Introduction: Tags!

What if the computer could do anything you told it to do? What if you told it to sing, and it would sing, or jump and it would jump? HTML, or hypertext markup language, is a lot like that. By knowing a simple list of commands, you can get the computer to do a bunch of cool tricks.

Tags
Commands in HTML are contained in tags. If you wanted the computer to jump, you'd simply say:

<jump>

Notice that the command is contained within the "greater than" and "less than" symbols. This whole thing is called a tag. All commands in HTML are contained in tags. You just have to know the right tags to use to make a webpage.

You're ready to learn your first tag, and this is an easy one. Suppose you want the computer to read a document written in HTML. Here's how you tell it to do that. You simply type:

<html>

Too easy, right? You're on your way to making your first web document.

Does capitalization count?
Here is some good news for the people who forget to turn off the capslock button - capitalization doesn't matter in the HTML code. Actually, a computer would read all three of these the same:

<html>

<HTML>

<hTmL>

It's best to be consistent though. It is easier and customary to do all of your code in lower-case letters.

You just finished with your first lesson.