Cs42

From Coder Merlin
Within these castle walls be forged Mavens of Computer Science ...
— Merlin, The Coder

HTML Basics[edit]

I'm sure you have used websites before. YouTube (www.youtube.com) is a great example! YouTube has something interesting for almost everyone. Think about what interests you. What do you like to watch on YouTube?

YouTube is one of many websites. Websites are like online pictures or papers that you can visit using a computer. Here are some more examples of websites:

You can visit many websites that you can visit, each one for a different purpose. Some websites are used for fun, some are used to teach people, and many others for other reasons.

Have you ever wondered how these websites are created? You can't build them using Legos or clay, can you? Although you can't built a website using your hands, you can using a computer! All websites are created using a tool called HTML.

HTML stands for "Hyper Text Markup Language," but you don't need to remember that to build your own website.

All you need to know to make a website using HTML is tags. HTML tags are used to create parts of a website, like pictures and words.

Building a website is pretty hard, so the computer will do it for you. You only need to tell it what to do. Tags are the way you can tell the the computer what you want. They tell the computer what to put on your website.

The paragraph tag in the first bullet below is not showing up. Might need to use the PRE (preformatted) tag? Here are some examples of tags:

  • - The paragraph tag. This adds words to your website.
  • <img></img> - The image tag. This adds pictures to your website.

There are many more tags, all waiting for you to learn. Once you learn about them, you can use them to build your very own website.

But before that, you need a plan. Let's first draw on a sheet of paper what you want your website to look like. Try to be creative, and make it all about you!