Write HTML Using Notepad or TextEdit HTML can be edited by using a professional HTML editor like:
Adobe Dreamweaver Microsoft Expression Web CoffeeCup HTML Editor However, for learning HTML we recommend a text editor like Notepad (PC) or TextEdit (Mac).
We believe using a simple text editor is a good way to learn HTML.
Follow the 4 steps below to create your first web page with Notepad.
Step 1: Open Notepad To open Notepad in Windows 7 or earlier:
Click Start (bottom left on your screen). Click All Programs. Click Accessories. Click Notepad.
To open Notepad in Windows 8 or later:
Open the Start Screen (the window symbol at the bottom left on your screen). Type Notepad.
Step 2: Write Some HTML Write or copy some HTML into Notepad.
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <body>
<h1>My First Heading</h1>
<p>My first paragraph.</p>
</body> </html>
Step 3: Save the HTML Page Save the file on your computer.
Select File > Save as in the Notepad menu.
Name the file "index.htm" or any other name ending with htm.
UTF-8 is the preferred encoding for HTML files.
ANSI encoding covers US and Western European characters only.
You can use either .htm or .html as file extension. There is no difference, it is up to you. Step 4: View HTML Page in Your Browser Open the saved HTML file in your favorite browser. The result will look much like this:
To open a file in a browser, double click on the file, or right-click, and choose open with.
HyperText Markup Language, commonly referred to as HTML, is the standard markup language used to create web pages. It is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags enclosed in angle brackets (like <html> ).
What is HTML? HTML is a markup language for describing web documents (web pages).
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language A markup language is a set of markup tags HTML documents are described by HTML tags Each HTML tag describes different document content HTML Example A small HTML document:
<h1>My First Heading</h1> <p>My first paragraph.</p>
</body> </html>
Try it Yourself »
Example Explained The DOCTYPE declaration defines the document type to be HTML The text between <html> and </html> describes an HTML document The text between <head> and </head> provides information about the document The text between <title> and </title> provides a title for the document The text between <body> and </body> describes the visible page content The text between <h1> and </h1> describes a heading The text between <p> and </p> describes a paragraph Using this description, a web browser can display a document with a heading and a paragraph.
HTML Tags HTML tags are keywords (tag names) surrounded by angle brackets:
<tagname>content</tagname> HTML tags normally come in pairs like <p> and </p> The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag The end tag is written like the start tag, but with a slash before the tag name The start tag is often called the opening tag. The end tag is often called the closing tag. Web Browsers The purpose of a web browser (Chrome, IE, Firefox, Safari) is to read HTML documents and display them.
The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses them to determine how to display the document:
HTML Page Structure Below is a visualization of an HTML page structure:
<html> <head> <title>Page title</title> </head> <body> <h1>This is a heading</h1> <p>This is a paragraph.</p> <p>This is another paragraph.</p> </body> </html> Only the <body> area (the white area) is displayed by the browser. The <!DOCTYPE> Declaration The <!DOCTYPE> declaration helps the browser to display a web page correctly.
There are different document types on the web.
To display a document correctly, the browser must know both type and version.
The doctype declaration is not case sensitive. All cases are acceptable:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<!doctype html>
<!Doctype Html>
Common Declarations HTML5 <!DOCTYPE html> HTML 4.01 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> XHTML 1.0 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
HTML VERSIONS Since the early days of the web, there have been many versions of HTML:
Version Year HTML 1991 HTML 2.01995 HTML 3.21997 HTML 4.011999 XHTML 2000 HTML5 2014