Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Scribd
Upload
86 views

Prerequisites:: HTML Basics

HTML Basics document provides an overview of HTML including: 1) HTML is a markup language that uses tags to tell web browsers how to structure and present content. It is saved as plain text files with .html or .htm extensions. 2) Basic HTML documents have <html>, <head>, <title>, and <body> tags that provide the framework and metadata. Common text formatting tags include <b>, <i>, <br>, and <p>. 3) Attributes add more information to tags, like aligning headings. Well-formed HTML requires closing tags in the proper nested order.

Uploaded by

Anshu Girdhar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
86 views

Prerequisites:: HTML Basics

HTML Basics document provides an overview of HTML including: 1) HTML is a markup language that uses tags to tell web browsers how to structure and present content. It is saved as plain text files with .html or .htm extensions. 2) Basic HTML documents have <html>, <head>, <title>, and <body> tags that provide the framework and metadata. Common text formatting tags include <b>, <i>, <br>, and <p>. 3) Attributes add more information to tags, like aligning headings. Well-formed HTML requires closing tags in the proper nested order.

Uploaded by

Anshu Girdhar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 20

HTML Basics

Prerequisites:
You will need a text editor, such as Notepad and an Internet browser, such as Internet
Explorer or Netscape.

Q: What is Notepad and where do I get it?


A: Notepad is the default Windows text editor. On most Windows systems, click
your Start button and choose Programs then Accessories. It should be a little blue
notebook.

Mac Users: SimpleText is the default text editor on the Mac. In OSX use TextEdit and
change the following preferences: Select (in the preferences window) Plain text instead
of Rich text and then select Ignore rich text commands in HTML files. This is very
important because if you don't do this HTML codes probably won't work.

One thing you should avoid using is a word processor (like Microsoft Word) for authoring
your HTML documents.

What is an html File?

HTML is a format that tells a computer how to display a web page. The documents
themselves are plain text files with special "tags" or codes that a web browser uses to
interpret and display information on your computer screen.

ƒ HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language


ƒ An HTML file is a text file containing small markup tags
ƒ The markup tags tell the Web browser how to display the page
ƒ An HTML file must have an htm or html file extension

Try It?
Open your text editor and type the following text:

<html>
<head>
<title>My First Webpage</title>
</head>
<body>
This is my first homepage. <b>This text is bold</b>
</body>
</html>

Save the file as mypage.html. Start your Internet browser. Select Open (or Open Page) in the
File menu of your browser. A dialog box will appear. Select Browse (or Choose File) and locate the
html file you just created - mypage.html - select it and click Open.
Example Explained

What you just made is a skeleton html document. This is the minimum required information for
a web document and all web documents should contain these basic components. The first tag
in your html document is <html>. This tag tells your browser that this is the start of an html
document. The last tag in your document is </html>. This tag tells your browser that this is
the end of the html document.

The text between the <head> tag and the </head> tag is header information. Header
information is not displayed in the browser window.

The text between the <title> tags is the title of your document. The <title> tag is used to
uniquely identify each document and is also displayed in the title bar of the browser window.

The text between the <body> tags is the text that will be displayed in your browser.

The text between the <b> and </b> tags will be displayed in a bold font.

 <DOCTYPE – Document types define which HTML version you use .


 The <html> and </html> tags identifies that this document is a web page or HTML document.
 The <head> and </head> tags are specifies page information which is not visible in a web page.
 The <title> and </title> tags are assigns to page name. title content generally displayed at top of browser.
 The <body> and </body> tags are contains page contents which is visible in Browser window.

HTM or HTML Extension?

When you save an HTML file, you can use either the .htm or the .html extension. The .htm
extension comes from the past when some of the commonly used software only allowed three
letter extensions. It is perfectly safe to use either .html or .htm, but be consistent.
mypage.htm and mypage.html are treated as different files by the browser.

