Basic Notes - Useful Tips

Basic Notes - Useful Tips

When you write HTML text, you can never be sure how the text is displayed in another browser. Some people have large computer displays, some have small. The text will be reformatted every time the user resizes his window. Never try to format the text in your editor by adding empty lines and spaces to the text.

HTML will truncate the spaces in your text. Any number of spaces count as one. Some extra information: In HTML a new line counts as one space. 

Using empty paragraphs

to insert blank lines is a bad habit. Use the
tag instead. (But don't use the
tag to create lists. Wait until you have learned about HTML lists.)

HTML automatically adds an extra blank line before and after some elements, like before and after a paragraph, and before and after a heading.

We use a horizontal rule (the

---

tag), to separate the sections in our tutorials.

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More Examples

More paragraphs
This example demonstrates some of the default behaviors of paragraph elements.

html>

This paragraph

contains a lot of lines

in the source code,

but the browser

ignores it.

This paragraph

contains      a lot of spaces

in the source     code,

but the    browser

ignores it.

The number of lines in a paragraph depends on the size of your browser window. If you resize the browser window, the number of lines in this paragraph will change.

Line breaks
This example demonstrates the use of line breaks in an HTML document.

To break
lines
in a
paragraph,
use the br tag.

Poem problems
This example demonstrates some problems with HTML formatting.

   My Bonnie lies over the ocean.

   My Bonnie lies over the sea.

   My Bonnie lies over the ocean.

  Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me.

Note that your browser simply ignores your formatting!

Headings
This example demonstrates the tags that display headings in an HTML document.

This is heading 1

This is heading 2

This is heading 3

This is heading 4

This is heading 5

This is heading 6

Use heading tags only for headings. Don't use them just to make something bold. Use other tags for that.

Horizontal rule
This example demonstrates how to insert a horizontal rule.

The hr tag defines a horizontal rule:

---

This is a paragraph

---

This is a paragraph

---

This is a paragraph

Hidden comments
This example demonstrates how to insert a hidden comment in the HTML source code.

This is a regular paragraph

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Basic HTML Tags

If you lookup the basic HTML tags in the reference below, you will see that the reference contains additional information about tag attributes.

You will learn more about HTML tag attributes in the next chapter of this tutorial.

Tag	Description
	Defines an HTML document
	Defines the document's body
to	Defines header 1 to header 6
	Defines a paragraph
	Inserts a single line break
	Defines a horizontal rule
	Defines a comment