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Website Development & Hosting

Tags and Attributes

Tags are designed to tell the computer how to interpret the document you created for viewing by

a human reader. Html is a formatting language and the tags are its tools. There are dozens of

different  tags,  and  html  writers  must  be  careful  not  to  use  tags  that  are  browser  or

platform specific.

In addition, the tags may be affected by the defaults set on your computer when you create the

document and on the client computer when the user views the document.

The format of your text is not governed by the codes generated through keyboard commands. In

other  words,  hitting  return  will  not  necessarily  space  lines  in  an  html  document.  All

formatting must be done with standard tags that are understood by the client s browser.

Most  tags  come  in  pairs  to  indicate  the  beginning  of  the  format  and  the  end  of  the

format. .or example, 
 indicates the commencement of a paragraph and 
 closes the

paragraph. Many people are careless with the end tags and may not include them. This is not a

good habit to develop for a couple of reasons. .irst, browsers are designed to work with standard

code. Although some browsers are more forgiving than others, remember, you do not know what

browser your potential users may have and you would like that page to work as you expect it to.

Second,  a  newer  form  of  markup  language,  XML,  is  currently  making  great  strides  in  the  web

world and gaining in popularity. XML requires that tags opened must be closed.

Various attributes (size, shape, position etc.) can be used with some tags to further enhance or

clarify the format.

Among the types of tags that will help you are:

a

character tags, which alter the appearance of the characters found between them and, in

the  case  of  header  tags,  may  have  an  impact  on  how  the  document  is  indexed  by

automated indexers

a

divider  tags,  which  help  you  divide  portions  of  your  text  or  portions  of  your  page  into

paragraphs, by adding a single line between lines of text, or by using horizontal rules as

spacers

a

alignment tags, which align the text between them; for example, centering it on a page

a

list tags, which come in various kinds, allow you to indent, provide numbered lists and

bulleted lists.

Perhaps most important of all are the linking or anchor tags that allow your client to make the

hypertext jumps the web is known for.

Copyright  NESIS 2002

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