How to View HTML Source

A good way to learn HTML is to look at how other people have coded their html pages. To
find out, simply click on the View option in your browsers toolbar and select Source or Page
Source. This will open a window that shows you the actual HTML of the page. Go ahead and
view the source html for this page.
HTML Tags

What are HTML tags?

ƒ HTML tags are used to mark-up HTML elements


ƒ HTML tags are surrounded by the two characters < and >
ƒ The surrounding characters are called angle brackets
ƒ HTML tags normally come in pairs like <b> and </b>
ƒ The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
ƒ The text between the start and end tags is the element content
ƒ HTML tags are not case sensitive, <b> means the same as <B>

ƒ
Logical vs. Physical Tags

In HTML there are both logical tags and physical tags. Logical tags are designed to describe (to
the browser) the enclosed text's meaning. An example of a logical tag is the <strong>
</strong> tag. By placing text in between these tags you are telling the browser that the text
has some greater importance. By default all browsers make the text appear bold when in
between the <strong> and </strong> tags.

Physical tags on the other hand provide specific instructions on how to display the text they
enclose.
Examples of physical tags include:

ƒ <b>: Makes the text bold.


ƒ <big>: Makes the text usually one size bigger than what's around it.
ƒ <i>: Makes text italic.
Physical tags were invented to add style to HTML pages because style sheets were not around,
though the original intention of HTML was to not have physical tags. Rather than use physical
tags to style your HTML pages, you should use style sheets.

HTML Elements

Remember the HTML example from the previous page:

<html>
<head>
<title>My First Webpage</title>
</head>
<body>
This is my first homepage. <b>This text is bold</b>
</body>
</html>

This is an HTML element:


<b>This text is bold</b>
The HTML element begins with a start tag: <b>
The content of the HTML element is: This text is bold
The HTML element ends with an end tag: </b>

The purpose of the <b> tag is to define an HTML element that should be displayed as bold.

This is also an HTML element:

<body>
This is my first homepage. <b>This text is
bold</b> </body>

This HTML element starts with the start tag <body>, and ends with the end tag </body>. The
purpose of the <body> tag is to define the HTML element that contains the body of the HTML
document.

Nested Tags
You may have noticed in the example above, the <body> tag also contains other tags, like the <b>
tab.
When you enclose an element in with multiple tags, the last tag opened should be the first tag
closed.
For example:

<p><b><em>This is NOT the proper way to close nested tags.</p></em></b>

<p><b><em>This is the proper way to close nested tags. </em></b></p>

Note: It doesn't matter which tag is first, but they must be closed in the proper order.
Tag Attributes

Attributes are instructions that clarify and modify an element. Attributes provide additional
information about HTML elements.

Tags can have attributes. Attributes can provide additional information about the HTML
elements on your page. The <tag> tells the browser to do something, while the attribute tells
the browser how to do it. For instance, if we add the bgcolor attribute, we can tell the browser
that the background color of your page should be blue, like this: <body bgcolor="blue">.

This tag defines an HTML table: <table>. With an added border attribute, you can tell the browser
that
the table should have no borders: <table border="0">. Attributes always come in name/value
pairs
like this: name="value". Attributes are always added to the start tag of an HTML element
and the value is surrounded by quotes.

Basic HTML Tags

The most important tags in HTML are tags that define headings, paragraphs and line breaks.

Basic HTML Tags


Tag Description
<html> Defines an HTML document
<body> Defines the document's body
<h1> to <h6> Defines header 1 to header 6
<p> Defines a paragraph
<br> Inserts a single line break
<hr> Defines a horizontal rule
<!--> Defines a comment
Headings
Headings are defined with the <h1> to <h6> tags. <h1> defines the largest heading while <h6>
defines the smallest.

<h1>This is a heading</h1>

<h2>This is a heading</h2>

<h3>This is a heading</h3>

<h4>This is a heading</h4>

<h5>This is a heading</h5>

<h6> This is a heading</h6>

HTML automatically adds an extra blank line before and after a heading. A useful heading
attribute is align.

