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The 3 basic formatting features of HTML

RemainAnon

Junior Member
When you first start using HTML, the first things you want to learn is how to start customizing the text on your webpage. These are handy to make things stand out more than others, or just to put emphasis on a certain point.

Firstly, to make your text bold in HTML, you do:

HTML:
<b>insert text here</b>

Which would look like this:

insert text here

Secondly, to make your text italic, you do:

HTML:
<i>insert text here</i>

Which would then look like this:

insert text here

Finally, to underline your text, do the following:

HTML:
<u>insert text here</u>

Which would look as follows:

insert text here
 
Useful post for absolute beginners, but ever since I learned them I started wondering if they are still used today, and if they are - where?
 
The HTML tags are just the basic commands that tend to put a newcomer at ease. The real world works in a much more complicated way. For example, view the source code of a web page. I find the code not just difficult to understand but would never attempt it without software.

In this context, the codes are useful when explaining why people need to know them. In a forum signature, I need to add a URL using <a href="url">Link text</a> code. The output make better understanding of how HTML is used in the real world.
 
Nice and clear for beginners, agreed. If anyone is interested in learning HTML from the very start, check out CodeAcademy. They make it really easy to learn how to code in various languages in small chunks.
 
I do occasionally use these tags from time to time on forums that allow html usage, but that don't have a wysiwyg feature. I rarely need to use them anymore, though. That being said, these are useful for complete beginners, but not very useful for someone who has been using these features for a number of years to customize text.

What would you recommend to learn second?
 
That was pretty basic :). I am not as much of a newbie than I thought I was. Code Academy? Sounds like something that could be very useful to me. Is it free? I am a poor college student and free resources would be nice to have. Legal or not, I don't really mind ;)
 
Yes, it's totally free and it's simple and easy to use. You can learn CSS, as well, and other languages in addition to those. It's set up in a sort of school lesson type format to learn in small chunks. I would recommend it!
 
They're the 3 i always remember, i tend to look others up. I remember marquee as well, i just haven't done much HTML in recent years.
 
RemainAnon,

Thank you for these quick tips on creating HTML commands. I would like to know if there is an HTML dictionary out on the web that list all the codes and what they do?

I learned how to save my commands in Notepad to create a webpage.

Simply follow these steps:

1. Open Notepad.
2. Create your HTML command scripts.
3. Save our file as an Title.html (.html is the extension needed for the web browser to recognize the HTML commands).
4. Drag file over to an Internet Browser and viola--YOU have a Webpage from Scratch!

Learned this from the following link a two years ago: http://youtu.be/GwQMnpUsj8I

Have fun!!
 
RemainAnon - those tags are outdated. For example, from: http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-b-and-i-tags
The HTML5 specification has the following recommendations with regards to the use of the i element (highlighting added):

Authors are encouraged to use the class attribute on the i element to identify why the element is being used, so that if the style of a particular use (e.g. dream sequences as opposed to taxonomic terms) is to be changed at a later date, the author doesn't have to go through the entire document (or series of related documents) annotating each use. Similarly, authors are encouraged to consider whether other elements might be more applicable than the i element, for instance the em element for marking up stress emphasis, or the dfn element to mark up the defining instance of a term
 
I am so pleased that they have made HTML5 it looks much easier and cleaner.
With all the new semantic elements.

Now I just have to start trying to learn it
I am going to go with CSS Grids (whcih I ahve just ound)
 
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