NWE Help: Web: Authoring: HTML: Skeleton

NWE Home :: Help :: Web :: Authoring :: HTML

Every HTML document you produce should have a basic skeleton. A basic skeleton is made up of four tags known as document structure tags. The four tags that make up document structure are:

<HTML> identifies the document type to the web server.
<HEAD> encloses technical information about the document.
<TITLE> gives your document a name.
<BODY> encloses the actual document content.

What is important is not that you know everything that every HTML tag does, but that you at least understand the principles of simple HTML code and structure. (After all, you are not taking an NWE course on web design.)

That said, here is what a basic skeleton should look like:

     
           <HTML>
           <HEAD>
           <TITLE>A simple HTML document</TITLE>
           </HEAD>
           <BODY>

              This is the main content of the document.

           </BODY>
           </HTML>

1. Note that the tags are in a certain order. They MUST always be in this order! The HTML tag comes first; it contains the entire document, then comes a HEAD, which contains a TITLE, and then a BODY, which contains your content.

2. These tags are container tags -- that is, they enclose information, and therefore require a matching end tag to signal the end of the information they enclose. For example, notice that the <HEAD> tag has a matching </HEAD> end tag.

3. There is only one HEAD, TITLE, and BODY in any given web document.

That's it! That is all the HTML you need to know to make your first web page. And to make things even simplier for you, if you open a new or blank file in asWe and click on the "Standard HTML layout" button in asWe, the basic skeleton will be automatically generated for you with nice indents and syntax coloring! But before we introduce you to asWe, you should be familiar with how to add links, images, and other good, and probably required, stuff to your pages.

Back: Elements and Tags
Next: Divisions