In the last issue, we gave you the basic tags that must be included in all homepages. This month, let's take a look at formatting some of your text and adding links to other pages that contain valuable information.
If you want to add emphasis to your text, you can format it to be in bold, in italics, etc. The tags are merely added before and after the word or words that you want emphasized, and are:
<STRONG>BOLD</STRONG> - an alternative is <B> </B>
<EM>ITALICS FOR EMPHASIS</EM> - an alternative is <I> </I>
Tags can be combined, so if you want bold italics, you would have:
<STRONG><EM>BOLD ITALICS FOR EMPHASIS</EM></STRONG>
Remember to close your tags in the opposite order to which you open them!
<font size="+2"> is this size while <font size="-2"> is this small
While some browsers do recognize primary colors in the tag <font color="green">, (which will give you this effect) others may not and the effect you want to create will be lost. You are best to go to http://www.cse.psu.edu/~echo/colors.html where you will find a RGB Color Value Table. Each color represents a combination of red/blue/green, and the color table will look like this:
Decimal Hexadecimal Description --------------------------------------------------- 240, 248, 255 f0, f8, ff AliceBlue 250, 235, 215 fa, eb, d7 AntiqueWhite 255, 239, 219 ff, ef, db AntiqueWhite1 238, 223, 204 ee, df, cc AntiqueWhite2 205, 192, 176 cd, c0, b0 AntiqueWhite3 139, 131, 120 8b, 83, 78 AntiqueWhite4 127, 255, 212 7f, ff, d4 aquamarine1 118, 238, 198 76, ee, c6 aquamarine2 069, 139, 116 45, 8b, 74 aquamarine4Using the hexadecimal code found on this list, your tag to change the font color to coral will be <font color="ff7f50"> (don't use the commas in the hexadecimal code), which is this color.
Don't overdo it tho, when changing size and color of your font. Too many changes can make trying to read a page quite annoying!
You may choose to divide your homepage into sections and sub-sections, and will want to use a title for each section. Headings can be used in a document, and are available in 6 font sizes, with <H1> being the largest and <H6> being the smallest:
You may choose to have a line drawn after your heading. If so, the tag <HR> will show up as a horizontal rule (line) as follows:
This horizontal rule is a set length, but that can be changed, as can the placing of the rule on your page. For example:
<HR width="50%"> will give a rule like this:
If you wish this smaller horizontal rule to be aligned to the left , you can do this:
<HR width="50%" align="left">
with these results:
One of the most important aspects of a homepage on the World Wide Web, is the ability to "link' from your site to information on the site belonging to someone else. You will notice as you visit web sites that certain words or sets of words are underlined and in a different color font. These are the links that allow people who visit your web site to have accessibility to information that you consider valuable and of interest. This is not physically on your web site, but can be accessed from it and removes the need to duplicate information on the Web.
You can either link to other pages that you have set up on your own site, or you can link to outside sites. To set up a link to an outside site, you must first know the correct URL for the site you want to make available. A link is set up as follows:
<A HREF="site URL is here">text for the actual link is here</A>
For example:
