2.2 A First HTML Document
It seems every programming language
book ever written starts off with a simple example on how to display
the message, "Hello, World!" Well,
you won't see a "Hello,
World!" example in this book. After all, this is a
style guide for the new millennium. Instead, ours sends greetings to
the World Wide Web:
<html>
<head>
<title>My first HTML document</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>My first HTML document</h2>
Hello, <i>World Wide Web!</i>
<!-- No "Hello, World" for us -->
<p>
Greetings from<br>
<a href="http://www.ora.com">O'Reilly & Associates</a>
<p>
Composed with care by:
<cite>(insert your name here)</cite>
<br>©2000 and beyond
</body>
</html>
Go ahead: type in the example HTML source on a fresh word-processing
page and save it on your local disk as
myfirstl. Make sure you select to save it in
ASCII format; word processor-specific file formats like Microsoft
Word's .doc files save hidden
characters that can confuse the browser software and disrupt your
HTML document's display.
After saving myfirstl (or
myfirst, if you are using archaic DOS- or
Windows 3.11-based file-naming conventions) onto disk, start up your
browser and locate and open the file from the
program's File menu. Your screen should look like
Figure 2-1.
Figure 2-1. A very simple HTML document
