There's no instruction on how to use them, but this is a good online cheat sheet if you just want a quick reference to tags
  
  
• Authoring For The World Wide Web - A concise overview of the web, HTML, the major element tags, and document structure; from the University of Toronto.
  
  

HTML Editing Tools

• Free HTML Editors, hosted by HomeWorlds, is a directory of free HTML editors for various operating systems. Links to download sites are provided. If this isn't enough try Yahoo!'s directory of HTML Editors, many of which are free as well
  
  

Graphics / Clip Art / Colors

• Barry's Clip Art Server - A great source for free clip art in GIF format, including animated GIF files.
  
  
• Clipart.com - A good index to 100 other sites offering clip art, much of it free for your use
  
  
• ClipArtConnection.com - Large archive of free image files, including both "pictures" and a number of graphics used to structure documents (e.g., arrows, buttons, icons, and lines). Every files is listed with its size, height, and width attributes. Also includes links to other good sites.
  
  
• Karen Shader Designs - A small, colorful collection of free clip art guaranteed to brighten up any web page; all of the images are reproduced from original watercolor paintings and hand-lettered calligraphy.
  
  
• Laurie McCanna's Free Art Page - A small but attractive collection of free web graphics available for download; all files are compressed in the ".zip" format.
  
  
• Web Clip Art Page from About.com - About.com is a directory of internet resources on many topics. Each topic area is supervised by a human indexer (called a "Guide") to assure the general quality and currency of the linked information. The Web Clip Art page contains lots of good links, organized by subject area.
  
  
• The Greatest Color Utility 98 - A fun tool for sampling colors on the web; it allows you easily to manipulate color settings and see instant results. When you find a color you like, simply plug the hexidecimal code into your web page.
  
  
• HTML Color Pickers - A handy directory of downloadable shareware and freeware color utilities for web design, courtesy of TUCOWS.COM, Inc. Lots of good stuff here, including the "HTML Paint Brush."
  
  
• The 216 Colors of the Web - Handy table of web colors and corresponding hexidecimal codes. These colors should look the same on every graphical browser running on Macs and PCs.
  
  
• Lynda Weinman's Browser Safe Color Palette - One of the top authorities on web graphics set this page up in 1996 to organize the 216 "browser safe" colors in two different ways (by color and hue). She no longer believes the palette is necessary because the number of people using 256-color (8-bit) computer systems have dropped off to insignificance. But this is still a useful reference.

Style and Design Tips

• Composing Good HTML - An excellent discussion of some of the most important style and design issues to keep in mind when using HTML to write web pages. The writer does a good job of relating the use of specific tags to their intended purposes and illustrating the pitfalls of "quick fix" solutions to common problems. A good starting point for developing your web-writing habits.
  
  
• Style Guide for Online Hypertext by Tim Berners-Lee, one of the major figures in the development of the World Wide Web and the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Contains lots of helpful recommendations.
  
  
• Yale Style Manual - An online book that covers all the major style and design issues for the web. Contains some very good illustrations to accompany the points made in the text.

Online HTML Tutorials

• Anabella's HTML Help - A good site that covers the use of HTML tags for several different purposes, with illustrations for every tag discussed.
  
  
• A Beginner's Guide to HTML by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications is a standard, widely-used tutorial. It covers all the basics.
  
  
• Beginner's HTML - Yahoo!'s directory of introductory-level HTML tutorials is a good place to find a tutorial that's right for you. There were about 40 links there the last time I checked.
  
  
• HTML Basics - Elementary but very clear and helpful primer on HTML. You can have a good page drafted in an hour using this guide.
  
  
• HTML - The Hypertext Markup Language by Alan Richmond is available at the Web Developer's Virtual Library site; the site contains many other web authoring tools
  
  
• HTML With Style is an HTML Tutorial produced by www.webreference.com; it includes both elementary and advanced level instruction on the use of HTML, with additional tutorials on Cascading Style Sheets and Java
  
  
• Webmonkey's HTML Basics Collection - Not just one tutorial, but several. Webmonkey's tutorial archive is a good place for HTML beginners to find online instruction. The tutorials range from introductory to advanced level, and some of them concentrate on important areas within HTML (e.g., tables, frames).

Directories of Online HTML Resources

• Anne's World - Web Page Resources - I've given you the Site Map's URL because it presents a better picture of what you can find on this very large directory than the home page does.
  
  
• Information on HTML Tags and How to Use Them - A good list of online resources created by the HTML Writers Guild
  
  
• HTML Resources - Another directory from the HTML Writers Guild; this one covers a broader area and includes links to online introductions to HTML, validation services, style guides, browser support testing tools, official standards, and more lists of lists!
  
  
• DevX: Web Developer Zone - A fine collection of tutorials and references for web developers. The subject scope extends into advanced areas including Java, XML, and Dynamic HTML, but it also includes more basic topics.