<h5 align="left">I can align headings </h5>

<h5 align="center">This is a centered heading </h5>

<h5 align="right">This is a heading aligned to the right </h5>

Paragraphs

Paragraphs are defined with the <p> tag. Think of a paragraph as a block of text. You can use
the align attribute with a paragraph tag as well.

<p align="left">This is a paragraph</p>

<p align="center">this is another paragraph</p>

Important: You must indicate paragraphs with <p> elements. A browser ignores any indentations
or blank lines in the source text. Without <p> elements, the document becomes one large
paragraph. HTML automatically adds an extra blank line before and after a paragraph.
Line Breaks

The <br> tag is used when you want to start a new line, but don't want to start a new
paragraph. The <br> tag forces a line break wherever you place it. It is similar to single
spacing in a document.

This Code Would Display


This
<p>This <br> is a para<br> graph with is a para

line breaks</p> graph with line breaks

The <br> tag has no closing tag.

Horizontal Rule

The <hr> element is used for horizontal rules that act as dividers between sections, like this:

The horizontal rule does not have a closing tag. It takes attributes such as align and
width. For instance:

This Code Would Display


<hr width="50%" align="center">

Comments in HTML

The comment tag is used to insert a comment in the HTML source code. A comment can be
placed anywhere in the document and the browser will ignore everything inside the
brackets. You can use comments to write notes to yourself, or write a helpful message to
someone looking at your source code.

This Code Would Display


<p> This html comment would <!-- This This HTML comment would be displayed like
is a comment --> be displayed like this.
this.</p>

Notice you don't see the text between the tags <!-- and -->. If you look at the source code,
you would see the comment. To view the source code for this page, in your browser window,
select View and then select Source.
Note: You need an exclamation point after the opening bracket <!-- but not before the
closing bracket -->.

HTML automatically adds an extra blank line before and after some elements, like before and
after a paragraph, and before and after a heading. If you want to insert blank lines into your
document, use the <br> tag.
Try It Out!

Open your text editor and type the following text:

<html>
<head>
<title>My First Webpage</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1 align="center">My First Webpage</h1>
<p>Welcome to my first web page. I am writing this page using a text editor and
plain old html.</p>
<p>By learning html, I'll be able to create web pages like a pro....<br>
which I am of course.</p>
</body>
</html>

Save the page as mypage2.html. Open the file in your Internet browser.

Other HTML Tags

As mentioned before, there are logical styles that describe what the text should be and
physical styles which actually provide physical formatting. It is recommended to use the logical
tags and use style sheets to style the text in those tags.

Logical Tags Physical Tags

Tag Description
Tag Description
<abbr> Defines an abbreviation
<b> Defines bold text
<acronym> Defines an acronym
<address> Defines an address element <big> Defines big text
<cite> Defines a citation <i> Defines italic text
<code> Defines computer code text <small> Defines small text
<blockquote> Defines a long quotation <sup> Defines superscripted text
<del> Defines text <sub> Defines subscripted text
<dfn> Defines a definition term <tt> Defines teletype text
<em> Defines emphasized text <u> Deprecated. Use styles instead
<ins> Defines inserted text
<kbd> Defines keyboard text
<pre> Defines preformatted text
<q> Defines a short quotation
<samp> Defines sample computer code
<strong> Defines strong text
<var> Defines a variable

Character tags like <strong> and <em> produce the same physical display as <b> and <i> but are
more uniformly supported across different browsers.
Some Examples:

The following paragraph uses the <blockquote> tag. In the previous sentence, the blockquote tag
is enclosed in the <samp> Sample tag.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare,
and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.

Although most browsers render blockquoted text by indenting it, that's not specifically what it's
designed to do. It's conceivable that some future browser may render blockquoted text in some
other way. However, for the time being, it is perfectly safe to indent blocks of text with the
<blockquote>.

This Code Would Display


<abbr title="World Wide Web">WWW</abbr> www

When you hold your mouse pointer over the WWW, text in the title attribute will appear in.

