HTML class I - In the beginning...

Required Parts
<html>
<head> </head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

<html> alerts the browser to interpret the following text (within the <html> brackets) as html. The closing tag is a MUST.
<head> contents: (contents in the document's <head> do NOT appear on the displayed page in the browser - ALL are optional)
- title: <title>Title of your page here appears in the top bar of the browser - not on the page </title>
  Some search engines use this title in matching with a search request. The title tag can not be formatted, like text on your page. It's merely a holding place for the title text. You can't apply bold or center to it. It will only appear in the browser's top bar. The title tag is not used anywhere else in teh document, only inside the head. Page titles to appear on your page in the browser are defined differently (will be discussed in the "Text" section).
- meta tags: used for search engines - many use in searching for keywords on your page and displaying the short description in the results.
  
  <meta name="keywords" content="dog,pet,puppy,tail,leash,collar,flea,shampoo">
  
  <meta name="description" content="Dog Supply Store - find all your dog supplies here">
- BASE tags: <BASE HREF="http://www.myhost.com/"> - specifies www.myhost.com to be the base from which all relative URLs should be determined. ("relative URLs" - discussed in the "links" section.)
  <BASE TARGET="default_target"> - This allows the author to pick a default target window for every link in a document that does not have an explicit TARGET attribute ("target" - discussed in the "links" section).

<body> attributes: <body attribute="value" attribute2="value">

Attribute	Description	Code
bgcolor	background color: fills entire page	bgcolor="red" or bgcolor="#FF0000" default in Netscape is white; default in IE is gray
background	background image - will automatically tile	background="images/house.jpg"
text	define default color of text (text color can be defined in specific instances throughout the document to override this setting. If not defined in the body, the default is black)	text="color"
link, alink, vlink	define link color - default is blue (can be found in browser settings/preferences); alink= active link; vlink= visited link (what color changes to after it's been clicked)	link="color"
leftmargin, rightmargin, topmargin, bottommargin	defines page margins in pixels; left and right margins may only display in IE (some versions of Netscape do not support this element)	leftmargin="50"

Example:

<html>
    <head>
      <title>Roger's Dog Supply</title>
      <meta name="keywords" content="dog,pet,puppy,tail,leash,collar,flea,shampoo">
      <meta name="description" content="Dog Supply Store - find all your dog supplies here">
    </head>

<body bgcolor="#00FF00" text="#000000" link="#FFFFFF" vlink="#FFFF00">

body text

</body>
</html>

Next --> Text

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