Jump to Main Content

Create an HTML Web Page

Create your HTML structure

Inside index.html you have the following markup:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD  HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"  content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

Note: The blank space between the opening and closing body tag is not necessary.

The basic structure required for all HTML files is:

  • <html>
  • <head>
  • <title></title>
  • </head>
  • <body>
  • </body>
  • </html>

To help solidify the structure required, see the illustration below:

HTML Required Tags

You will notice we have the DOCTYPE listed as well. Though the DOCTYPE is not required, it is helpful to think of this as being required, to ensure our code can be validated against the W3C specifications to ensure your web page is in compliant mode.

Mark-up tags

HTML is made up of mark-up tags which display text, images, lists and tables to the browser. These markup tags are created using the keys on your keyboard. Tags consist of an opening and closing tags, which are:

  • <html>
    • Opening tag
  • </html>
    • Closing tag

Title Tag

Giving your page a title is simple. Using the <title> tag, we’ll name our web page My first web page: 

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD  HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>My first web page</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

Save your file. Before you can view the title, you must open your web browser. Follow these steps to start your web browser:

  • From the Desktop, select Start>Programs>Microsoft Internet>Internet Explorer
  • From the main menu, select File>Open
  • Browse dialog window shows
  • Click Browse
  • Navigate to your folder and select index.html
  • Click OK
  • You will see nothing in the window because we have no text, images, list or tables in our document

However, if you view the top left corner of your web page, you will see My first web page:

Title of our web page

Title Showing

We'll continue with the body content next.

top of page