Fr. Bucko's
Mighty HTML Guide


BASIC HTML


Introduction to the World Wide Web
Welcome to the on-line html tutorial. These pages are designed to make you a self-learner in using creating and maintaing your own web pages for personal, academic, promotional and/or scholarly uses. Please try the instructions first and, if you still have problems, contact Fr. Ray Bucko, S.J. for assistance. Also, if you have suggestions for new instructional materials please contact Fr. Ray Bucko, S.J..


Creating Your Own Web Page for the Cultures and Collections Course
Students in HRS 331 Honors Seminar: Cultures and Collections: From Cabinets of Curiosity to Cyberspace will use the College of Arts and Sciences' Web Server "Puffin" for this coruse. You will be able to "map a drive" from any computer on the campus that is connected to the Network. It is best to use the computers in the Social Science Data Lab for your work. Remember that you can use a floppy disk for your work and then load it to the server from a computer in the Data Lab once you have signed on with your Net ID and have mapped a network drive to your web folder.

Your Museum Page Address for the Culture and Cures Course

The address of our home page for the Cultures and Cures class is this:

http://puffin.creighton.edu/museums/
Puffin is the name of the College of Arts and Science Web Server. Creighton and edu represent the rest of the "address" to the server. This address is expresses in a series of numbers (147. ) but has an alias using words -- after all, who can remember all those numbers? Museums is a subdirectory on Puffin in which we keep the index page for our museums course.

Your page address is the same as the above address with the addition of another sub-folder named for your last name. Thus Rebecca Allen's Musuem address is:

http://puffin.creighton.edu/museums/allen/

Your default page is named index.html -- because it is a default page you do not need to type it into the address (thus making the address shorter). You can get to the same place, if you enjoy typing, by using the longer address:

http://puffin.creighton.edu/museums/allen/index.html

The Basic Syntax of an HTML Page
This template gives you the basic syntax for any html page. If you are using a wisiwig html editor such as AOL Press you will not be able to see any of these codings. If you are using Webber you will see the code.

    <HTML>
    <HEAD>
    <TITLE>    HTML Page Template</TITLE>
    </HEAD>
    <BODY>

    </BODY>
    </HTML>

These are the basic elements for any HTML page. HTML commands a re always placed between < > symbols. To end a command you use the same two symbols but with a forward slash </ > in front of the command you wish to end. Thus <HTML> and </HTML> are the very first and very last command on a HTML page indicating that all the material between the commands is in HTML language.

Note that the material contained between the <TITLE> </TITLE> command is not the title which will appear on your actual document but rather an indexing title which some browsers such as LYNX display on the upper right of each screen and other browsers ignore for actual display (although they will use the title to identify the bookmark). Your title should contain key words indicating the content of the page. Each title on multiple page home pages should be unique. Web indexing programs such as LYCOS enter the title (and sometimes part or the entirety of your page) into their databases for key work retrieval.

The part of your home page which is visible to browser is between the <BODY> and </BODY> command. Note that anything between the < > symbols is invisible unless you use the view source function on browser. The reason why you can see these brackets and commands in this text because I use special characters to indicate that I am displaying these symbols for observation rather than as commands. Within this page are actual HTML commands which are invisible to the user.


Useful Basic HTML Formatting Commands
Once you have created your basic page template you will have to format the rest of your document so that the Web Browswer knows how to lay out your page. Keep in mind that you must code all formatting: carriage returns and indenting. You have to do this with specific commands. Web Browswers do not read carriage returns. You have to tell the browswer to skip a line with a piece of code. Here are some basic formatting commands that will help you create well laid out pages.

<P> </P> - Skip a line between paragraphs
<BR> Skip to next line
<BLOCKQUOTE> </BLOCKQUOTE> - Set paragraph off with a left and right margin. This is a great command to keep your page centered and shorten the line length on your page.
<H1> </H1> - Largest type heading
<H2> </H2> - Next smallest type heading
<H3> </H3> - Next smallest type heading
<H4> </H4> - Next smallest heading
<H5> </H5> - Next smallest heading
<H6> </H6> - Smallest type heading
<I> </I> - set type to italic
<B> </B> - set type to bold
<CENTER> </CENTER> - Place text in center of page
<HR> - Draw a line across the page (and skip to next line)