HTML Character Entities

Some characters have a special meaning in HTML, like the less than sign (<) that defines the start
of an HTML tag. If we want the browser to actually display these characters we must insert
character entities in place of the actual characters themselves.

The Most Common Character Entities:

Result Description Entity Name Entity Number


non-breaking space &nbsp; &#160;
< less than &lt; &#60;
> greater than &gt; &#62;
& ampersand &amp; &#38;
" quotation mark &quot; &#34;
' apostrophe &apos; (does not work in IE) &#39;

A character entity has three parts: an ampersand (&), an entity name or an entity number, and finally a
semicolon (;). The & means we are beginning a special character, the ; means ending a special character
and the letters in between are sort of an abbreviation for what it's for. To display a less than sign in an
HTML document we must write: &lt; or &#60; The advantage of using a name instead of a number is that
a name is easier to remember. The disadvantage is that not all browsers support the newest entity names,
while the support for entity numbers is very good in almost all browsers.

Note: Entities are case sensitive.


Non-breaking Space

The most common character entity in HTML is the non-breaking space &nbsp;. Normally HTML will
truncate spaces in your text. If you add 10 spaces in your text, HTML will remove 9 of them. To
add spaces to your text, use the &nbsp; character entity.

This Code Would Display


<p> This code would appear This code would appear as this.
as this.</p>
This Code Would Display
<p> This code &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; would This code would appear with three extra
appear with three extra spaces.</p> spaces.

HTML Fonts

The <font> tag in HTML is deprecated. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has removed the
<font> tag from its recommendations. In future versions of HTML, style sheets (CSS) will be used
to define the layout and display properties of HTML elements.

The <font> Tag Should NOT be used.

HTML Backgrounds

Backgrounds
The <body> tag has two attributes where you can specify backgrounds. The background can be a
color or an image.

Bgcolor
The bgcolor attribute specifies a background-color for an HTML page. The value of this attribute can
be a hexadecimal number, an RGB value, or a color name:

<body bgcolor="#000000">
<body bgcolor="rgb(0,0,0)">
<body bgcolor="black">

The lines above all set the background-color to black.

Background

The background attribute can also specify a background-image for an HTML page. The value of this
attribute is the URL of the image you want to use. If the image is smaller than the browser
window, the image will repeat itself until it fills the entire browser window.

<body background="clouds.gif">

The URL can be relative (as in the first line above) or absolute (as in the second line above).
If you want to use a background image, you should keep in mind:

ƒ Will the background image increase the loading time too much?
ƒ Will the background image look good with other images on the page?
ƒ Will the background image look good with the text colors on the page?
ƒ Will the background image look good when it is repeated on the page?
ƒ Will the background image take away the focus from the text?

Note: The bgcolor, background, and the text attributes in the <body> tag are deprecated in
the latest versions of HTML (HTML 4 and XHTML). The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has
removed these attributes from its recommendations. Style sheets (CSS) should be used
instead (to define the layout and display properties of HTML elements).

Try It Out!
Open your text editor and type the following text:
<html>
<head>
<title>My First Webpage</title>
</head>
<body background="images/clouds.gif" bgcolor="#EDDD9E">
<h1 align="center">My First Webpage</h1>
<p>Welcome to my <strong>first</strong> webpage. I am writing this page using a
text editor and plain old html.</p>
<p>By learning html, I'll be able to create webpages like a
<del>beginner</del> pro....<br>
which I am of course.</p>
</body>
</html>

Save your page as mypage3.html and view it in your browser.


Notice we gave our page a background color as well as a background image. If for some reason the
web page is unable to find the picture, it will display our background color.

HTML Colors

Color Values

Colors are defined using a hexadecimal notation for the combination of red, green, and blue color
values (RGB). The lowest value that can be given to one light source is 0 (hex #00). The highest value
is 255 (hex #FF). This table shows the result of combining red, green, and blue:

Color Color HEX Color RGB


#000000 rgb(0,0,0)
#FF0000 rgb(255,0,0)
#00FF00 rgb(0,255,0)
#0000FF rgb(0,0,255)
#FFFF00 rgb(255,255,0)
#00FFFF rgb(0,255,255)
#FF00FF rgb(255,0,255)
#C0C0C0 rgb(192,192,192)
#FFFFFF rgb(255,255,255)

Color Names
A collection of color names is supported by most browsers.

