Browsers handle text in a special way. Files with the HTML extension interpret the text in a special way to perform special functions.

Two such special characters are the < character and the > character. They are also know as the "less then" and "greater then" sign.

HTML code uses them to define special functions. The code in a tag begins with < followed by some code and ends with an >.

Browsers ignore the line feed and character return characters commonly used in plain text files. This means that seperate lines, and even paragraphs, in a text file would appear as one long line of text in the browser display if it weren't for a special tag that forces a new line. The reason for this is because the browser wants to determine where to wrap text depending on the font size the user has selected and not have new lines where they don't belong if a large character size is selected.

To illustrate this difference, use Control U (or select PAGE SOURCE from the VIEW menu) to view the ascii text used to generate this page of text. Notice that there are four paragraphs so far in this display, because of the break tags in the source text. There are more paragraphs to follow. Each paragraph has two forced line feed, carriage returns between paragraphs. These tags force new lines, but the tags themselves are invisible.

You may wish to open the PAGE SOURCE, copy the code and paste it into a new HTML file in you working folder and play around with it. Be sure and use the HTML extension. This makes it easy to see the results of your work. You can edit the text source file and close it to change the code. Then just double click on the file's icon to open it into your default browser. Its relatively easy to see the results of changing the source file. Introduce new break tags and see the results. Delete some of them and see the results. Change the browser's text size using the control plus and control minus keystrokes to see the differences caused by changing the font size. It will not take long to learn the function of the break tags.

You will probably have already noticed that this text also includes the HTML tags that mark the beginning and end of the HTML code here. The HTML tag marks the beginning of HTML code. The / sign in the end /html tag indicates the end of HTML code in this text file. Some tags are immediate instructions that perform a single function. Some tags set a state and require the end tag to terminate that state. This will become clear in later examples.

This is a trivial exercise, but it illustrates an easy way to learn the use of a plain text editor in Windows (the NotePad.exe utility), your browser and your special working folder to play around with HTML files. There are a number of utilities to create HTML code, but this method easily provides absolute control over your source code. You will be able to do things that the HTML designers haven't even thought of yet. In any case, you will be able to make the web pages as you choose and even create your own whiz bangs in them. Subsequent examples in this presentation will go into a number of them.

In Summary:
There are ascii characters that affect text files and are completely ignored by the browser, such as the line feed and character return characters. There are also tags that are recognized by the browser that are treated as common text characters by the text editors. Learning their uses permits creating "bare bones" HTML code that will allow you to do what you want it to do.