About HTML Files | Front-end Development Tutorials

Learning Goals

At the end of this Tutorial you will be able to:

Understand the basic <head and <body structure of an HTML file.
In VS Code, use File| New Text File to create a blank web page.
In VS Code, use File | Save As to create a new web page based on an existing web page.
Add and customise standard <head> content for a web page.
Copy-and-paste text content into the body of a web page.
Mark-up text with heading, paragraph, bold and italics HTML tags.
Add non-displaying HTML comments to a web page.
Create hyperlinks between web pages.
Upload web pages to your GitHub account.

Creating your folder structure

Before creating any web pages, it’s a good idea to create a location on your computer to store them.

Working with web pages is very different to working with Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop. With those apps, you are typically working with only a single file at any one time.

In contrast, web pages can contain lots of files. There is the web page itself (an HTML file), one or more stylesheets (CSS files), several images (JPG or PNG files) and maybe some JavaScript code (JS files) and videos (MP4 files) as well.

That’s a lot of files to keep track of!

Moreover, any one website will commonly contain multiple web pages, and each of these will have its own list of images and other files.

Creating your ‘main’ folder

Your first step is to create a 📁 folder on your computer to store all your web design work – all your files and sub-folders. You can think of this as your “main” or “high-level” folder.

For Microsoft Windows users, here are the steps:

Open File Explorer.
In the left-hand column, click either on Documents or your C: drive.
On the next screen displayed, in the blank space at the right side, right-click and choose New | New folder from the context menu.
Give your new folder a name. For example, websites.

DO NOT type upper-case letters. Type websites.

DO NOT type 'Websites' or 'WEBSITES'.

DO NOT type blank spaces such as 'web sites'.

✅ That’s it. In future, you will never need to wonder where your web-related files are located on your computer – they will always be in your 📁 websites folder.

Creating your ‘exercises’ sub-folder

Creating your ‘main’ 📁 websites folder is only a first step. You will be working with many dozens of files in this course. To keep your files organised, you will be creating a number of sub-folders. And many of these will, in turn, contain sub-folders of their own.

Follow these steps to create a sub-folder to store the exercise files you will work with in this and the next few Tutorials.

In Windows, open File Explorer.
Select and display your 📁 websites folder.
In the blank space at the right side, right-click and choose New | New folder from the context menu.
Give your new sub-folder this name: exercises

DO NOT type upper-case letters. Type exercises.

DO NOT type 'Exercises' or 'EXERCISES'.

✅ All done. Your folder and sub-folder structure should now look as shown below.

Viewing the full names of files

You will find it easier to work with the various types of files you will meet in web design when you can see the full name of each file.

By default, the Finder on Apple Macs shows the name of every file in full.

Microsoft Windows, however, hides the second part of file names, known as the file name extension.

Follow the steps below to view file name extensions in Windows 11.

Open File Explorer.
Click the View menu and then the Show command.
From the sub-menu now displayed, select the File name extensions option.

And here are the steps for Windows 10:

Open File Explorer.
In the menu at the top of the screen, click the View option.
You are now shown a new ribbon of options. Check the box named File name extensions.

✅ In future, all files will shown with their full file name that includes the file name extension.

Pinning File Explorer to your Windows Taskbar

If you are using Windows, you can add File Explorer to the Taskbar along the bottom of your Windows desktop. You can then launch it at any time with a single click.

Follow these steps:

In the Search Box at the left of the Taskbar, enter "File Explorer" (without quotes).
When the File Explorer icon is displayed in the list of search results, right-click on it.
Choose Pin to taskbar from the list of options displayed.

In future, when you need to launch File Explorer, you can simply click its icon on the Taskbar.

✅ Another task completed. You are now ready to create your first web pages.

HTML files: The basic structure

The simplest possible HTML file has two main parts - the head and the body and looks as shown below.

Creating your first web page

You are now ready to create a new web page – that is, an HTML file. Here are the steps:

Start Microsoft Visual Code (VS Code) on your computer.
Choose the File | New File command. VS Code creates a new, empty file in a new tab within your VS Code window. It suggests the name of Untitled-1 for your new file. Let’s give your file a new name and save it as an HTML file.
Choose the File | Save As... command.
In the dialog box now displayed, save your file in the 📁 exercises sub-folder of your 📁 websites folder with this name: page-1.html

DO NOT name your web page with an upper-case ‘P’ as in Page-1.html.

And DO NOT use some other combination of upper and lower-case letters, such as PAGE-1.HTML or page-1.HTML.

Also, DO NOT enter any blank spaces in the name of your file: type page-1.html NOT page - 1.html or page -1.html.

Because you have included the file name extension (.html), you can ignore the second box named Save as type. After typing the name of your file, click the Save button. Notice how VS Code now displays the name of your page-1.html file at the top of the screen.

✅ That’s it. You have successfully created your first sample web page.

Your folder and file structure should look as shown below.

Adding the <head> and <body> structure

After creating and naming your new, empty page-1.html web page, your next task is to add the basic <head> and <body> structure to it.

Visual Studio Code offers a convenient shortcut for doing this.