Color Color HEX Color Name


#F0F8FF AliceBlue
#FAEBD7 AntiqueWhite
#7FFFD4 Aquamarine
#000000 Black
#0000FF Blue
#8A2BE2 BlueViolet
#A52A2A Brown
HTML Lists

HTML provides a simple way to show unordered lists (bullet lists) or ordered lists (numbered lists).

Unordered Lists
An unordered list is a list of items marked with bullets (typically small black circles). An unordered list
starts with the <ul> tag. Each list item starts with the <li> tag.

This Code Would Display


<ul>
<li>Coffee</li> ƒ Coffee
<li>Milk</li> ƒ Milk
</ul>

Ordered Lists

An ordered list is also a list of items. The list items are marked with numbers. An ordered list
starts with the <ol> tag. Each list item starts with the <li> tag.

This Code Would Display


<ol>
<li>Coffee</li> 1. Coffee
<li>Milk</li> 2. Milk
</ol>

Inside a list item you can put paragraphs, line breaks, images, links, other lists, etc.

Definition Lists

Definition lists consist of two parts: a term and a description. To mark up a definition list, you need
three HTML elements; a container <dl>, a definition term <dt>, and a definition description <dd>.

This Code Would Display


<dl>
<dt>Cascading Style Sheets</dt> Cascading Style Sheets
<dd>Style sheets are used to provide Style sheets are used to provide
presentational suggestions for presentational suggestions for
Documents marked up in HTML.
</dd> Documents marked up in HTML.
</dl>

Inside a definition-list definition (the <dd> tag) you can put paragraphs, line breaks, images, links,
other lists, etc
Try It Out

Open your text editor and type the following:

<html>
<head>
<title>My First Webpage</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#EDDD9E">
<h1 align="center">My First Webpage</h1>
<p>Welcome to my <strong>first</strong> webpage. I am writing this page using a
text editor and plain old html.</p>
<p>By learning html, I'll be able to create web pages like a pro....<br>
which I am of course.</p>
Here's what I've learned:
<ul>
<li>How to use HTML tags</li>
<li>How to use HTML colors</li>
<li>How to create Lists</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>

Save your page as mypage4.html and view it in your browser.

HTML Links

HTML uses the <a> anchor tag to create a link to another document or web page.

The Anchor Tag and the Href Attribute

An anchor can point to any resource on the Web: an HTML page, an image, a sound file, a movie, etc.
The syntax of creating an anchor:

<a href="url">Text to be displayed</a>

The <a> tag is used to create an anchor to link from, the href attribute is used to tell the address of
the document or page we are linking to, and the words between the open and close of the anchor tag
will be displayed as a hyperlink.

This Code Would Display


<a href="https://google.com">click here!</a> Click here!

The Target Attribute

With the target attribute, you can define where the linked document will be opened. By default, the link will
open in the current window. The code below will open the document in a new browser window:

<a href=https://google.com/ target="_blank">click here!</a>


HTML Images

The Image Tag and the Src Attribute

The <img> tag is empty, which means that it contains attributes only and it has no closing tag. To
display an image on a page, you need to use the src attribute. Src stands for "source". The value of
the src attribute is the URL of the image you want to display on your page. The syntax of defining an
image:

This Code Would Display

<img src="graphics/chef.gif">

Not only does the source attribute specify what image to use, but where the image is located. The
above image, graphics/chef.gif, means that the browser will look for the image name chef.gif in a
graphics folder in the same folder as the html document itself.
src="chef.gif" means that the image is in the
same folder as the html document calling for it.

src="images/chef.gif" means that the image


is one folder down from the html document that
called for it. This can go on down as many layers
as necessary.

src="../chef.gif" means that the image is in


one folder up from the html document that
called for it.

src="../../chef.gif" means that the image is


two folders up from the html document that
called for it.

src="../images/chef.gif" means that the


image is one folder up and then another folder
down in the images directory.

src="../../../other/images/chef.gif"
means this goes multiple layers up.

