Acme Web Design Info

Build Your First Web Page with HTML

What is a Web Page? A Practical Answer

Very advanced technology is driving the world wide web, and many, many minds are consistently occupied with the business of making it more complex, more powerful and more interesting. From beginners to advanced users alike there is plenty to learn, but if all you're trying to accomplish is getting a web page online for the world to see and as fast as possible, you may be less interested in the technical wizardry behind the Internet and more concerned with the how-to of getting on it. If you think you might be in that boat, hop in as we take a practical approach to explaining just that.

The concept behind a web page is very simple. A web page is a document, having much in common with brochures, phone directories and other printed and electronic material. Like most documents, a web page contains words and symbols that convey information from human to human. The single most important difference between a web page and most other documents is the capability of hyperlinks like this, which enable a reader to travel thousands of miles across the Internet from one document to another, almost instantly! In modern times, the value of the hyperlink is taken for granted, but its use has revolutionized the organization of information the world over. Hyperlinks are easy to create, and we will teach you the HTML code for them later in this tutorial.

A web page is basically a text document. If you want to see how this works, follow these simple instructions:

1. Open a new text document by launching your favorite text editor. Notepad - a small program that comes with Windows - works very well for when you're starting out, and you can usually find a shortcut to it in Program Files -> Accessories.
2. Type something like "Hello, world!"
3. Save the document somewhere you can remember. When you save, select the "All Files" option and save as hello.html.
4. Find the file you just saved.
5. Open the file in your browser by double-clicking it.
6. The file should open in your default browser, and you should see the words "Hello, world!" on the screen.

Viola! You just created your first web page, congratulations!

Now that you know that a web page is really just a text document in disguise, it should be a lot easier to wrap your mind around the technology that makes the web page work. By adding the ".html" instead of ".txt" to the end of a file, you tell your computer that the file should be opened by your browser instead of your text editor. The browser then reads the file and displays whatever you put in the file. Pretty cool, isn't it? But that's nothing to the raw power you will wield once you learn how to use the HTML language in your file!

Next we will explain the basic principles behind HTML, and give you a few quick and dirty examples to get you started.

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