Module 3: HTML Tags

I suffered some embarrassment a few days prior to starting this Module. I was chatting with a friend on Skype and asked the question, "What is the purpose of HTML? What does it do?". The response I got was "Sorry?!"... Immediately I regretting showing my ignorance, and felt foolish for asking. My pal wrote back something to the effect of it being the language that makes the web page all pretty. He followed that message with a picture of my blog in HTML form, and I was shocked. Before me was a page that I had seen countless times before and not known what it was or what it was for. We talked for a while about "the ghost in the machine", and suddenly it all made sense.

After reading the Module, I started on the HTML tags task. Joe Barta took me through 26 steps of the most basic of information (what I needed) concerning HTML. Firstly on his recommendation I got myself Note Tab Light, followed by Firefox. Well, needless to say that afternoon had to be written off, I was very keen to familiarise myself with all of the new tabs I had seen in the tutorial.

The following morning I got right back into it and was pleased that I had remembered the page layout and some of the more basic tags. My first web page was made up of a picture and a background colour, some text and few links, one to my email address, the other to this blog.

Blogging or HTML? Not a very difficult choice here. HTML. Although both offer the freedom of creation... I think HTML offers more control over the page which is appealing to me. Either way, I most definitely feel a sense of achievement with both.

I found the language very self explanatory and once I got used to the basic layout, I was fine. For some of the more complex codes I had to keep referring to the tutorials and for things like the picture resizing I installed Ifranview. Of course, this is all trial and error so I will have to spend lots of hours at the computer to iron out most of the issues. I ended up with this as my first attempt.


My very basic first attempt at creating a web page


After seeing some other pages, I feel the same way my 3 year old son does when he shows me a drawing he has done. "Look!" He gets praise for his mediocrity because he is 3, and that's just what you do. The praise I am giving myself here runs in the same vein. I'm celebrating my mediocrity... at least it works! And, it can only get better...