The browser puts the image where the image tag occurs in the document. If you put an image tag
between two paragraphs, the browser shows the first paragraph, then the image, and then the
second paragraph.

The Alt Attribute


The alt attribute is used to define an alternate text for an image. The value of the alt attribute
is author-defined text:

<img src="graphics/chef.gif" alt="Smiling Happy Chef ">

The alt attribute tells the reader what he or she is missing on a page if the browser can't load images.
The browser will then display the alternate text instead of the image. It is a good practice to include
the alt attribute for each image on a page, to improve the display and usefulness of your document
for people who have text-only browsers or use screen readers.
Image Dimensions
When you have an image, the browser usually figures out how big the image is all by itself. If you put in
the image dimensions in pixels however, the browser simply reserves a space for the image, then
loads the rest of the page. Once the entire page is loads it can go back and fill in the images.
Without dimensions, when it runs into an image, the browser has to pause loading the page, load
the image, then continue loading the page. The chef image would then be:

<img src="graphics/chef.gif" width="130" height="101" alt="Smiling Happy Chef">

Open the file mypage2.html in your text editor and add code highlighted in bold:

<html>
<head>
<title>My First Webpage</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1 align="center">My First Web page</h1>
<p>Welcome to my first webpage. I am writing this page using a text editor and plain old
html.</p> <p>By learning html, I'll be able to create web pages like a pro....<br> which I am of
course.</p>

<!-- Who would have guessed how easy this would be :) -->
<p><img src="graphics/chef.gif" width="130" height="101" alt="Smiling Happy
Chef" align="center"></p>
<p align="center">This is my Chef</p>
</body>
</html>

Save your page as mypage5.html and view it in your browser.

Tables

Tables are defined with the <table> tag. A table is divided into rows (with the <tr> tag), and each
row is divided into data cells (with the <td> tag). The letters td stands for table data, which is the
content of a data cell. A data cell can contain text, images, lists, paragraphs, forms, horizontal rules,
tables, etc.

This Code Would Display


<table>
<tr>
<td>row 1, cell 1</td>
<td>row 1, cell 2</td>
</tr> row 1, cell 1 row 1, cell 2
<tr> row 2, cell 1 row 2, cell 2
<td>row 2, cell 1</td>
<td>row 2, cell 2</td>
</tr>
</table>
Tables and the Border Attribute
To display a table with borders, you will use the border attribute.

This Code Would Display


<table border="1">
<tr>
<td>Row 1, cell 1</td>
<td>Row 1, cell 2</td>
row 1, cell 1 row 1, cell 2
</tr>
</table>
and....

This Code Would Display


<table border="5">
<tr>
<td>Row 1, cell 1</td>
<t d> Ro w 1, c el l 2< /t d>
row 1, cell 1 row 1, cell 2
</tr>
</table>

Open up your text editor. Type in your <html>, <head> and <body> tags. From here on I will only be
writing what goes between the <body> tags. Type in the following:
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td>Tables can be used to layout information</td>
<td>&nbsp; <img src="images/chef.gif"> &nbsp;
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Save your page as mytable1.html and view it in your browser.

Headings in a Table
Headings in a table are defined with the <th> tag.

This code Would Display


<table border="1">
<tr>
<th>Heading</th>
<th>Another Heading</th>
</tr>
<tr> Heading Another Heading
<td>row 1, cell 1</td>
<td>row 1, cell 2</td>
row 1, cell 1 row 1, cell 2
</tr> row 2, cell 1 row 2, cell 2
<tr>
<td>row 2, cell 1</td>
<td>row 2, cell 2</td>
</tr>
</table>
Cell Padding and Spacing
The <table> tag has two attributes known as cellspacing and cellpadding. Here is a table example
without these properties. These properties may be used separately or together.