In VS Code, click anywhere in your empty web page and type the exclamation mark ! (SHIFT key and 1 key). After one or a few seconds, the Emmet Abbreviation menu appears. Click on the first option from the menu. Or press the ENTER key. VS Code now fills your new file with the basic HTML structure.
NOTE: The exclamation mark ! shortcut key is part of Emmet, a collection time-saving tools for web designers and developers that is pre-installed in VS Code.
To make your web page easier to read and edit, add some blank lines after the closing </head> tag and before the opening <body> tag. Click just before the <body> tag and press the ENTER key one, two or three times. When you look at the HTML of your web page on the VS Code screen, you can now see visually ‘at a glance‘ where the <head> ends and the <body> begins.
Save your HTML file. You can choose the File | Save command from the menu. Or simply press Ctrl key (Windows) or Command ⌘ key (Apple) and press the s (for Save) key.

✅ Well done. You have now created what is called a ‘valid’ web page.

Adding a title to the <head> of your web page

Now you will give a title to your web page.

In the <head> of your page-1.html file, you can see that VS Code has given your page a default title of Document. This text is located between the opening <title> and closing </title> tags.
```
 <title>Document</title>
```
Replace this with the following new text:
```
 <title>A Tale of Two Cities</title>
```
When finished, save your HTML file.

Adding a description to the <head> of your web page

Now you will add a summary description of the contents of your web page.

In the <head> of your web page, at the end of the line that contains the <title> ... </title> tag pair, click with the mouse and then press the Enter key to open a new, blank line. Your web page should now look as shown below.

Copy the following line:

<meta name="description" content="A basic web page containing some text from A Tale of Two Cities, a novel published in 1859 by English author Charles Dickens.">

Paste the copied text in your web page, on the new, blank line you created under the <title> ... </title> tag pair. See below.
Save your page-1.html file.

✅ You are now finished working with the <head> of your first sample web page.

Displaying your web page

Let’s display your page-1.html web page in a web browser.

Open File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Apple Mac), and display the contents of your 📁 websites/exercises sub-folder. Your choice of default web browser determines which icon is shown for your HTML files.
- If you have set Google Chrome as your default web browser, your screen should look as shown below.
- If you have set Mozilla Firefox Developer Edition as your default web browser, your screen shown look as below.
In either case, double-click the page-1.html file to open it.
If some other web browser is your default:
- Right-click the page-1.html file.
- From the context menu displayed, choose Open with.
- Select either Firefox Developer Edition or Google Chrome to open the web page.
Your web page should look as shown below. Note the address of your web page in the Address Bar of your web browser.
- The first part of the address shows the name of the folder and sub-folder (websites/exercises) that contains your web page.
- The second part of the address shows the name of the file (page-1.html).
Also in the Address Bar of the web browser you can see that the forward slash / character is used to separate the name of the file from the name of the folders where the file is located.
Because you have not yet added any content to the <body> of your web page, it looks as if it is empty. However, your web page does contain the correct content within its <head>. To view this:
- Right-click anywhere on the web page.
- From the context menu displayed, choose the View page source command.
Your web browser opens a new tab and displays the HTML source code of your web page.

Adding text to the <body> of your web page

In this section, you will copy-and-paste some text content to the <body> of your web page.

Drag down and across all the text in the grey box below to select it.

A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

We had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Small Heading
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.

Small Heading
All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand.

Smaller Heading
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!

by Charles Dickens, published by Chapman & Hall in 1859.
Right-click on the selected text and, from the context menu, choose Copy.
In VS Code, with the page-1.html file open, click on the first blank line after the opening <body> tag. Now, paste the copied text.
VS Code may add one or more blank lines after the opening <body> tag and before the pasted text. You can delete these blank lines.
Save your file and then display it in your web browser.

As you can see, the web browser ignores any paragraph breaks in the file and displays all the text content as a single block.

This is because the content is not marked up with HTML tags.

Marking up the content in your first web page

Now you will mark-up the text of your web page with opening and closing pairs of the following HTML tags: <h1>, <h2>, <h3> and <p>.

The < symbol is known as the left angle bracket. And the > symbol is known as the right angle bracket.

To type a left angle bracket, hold down the Shift key and type the , (comma) key.
To type a right angle bracket, hold down the Shift key and type the . (full stop) key.
The / symbol is called the forward slash. The key is just to the right of the . (full stop).

Wrap the main heading text “A Tale of Two Cities” within <h1> ... </h1> tags.
Wrap the two “Small Heading” texts within <h2> ... </h2> tags.
Wrap the “Smaller Heading” text within <h3> ... </h3> tags.
Wrap the remaining paragraphs of text with <p> ... </p> tags.
On the last line, wrap the words “Charles Dickens” within italics <i> ... </i> tags.
And wrap the words “Chapman & Hall” within bold <b> ... </b> tags.
The body of your HTML file should now look as shown below.
Save your page-1.html web page file.
Display your web page in your web browser. It should now look as shown below.

✅ You have now finished working with your first sample web page.

Creating a home page for your website

In this section, you will use your sample web page named page-1.html as the basis for creating a front or ‘home’ page named index.html for your website.

