Text & Page Formatting

Text

Heading Tags | Font Tags | Color Tags | Format Tags

Page

Body Tags | Backgrounds (subsection)

Just like everything else in an HTML document, text can be modified by tags. You can change a text's size, style, form, and color.

Heading Tags

There are six different heading 'sizes', numbered 1 to 6, 1 being the largest and boldest. To turn regular text into a heading text, all you have to do is place the text between these two tags: <H#> and </H#>. For example:

<h1> Heading 1 </h1>

<h2> Heading 2 </h2>

<h5> Heading5</h5>

<h6> Heading 6</h6>

Font Tags
To change the font of text: <font face="name of font">text</font>
To change the font size of the text: <font size="+ or - #">text</font>
To change the font color: See below

And of course all these can be put together (in any order), and if you do, you only need one </font> instead of three. Here's what I mean:

Listed below are some font styles and effects:

<b>Bold text </b>

<i>Italic text </i>

<u>Underline text </u>

<sub>_Subscript <sub>
,

<strong>Strong text</strong>

<em>Emphasized text </em>

<blink> Blinking text (w/ Netscape)</blink>

<sup>^Superscript <sup>

Color Tags
If you wish to change the color of just a small section of text, just place the text between:

In HTML, every color is given a six letter-number code, and since nobody is expected to memorize this code, here's what you do:

open the HTML document in an HTML composer or editor (e.g.Netscape Composer)
highlight the section of text
find the always-present button or drop-down menu for 'font color', and choose a color

If you want to change the overall text color of the entire page, go here. However, overall text color is overridden by changing the color of a small section, and every text color is overridden by the color of links, which can be changed too.

Format Tags

Whitespace, Tabs, and whatever else is usually used to organize and separate text is read and seen as a single space when it is viewed by a HTML browser. So, since nobody wants their text to be one long paragraph, there are special 'solitary' tags used to separate and shape your text. These tags are 'solitary' becuase they're not paired with a 'close' tag. Here's a list:

<br> -- break: skips to the next line

<p> -- paragraph: skips two lines, creating a space between two lines of text. Is not equal to two <br> tags, because those are condensed into one single <br> tag.

<hr> -- draws a visible horizontal separation line <see below>. You can change its size with: <hr width="# %" size="#">; the hr below has a width=50% of the window and a (height)size=5 pixels.

  -- I know this isn't a tag, but it is read as and creates a non-breaking space.

Also, you can easily align text by placing one of these three tags around it:

<center> centered text </center>

<p align=right>aligned right text </p>

<p align=left> aligned left text </p>

In this page formatting section are the formatting options that are done within the opening body tag of an HTML document. These options include overall text color, the color of links, and options for your background. For example, the body tag for this page is:

Body Tags

Within the body tags, you can change :
The overall text color : <BODY Text="#colorcode">.
The color of linking text (three different types): Click Here.
The background... see below.

Backgrounds (Subsection)

To change the color of you background: <BODY bgcolor="#color code">

To have an image as your background: <BODY background= "what you saved the image as.what the image type is">. And just so you know, a background picture overrides the background color.

There are 2 types of image backgrounds, one is a tiled background (like this page), and the other is a border background (like my home page). Here's a tip: If you choose a tiled background, it is important that it isn't too "noisy" or "loud", because then it interfers with the page itself, causing it to be an eyesore. I'm not saying that all of your backgrounds should be faded, dark backgrounds are great too -- with white text. As long as the text contrasts with the background, viewers shouldn't have any trouble looking at your page.

If you prefer a border background, you obviously don't want to write over the border. However, HTML can't distinguish border backgrounds from tiled ones. Thus, you have to write within a table, whose size is only a certain percent of the page, and align it to either the left, right, or center. If you're confused, just click here.

Something cool that you can do with backgrounds is make them fixed. By this I mean that as you scroll down the web page, the background picture doesn't move. An example would be this page. To make your background picture stationary, just type within the body tag <BODY bgproperties= fixed>. However, this property is only supported by Internet Explorer and not Netscape.