This Code Would Display


<table border="1">
<tr>
<td>some text</td>
<td>some text</td>
</tr> some text some text
<tr> some text some text
<td>some text</td>

<td>some text</td>
</tr>
</table>

Cellspacing is the pixel width between the individual data cells in the table (The thickness of the
lines making the table grid). The default is zero. If the border is set at 0, the cellspacing lines will
be invisible.

This Code Would Display


<table border="1" cellspacing="5">
<tr>
<td>some text</td>
<td>some text</td> some text some text
</tr><tr>

<td>some text</td> some text some text


<td>some text</td>
</tr>
</table>

Cellpadding is the pixel space between the cell contents and the cell border. The default for this
property is also zero. This feature is not used often, but sometimes comes in handy when you have
your borders turned on and you want the contents to be away from the border a bit for easy
viewing. Cellpadding is invisible, even with the border property turned on. Cellpadding can be
handled in a style sheet.

This Code Would Display


<table border="1" cellpadding="10">
<tr>
<td>some text</td>
<td>some text</td> some text some text
</tr><tr>
<td>some text</td> some text some text
<td>some text</td>
</tr>
</table>
Table Tags

Tag Description
<table> Defines a table
<th> Defines a table header
<tr> Defines a table row
<td> Defines a table cell
<caption> Defines a table caption
<colgroup>Defines groups of table columns
<col> Defines the attribute values for one or more columns in a table

Table Size

Table Width
The width attribute can be used to define the width of your table. It can be defined as a fixed width
or a relative width. A fixed table width is one where the width of the table is specified in pixels. For
example, this code, <table width="550">, will produce a table that is 550 pixels wide. A relative
table width is specified as a percentage of the width of the visitor's viewing window. Hence this code,
<table width="80%">, will produce a table that occupies 80 percent of the screen.

This table width is 250 pixels

This table width is 50%

There are arguments in favor of giving your tables a relative width because such table widths yield
pages that work regardless of the visitor's screen resolution. For example, a table width of 100% will
always span the entire width of the browser window whether the visitor has a 800x600 display or a
1024x768 display (etc). Your visitor never needs to scroll horizontally to read your page, something
that is regarded by most people as being very annoying.

HTML Layout - Using Tables

One very common practice with HTML, is to An HTML <table> is used to divide a part of
use HTML tables to format the layout of an this Web page into two columns.
HTML page. The trick is to use a table without borders,
A part of this page is formatted with two and maybe a little extra cell-padding.
columns. As you can see on this page, there No matter how much text you add to this
is a left column and a right column. This page, it will stay inside its column borders.
text is displayed in the left column.
Try It Out!
Let's put everything you've learned together to create a simple page. Open your text editor and type
the following text:

<html>
<head>
<title>My First Web Page </title>
</head>
<body>
<table width="90%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" >
<tr bgcolor="#EDDD9E">
<td width="200" valign="top"><img src="graphics/contact.gif" width="100"
height="100"></td>
<td valign="top"><h1 align="right">Janet Doeson</h1> <h3
align="right">Technical Specialist</h3></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="200">
<h3>Menu</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="home.html">Home</a></li>
<li> <a href="faq.html">FAQ</a></li>
<li> <a href="contact.html">Contact</a></li>
<li> <a href="http://www.google.com">Links</a> </li>
</ul></td>
<td valign="top"><h2 align="center">Welcome!</h2>
<p>Welcome to my first webpage. I created this webpage without the assistance of a
webpage editor. Just my little text editor and a keen understanding of html.</p>
<p>Look around. Notice I'm able to use paragraphs, lists and headings. You may not
be able to tell, but the layout is done with a table. I'm very clever. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more
specific.</p>
<cite>Lily Tomlin </cite> </blockquote> </td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr width="90%" align="left">
<address>
Janet Doeson<br>
Technical Specialist<br>
512.555.5555
</address>
</body>
</html>

Save your page as mytable2.html and view it in your browser.

You might also like