Waterfall

Understanding How a Web Page Works

Find out what’s happening behind the scenes (View Page Source)

  1. Open your web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer)
  2. Right Click anywhere on the screen- From the contextual menu select View Source (View Page Source in Firefox)

Basic Tags and Their Meanings

The HTML Tag

An HTML tag is a code element that tells the Web browser what to do with your text. Each tag will appear as letters or words between a < (less than sign) and a > (greater than sign).

Example: <html>, <body>

To tell the Web browser to “end” doing what you just told it to do, a forward slash is used in the closing tag:

Example: </html>, </body>

  • Most tags come in matched “beginning” and “ending” pairs, but this is not an absolute rule.

Any Web page you create will contain the following tags at the start of the page:

  • <html>: tells the Web browser that this is the beginning of an HTML document
  • <head>: tells that Web browser that this is the header for the page (you’ll learn later what goes between “HEAD” tags)
  • <title>: tells the Web browser that this is the title of the page
  • <body>: tells the Web browser that this is the beginning of the Web page content — everything you want to say and see on your page will follow this tag.

The tags needed to end any Web page are:

  • </body>
  • </html>

Creating Your First HTML Document

  1. Open Notepad (Right Click on the Desktop > New > Text Document
  2. Type the following code in the documentHello World! This is my first page!
  3. Save the Document to the Desktop (File > save as (save as type: All Files) > mypage.html

View Your New Page

  1. Double Click on the file mypage.html

Additional Resources and Souce Materials