Starting a Web Page

[ On a PC | On a Mac ]

Go directly to the next page, An Introduction to HTML.

On a PC

  • Open Notepad. Click on the 'Start' button, then go into the 'Programs' and then 'Accessories' folder, and select 'Notepad.'

  • Hit "Ctrl-N" to open a new window. In that new window, click on this link: my template page. If you already know HTML you don't need this template, and you can begin your web page in the Notepad using HTML right away. If you are just learning HTML, click on the above link to go to that web page, follow the next few directions, and then come back to this site to continue.

  • In Netscape, go 'View' and select 'Page Source' or use Ctrl-U. This opens the source code of the page being viewed in Netscape. If using IE4, go to 'View' and select 'Source.'

  • Select the contents of the page (with the mouse) or use Ctrl-A.In IE4, the source code will come up in a notepad file: in Notepad, go to 'Edit' and 'Select All.'

  • Copy the selected text/page source with Ctrl-C. In IE4, Ctrl-C works as well, or 'Edit,' 'Copy.'

  • Paste the copied text into your empty Notepad file. Select 'Untitled-Notepad' from the start menu along the bottom of the screen, and use 'Ctrl-V' or 'Edit,' 'Paste' to paste the text into the empty, untitled Notepad.

  • Save the Notepad file as index.html. In Notepad, go to 'File' and then 'Save As.' If not already selected, make sure the 'Save in:' field is saving it to a disk in the A:\ drive. Type 'index.html' into the 'Filename:' field and then click on 'Save.' (All web pages must be saved with the extension (ending of the filename) '.html')

  • Close the source code. Close the window that says "Source of: http://www....(etc.)", the one that has the grey background with the text you just copied into the Notepad. After this, you should have returned from the template to come back to this page, so you can continue on to the next part of the tutorial.

On a Mac

Beginning a web page on a Mac is almost identical to using the PC instructions above. Use SimpleText (or TeachText) on Macs instead of Notepad on PCs to edit your web document, saving it with the extension ".html" as seen above.
Sometimes a page in progress works better when saved on the hard drive, instead of working from a disk. If the web page gets a fair number of errors while being run from disk, try saving it to the hard drive and then saving back to disk when you have finished editing the HTML document.

Go to the next page, An Introduction to HTML.