What is HTML?
Hyper Text Markup Language is a computer language that allows the text and images from around the Internet to be displayed in a web browser. It is a designed language controlled by the World Wide Web Consortium (see link in the lower left). The current version of the language is referred to as xHTML. Additionally it allows documents to be linked to each other. So pages within a site can reference each other as well as other sites on the Internet.
<FONT color="#0033CC">
<TAG attribute="VALUE">
HTML is comprised of tags, attributes, and values. For example, to make text turn blue a <FONT> tag is used. Click here and open the sample page. In the file menu select View/Source then return to this page. As the browser reads the html it follows the instructions given to it by each tag. When it reaches the <font> tag towards the end of the page, the browser knows everything that follows within that bracket effects the font. It reads the attribute(s) being defined, in this case the color. Then it uses the value given to change the color of the font to the blue assigned to #0033CC. (Note that the color is written in hexadecimal not in English. Dreamweaver has all the web colors and their values pre-stored so you only need to choose the color on the palette and the program will insert the correct number.)
The current version of xHTML requires, with rare exception, all tags must be opened and closed. Meaning you must first turn on the tag, tell the browser what to do with each attribute, and then turn the tag off. The cue for the browser that you are done is a separate close tag. It matches the open tag exactly with the exception of an additional slash at the beginning and the attributes and values are missing. i.e. </font>. Below are several tags seen in a regular page and some of the many attributes that may be associated with them.
| Name | Open Tag | Close Tag | Possible Attributes |
| Font | <font> | </font> | Color, size, face |
| Body | <body> | </body> | bgcolor, image |
| Link/anchor | <a> | </a> | href |
With the release of the newest xHTML versions, formatting items such as color, size, and placement are handled in a document called a style sheet. These items can be placed in the tag and will still work; however, they will eventually be phased out and newer browsers will start to ignore them.
