Simple HTML Document Template

HTML documents are plain ASCII text with tags inserted to create the different effects. They can be created using any text editor such as Notepad , or there is an excellent HTML editor Arachnophilia  which you can download and use FREE. 

With Microsoft Word you can save the file in HTML format,  but the results are less than satisfactory so avoid using both Word and Write.  (Do not use any other WYSIWYG web page editors such as Front Page, Netscape Composer, Hot Metal etc.) 

DO NOT DESIGN YOUR WEB PAGES FOR THIS CLASS USING Microsoft Word, or Front Page or any other  Graphical User Interface development system.    If it's obvious to me that your assignments were created using one of these programs you will receive zero credit for the assignment. 

Start with a page you created from scratch using a text editor,  or by using and modifying  a page you've copied from the internet.  In all cases, each HTML page should have the following format. 

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<HTML>
    <HEAD>
    <TITLE>Your document heading goes here</TITLE>
    </HEAD>

   <BODY>
         <H1> the page heading goes here </H1>
         The body of your HTML page goes here
   </BODY>
</HTML>

Download This Page:

You can download this template and modify it to suit your needs.  Follow this link and a new browser window will open with this page displayed.  From the browser File menu, select Save as.. , enter the file name template.htm, then save the page to your hard drive or floppy disk.

Notes: 

  • It is not absolutely required that you use the !DOCTYPE  tag, but it is recommended that you always do use it,  to ensure that your page is recognized, regardless of the browser used.   The  DOCTYPE declaration tells the browser what version of HTML to use in displaying your page.
      
  • Most Web pages are divided into two sections: the HEAD and the BODY.    Where the HEAD provides information about the URL of your Web page and the body  contains the bulk of your Web page including all the text, graphics and formatting.
       
  • All of the HTML tags in a document are bracketed by left and right angle brackets, e.g. <HEAD>.
      
  • Many of these tags appear as pairs which enclose the affected parts of the program. The closing tag is the same as the starting tag with a slash / appended to the word. These tags are sometimes referred to as container tags since they require start and finish tags.
      
  • The title enclosed by <TITLE> and </TITLE> within the <HEAD></HEAD> tags, is displayed at the top bar of the browser.
  • The body of the document should contain a page heading at the top and will contain all of the text and images that you want to display on the page as well as hyperlinks to other pages.
      

General Points:

  • HTML tags are not case sensitive, although file names in the UNIX environment are case sensitive. (The web server you will be posting your pages too, packard, runs UNIX.
     
  • The HTML text file you create and save must end with the file extension: HTM or HTML,  either one, it doesn't matter (myfile.htm or myfile.html). 
    A word of warning when using Notepad, it always tries to add the extension .TXT to the end of your file (myfile.htm.txt)    This is not good since your browser expects the file to end in .htm or .html.   You can get around this problem in Notepad by enclosing the file name in quotes when you save it.  So save as:   "myfile.htm" 

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Last updated on  09/03/2007 by L.M. Hicks