In VS Code, with the page-1.html file open, choose the File | Save As... command, and save your web page in your ‘main’ 📁 websites folder this new name: index.html

DO NOT name your web page with an upper-case ‘I’ as in Index.html.

And DO NOT use some other mixture of upper and lower-case letters, such as INDEX.HTML or index.HTML or whatever.

Also, DO NOT enter any blank spaces in the name of your file: type index.html NOT index .html

Your folder and file structure should look as shown below.
In the <head> of your new index.html file, update the title and the description tags by copying and pasting the lines below to replace the old title and description tags and content.
```
<title>Mary Smith | Home Page</title>
<meta name="description" content="Welcome to my website that showcases some of my digital creations.">
```
Replace the name “Mary Smith” with your own name. And edit the text as you wish. The <head> of your web page should look similar to the sample below.
Delete all the content from inside the <body> ... </body> tags of the web page.

Enter the new content below.

<h1>Welcome</h1>
<h2>Mary Smith</h2>

<h3>Sample Web Pages</h3>

<p><a href="exercises/page-1.html">A Tale of Two Cities</a></p>

Save your web page and view it in your web browser. It should look like that below.
Click on the hyperlink to ensure it works correctly.

✅ You have now finished working with your home web page.

Adding a back link to your sample page

As a final task, let’s add a hyperlink to your sample web page that, when clicked, brings the user back to your home web page.

In VS Code, open the page-1.html sample web page you created earlier in your 📁 websites/exercises sub-folder:
At the end of the file, just before the closing </body> tag, enter the following line.
```
<p><a href="../index.html">Back to Home page</a></p>
```
When finished, save your sample web page.
In your web browser, display the sample web page and verify the “Back to Home page” hyperlink works correctly.

✅ Task completed.

About relative hyperlinks

The hyperlinks in your Home page and at the bottom of your four sample web pages are examples of what are called relative hyperlinks.

A relative hyperlink is a hyperlink that contains the address of a linked-to, destination web page in relation to the location of the file that contains the hyperlink.

Consider the following two examples, each with two web pages, page-1.html and page-2.html:

In the simplest case, the two files are in the same folder.

The hyperlink in the first file that leads to the second file will be as follows:
```
 <a href="page-2.html">Page 2</a>
```
Conversely, the link in the second file back to the first file will be.
```
 <a href="page-1.html">Page 1</a>
```

In each case, there is no need to specify the folder name.

In the second example, the page-1.html file is in a folder one level above the page-2.html file.

The link from the first file to the second will now be.
```
 <a href="mystuff/page-2.html">Page 2</a>
```
In this case, the hyperlink tells the web browser: “Go down one level to a folder named mystuff to locate the file.”
And here is the link from the second file back to the first
```
 <a href="../page-1.html">Page 1</a>
```
The two dots and the forward slash (../) tell the web browser: “Go back up one level in the folder hierarchy to locate the file.”

You will learn more about hyperlinks in HTML in later Tutorials.

Adding comments to HTML code

In a web page, a comment is one or more lines of text that are visible only in the source code – but are not actually displayed in the web browser.

You can see an example of a short, one-line comment below.

  <!-- This is a comment -->

And here is an example of a longer, multi-line comment.

  <!--
Generated by Animista on 2021-2-3 11:17:9
http://animista.net, t: @cssanimista
-->

Follow these steps to create a comment in VS Code.

Type a left angle bracket (<), an exclamation mark (!) and two dashes (--). The is the opening part of the comment tag.
VS Code automatically adds the closing part of the comment tag: two dashes (--) and a right angle bracket (>).
Click in the middle of the four dashes and press the Spacebar a few times.
Type your comment in the blank spaces.

By default, VS Code displays comments in a dark green colour.

Hiding a web page from search engines

Google and other search engines use software programs called spiders to crawl the web for web pages to add to their list of indexed web pages. Only web pages listed in such an index will appear in search engine results.

If you don't want a particular web page to be found by Google or other search engines, follow these steps:

Open your web page in VS Code.
In the <head> of your web page add the following new line:
```
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
```
You can add this anywhere within the head. Typically, it is placed just after the charset line, as shown below.
When finished, save your web page.

Uploading your web pages to GitHub

After creating your web pages, you are now ready to upload them to your account on GitHub.

Open a new tab in your web browser and go to GitHub.com. If you are not already signed in to your GitHub account, sign in now.
On your GitHub home page, click the name of the repository (‘repo’) that holds your web pages. Its name will look as follows, where username is your chosen username on GitHub. username.github.io
On the next GitHub screen displayed, near the right of the screen, you can see a button named Add file. Click on it.
From the dropdown list displayed, choose the option Upload files.
In File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Apple Mac), drag-and-drop your index.html file and your 📁 exercises sub-folder to upload them to your repository on GitHub.
Scroll down to the bottom of the GitHub screen, and accept or edit the short message (Add files via upload) in the Commit changes box.
Finally, click the green Commit changes button to upload your files.

Your web pages are now published on GitHub at web addresses similar to the following, where username is the username you have chosen for your GitHub account:

https://username.github.io/index.html
https://username.github.io/exercises/page-1.html

It may take a few minutes for your uploaded files to appear on GitHub.